Aircraft

I feel the mechanic created this situation by not performing the overhaul in a timely manner. He would work for a few hours, leave the hangar and not get back to the job for days or weeks. This caused him to lose track as to where he was in the overhaul process, and consequently, miss a very important step.

Upon inspection of the runway a dead Prairie Dog was found in the vicinity of where I landed. It appears as though my right main tire struck the Prairie Dog, which caused me to veer to the right. There were no injuries.

I saw a high wing aircraft within 100 feet of me at the same altitude! He was so close I thought we were going to collide! I had little time to react and the aircraft passed within a few feet behind me. I pressed the PTT switch and said, “that was close!” to which the (presumably) pilot of the other aircraft responded, “was that on purpose?” I responded “of course not!”

We entered the pattern and got no gear down in the annunciator panel. I pointed this out to the owner and he said the gear is down and didn’t seem surprised. We verified this with a small window on the floor between the front seats.

I think he missed me by less than 20 feet. It was incredibly close. Then I rejoined final, and went around. As I went around I saw the offending 172 landing in front of me. I vehemently asked for an explanation, as I was very shaken by what had happened. The 172 pilot finally replied and stated: “This is an uncontrolled airport, I don’t have to make radio calls.”

After retrieving the fuel hose and grounding wire back to the pump area, I was walking back to the plane to retrieve the ladder in front of the right wing, but was distracted by a small piece of paper – a fuel receipt from a prior pilot – which I picked up and walked over to the trash can, which was behind and to the left of the aircraft at an approximately 8 o’clock position. As I walked back to the plane, my view of the ladder was blocked by the fuselage and I forgot about the ladder.

I attempted to change fuel tanks from left to right. While passing the off position the valve stuck in the off position. It would not budge. The engine on my Mooney M-20 E Super 21 quit and I made an uneventful landing in a pasture.

Pilot and controllers need to be able to talk to each other, especially during an approach or departure stage when the dangers of flying increase. There is a lot of flight activity at KVPZ and the surrounding airports. There are a lot of agricultural planes that fly around, as well as skydiving operations. The area that we fly in is also on the STAR for arriving Chicago Midway International Airport (KMDW) traffic, which is handled by the same Approach Controller that I could not communicate with.