{"id":2453,"date":"2013-11-15T06:40:58","date_gmt":"2013-11-15T14:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=2453"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:57","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:57","slug":"88-slight-breeze-hereford-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/88-slight-breeze-hereford-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"#88 A slight breeze in Hereford, Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cub<\/a>
The Cub during a practice session.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It must have been in the eighties.\u00a0 Details of this trip have been lost to a great extent in my little memory banks. I don\u2019t even remember where I was coming from or where I was going. I was in my old 100HP Cub, “The Quacker-Smacker”. \u00a0I had a quartering tailwind.\u00a0 I was making a pretty good ground speed, but my crab was huge as I crossed the Texas countryside on my way from one air show to another.\u00a0 Checking my chart, it seemed that Hereford, Texas would be a good fuel stop.\u00a0 \u00a0In fact, there are only two things I remember about Hereford.\u00a0 My first memory of Hereford was the smell of the feedlot next to the airport.\u00a0 It was amazingly pungent.\u00a0 Considering how wind normally causes odor to get diluted, it must have been REALLY pungent on a windless day.\u00a0 That day was sure not windless.\u00a0 In fact, my little 100hp Cub was barely able to beat into the wind as I entered the pattern. The wind got stronger.\u00a0 When I turned into the wind over the airport, my groundspeed was down to a crawl.\u00a0 The single runway at Hereford was out of the question.\u00a0 The wind was nearly a direct crosswind.\u00a0 I called for an advisory and got the lineman, who reported the wind at over 35 knots.\u00a0 I\u2019d slurped gas like crazy to get there and my fuel gauges were pounding on \u201cempty\u201d.\u00a0 I asked the lineman for some special help and he was very accommodating.<\/p>\n

\"Hereford,<\/a>
Thanks to Google Earth for this shot of the Hereford, Texas airport. The feedlot is to the lower left<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I circled overhead.\u00a0 The downwind portion of my circle took about ninety degrees of bank to avoid being blown into the next county.\u00a0 The upwind portion was virtually wings level !\u00a0 I spotted a tiedown spot on the ramp and made an approach at it from a position directly downwind.\u00a0 As I brought the power back and slowed down I found that I was able to hover just downwind of the parking spot.\u00a0 I played with power and pitch.\u00a0 Carefully, I descended.\u00a0 As I got lower, I actually achieved some ground speed so I had to reduce the power a little more and pitch up to slow down.\u00a0 I descended directly into the spot.\u00a0 The lineman waited.\u00a0 When I touched the ground and held both brake and power to stay in position, he scampered in and secured the tiedown chains to my tiedown points on either wing.\u00a0 I then brought the power back and allowed the ship to settle against the tension of the tiedown chains.\u00a0 The tail came down and he secured it.\u00a0 Only then could I shut down.\u00a0 The Cub sat on its tiedown spot, its wings rocking in the wind.\u00a0 There\u2019s a reason most of us don\u2019t like chains:\u00a0 they have no shock absorption and the Cub was pounding against the tension of the chains.<\/p>\n

The lineman had trotted over to the gas truck and he brought it up to the Cub.\u00a0 It broke the wind sufficiently that much of the pounding stopped.\u00a0 I grabbed the nozzle and perched precariously on one tire and then the other as I topped both tanks while holding on against the gale. I topped the secret ferry tank as well.<\/p>\n

After paying and peeing, the process was reversed.\u00a0 I started up and he released the tail.\u00a0 I powered up to release the tension on the tiedown chains and he released them.\u00a0 He gave me a thumbs up and I opened the throttle.\u00a0 The Cub rose up in a hover.\u00a0 I turned to climb on course and assumed that huge crab angle.<\/p>\n

By the time I got to my destination, the wind had decreased.\u00a0 Otherwise, I\u2019d remember that place as well as I remember Hereford, Texas.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

” There\u2019s a reason most of us don\u2019t like chains: they have no shock absorption and the Cub was pounding against the tension of the chains.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35,47,171],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}