[Rhodes22-list] Compass Stories

[brad haslett]

Bob Weber,

Since its 4am and I can't sleep I may as well tell a
couple of compass stories, one involving your beloved
Redbirds.

In the late 70's I was running a small freight company
in Little Rock.  FedEx and the air freight forwarders
only delivered within the city so all the little
factories around Arkansas would have to send a driver
daily to LIT for their inbound freight, often a 4-hour
or more round trip.  My business was to put the
freight on an airplane and deliver it much sooner.  A
lot of these guys liked getting out of the factory so
you had to identify who had the power to make a
decision (usually the traffic manager) and get their
approval to use us.  Our marketing efforts consisted
of picking these guys up in an airplane and flying
them to Little Rock for an overnight stay on my bosses
44-foot houseboat.  We'd take them out on the Arkansas
River, feed them steak, get them drunk, and show a
classic movie, say something starring Linda Lovelace. 
It was pretty heady stuff for a lot of these guys and
it worked.  One morning we headed back to the dock in
fog so thick you couldn't see either bank of the
river.  We were navigating using a compass and map,
and the depth finder to stay in the channel.  I was
posted on watch on the bow to listen for barges.  I
looked up and saw a major powerline and my boss found
our exact location on the map.  About thirty minutes
later I saw another overhead powerline and pointed it
out.  The throttles suddenly went to idle and we had a
conference.  There was only one powerline that crossed
the river in our location.  In the fog and confusion
we had done a 180 degree turn in the river and was
headed back downstream.  Keeping with the old Navy
tradition, "better to die than look bad", we did
another 180 and never mentioned our "problem" to our
guests.

My boss was a big Cardinal fan he flew to a couple of
games each month.  The one time I went with him I
agreed to fly to STL with the understanding I could
drink beer during the game and he'd fly back.  We
landed at Parks Bi-State and took a cab downtown.  I
got up to go get some beers and my boss said, "yea,
get me a couple more too!"  OK, so much for him flying
home. I like baseball but the game goes a lot slower
without beer. We got in the airplane after the game
and I said I'd go inside and get our IFR clearance on
the phone.  "Ah hell, lets just pick it up airborne" 
I pleaded with my boss that the weather looked pretty
shitty and that wasn't a good idea.  Long story short,
he intimidated me into launching and we called Scott
AFB approach for the clearance.  "Remain VFR and
standby".  It was a bit late for that since we went
popeye at about 500'.  We got our IFR and pressed on. 
The wx at LIT was about 400' overcast and all we had
on board was a localizer.  Then my boss started
explaining what all didn't work.  No G/S, no marker
beacon, no ADF, and the number two VOR was EXACTLY 90
degrees off.  "Are you sure?  Exactly 90 degrees?"  We
used a crossing radial off the #2 VOR, corrected 90
degrees of course, to identify the outer marker and
descended to the MDA.  And flew and flew and flew and
flew and flew.  After about 10 minutes I couldn't take
it any more and started to go missed when all of a
sudden the approach lights came into view.  We must
have let down about 30 miles from the airport.  That
was my last Cards game with that employer and a few
weeks later I found another job.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!"

Brad


		
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