SPRING IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER

Blue Mountain EAA Chapter 604
By - Don Bais (Courtesy of The Rite Flyer)

It’s that fabulous time of year again when spring is in the air, be it a mite cool just yet, but rest assured it will come. When the weather begins to warm a little, our aviator minds turn to flights of fancy and it’s time to get our birds out of the nest and ready to go.

Strange things happen to our birds during the time they are asleep for the winter. Moisture can form in the fuel tanks, tire pressure seems to drop, and all that dust we need to get rid of! The brake disks get rusty and the battery may be down. And then there are those various critters that can invade our planes, be they parked inside or out. Birds and mice love to make our planes their homes. Mud dobbers love to make their little mud houses on our engine cylinders and create those nasty little hot spots if we don’t find them and remove them.

We purchased our Comanche in early May of 1983. We didn’t have a hangar yet so it was parked outside. We hadn’t flown for a couple of weeks and when we went out to fly I did the usual pre-flight list checks, got in, and cranked up. We were cleared for taxi to runway 14 for departure, did our run-up and were cleared by the tower for departure.

It was a bit cool so Alyce pulled the cabin heat on. As we began our climb out something started to smell hot. It wasn’t an electrical or oil smell and there was no smoke but something was hot. I called the tower and got a short close pattern for landing. We taxied off the active and stopped in a safe place. I opened up the cowling and began to investigate. Upon close examination, I could see insect legs sticking out of the shroud around the exhaust that provides cabin heat. I took a screw driver and proceeded to remove the shroud and wouldn’t you know it – that shroud was occupied by about a quart jar full of yellow jackets. Fortunately, they were pretty disabled but still moving slowly about. I still don’t know why we didn’t get a surprise in the cockpit, but not one yellow jacket came through.

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