AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2019 - 99

wings. Wait. I've got no aileron response.
OK, let the airplane slide nose-down to an
upright position.
Looks good. What's my altitude? 3,500
feet agl. OK, I've got height safety. Try to
level the wings. The yoke won't move. Try
the elevator. No response. Rudder pedals?
Working. Throttle? Full to idle. Check the
tail section. Looks solid. Check the wings.
No flutter. No skin buckling. No propeller
vibration. Let's see if I can make it back to
the field with frozen ailerons and elevator.
Should I force the yoke and see if it frees
up? Better not. Whatever is the problem
might get worse if I use brute force.
NAVIGATE. I'm still over my practice area
with DPA 15 miles to the east. Can I maneuver the Aerobat with just the rudder and
throttle? Let's see. Rudder to a heading of
110 degrees and work the throttle to maintain altitude. Yes, it works. Sloppy but I'm
there. I think I can pull this off.
It was time to call the field.
COMMUNICATE. I called DuPage Tower
with my location: "I'm 15 miles due west
of the field at 3,500 feet. Except for rudder
controls and a working throttle, my other
controls are frozen. I can basically fly the
plane in the direction of the airport, over."
The tower advised me to declare an
emergency, and I did, requesting the wind
vector and routing to the best runway for
a straight-in approach, with or without a
tailwind.
"Cessna Four-Six-Zero-Six Alpha, we
can give you a straight-in to Runway 10
with a quartering tailwind, 7 to 9 knots
variable off your left side. Do you feel you
can make the field or do you want to bail
out over the cornfields?"
I said I was sure I could make the field.
"Cessna Four-Six-Zero-Six Alpha,
report at 5 out and 2 out. Good luck."
Reduce throttle. Start descent. Keep
on that left rudder to stay lined up to the
left of Runway 10 to adjust for the tailwind. Looks good. Five miles out. Runway
in front of me.
"Cessna Four-Six-Zero-Six Alpha, this
is DuPage Tower. We have you in sight. Be
advised the winds are now at three-zerozero at 8 knots, gusting to 10."

The situation was getting dicey. Put
in more left crab and hold it all the way.
Three miles out. Reduce power. Stay a little high on the glideslope. One mile out.
Reduce power. No flaps. Maintain crab
over the numbers. Idle, hold the crab.
After a nice, smooth flare, I straightened the nose and touched down. A real
greaser.
I taxied to tiedown, killed the mixture and the battery, pulled the keys, and
chocked the nosewheel. Once inside the
flight standards district office building,
I contacted the manager of the Cessna
club and described what happened. He
was at the field in 20 minutes. Popping
open the door of the airplane, he stuck
his head and flashlight behind the yoke
just aft of the firewall. Straightening up,
he grabbed the yoke and yanked it hard
to the right. Another crack and pieces of
brittle, yellowed plastic rained down on
the rudder pedals. The yoke was free.
The plastic was part of the airspeed
feed tubing from the static port and the
pitot tube to the airspeed indicator. It
had hardened with age and had come
loose from its support as a result of my
4-G pull-ups, wedging into the chain
pivot controlling the ailerons and elevators. Had I yanked the yoke, I would have
regained bi-directional control, but without airspeed input.
In retrospect, I realized I was never
in serious danger. I had altitude, time to
plan, and a situational awareness gained
from my many hours of aerobatics. How
ironic, though, that in 50 years of flying various high-performance aerobatic
aircraft, it was the lowly Cessna Aerobat
that gave me my biggest scare.
AOPA
DAVID WERDEGAR is a private pilot who

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lives in Illinois.

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2019

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