Shelter From the Storm(s)
By Dick Karl
December 2008
 The crack of thunder was ear splitting and air clearing; you could smell the electricity. Though the rain had diminished from its torrential pace, there was little doubt that this thunderstorm was directly above us. Not one second of interval between flash of lightning and thwack of thunder was detectable. How pleased I was that I'd made arrangements for our airplane to be hangared on this stormy night.
No sooner had I thought these thoughts than the lights went out in this New Hampshire cottage. Water was no longer available, as electricity was required to run the well pump. The rain picked up again, sheets of it sprayed the windows as if buckets of water had been hurled at the house. Rivers of water cascaded off the roof, but our Cheyenne was safely tucked into one of the new hangars at Lebanon, New Hampshire. We had arrived just in time. The next day we learned that a woman had been killed in a neighboring town. A tornado had removed her house from around her as she sat in her living room.
The new hangars towards the south end of the field were a welcome development for us. Jay Fitzgerald, Lebanon's operations supervisor, was just putting the finishing touches on getting the hangars occupied as our week in New England rolled into view.
Our hangar was a big one. Jay had contacted Michael Nolan of Washington, D.C., and arranged for us to borrow his electric tug so as to put our airplane in the hangar. Michael spends lots of time in the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River and rents a hangar full time at LEB and one at Gaithersburg (KGAI). He flies a Baron.
As we taxied up just ahead of the storm clouds, Jay was standing there, tug in hand. Together we got the Cheyenne towed around to our temporary hangar and pointed her backwards into the sheltering building gated with a huge bifold door. The construction was so new that there was a two inch difference between the hangar floor and the ramp. You can guess which was higher. This necessitated the placement of three plywood wedges to allow the tug to push the airplane (now weighing about 7,400 pounds, I'd guess) up the hill into the hangar.
You can not imagine how slow an electric tug moves when it isn't attached to an airplane and how fast it seems when you are propelling three-plus tons of pride onto three very small appearing plywood ramps. I had not yet heard about the owner who missed and damaged his Cessna 182 when it careened into the hangar wall. Safely tucked away, I thanked Jay, called Michael Nolan to thank him and headed for shelter.
I was to repeat this feeling of earnest thanks for five straight days. Though our power was restored and the water got pumping again, it was a very soggy week. Without Jay and the folks at LEB, I'd have been constantly fretting about the airplane and its safety.
To make things even better, Greg Soho at Signal Aviation at LEB agreed to tug us in and out, once the appropriate asphalt had been put down to make the plywood wedges unnecessary. Since we're in a community hangar at Signature in Tampa, it was fun to visit the airplane in its own "house."
The next week I headed for Oshkosh, St. Louis and South Bend. Each trip featured classic summer flying, with lots of convective activity and lots of deviation, but for the most part I got to where I wanted to get when I wanted to get there.
Until late August, that is. Hurricane Fay got downgraded to a tropical storm but it still managed to wreck havoc on the state of Florida. One of the principal reasons for its negative effectiveness was that it hung around over various parts of the state for days on end. Rain, in some places over two feet of it in two days, made for floods, power outages and frayed tempers. (I sometimes wonder if the tempers are a result of the rain and humidity or the actual barometric depression.) On the day I had planned to fly my trusty Labrador retriever, Corbett, from Tampa back to New Hampshire, the storm squatted squarely in our path over the northern part of the state. My wife, Cathy, was waiting eagerly in New Hampshire to see us; actually, mostly eager to see the dog.
The night before the proposed trip I phoned two consultants whom I know to be consummate airmen and wise souls in general. Not only that, but they know me and my limitations, both as an aviator and a man. I called Rob Haynes, head of standards at Southwest Airlines, Cessna 210 owner and a calm presence in general, and asked for his advice. Go or no go? He sent me SWA's hurricane update, which sounded ominous as hell. Rob and I agreed to talk the next morning. So did Doug Commins. He was my simulator partner at Higher Power Aviation in Dallas a couple of years ago when we got our 737 type ratings. Doug now flies for NetJets and was on a seven-day trip flying important people around, with the occasional dog himself.
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