On December 18, 2008 I got out to the airport just as the snow was being plowed from in front of the hangers, so I shoveled out in front of the doors. As it was a nice day to fly, I rolled out the Taylorcraft after checking for water in the two tanks I intended to use, the nose and left wing. I flew over Starks and then down over the Waterville airport, to see if Ray Steinmeyer was there. He wasn’t, and the runway was still being cleared, so I continued on down the river to his house in Sidney. The nose tank was just about dry by now, so I opened the valve to drain the six gallons in the left wing into the nose. The float wire in the nose tank didn’t pop up, but that didn’t concern me too much, as it sometimes hangs up. I continued down the river at 1500 feet, when the engine suddenly stopped. I was just abreast of Kramer Tractor on the West River Road (Rt. 104). I opened the valve on the right wing tank, and put the nose down to keep the propeller turning. I picked out a field directly across the road from Kramer, and circled once to bleed off altitude. Meanwhile the engine didn’t catch. When I completed the turn, I was lined up with an even better field just upriver of the first one, and this one had the outline of a beaten down path under the three inches of snow, and perpendicular to the river, so that’s where I landed. With the snow and uphill slope, there wasn’t much of a roll out.

There was a wad of straw around the tail wheel, but no damage to the airplane. I trudged up to the road, to find that one of Ray’s neighbors had stopped his pickup to look. He gave me a ride the half mile down the road to Ray’s house. Ray was plowing his driveways with his derelict old IH Scout. When he finished, we took his car back to the scene with a step stool, funnel and can of gas. We sticked the tanks. Both wing tanks were empty, but the nose tank now had plenty of gas. I started it up and it ran fine. There must have been an ice blockage in the left wing tank feed, and the right tank never had any gas in it. We didn’t put any more gas in, because I didn’t want to add any more weight. As it turns out, the path that I had landed on continued back to the middle of the field, made ninety degree left turn, and continued across the width of the field parallel to the river. This was also in alignment with the prevailing southerly breeze. We paced it off, and figured we had the makings of a runway. We drove back to see Ray’s neighbor across the road. He had a new New Holland 4WD diesel tractor that he had just gotten to play with in his retirement. He leaped at the chance to plow a runway with it. While he was driving to the scene, Ray I had a quick snack at his house. When we got back to the field, the plowing was almost complete. We had about a 600 foot strip. We towed the airplane up to the north end with the tractor. I got in and took off, being careful to miss the abandoned double bottom plow in the middle of the field. I lifted off at the crest of the field just as I passed the plow, settled back and bounced once, then climbed, clearing the trees at the edge of the field with room to spare.

I made a sweeping turn back over the field and continued north. Feeling that my good karma might be stretched a little thin, I went up to 2300 feet and followed the interstate generally up to Fairfield Center, where I followed Rt. 139 back to Norridgewock. There were more fields under me this way.

“Crash” Patten
Private Pirate