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In-flight fire forces pilot to land at Shafter's Minter Field
| Sunday, Aug 5 2007 9:10 PM
Last Updated: Sunday, Aug 5 2007 9:14 PM
Mark Drew was 8,500 feet above Interstate 5 Sunday afternoon when he heard sparks in the console of his home-built airplane, a Van's Aircraft RV-6A.
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When the Northridge pilot noticed smoke, he abandoned plans for lunch at Harris Ranch.
Drew broadcast a distress call and turned his plane toward Meadows Field in Bakersfield.
Soon, smoke billowed from the console and sparks exploded near the fuel line.
"The only thing that was going through my mind was: 'Where is the nearest airport and how do I get there?'" he said.
At Meadows Field, air traffic controllers had heard Drew's call and rallied help. Emergency units rushed toward Meadows Field and Bakersfield Municipal airport.
But Drew didn't make it that far.
Another flight
Pete Plumb also was in the air, five miles south of Shafter's Minter Field on his way back from Bakersfield.
Air traffic controllers radioed him to check for Drew's plane.
Plumb, who runs a business building wood-winged planes on Minter Field, knew the situation was serious.
"It could have been really bad," Plumb said. "An in-flight fire is never good."
He scoured the skies for Drew's plane.
Breathe
Things were definitely not good inside the RV-6A cockpit over Shafter.
Drew couldn't see through the smoke -- though that wasn't his biggest problem.
"My immediate concern was breathing," he said.
Pilots are trained to stay calm, so he thought about his problem logically.
"Panic is a bad thing," Drew said.
He had to breathe, which meant he had to vent the smoke.
Drew would have to open the clam-shell cockpit cover.
To do that, he had to slow down.
"I throttled back to 80 knots," he said.
Then he opened the canopy.
Skin of his knees
Now Drew had another problem.
He couldn't let go of the canopy and risk having it ripped off the plane.
He also needed one hand for the plane's throttle and one for the aircraft's wood-handled stick.
"I was using the stick with my knees and holding the canopy with my right hand and adjusting the throttle with my left hand," he said.
Once he had the plane stable and his lungs clear, Drew started looking for a good stretch of road to set down on.
Instead he saw Minter Field.
Lunch
Plumb, in the air above Minter, finally saw Drew's maroon-red RV-6A. He opened a channel on his radio and called it in.
The plane, he told flight controllers, was on the ground.
Drew described the landing simply.
"I made a safe landing," he said.
Then he chuckled.
"I didn't have any right brake so I actually had to do circles on the runway while I taxied," he said. "Then I shut it down and pulled it off the runway."
Regulars on the Minter Field airport rallied around Drew, hitching his plane to a truck and towing him to a tie-down.
Plumb let Drew borrow a cell phone so he could call his wife and the friend he was supposed to meet at Harris Ranch.
Then the two pilots started talking serious business.
"Are you hungry?" Plumb asked the Northridge pilot.
"I sure am," Drew told him.