A few weeks ago we flew the A2A Comanche for the "Bush League Backcountry Fly-In Series" event, and an interesting sequence unfolded with respect to the mechanical upkeep of the aircraft. During the preflight, we noted that the right flap seemed looser than normal, and I debated whether it was time to fix the linkage using the maintenance function within the simulated tablet. For whatever reason, I ultimately decided not to deal with it. Later during the flight, however, that flap did end up jamming, resulting in an asymmetrical roll force during one of the landings. We managed to make it down okay, and repaired the flap before departing on the next leg.
On tonight's preflight we noted that the left flap linkage was loose -- and, with the memory of the recent stream's failure still in mind, I figured it would be a good idea to fix this one before departing. Strangely, the tablet's maintenance tab indicated that this flap was perfectly fine, so we pressed on. And, lo and behold, while on approach for our fourth landing, we felt a sudden roll and realized that the left flap had failed. We landed safely without flaps -- which caused a slightly elevated approach speed, and that then led to a discussion over whether this required us to change our CTAF calls in any way. And once again, we were able to repair that flap and continue on. However, it certainly felt off-putting that we had detected this impending failure from the outset, but were seemingly not afforded the option to repair it proactively.
Overall, the night was a relatively leisurely one. Sometimes these "River Run" episodes have us hunting for tiny grass strips scarcely larger than someone's yard. In tonight's case, our departure field of Los Alamos (KLAM) plus the five destinations (Santa Fe KSAF, Double Eagle KAEG, Albuquerque KABQ, Mid-Valley E98, and Belen KBRG) were all paved, public strips, each offering a runway of at least 4,300 feet. Weather played a small role as we started the evening covered in a light layer of ice, and had some strong and gusty winds for some of our arrivals. But landings throughout the night were pretty smooth overall, with the one exception occurring at Albuquerque (KABQ) -- where we intentionally landed firm and rolled short on Runway 30, to avoid crossing the designated active runway, Runway 3.
The ice in particular made the first departure from Los Alamos a bit tense as we weren't truly sure whether we would be carrying too much additional weight and/or have lift disrupted because of it. While in the real world we would have evaluated this situation way more conservatively, in the sim we decided to risk it. We took off cautiously, ensuring we had climb performance to come away from the field. Obviously, there was an impact on climb performance just from the high field elevation. We weren't completely sure whether icing created an additional impact on that or not -- it felt like maybe it did. However, we rotated and pitched to maintain a Vy of 105 and seemed to garner a relatively adequate climb rate. The windshield eventually cleared up and ice didn't remain a factor for the remainder of the evening. It was a stark reminder that just because the desert of the American Southwest is dry, that doesn't always mean it's hot! -- Watch live at https://www.twitch.tv/slantalphaadventures