Risky takeoff procedure !

[Guest Bobby]

When I first began flying a B-26 I was assigned to an Instructor Pilot named Captain Mark Banek. He was to introduce me to what to do and what not to do while in a B-26. Mark was an "Old Salt" pilot that had many hours in a B-26 and was a Hot Dog. Our first trip I was in the right seat and Mark was doing the driving. We taxiid out to the end of the runway and he began his runup fo takeoff. After rolling a short distance he reached over and pulled the landing gear lever to the up position. He told me to not pull tjis lever up until I had gone a short distance because if I let the plane lurch on takeoff roll it would let the landing gear fold up. He explained that as long as I kept the weight of the aircraft down on the gear they could not fold up. When he reached takeoff speed he pulled the nose up and the gear started folding up into their wells. There was no advantage to pulling this stunt. It was just a Hot Dog maneuver.

 

The next thing that he told me was to never bank into a dead engine. Of course he then feathered our left engine and banked left. After showing me that this could be done he restarted the left engine and he demonstrated more do=not-try-this-at- home moves. Boy what a day!

 

PS. I never tried any of his maneuvers on my own. There was no advantage in doing so.

 

 

[Guest Glenn]

Hey Bobby good to see you again. Feel free to tell us more of your interesting stories.

 

PS - Moving this to Aviation Humour & Interesting Stories

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Nice to know just how far you can go and see that it CAN be done, but as you say, the idea is not to get yourself into a situation where you need to do it.