I received this email and was asked to post it here.

quote:

Good morning Bill,
I would like to post this on the Barth page, I got this email from my father in law, an avid airplane man and Alaska fisherman.
Doris

During a private "fly-in" fishing excursion in the Alaskan wilderness, a charter pilot and fishermen left a cooler and bait in the plane.

A bear smelled it....

This is what he did to the plane....









The pilot called another pilot to bring him 2 new tires, 3 cases of duct tape, and a supply of sheet plastic.

He patched the plane together, and FLEW IT HOME!





Yep, Duct tape fixes everything.. ...

My new personal favorite is Gorilla Tape. Lasts much longer and is stronger......also a real bear to take off and replace.

I surely believe it. I'm not a pilot but I have an antique car buddy who is now close to 80. He has been a crop-duster and bought and sold small airplanes since the 1950's. He has talked several times about patching planes he had bought with bedsheets and things like Elmer's glue concoctions or cornstarch and then flew them home.
I've watched him restore small planes and they stretch something similiar to muslin and tape the joints with a special type of tape...sure made me think twice about flying in a small plane....much rather be in an all metal, riveted, Barth....

Necessity is the mother of invention, & American ingenuity is alive & well in the Alaskan bush.

I'd have been a little nervous about that busted horizontal stabilizer on the starboard side, but maybe he had a complete tool kit on board (common pliers, & a 10" crescent wrench) levered the tail feather back into position with the pliers, & rigged a splint out of duct tape & a piece of that rib cage, or antler, whatever it is, in the background of the last picture.

Neat story and pix, but I have to ask, how?, and why? would a bear do that to the tires? I know I'm just a youngster to most of you guys but I learned to fly in my Dad's Stinson Voyager, and they really did make them out of cloth back then!

This fellow, as most bears, overreacted to being thwarted in his attempt to get at the bait. He took out his ire on the entire aircraft, & one chomp of his big teeth, or maybe just a hefty swipe of a paw, easily did in the tires.

Back before the park service discouraged wildlife feeding, we watched a Yellowstone bear trash a new, white Cadillac about as effectively as this fellow did the airplane. He succeeded in getting a box of candy from the shelf behind the rear seat, but broke a partially opened window, tore up the upholstery, & dented & scratched the bodywork as well in his frustration. And that was just a medium-size black bear.

Would have been wild to see a video of that....

Not much can beat a mad bear, but when I was younger, a customer of my dad's car dealership had their nearly new Blazer towed in after a Raccoon climbed in a window left open only a few inches. A thunderstorm rolled in and the poor raccoon couldn't figure out how to get out, so it attempted to dig its way out. It took out most of the carpet, seats, door panels, wiring under the dash, AC ducts, even the headliner.

Eventually it did find its way out after almost totaling the Blazer.

I also remember going through one of those drive through monkey zoo adventures with our car. I realized only after driving in that the place was just littered with wipers, antennaes and anything else not thoroughly bolted down. The minute you entered those monkeys jumped all over the car and started prying. Beats catching flys in a cage I guess, if you're the monkey that is.

quote:

Originally posted by noble97monarch:
Not much can beat a mad bear, but when I was younger, a customer of my dad's car dealership had their nearly new Blazer towed in after a Raccoon climbed in a window left open only a few inches. A thunderstorm rolled in and the poor raccoon couldn't figure out how to get out, so it attempted to dig its way out. It took out most of the carpet, seats, door panels, wiring under the dash, AC ducts, even the headliner.

Eventually it did find its way out after almost totaling the Blazer.

Reminds me of a goat attack here in El Segundo.

There is a strip of land between tow roads that is hill and gully. The city installed some goats to keep the grass down. A couple of guys with a taste for birria de cabra decided to steal the goats. Someone called the cops. When the cops arrived, two of the goats were already loaded into what was a van, which had a pretty nice interior. The goatnappers were arrested and processed, but the tow goats were left in the van for quite a while. By the time the goats were released and the van impounded, the interior vinyl and any plastic parts were completely chewed to pieces. Even the dashboard was gone.

Some suspect the delay in liberating the goats was intentional.

the goatnappers were deported and no one ever did claim the van.

Would have been wild to see a video of that....

Not sure I could have watched it, Patch....

I found an old J3 Cub up in Muskegon back on a cold morning in early 1978 that required a duct tape mod in order to get it back to Allegan. First we had to warm the fabric up to get it to stick. Flew it another couple of weeks before we finally bit the bullet and recovered it.

Having been in the flying business for 16 years I can assure you there is no doubt still a lot of duct tape flying around.