Video Note: Video of me doing the takeoff on runway 19 towards the wires. The turn is to avoid the wires until you clear them. Video courtesy of Shane Cassell.

By now we’d gotten pretty used to the drill. Arrive at the airport, pick up the equipment, preflight the plane and the equipment, sign off with the boss, and then take off. The only difference today was that the boss noticed a fuel stain inside the cowling (He keeps this thing immaculately clean … so you notice if there is anything). After checking everything to see if there was a broken line anywhere he deduced that it might have been due to over priming and told us to be careful when we prime. With that done we jumped in the plane and took off. Flying southwest we started climbing to see if we could get on top the haze. Our optimal picture taking altitude for most fields is between 5,000 – 6,500 feet. We manage to just barely get above the haze by that point and enjoy relatively clear forward visibility.

As we got closer to the target fields we started noting some scattered clouds building below us. We took note of them because if they got any thicker it would make it impossible to get any pictures. Still we press on hoping to at least get some of the fields done before the weather goes south. As we lined up on the first field the visibility started getting lower. We still had the legal required visibility but we were getting nervous as we would now have less time to spot any conflicting air traffic. Just to be sure we call up Peoria approach control so that we’d have an extra pair of eyes watching our back. As we get to about the 6^th field, the clouds are now threatening to block any visibility of the fields below. We were now just barely getting the shots and eventually the cloud layer closed in over the fields. Seeing as the main purpose of the flight was now unachievable we tracked down our fuel stop and got on the ground. Back on the ground, as I’m parking the plane the engine suddenly starts to run rough. I pushed the mixture in just in case I’d leaned too much for the taxi. It quickly went away and ran fine again. Puzzled, I made a mental note to do a full check on the run up.

After calling home base, we were told to call it a day and head back. Seeing as the clouds were now at about 3,000 feet, we were probably not going to be taking any more pictures any time that day. After getting fuel we headed back north to the home field.

Soon enough we were back at the home airport and taxied up to the hangar. I pulled the mixture to shut the engine down and to my surprise it wouldn’t die. I increased the rpm and tried again … nope, still limping along. After a lot of jiggling I finally got it to die. Well by this point I was pretty much on full alert. I had already noticed that during the flight the rpm would drop about 100 rpm sometimes upon which I would pull the carburetor heat to make sure it wasn’t carburetor ice. It typically didn’t do a lot and eventually it’d go back to normal. By this point however I wanted to look further into it. After we described the problem to the boss and explaining that the primer was locked in place, he figured that the carburetor bowl was probably starting to loosen, or that the gasket was leaking. After removing the cowling and checking the carburetor, lo and behold it was exactly as he said, the carburetor bowl had just a little movement whenever you wiggled it.

Now I’ll just describe what that would have done for all of you who aren’t aircraft mechanics. This wasn’t something that would cause an immediate failure in flight … or at least it wouldn’t so long as we didn’t ignore the signs. Long story short, the engine is still being supplied with air and fuel due to the gap between carburetor halves provided by the loosened bolts. It isn’t as noticeable in flight other than the rpm changes I saw, but on engine shut down you’ll get a hint when it doesn’t want to turn off. The carburetor was brand new as they’d recently redone the engine so we’re not entirely sure how they loosened since the safety mechanisms for the bolts were still in place. In any case we tightened them all up, did an engine run up and a test flight just to be sure and all worked perfectly. And thus ended this whole exciting ordeal … which wasn’t really that eventful at all to be honest.