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A youthful Macarthur Job with the Piper PA-20 Pacer VH-AMA that is the subject of this month's Air Safety feature. The offending louvres in the nose cowling can be seen immediately ahead of the author's left arm.
Air Safety- Subtle Incapacitation
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Subtle Incapacitation
The old blue and white Piper Pacer had seen better days, but there was no denying its appeal, even parked and silent on the grass beside the little airport’s deserted apron. No, I’m not just short cutting and talking about the once ubiquitous Tripacer, or “Piechaser” as irreverent aero dubbers of yesteryear preferred to call it. The PA-20 Pacer was in fact the tailwheel equipped predecessor of the PA-22 Tripacer, developed in the early postwar years from the earlier, lower powered three seat Piper Cruiser and four seat PA-16 Piper Clipper. Squat and stubby and close coupled, it sat defiantly on its wide track, big tyred “conventional” undercarriage with an arrogance redolent of a black and white Hollywood aviation thriller of the 1930s – when leather jacketed celluloid heroes defied storm and tempest at the controls to win undying love from the dizzy, immaculately coiffured blonde waiting anxiously by the radio in the airfield office.
Like its predecessors, the Pacer acquired something of a reputation for being skittish on the ground – during the 1950s it earned the dubious statistical distinction of being the most ground looped type on the US register! Undoubtedly this was one of the factors that several years later prompted its old and august manufacturer to move its main undercarriage legs back behind the centre of gravity, add a nose leg beneath the engine, modify its name – and presto, the much more docile Piper Tripacer entered the market! A further refinement was to interconnect the aileron and rudder controls with a system of springs to help prevent inexperienced pilots becoming “crossed over” if they inadvertently flew into cloud – a device that saved the life of at least one pilot I knew.
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