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Another story of Good Luck.

The Pratt and Whitney radials hold a rather large quantity of oil so to warm up takes time. On a winter’s morning this can be up to 15 minutes. Rather than sit in a cold aeroplane I would get out and do any other thing. I always, yes always, had the tail wheel tied. When oil warms the RPM increases and the aeroplane can walk off if not tied.
I heard acrunch and mistook it to be a vehicle running over a pile of pallets nearby. I walked outside and found my aeroplane had walked off and had stopped only after it entered a small stand of trees. The rope was hemp only, no synthetic and had failed. I shut down the engine and drove home for my chainsaw and returned and cut the aeroplane out of this plantation and pulled it free. I replaced the broken spray nozzles and departed for my first job, now nearly an hour late. The trail of leaves and small branches left on the bitumen strip looked like Hansel and Gretel had been.
Now there was a very fortunate aspect to this incident. Here it is. At home we had a slow combustion stove which consumed fire wood about 10 inches in length thus I cut firewood just that long. Several pieces had been cut and left in front of these trees and the aeroplane had taxied over them. When I pulled the plane back I checked the clearance between the prop and these sawn cuts. About the depth of the small end of my index finger. That would be about one quarter of an inch. If I have of had a prop strike that would be a couple of days out of service to acquire another engine, install it and I would have needed to find the money for same.
Now that was luck. I did have another stroke of good luck when I lost the sump plug. I told this story some weeks ago and if you missed it do go back and have a read.
Luck. There are two types. Firstly if it wasn’t for bad luck, one may not have any luck at all. Then secondly there’s just the opposite. Now a bloke gets good luck sometimes, right? It seemed like I did.