Repo Man

Later, on sober reflection, I couldn’t believe that I’d had the nerve to go through with it and keep a straight face in the aftermath. At the time, I didn’t really think about it. I just did it. I’m sure you can understand that young men – and I was young then - do things that a sane person would never consider, that seem improbable and sometimes downright dumb-ass. This incident could easily have ended up in the latter category, but that day my karma was good and all went well.

Let me back up a bit here. I received an excellent and very thorough education at the University of Southeast Asia back in the 60’s. In addition to the many distasteful things I majored in, I also picked up some very useful skills, like adding a little starch when laundering your shorts, because that made them look sharp and square during the endless inspections of your footlocker. Of course, wearing starched shorts was another, less pleasant, matter, particularly in hot and humid climates. In addition to being really uncomfortable, it also speeds the onset of jungle rut. On the upside, starch in your shorts discouraged crabs. They didn’t like it and stayed away. On the other hand, starched shorts do not stave off the clap, which always seemed to accompany the crabs. They had this symbiotic relationship, where if one was in attendance the other wasn’t far behind. Or maybe it was just the place or the company we were keeping. Anyway, this is a subject you don’t want to discuss with your mama. She just wouldn’t understand.

Another useful skill I came away with was the art of spit-shining your boots. For those unfamiliar with this technique, you need cotton balls, black shoe polish, elbow grease and ample gobs of spit. The end result should allow you to see the warts on your pecker reflected in the shine of your boots, as my old drill sergeant used to say. I know. Why would anyone want to see that? It seems sort of unhygienic and there certainly isn’t a need to know. It just was very important at the time.

As well and more to the point of this story, Uncle Sam taught me to fly an airplane. I took to that like my dog to otter scat. I couldn’t get enough of it. I loved it.

The next logical step, of course, was to acquire an airplane and in the 70’s when I lived in Miami, I could finally afford to own one, that is the bank and I could. I my case, it was a 1974 single-engine Piper Cherokee 180. It had about 3,300 TT on the airframe and 1,300 hours on its Lycoming engine SMOH. It cruised at 124 knots and had a range of 510 nautical miles, with a ceiling of 15,700 ft. What made it particularly attractive to me was the short ground roll on take-off (720ft) and landing (600ft) and the low stall speed. You could land and take off on a beach or a field without much of a problem. On the flat topography of Florida and the Bahamas this was a definite plus. I mean, the highest point in South Florida is a place called Shark Pass, elevation 3ft.

To help with the payments, I leased it back to the seller, a flight school at Tamiami General Aviation Airport, southwest of downtown Miami. During the week the flight school used the plane to train future pilots and on weekends I used it to fly all over Florida and the Keys, the Bahamas, the Yucatan or wherever. This arrangement seemed to work pretty well until sometime in late June of 1976. I should have known better than to trust someone else to look after my toy.

A friend of mine at the flight school called to tell me that the company was about to go belly-up and that they planned to declare my plane as part of their assets to satisfy the bank. He said, I’d better get my butt out there and repo my plane, before the bank took over, which was set to happen in the morning. Needless to say, I did just that. I waited ‘til dark, had one of my buddies drive me to Tamiami Airport, untied my plane and flew it out to Homestead General Airport, about a 15 minute flight south along Dixie Highway. Unlike in Canada, in the U.S. you were only required to file a flight plan if you planned to cross the Air Defense Identification Zone (A.D.I.Z.) line off shore, otherwise it was entirely voluntary. The next day I rented a hangar to keep my toy out of sight. No one tried to stop me. Nothing to it. The lesson I learned from this episode was to always and thoroughly do my due diligence.

The next weekend, on June 27- I remember the day, because it is my father’s birthday - late in the afternoon, I was flying back from Chubb Key, a small island south of the Berry chain in the Bahamas. I’d been scuba diving on a sunken DC6, a drug plane that had missed the runway and sank in 80 feet of water. I was about 20 miles off-shore cruising along at 9,500 feet, and had just passed the A.D.I.Z. line, my plane’s engine started to sound rough and after a few minutes suddenly started sputtering and then died on me. I thought that the engine had sounded a bit different from the start, but I had paid no attention to it. I tried to restart it, but no such luck. It was dead. The problem is that unlike with a car, you can’t pull over to the shoulder and fix the problem or call CAA. With a single-engine plane you only have one option – get it down on the ground as safely as possible.

I knew that at that altitude my glide path was about 25 miles, enough to reach land. I radioed Opalocka, the official general aviation Customs Port of Entry and told them that I had had an engine failure and had lost power and was forced to glide in for a landing. The tower said that they had me on radar and cleared me for runway 27 W. They advised that if I couldn’t make Opalocka, I should try Homestead AFB, which was located right next to the shore and much closer.

To be on the safe side, I switched to the military frequency and radioed Homestead AFB tower and informed them of my predicament and asked for permission to land. Permission was refused. It was restricted to military flights only. By that time I was getting pretty low and my choice was to crash land in the mangroves, put down in the water or land at Homestead. I called Homestead AFB tower again and told them I was coming in for a landing; that I had no choice other than to land in the drink. I turned the radio off and barely made it over the perimeter fence and put my plane down on the restricted runway.

By the time I got out of my plane, it was surrounded by several air policemen who told me that I was under arrest and my plane was impounded. They were all over it with their dog. I guess they were looking for drugs and other contraband. They found nothing but my dive gear. They pushed the plane to a parking area next to the end of their north-south runway, confiscated the keys and I was off to the base guard house, where they charged me with criminal trespass and locked me up. After a couple of hours, they allowed me to call my lawyer, who persuaded the APs to let me go, with my plane as bond until they figured out what to do about me. Before we left, I asked them for permission to bring my mechanic down to see what had caused the engine failure.

The next morning, I returned with my mechanic to take a look at the engine under the suspicious eyes of the APs. It didn’t take long to realize that one of the pistons had seized up. We removed it and it was pretty badly corroded. My mechanic told me that he couldn’t fix the problem there; that the engine needed to be in the shop for a major overhaul. On our way out of the base, he did let on that with any luck he could probably fix it that the plane could be flown for a limited distance on three cylinders.

It turned out later that the flight school had used regular gas, instead of aviation fuel. They did this to save a couple of dollars on gas and the plane wasn’t theirs, so who cared. The leaded gas had corroded one of the plane’s four pistons and caused the engine to seize. I would deal with them later. First I had to get my toy back.

I racked my brain for a solution to this dilemma. This was the U.S. Air Force. They had guns and very fast planes and helicopters. I also realized that this was still the military, which on the surface was the picture of efficiency and order, but I had been a member of that same military and I knew that under the surface the right hand often didn’t know what the left hand was doing. This was still the place of the big snafu – situation normal all f…ed up, or so I hoped. Then the answer came to me. The next weekend was the 4th of July and this was the country’s 200th birthday and the Air Force had planned a major celebration at Homestead, including an open house, a fly-by, a big parade, speeches by the brass and local politicians. I figured no one would pay attention to a couple of guys working on an airplane amid all the hubbub all over the base. Most importantly the Air Police would be busy being important at the gate and all the festivities. All eyes would be on the parade.

Long story short, my mechanic and I entered the base with the crowd of visitors and made our way to my plane with a spare set of keys. He did whatever it was that needed to be done to make the engine turn over, gave me the thumbs up and I hopped in and taxied down the taxiway, as if I was simply taking the plane to a new parking area. The engine sounded rough, but it generated power. No one tried to stop me. After about 1,000ft I turned the plane around, trimmed it to take-off configuration, put on full flaps and put the power lever to the wall.

I knew right away that the take-off roll would be quite a bit more than 720ft, but at that point I was committed and didn’t think about failure, only about topping the 8ft high fence at the end of the taxi way. Lift-off speed was 70 knots and it seemed to take forever to get there, but finally about 100ft short of the perimeter fence, the plane lifted and I jerked it over the fence. The engine was coughing and straining pretty hard, but I was able to slowly urge it up to about 100ft above the ground and headed for Homestead General, about 10 minutes north. Again, no one tried to stop me or raise any kind of alarm. Piece of cake.

I landed without a problem, taxied to my hangar, secured the plane, locked the door and went home. The next morning I drove back to the base and asked the APs if it was alright to go and work on my plane. They were ok with that, which meant that they had not noticed that the plane was missing. They even offered me a ride. When we got to the parking area, of course there was no plane. The APs had no idea where it might have disappeared to.

Back at the guard house, it turned out that they had not recorded the plane’s ID number and hadn’t removed the plane’s registration from the plane. As I said before – snafu still reigned. I went into overdrive and put on a pretty good show of anger, disbelief and blame over their incompetence, lack of security and procedure. I threatened lawsuits, negative publicity and damages. It was one of my better performances. My B.A. in Speech & Drama was paying off. They were at a loss as to what possibly could have happened to the aircraft under their very noses. The Officer of the Guard promised to start a search of the base right away and assured me that there would be disciplinary action over the negligent handling of this matter. I told them that my attorney would be in touch later and went home.

I called my lawyer and told him what had happened. He thought it was hilarious. He wanted to sue the Air Force for the value of the plane. We settled on getting the trespass charges dropped in return for our silence on the disappearance of my plane. We told them that my insurance would take care of the loss. The Air Force seemed relieved.