The Saturday before Thanksgiving the weather was pretty nice. After flying with a student in the morning I decided to keep up my practice flying tailwheel aircraft. The School has a Cessna 152 that is a tailwheel aircraft. After flying and obtaining my tailwheel endorsement over the summer I have been looking for more opportunities to build tailwheel aircraft time. I will include a photo of a similar Cessna 152 to the one I was flying below. My goal was to practice landings in this frequently tricky to land aircraft on the grass adjacent to the paved runway at the Ionia airport.
After almost an hour of landing practice I was on final approach at about 60 knots airspeed and all was well. I let the aircraft down gently on the main landing gear and held the tail of the aircraft off the ground for a second or two. At this point the Cessna was rolling over the grass at about 40 knots and rapidly slowing to a stop. This is a critical point in the landing process because a tailwheel aircraft is particularly susceptible to a phenomenon known as a ground loop at this speed. A ground loop is an uncontrolled spin on the ground. It is similar to an accidental donut in your car, however, in an aircraft they frequently result in expensive damage.
It was at this critical, vulnerable moment when the otherwise graceful aircraft is quite awkward on the ground that something caught my eye just to my left out the window. A DEER was running right at my airplane! It would have hit my aircraft and could have sent me skidding out of control but at the last second the Deer made a sharp turn and began running WITH my airplane at about 40 M.P.H. I was shocked. The Ionia airport is very close to a dense residential and commercial area, but deer sightings were not infrequent around the airport. However, one had never run right up to my airplane before. Across the country deer vs. plane events are rare but often result in catastrophic damage.
The animal edged closer. It was underneath my wing. Its head was inches from contacting the lower corner of my flap which was down for landing. Its feet were almost rubbing against my landing gear. In a flash I pushed forward on the yoke to keep the tail heavy aircraft from settling on the ground and having the flap hit the deer. In the same second I pushed the throttle all the way forward in a desperate bid for more airspeed and control. I yanked back on the control yoke at a speed that was probably a little too low for normal lift off but I needed altitude no matter what. The laws of physics were on my side. Ground Effect reduces drag for an aircraft very low to the surface of the earth. By very low I mean only about within 10 feet of the surface. I took advantage of this and popped the aircraft up a few feet off the ground. It is not recommend by Cessna to take off with full flaps. They are only used for landing. However, I had no time to reach for the flap handle in my haste to avoid a crash. Full flaps add a great deal of lift at a low airspeed but they also increase drag significantly. Ground Effect helps to minimize this problem briefly but I had to be careful not to over rotate and have a takeoff stall which would led to an even worse crash.
By the Grace of God the Deer slid right under my landing gear. I could almost swear that my left tire brushed to top of the deer’s back or head as it ran on. That animal is capable of great bursts of speed. After squeezing past me, the deer headed straight for some corn a few dozen yards away. My heart was in the throat. My stomach had dropped out. Adrenaline and kicked into high gear. I still had to fly the airplane. After a normal traffic pattern, a warning over the local radio frequency, and a very carefully final approach I landed with out incident. Not to have my confidence shaken I made a few more trips around the airport, always looking for any animals making an unauthorized runway incursion. This entire deer event only took about 5 seconds but it seemed much longer than that.
Should I have slammed on my brakes? I think not. The distance between my propeller and the ground is not much and a slam on the brakes is a good way to have a propeller strike in a tailwheel aircraft. The brakes are not anti-locking and braking action is average at best on grass. Perhaps most importantly, if I had stopped the aircraft suddenly the Deer may have kept on running a head of where it was parallel to the cockpit and into the propeller. The mess that would have created would have been beyond description.
I try to teach the people I fly with to turn the carburetor heat control to off or cold shortly before landing. Many people don't do this out of habit but with carburetor heat applied engine performance is robbed especially in an emergency go around situation as outlined above. You want as much climb ability as you can have if you have to do a sudden go around and inches matter.
Finally, I am writing a letter to the officials in charge of the Ionia County Airport requesting that something be done about the deer over population around the airport. We will see what, if any, action this brings. Below you will find my highly technical and detailed drawing I created of the incident. Don't laugh it took weeks in Windows Paint.
JMG
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