AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2015 - 94

P&E

94 | 

NEVER AGAIN

Then he asked which of us had been flying. I told him I had, and he asked where I
had been flying. Before I could answer, he
said, "Let me guess-east of Knoxville, over
the mountains, and above 3,000 feet agl but
below 5,000 feet."
Astonished, I asked how he could possibly have known that. He answered my
question with another question: "Did
you see little wisps of smoke down in the
valleys of those mountains?"
I said I had seen those quite often.
"Those weren't barbeque grills, son,
they were moonshine stills," he said. "Those
moonshiners saw your airplane, figured
you were a federal revenue agent, and took
a shot at you! I knew you were between
3,000 and 5,000 feet because if you were
lower than 3,000 feet the bullet would have
clipped through the entire wing; and if you
had been above 5,000 feet nobody with a
pistol would have tried to hit you.
"And it was a pistol, a .45 or .357 from
the looks of the hole, and the bullet was

tumbling when it hit you. See here [pointing to the hole], it isn't a round hole, more
like an oval. And it missed your fuel tank in
this wing by less than a foot."
I had been just mildly intrigued up until
the part about a speeding bullet barely missing the fuel tank. Now the mental image of
a flaming Cessna ripping into the trees in
the middle of nowhere, with me in it, really
got my attention. The older pilot said, "Boys,
always cross those mountains above 5,000
feet agl. Not everybody around here likes
airplanes as much as we do."
My friend and I talked about this incident with lots of other pilots over the next
few years. The best idea on how to avoid
future ventilations of Cessnas came from my
wife, Cindy, who suggested we put big, black
tape letters on the bottom of the fuselages,
about two feet across, so people could read
them clearly from the ground. They should
spell "NOT A FED."
WEB

www.aopa.org/pilot/never_again

Lessons learned: Before you fly from a
new airport, tell the local guys where you
plan to go and get the local scoop on the
locations of hazards such as busy airspace
and routes, towers, tricky winds, and highspeed lead. Do thorough pre-and post-flight
walkarounds and look for anything unusual,
such as oil seeping from joints in engine
cowlings (something has let go), brake fluid
on a tire (bad O-rings on the pistons), fresh
bird remains (a bird strike), and one more
item that I have added to my own personal
checklist-newly arrived, large-caliber bullet holes.
AOPA
Mack McKinney teaches and speaks professionally on decision making, in aviation and
business.

DIGITAL EXTRA Hear this and other
original "Never Again" stories as
podcasts every month on iTunes
and download audio files free
(www.aopa.org/never_again).

sm

Powder Hounds

Snow? Get out there and frolic in it! Bolt on your skis, crank up the
heat and take off for snow country. Find a clearing with lots fresh
powder and expand the envelope on adventure.

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2015
