9. Aircraft hail damage

I was given a trip to go with the company President, Lynn J. Helms to White Plains, NYwhere he left the airplane. I had two people to drop at Danbury, CT and return to Lock Haven. As I was leaving Danbury, I sat waiting for a clearance. There was a big blue hole just to the North and I contemplated canceling and going VFR, but in the past that had not always proved to be the correct decision so I waited. At that time radar was not approved for ground operation so I had it on standby. I received clearance to climb, maintain 2,000. Level at 2,000 I reached for the radar, but received clearance to 4,000. At 4,000 I turned on the radar and immediately received a severe hail strike. I advised the controller and ask for a vector. He told me not to come down there and get in his traffic. At that point he lost me on radar and I lost communications with him. I turned South and got out of the hail. To stay out of New York traffic, I turned West. I was showing 13.4 DME from the La Guardia VOR, but knew it was slant range and I couldn’t get a radial off the VOR on Nav so I turned North and went right back into the hail. This time I held my heading and soon broke out in the clear. Time for inventory. Wings and tail looked okay except for dents in the leading edge of the wings.

I contacted Center and cancelled IFR. Upon landing at Lock Haven, I looked the airplane over. Prop spinners smashed flat. Exhaust stacks looked like some one has used a Pean hammer on them. All leading edges - wings, horizontal and vertical tail had many large dents. It cost $75,000 to repair the damage.

This airplane was assigned to the President. I didn’t see him for about two months, but I approached him all full of apologies. He said, “I’m going to tell you three things. Nobody flies into hail on purpose. I’m very glad you are here to talk to me about it. We make new airplanes every day and I don’t want to hear any more about it”. I gotta tell you, I felt better after his kind words.

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