Tag Archives: travel

Pitch Perfect

It’s a normal smoggy day at Chino airport. I’ve just taken off with my student, Stan, whom I’m checking out in his two-seater, fabric-covered Taylorcraft. The takeoff goes normally but after we level off and pick up speed, Stan can’t keep the plane’s nose down.

“Trim forward, Stan.”

“I am.”

“Trim down more.”

“I am!”

The plane is still pitching up violently, threatening to stall. I see Stan straining to push the control wheel forward, but it isn’t helping. What’s wrong?

I’m studying anthropology at Cal State Fullerton and need a little extra cash so when Hank Bradford lures me over to Chino with the promise, “I’ll give you a twin-engine checkout in the Aero Commander” (a larger twin-engine plane), I jump at the chance to work for United California Aviation—the outsize name for Hank’s dubious fixed-base operation. UCA consists of an office, a small workroom with a picture of a naked woman hanging on the wall and a few hundred square feet claimed from the vast and empty adjoining hangar. Hank has opened a small café and offers hamburgers to a few army personnel temporarily stationed here. He acts as a maître d, circulating through the room chatting up the troops as he follows a waitress around, pretending to grab her hips.

I never see the promised Aero Commander. Rather, I end up doing routine maintenance on random aircraft that show up. No tools available—I bring my own. But one day I arrive at work about noon on a Thursday and Hank says, “Wanna’ take the Apache and fly some fishermen down to Baja for the weekend?” Immediately I say yes, even though I’ll miss a day of my classes and even though I have little time to prepare for the flight. But you never turn down a chance to fly a multiengine plane. A fun weekend.

Now today I’m still trying to figure out why Stan can’t control his airplane. “Stan! Give me the wheel.” I grab the dual control wheel and it just about hits me in the face! The airplane is still trying mightily to pitch up. If the nose rises a bit more, the airplane will stall and plummet us to the ground. I barely keep it level, forcing the control wheel forward. “Stan, we have to turn back to the airport; something’s wrong. I’ll land the plane because I don’t know how it’ll react if we slow up.” I hold forward pressure on the wheel all the way through the landing.

I walk around the plane, suspecting something’s wrong with the elevator control system, those “flippers” at the tail that pitch the airplane up or down but they seem to be operating normally.

Then I notice the small trim tab hinged at the rear of one of the elevator surfaces. This tiny deflector moves the larger elevators up or down. So I yell to Stan who is still in the cockpit, “Stan; turn the trim tab crank counterclockwise.” As Stan turns the crank to lower the nose, I see the trim tab moving downward. In flight, this would force the elevator up, which would pitch the nose up­—the opposite of how it’s supposed to work. The mechanic (probably my boss, Hank) had hooked up the trim tab control cable backwards! “Stan; we’re done flying until I get this control fixed!”

This flight could have been a disaster—I hate to think what would have happened if Stan had been flying without an instructor. In the future I determine that after maintenance is done on an airplane I need to perform a more thorough preflight check—including the trim tab.

A Blessed Death

On December 13, 2024, I lost my dearest treasure. So this blog is very personal. Here is the eulogy I wrote for the memorial service on December 28.

Each life is sacred to God. Thus, it is fitting that we meet today to celebrate the life and faith of Barbara Ann Hurd (Breneman). She was born during the Great Depression to a strong Mennonite family living on a dairy farm near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Farming life taught her the virtue of hard work, a virtue she demonstrated throughout her life and inflicted on her husband and children.

In 1967 Barbara began her work with Latin America Mission when she taught school in Costa Rica. We met each other there and, after a few months, became engaged on a remote airstrip in Venezuela where I was flying for Mission Aviation Fellowship. Later, we adopted our three children from Costa Rica and Colombia.

Barbara never complained about where we lived. In Venezuela she would stare up at the cockroach-eating geckos on our ceiling who would lose occasionally lose their grip and land on our supper table. As I was flying over the Venezuelan jungle, she stayed home alone with Princessa, our German Shepherd, checking my progress with our short-wave radio. When our water supply failed, she took our laundry down to the Orinoco River to wash it and beat it out on the rocks.

When we moved to Colombia she comforted me after an airplane crash, nursed me through a bout of Typhoid fever and, when we were evicted, found us a new home.

During my years at Penn State, Barbara never complained about the poverty of grad school. She worked as an overnight nurse’s aide. She planted a productive garden in rocky soil. She sewed and patched clothes. Our 100-year-old house had no furnace so we bought a free-standing woodstove and Barbara helped me build a 30-foot-high cement-block chimney for it.  On trash days, Barbara would lead the whole family out to scavenge the garbage cans and dumpsters. She made her own tortillas, except once, when she brought some hard taco shells home from a local garage sale. She linked us up with the local Christian and Missionary Alliance Church and directed their program for seniors. She took the lead in forming some of our life-long friendships.

We moved to Minnesota in 1982 where I taught at Bethel University. She painted and wallpapered our two-story colonial house and turned it into a home. We would drive at night up University Ave. to Main St. to gather what she called “used carrots,” discarded in a field by the green grocer. I would shine the headlights out over the field and she would dash out to fill a large bag with carrots while our kids would all bend down so their friends would not see them. She made ice cream with cream from a nearby Amish farm, churning it with ice that we harvested from our yard and crushed in a burlap bag. She frequently hosted students and faculty and linked us into a strong, loving network of friends. Barbara entered into the life of each church we attended and served them well—Sunday School superintendent at Good Shepherd Church and 28 years as a volunteer counselor in the North Heights counseling clinic.

In 1988 we uprooted our whole family to live for a year in Costa Rica where I taught in a missiological school. When I was caught in the eye of hurricane Joana in Bluefields, Nicaragua, she volunteered at a local shelter and awaited word from me. Several years later, she joined me for five months in northern England when I was a visiting fellow at Durham University. We explored Holy Island together, along with other wonders of the Celtic Christian world.

Barbara suffered through the many stories we told at her expense. For instance, the healing service where she said, “I wanted to go down for healing but if I got healed, I would never know what was causing it.” Like Mary Poppins, she was an Almost Perfect Person. We would joke that Lent was the hardest season of the year for her since she never could think of any sins to confess.

Barbara was the beating heart of our home. Always loyal to her husband. A sacrificial wife and mother, she fiercely fostered our social, emotional and spiritual development.

Her life motto was “To know Christ and to make him known.” She forgave people who hurt her, including her husband, and poured her life into her kids and grandkids. In the larger community, her charity was natural and unpretentious.

We lived Barbara’s last days in sacred time. In our own bed, I would hold her hand and speak my gratitude to her. Her condition waxed and waned and in the low times she would say, “I just want to go and be with Jesus.” Barbara was embarrassed at all the care we had to give her—the last words she spoke were “thank you.” She trusted in Christ and his death on her behalf and confidently looked forward to a resurrection when she would dwell in the house of her Lord forever. She died without regrets, with no unconfessed sin and with no unfinished business. It was a blessed death for her and a gift to all of us.

Barbara, I bow before your example, your faith and your service. You have distributed your rich gifts to many and now I release you to our Lord. May eternal light shine upon you.

James Hurd and family

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