The PapaGolf Chronicles

It's all about the wind

2011-04-06T20:45:00.002-04:00

The annual is finally done, and after an epic struggle, the engine cowls are back on the airplane. What with the shiny, tight new hinges, it was a bit of a chore to get the pins to go in. It had to be done, though: I had a flight scheduled that I didn't want to miss. We're going through an ISO certification at the paying job and the corporate office experts are in town to help me muddle my way through the explanations of the somewhat quirky processes that result from the small size of our business unit and the heavy dependence we have on IT in-house services (i.e. me).

One of the corporate specialists is Jen, who just had her first flying lesson this past weekend. She's flying out of Oakland, and if nothing else, the scenery is spectacular.

As spectacular as her training environment will/would be, there will be costs above and beyond the rental charges to consider, though. It's a forty-five minute trip to the airport, and the Bay Area is notorious for winds and fog. She's still on the fence about whether she will continue with the lessons or not, but one way or the other she has developed a taste for flight.

Me? As you've seen in these pages before, I've developed a taste for flying with pretty women.

We scheduled our flight for Wednesday night as that night offered the best opportunity to break away from the group. Unfortunately, the winds did not want to cooperate. As Jen will eventually learn in her training, the wind is always, always, always a consideration in flying. High winds need to be considered in all aspects of any given flight. With a light plane, the pilot has to be aware of the direction of the wind even when taxiing out to the runway. A strong enough wind from the side could, for example, lift a wing or even flip over the airplane. The same strong wind will affect the directional control on takeoff, ground speed (and thus projected fuel requirements) while enroute, and all manner of things while approaching to land. A crosswind will factor in the pilot's approach and landing pattern as it attempts to move the plane closer to or further from the optimum downwind and base leg paths. It will certainly have an affect on the final approach and landing, even if it is right down the runway.

Even light winds need to be considered, albeit not quite as heavily. A light wind on takeoff will require more runway to reach a flyable airspeed. The landing roll out will be longer as well without a good headwind to slow the airplane. Light winds also have an affect at uncontrolled airports where each individual pilot gets to determine which runway direction is "active" and the wind isn't providing a clear choice.

The forecast for our flight was winds out of the southwest at 18 knots, gusting to the high 20's. That's too much wind for my comfort. Later in the day, the forecast showed the winds tapering off to 10 knots at or around 7:00 pm. That's more like it! At the end of the workday, the winds were still too high but we decided to make the trip across town anyway in the hopes that the forecast for lower winds would come true and we'd be able to fly.

By the time we got there, the forecast had been amended: 25 knots gusting to 37.

Well.

Not today, then.

Having made the trip, though, we decided we might as well go over to the hangar for a tour. I got to show off my half-completed RV-12, up to and including a quick demonstration of the always impressive pneumatic rivet puller and the often intriguing concept of clecos. After about a half hour of expostulating on the benefits of the RV-12, I figured it was about time we give up and go get some dinner instead. But... it seemed less windy. I called the AWOS phone number and sure enough, the winds has dropped to 17 gusting 22. Right down the runway.

That was more like it! Just another couple of knots...

By the time we got into the plane, the tower was reporting 15 gusting 20-ish. It's a go!

The takeoff was a breeze (so to speak) and we were soon climbing towards the setting sun. At 3,000' I let Jen take the controls. Her first lesson having been primarily on the topics of straight & level flight and sightseeing, she demonstrated her acquired skills in each. After a few minutes of that, I showed her how to determine our compass direction (well, ground track to be perfectly precise) from the GPS and how to turn to a given heading. North being my first choice, my aging eyes having quickly tired of squinting into the later afternoon sun.

After a series of gentle turns, I took over and demonstrated some of the more aggressive maneuvers available in the repertoire of an RV-6 pilot. I think above all of the great things about flying with neophytes is the kick I get from spontaneous delighted laughs. Or squeals, as the case may be.

I can only do so much of that without risking the onset of nausea in both pilot and passenger, so we then climbed up to sufficient altitude to overfly Columbus without invoking the dreadful ire of Columbus Approach, and by extension, should my luck run that way, the FAA.

By the time we got back to Bolton, the winds were down to 13 gusting 21, still right down the runway. We were well positioned for an entry to right base, although with the twenty degrees of crab I needed to hold us close to the runway, it was a very ill-defined base leg. Crawling down final gave me plenty of time to assess the slight crosswind component and set up for a flare right over the numbers. The touchdown wasn't bad at all, but the roll out had my feet moving fast enough to qualify for a spot on Dancing with the Stars. With the extra wind over the nose, the tail stayed up longer than normal which meant that most of my steering was with the rudder rather than the tailwheel. That can be tricky as the airflow across the rudder decreases and I have to start stabbing at the brakes. By the time the tail finally dropped, we were almost at a crawl.

We turned off at Alpha 3 and I congratulated myself on a "good enough" landing.

We ran into a little problem while heading back to the hangar. A pair of geese have built a nest by one of the hangars and one of them was standing right in the middle of the taxiway. You don't dare hit one of them; that would qualify as a prop strike and required a federally-mandated tear down of the engine to check for damage to the crankshaft. In other words, thousands of dollars. I finally encouraged the goose to move out of the way, but he wasn't at all happy about it. As with any entitlement-minded member of a government-protected identity class, he got very vocal about any perceived encroachment on his rights. As we went by, he was at full neck extension, honking his fool head off. I expect he and the missus will be camping in a capital rotunda somewhere soon.

The final chapter

2011-03-04T16:41:00.000-05:00

Now showing on Barnstormers.com:

RV-6 • $56,500 • FOR SALE • Beautiful and eye-catching low time RV-6 must go to make room for RV-12. 400 TT. Lyc. O-320 A2D 150 hp 400 TTS Factory Reman., Sensenich FP prop 400 since new. Garmin 396 GPS, Dynon D-6, ICOM A200, Intercom, KLN-89B GPS, strobes, nav lights, sump pre-heat, electric flaps. Nice interior. Always hangared. Annuals performed by a trusted A&P. This is a simple, reliable, low-maintenance RV-6 built in the spirit Van intended. Emails preferred. • Contact Dave Gamble, Owner - located Grove City, OH USA • Telephone: 614 277-1269 • Posted March 4, 2011 • Show all Ads posted by this Advertiser •Recommend This Ad to a Friend • Email Advertiser • Save to Watchlist • Report This Ad • View Larger Pictures •Finance

I have to confess that posting the ad hurt a lot more than I thought it would. I knew the day was coming when I first pulled a rivet on the RV-12, but....

...it still hurts.

Learning to Fly

2011-02-15T19:08:00.001-05:00

Well, that's what it felt like, anyway. I was aghast when I looked at my flight log and saw that I had not flown since November someteenth, 2010. I knew it had been awhile, but I had no idea that for the first time in twenty years I had let my VFR currency lapse.

Wait, what? Well, I think the FAA can say it better than I can:

§ 61.57   Recent flight experience: Pilot in command.
(a) General experience. (1) Except as provided in paragraph (e) of this section, no person may act as a pilot in command of an aircraft carrying passengers or of an aircraft certificated for more than one pilot flight crewmember unless that person has made at least three takeoffs and three landings within the preceding 90 days, and—
   (i) The person acted as the sole manipulator of the flight controls; and
   (ii) The required takeoffs and landings were performed in an aircraft of the same category, class, and type (if a type rating is required), and, if the aircraft to be flown is an airplane with a tailwheel, the takeoffs and landings must have been made to a full stop in an airplane with a tailwheel.

Clear as mud, right? Basically it means that the FAA thinks I will forget how to fly an airplane on the 91st day of not doing so. It also says that they're fine with me going out alone and teaching myself how to fly all over again, but they'd prefer that I not risk anyone else's bacon. There's a little wrinkle in there for tailwheel airplanes like mine: the landings have to be to a full stop on the runway. This is as opposed to nosewheel airplanes which are, when compared to tailwheel airplanes, so easy to fly that you only have to show the ability to find the runway and smack into it with two out of the three wheels.

And to some degree, I think they're right. It had been 94 days since I had last flown and I definitely felt something akin to trepidation as I was driving home from work marveling at the fact that it's still the middle of February and the car thermometer was indicating 44 degrees outside. The winds were light out of the south-southeast and there was only a thin layer of clouds at the 10,000' level, far above any altitude that I would be likely to reach if I were to go out and practice a few landings. The tingling of nerves came from the inescapable fact that this was good flying weather and that I really, really needed to get back into the air, whether I felt perfectly secure in my ability to do so or not.

It was, however, by no means a given that Papa would share my desire to fly. Having endured three months of inactivity and bitter cold, there was a chance that I wouldn't even be able to get the engine to start. Although brand new, it was possible that the battery would have lost sufficient charge to crank the engine after sitting idle in the cold weather. There was also a question of logistics: would I be able to even get the plane out, what with all of the RV-12 construction going on?

The latter question was answered first: I was able to navigate Papa out of the hangar without knocking anything over or dinging any parts on either airplane. This begged a follow-on question: would I be able to do the same thing in reverse when I got back?

After the kind of extensive preflight that I do when I haven't flown for awhile (which has more to do with delaying the moment when I will have to bet the farm on my retained ability to actually fly an airplane than it does on distrust of the equipment) I climbed in and settled into the now unfamiliar cockpit environment. Geez, the two open holes where I yanked out the gyros are still there. I haven't installed that Dynon yet?? I spent a few moments reviewing the engine start procedures in my mind, proceeded with them once I was sure I had the order correct, applied just a titch more fuel prime than I would normally, and engaged the starter.

I had worried needlessly.

A strong, hearty crank of two blades and the engine sprang to something passably like life. Like a bedridden patient that's taking his first steps after months of inactivity, there was a little limping and complaining, but within a minute or two everything had smoothed out. I wanted to let the engine loaf along at a low idle for a few minutes anyway, so my usual angst at the delay caused by the GPS having been lobotomized to the degree that it couldn't even tell what day it was didn't lead to the normal hurling of derogatory insults at the smug little box.

While the engine was shaking off the deleterious effects of months-long neglect, I rehearsed my pending communications with the control tower. I've found that it pays to slow my radio tempo down considerably when talking to ATC after any significant gap in my recent experience. If I were to try going from zero-to-sixty like I would normally do, I end up tripping over my words like a lying five year old caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Or a Congressman presented with photographic evidence of marital malfeasance. Either way, it's embarrassing, so I try to avoid it.

All went well, although I was a little curious as to why I would be taxiing to runway 4. Both wind socks were indicating that the prevailing breeze would slightly favor runway 22. I suppose the ultra-sophisticated and high-calibrated electronic gadgetry in the control tower was presenting a more accurate representation of the conditions than the extraordinarily low-tech windsocks. Who ya gonna believe? At a wind speed of four knots and a difference in wind direction wavering between ten to twenty degrees, I figured it wasn't worth making a fuss over, particularly since there was an inbound on the ILS 4 approach. I wasn't going to win that argument, I figured, so why start it?

I spent a little longer on the engine run-up than I normally would, mostly because I wanted the engine to have every opportunity to forfeit the game while we were still safely on the ground, but also because I knew I was going to have to wait for the ILS arrival to either land or go off on the missed approach. All of the cylinders were showing heat on the EGT and the mag drop on both sides was nominal, and the ILS arrival broke off the approach a mile out. There were no more excuses; it was time to try to fly!

The takeoff was a breeze, given the minimal impact of, well, the breeze. We were soon climbing out to the west with Papa screaming skyward at an impressive 1,500 feet per minute and me struggling to get my head around the fact that we weren't still rolling down the runway. Experience quickly kicked in and I went through the transition from takeoff to flying which is simply fuel pump off, lean the mixture, and start paying attention to where we're going. We toodled along at 3,500' at nearly full throttle for the fifteen or twenty minutes that I figured it would take to get the oil heated up enough to burn out any moisture that may have gathered in it and, to be honest, delay the moment when I'd have to again bet the farm on my retained ability to land an airplane.

The moment when the rubber meets the road, if you will.

There's not much to say about the ensuing landings. We were right traffic to runway 4 which meant that I had to be careful not to let the wind get me pushed in too close to the runway or let it push me too far out on the base leg. It took a couple of landings to get over my ground shyness and let the plane descend on the base leg, and it also took those two landings to get over the feeling of the plane traveling very fast in the flare. It also takes a few landings to get used to the RV-6's pitch sensitivity in the flare. With all that said, I thought all four of the landings were acceptable. None were great, but all were satisfactory.

While carefully pushing the Papa back into the hangar, I couldn't helping thinking about how nice it was to feel like a pilot again.

I remember when...

2011-02-05T13:53:00.000-05:00

... I used to be a pilot.

This has to have been one of the worst winters ever for bad flying weather, although I do recognize that I probably say that every year. It has been gray, gray, gray.

It looked like Friday afternoon might be nice enough for a set of touch & goes, but that idea was mooted by the sheet of ice in front of the hangar. The airport maintenance folks had been up and down the taxiway in front of the hangar with one of the big brush trucks they use on the runway, but that had the not-so-great result of simply burnishing the ice to a rink-quality sheen.

Except, of course, for the ice wall. That was still there and every bit as insurmountable as ever. It doesn't look like much, but you have to remember that I'd have to push the airplane over it with only the grip my feet could get in the shiny ice to act as a fulcrum.

Not likely to work, that.

Arriving today via UPS, weather permitting

2011-02-02T17:22:00.001-05:00

We're in the clutches of an ice storm, and while that's better than the pummeling that the rest of the midwest is getting, it's still playing havoc on transportation and commerce. But should the UPS truck manage to slip/slide its way to my driveway, I should be receiving one of these today:

What in the world is that?? Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, so a YouTube must be worth 30,000 words per second:

That's probably to most boring video on YouTube, at least after the first minute, but it certainly shows what a Trius 1-Step is and how it works. Not how it should be used, though. He really ought to be pressing it with his left foot. Still, you get the idea.

The idea is simple: it is to allow me to practice my shooting on off weeks from sporting clays. Now I just need to find a big, open field...

Another round of sporting clays

2011-01-31T06:04:00.000-05:00

When you consider that my first full 10-station round with a 12 gauge was two weeks ago, and that it came right on the heels of my first time shooting a shotgun in my life, today was a resounding success. That round last week when I first tried a 12 gauge?

I shot 7 out of 50.

Today, with my new (to me) shotgun and two rounds of experience under my belt?

Missed 'em all!

No, just kidding! I can't believe how much better I did. Out of the first two pairs, I nailed three birds. It went on like that for the rest of the round. I finished with a total of 22 out of 50! Out of the five of us in the group, that was second best. The new gun worked great, but a big part of the improvement came from a suggestion from one of the guys I was shooting with. He's pretty new at it too, and he was also having the same problem I was having with trying to aim like you would with a rifle. They say with the shotgun you should shoot with both eyes open rather than with one closed as you would with a rifle. His advice was to ignore those guys and go ahead and just use one eye. It made all the difference!

I took my little camcorder with me today and while I'm a little disappointed in the jerkiness of some of the video, at least you can get an idea of what it's like.

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Crossposting just to keep this blog alive

2011-01-31T06:03:00.000-05:00

I haven't been flying at all this winter. Just the other day I was thinking about how fun it used to be to be a pilot. I've been busy on the RV-12, but even that project has its delays. As we can see here:

The down side of winter projects is....

...winter is cold!!

The reason I need winter projects so badly is that I get cabin fever something fierce. I have to have something to keep myself occupied. In fact, February is the worst month of my life because it is so hard to find something to do that doesn't involve being outside. When I started on the RV-12, my hope was that I would consistently have work that I could do down in the basement, but for the second year in a row that hasn't worked out. Last year I was forced to move to the hangar to build the tail cone. I started the fuselage in the spring and was able to spend some days in the basement that would have been nicer spent outside. This year it's the wings.

It's 6 degrees Fahrenheit outside today.

I'm inside, and I'm staying there. At least there's football on TV!

I did go out for awhile this morning, and I'll share the details of that with you since I told you about shooting Sporting Clays last weekend. I might have mentioned that I'd be wanting to get my own shotgun rather than being dependent on borrowing a gun. To that end I did some research to try to find a reasonably priced gun that offered reasonable quality in return. From what I've seen in retail stores, there is exactly one low-cost over/under shotgun, and web reviews were not favorable. That gun costs $450 new. The next one up in price (and I was assured that this was a terrific deal by the guy at the counter) was $899. Marked down from $1,200, I think. Didn't matter. You could mark down the Hope diamond from $12,000,000 to $5,000,000 - I still can't afford it.

I started looking for used guns. That's not as easy as you might think. Craig's List won't sell them, nor will eBay. I finally came across Gunlistings.com (which for some reason I keep reading as 'GunSlingers.com' - a strange mental tick, that) which is kind of a Craig's List for guns. I spent a week perusing the listings and finally found one that I was interested in. It was a Remington 310 over/under (made in Russia) for $400. It took a week for the seller to get back to me, and that was just to tell me that it was already sold.

I decided to expand my search from Columbus to all of Ohio and BAM!, I found a Verona LX-502 (Italian made) for an asking price of $525. That was a pretty good price, but somewhat over my budget. The seller accepted an offer of $460. That was only $10 over budget, and he was kind enough to meet me in Washington Court House, thus saving me a couple of hours of driving. We had a nice breakfast at McDs and chatted about guns, work, taxes, and wives. He seemed a decent and likable sort; that has been my experience with everything that I've bought or sold on Craig's List, as well as everyone I've met in shooting and gun shows.

So, here's my new sporting equipment:

I also found a few videos on YouTube that someone from the place I went last weekend has been uploading for the last couple of weeks. I suspect that it's hard to do Sporting Clays justice with a handheld camcorder, but you can kind of get the idea:

(20 gauge shells are yellow - that's why there was surprise over them being red)

New Stearman pix

2010-12-14T17:06:00.000-05:00

Red Stewart Airfield is one of those quaint old airports where people will just go hang around watching (and apparently photographing) airplanes. One of my blogging buddies, Steve DiLullo who chronicles his flying activities out of his home airport at Red Stewart, came across some pictures that had been taken of my momentous flight in the Stearman. He was kind enough to pick them up and send them to me, and here they are:

50,000!

2010-11-17T18:44:00.000-05:00

The PapaGolf Chronicles had its 50,000th visit today. According to the SiteMeter, the link came from Doylestown, PA and was a redirect from a Bing.com search for "old photos of power plants."

This blog is nothing if not esoteric!

My Dukakis moment

2010-11-13T21:46:00.006-05:00

NOTE: For those arriving from the Van's Airforce web site, I need to clarify that I am not an RV-6 builder. I am an RV-12 builder, but I bought my RV-6 already flying.

Who remembers this:

Some say this picture cost Mr. Dukakis the presidency of the United States. Me? I hope that's not true or my own chance to occupy the big chair is ruined for, as luck would have it, I now have a picture of your's truly that's even worse. But we'll get to that...

Here we are in the middle of November and I was presented with a completely unexpected quandary. After all, no one expected the terrific weather we've had all week, and even less expected was that it would continue into at least one day of the weekend. But there it was in all its glory: a forecast for clear-ish skies and reasonable temperatures. I would simply have to fly somewhere. I checked the schedules of the usual suspects that accompany me, but it looked like I'd either have to go somewhere alone or see if I could still fit my ever-expanding puppy pal Cabot into the plane.

Nagging at the back of my brain has been the idea that I'd really like to get out to Red Stewart airport and get a ride in their Stearman. Having failed to find an open spot on the schedule last time I tried, I didn't think it was very likely that I'd be any more successful when calling on a Friday afternoon with the very public promise of good weather on Saturday to entice others into the same idea. I called anyway. The woman that answered the phone sounded as if she didn't expect to find any openings as she asked me to wait while she consulted the schedule, and actually sounded apologetic when she told me that the only opening was at 3:30 PM. I leapt at it! I figured that would probably be the warmest part of the day and that seemed to me to be a quite desirable detail when booking a ride in an open cockpit biplane. In November.

Still, that left most of Saturday for me to pace about in barely contained excitement. I finally gave up and headed for the airport a little after 1:00. Red Stewart is only 50 miles away and I knew I'd be horribly early, but I just needed to go. I took one last look at the forecast and spent a few moments pondering the warning of 14G20 winds before deciding that those winds, while close up against my personal maximum, were still within the bounds of flyable. The were pretty much out of the southwest, too, so I'd only be dealing with a fractional crosswind component of them anyway.

The winds hadn't yet picked up as I climbed out of Bolton Field and headed towards the southwest, but it wasn't long until we started bumping through a light but frenetic chop. It was the kind of sky that just won't allow the plane to settle into any kind of relaxed, hands-free flying. I had to keep a tight hand on the reins for the entire trip. Dialing in the frequencies of some of the automated weather reporting systems in the vicinity of my destination proved what I already knew: the promise of 14G20 winds had been kept. Well, at least I knew that it was going to be an interesting arrival!

I had no idea how interesting! Red Stewart has a grass runway and those are notoriously difficult to pick out of the surrounding farm fields, but that's what GPS is for. With only three miles remaining before the GPS would start counting how many miles the field was behind me rather than in front of me, I caught sight of it. It was the field with a high-powered plane doing aerobatics just to the north of it. Or, in other words, right where I was headed. The radio was mostly quiet with the exception of a couple of planes entering the pattern at Waynesville, wherever that was. Oddly enough, though, there were also a couple of planes entering the pattern at Red Stewart. An idea started to tug at what little attention I had remaining as I concentrated on not being speared by an aerobatic plane descending straight down out of a hammerhead stall. Oh, and there was also what looked like a Piper Cub rolling down the runway on takeoff.

Not counting the aerobatic guy, there were four airplanes in the general vicinity of the runway. One was not talking on the radio at all; he was on final and thus not much of a factor. One was on left base, but he, as with the third guy who was busy making a right 360 degree turn out of the downwind leg to increase his spacing behind the guy on base, was reporting his activity as being at Waynesville.

BING! The light came on.

Oh! I get it now! "Waynesville" is the name of the airport, not "Red Stewart!" Or they're synonymous. Whatever. It was time to cast aside all of the nagging details and get busy with landing my plane. I slowed down and dropped flaps to keep myself behind the guy that had finished his 360 degree turn and was back to flying a normal pattern. I extended my downwind to give him a little more room. I could feel the crosswind from the left as I came down final and compensated for it by keeping my left wing low. I made a fairly decent touchdown but fell victim to the oldest grass runway trick in the book: if you don't make a full stall landing, the humps and bumps in the runway will bounce you right back into the air. There's only one result to that: an embarrassingly bumpy arrival. Which, after having very publicly embarrassed oneself, leaves only a single path of recourse: park far away from the spectators.

Unfortunately, I parked with the gusty wind at my back. The wind was strong enough that it was slapping the rudder from stop to stop, a situation that I simply cannot tolerate. It's horribly hard on the hinges and can even result in small dents in the skin of the rudder if it bangs hard enough to contact one of the screw heads protruding through the fiberglass fairings. I had to dig around in my just-in-case kit to find the rudder lock that I use to immobilize the rudder in situations like this. I don't like to use it because I'm afraid I'll forget to remove it before trying to taxi out to the runway. I'd know if I had forgotten it pretty quickly since I wouldn't be able to turn the airplane, but it would be terribly embarrassing to have to shut down and go back out to remove it. Worse, even, than forgetting to remove a chock. And, well, my local reputation as a competent pilot wasn't all that great anyway, what with the preceding landing and all.

With an hour and a half to kill, I entertained myself by walking around soaking up the ambiance of the rustic airport. I even managed to talk to a few folks with none of them making any mention at all of my landing. Maybe it wasn't all that bad after all. Or maybe they were just being polite. Either is fine with me.

At about 3:15 I was approached by a guy that asked if I was Dave. "Well, yes I am!" I replied. "I'm Dave too. Are you here for the Stearman ride?" Ah, early! What a stroke of luck! I was more than a little afraid that they might be running late and that I'd run into a shortage of daylight at the other end of this little adventure. We walked over to a pair of hangars, between which the Stearman was hiding.

Dave went through the preparations for starting the big radial engine. It was apparent that pilot/cadets of the late 30's were horribly spoiled because the airplane had obviously been designed for an external crewman to start. Note from Dave's efforts that the engine is primed from outside the cockpit. And if that's not evidence enough, note that right next to the primer knob is a slotted orifice that a crank handle inserts into. After priming the engine, the poor crewman would be forced to turn that crank in order to spin up a massive flywheel under the cowl. When the pilot/cadet hollered out that the magnetos were live, the crewman would pull a knob that would transfer the rotational energy of the flywheel to crank the engine over. If he was lucky, the engine would start on the first or second try.

Dave didn't make me do that, although he did relate the story of an aspiring Stearman pilot that had wanted to try it himself, ostensibly for the "authenticity" that's in it.

He only asked once.

With those preparations out of the way, I was invited to alight. And given my status as a pilot (Dave had been up flying when I arrived, and who was I to disabuse him of the notion that I had done it well?) he insisted that I sit in the back seat. Oddly enough, that's considered to be the pilot's seat. It probably has something to do with weight and balance when flying solo. In any event, I jumped at the chance. He gave me a quick description of the contortions I'd have to go through to climb all the way up there and into the seat before heading on up to the front seat himself. Luckily he was still facing to the front as I clumsily crawled over the side coaming and ignominiously plopped down into the seat.

As I was in the official pilot's seat, I'd have some duties not normally entrusted to uncredentialed goundlings. First, once he was belted in and ready to start the engine I'd have to flip the battery switch to "on." Once the engine had started, I'd have to flip the radio switch to "on." That particular operation seemed kind of gratuitous because I could quite plainly see the void where the radio used to be installed, but I suppose it had something to do with the intercom.

All that was left to do was to fasten and snug down the safety belts which, considering the complete lack of any overhead structure to keep me in the airplane, was a task that I paid particularly rapt attention to. Oh, and I had to put on the cloth helmet/headset thingy. And it was at that precise moment that any thoughts and dreams about attaining high political office were dashed forever.

As surely as Napoleon had his Waterloo, I had finally had my long-dreaded Dukakis moment.

And you know what? Within just a couple of minutes I wouldn't care! Not in the least!

Radial engines don't seem to roar into life all at once like the little four cylinder bangers that I'm accustomed to. Rather, they bang and splutter and spit out flames and noxious clouds of smoke as they seemingly reluctantly come to life. Frankly, that is a great deal of their appeal. As I've often said, the primary function of airplanes like the Stearman is to convert large quantities of expensive petroleum products into noise. Sweet, wonderful noise, of course, but noise nonetheless. And I'm here to tell you, it sounds just as nice from inside the airplane as it does from the outside.

I sat there for a couple if seconds in awe of the momentous moment. This was, after all, the very first time I had ever even sat in a venerable classic like a Stearman, and now here I was getting ready to fly in one! Surprisingly, I even remembered to turn on the second switch!

What? Did I hear him right? It seemed that Dave had just said that he would taxi us out from between the hangars and then I could take over. Really?? That was not what I had expected at all! And I was completely unprepared for it; I had cameras spread out all over the place back in my little cubbyhole, ready to record every moment of the ride. I started trying to find places to put all of the cameras where I'd still be able to get at them later. That proved challenging since in my zeal to not fall out of the airplane I had snugged myself down very, very tightly. I couldn't get to any of my pockets!

I managed to get everything tucked away through the simple expedient of sitting on whatever I could get under my thighs and tucking one of the thinner cameras underneath one of the shoulder straps. As I took over the steering of the plane (and asking Dave to make sure that if I was going to hit anything to please make sure it was anything other than the little gray airplane over there by the runway) I quickly realized one very critical difference between sitting in the back seat of a Stearman versus sitting in an RV-6: you can't see a blooming thing from the back seat of a Stearman. It steers pretty well, although I don't think the tailwheel does anything other than freely swivel around. It seemed that I could make gentle turns by using full rudder throw (and man, do those pedal travel a long way!) and could encourage tighter turns by stabbing at the brakes. It was actually pretty easy to taxi once I got in the habit of making frequent S-turns in order to see what was out in front of us.

I managed to get us to the end of the runway without running over anything, although I did exhibit a tendency to taxi faster than Dave was comfortable with. The problem is that my airplane is very small and light compared to a behemoth like the Stearman and I'm therefore used to being able to stop quickly. The Stearman, on the other hand, weighs 3,000 pounds. It doesn't do anything quickly. There are a lot of people and little bitty airplanes moving around at Red Stewart, so a walking pace while taxiing is the way to go.

When we reached the end of the runway, Dave had me point the plane into the wind and do the engine run-up. That was performed in a similar manner to the way I do it in the RV-6 with one notable exception: the tach rotates counter-clockwise, as opposed to just about every other tach in the world. With the run-up done, Dave had me position the plane on the runway. He then told me we'd do the takeoff together - he'd man the rudders while I did the rest. He asked me to be gentle with the throttle until reaching 1,500 rpm since there is a notable burble right around 1,300. "Notable" is a generous description. "Startlingly abrupt" seems more apt in the event.

I actually did pretty well with the takeoff, although I was surprised at how long it took to get up to flying speed. This is, by the way, another area in which grass runways try to trip you up. The same humps and bumps that kept me from landing smoothly also try to throw the plane into the air before its truly ready to fly. After a few false takeoffs with resultant bouncy returns to the runway, I got us into the air and climbing out at a sedate 60 mph.

Did I say "sedate?" Well, when viewed from a distance I'm sure it looked that way. When sitting in an open cockpit biplane, though, no speed over 10 mph can be described as anything other than "unremittingly loud." The first thing I remember is the wind getting under the lip of the cloth helmet/headset thingy and making it feel like a hat that's getting ready to blow right off of your head. It took a couple of frantic grabs at it before I fully internalized that it wasn't going anywhere. As we accelerated to a blistering 75 mph for our excruciatingly slow climb to 1,500' AGL, I started to notice that the buffeting from the air was getting more than a little abusive. It only took a couple of minutes to realize that my eyebrows were going to hurt for the rest of the day from my eyelids flapping up and slapping them. I'm not complaining here, mind you, but I have to say it: a pair of goggles would have been nice!

I was desperate to take some pictures but I couldn't bring myself to relinquish the controls. Years of practice in the RV-6 came to my rescue, though. If there's one thing I can do, it's fly with one hand and take pictures with the other.

We eventually reached our desired altitude and I put the camera away. I don't know how long it took to get to altitude since there's no vertical speed gauge in the panel. I suspect they had it removed because they considered it to do nothing but taunt them as they struggled for altitude. And really, who needs an instrument to tell you that your exact rate of climb is "lethargic." Actually, I'm not sure why they even have an airspeed indicator either. With the wind buffeting my eyelids, I cast a glance down to the panel to see how fast we were going, fully expecting to see 120 or 130 mph. Nope.

80 mph.

It seems like no matter what I did with the throttle, no matter what position I put the airplane in, every time I looked at the airspeed indicator we were doing 80 mph. It is truly the one-airspeed airplane! Climb at 80, cruise at 80, land at 80. I have yet to figure out why it has a throttle at all - it seems like an on/off switch would suffice.

Anyway, once at altitude Dave told me I could play around with the plane if I'd like to. He only had to offer once! I started with some shallow banked turns to get a feel for it, eventually working my way up to wingovers and steep turns. I found the plane to be responsive in the things you need it to do such as normal, routine flying, but very heavy if you asked it to hurry things along. In other words, it would willingly roll into a turn with very little stick force, but you could heave as hard as you wanted to move the stick further over and still have very little effect on the rate of the roll. The rudder was the same way - it was much lighter than I had expected it to be, right up until I asked it to force the nose down while we were in a steep bank at the top of a wingover.

I also discovered that the Stearman will not pick up speed willingly, but it will gladly shed it like a Husky dropping coat in August. When I toss the RV-6 around I have to be very careful to keep it from picking up great gobs of speed; with the Stearman I had no such worries, but I had to make sure I didn't lose too much. I also noticed that I started to learn a few moves that I could use to avoid the worst of the air blast. For example, I soon learned that you can duck your head into the inside of a steep turn to avoid the blast of hard air you get if you haven't coordinated the rudder and ailerons correctly. Still, even with the ability to score a few brief calm moments I wouldn't want to fly a long cross-country in one of these things.

Right around the time I had had enough of flinging the plane around (to the degree that a plane that heavy can be flung, anyway), Dave asked me to climb higher. It was his turn to fly! We had briefly discussed my appetite for advanced maneuvers like loops before takeoff and I had blithely answered in the affirmative. Yes, please, let's have some! What I hadn't fully considered was the difference between me doing loops and me riding with someone else doing loops, particularly in an airplane with no top! It was too late to back out, though, what with the enormous investment that had been required to put another thousand feet between us and the cold, hard earth. I pinched the seat cushion just a little tighter and gave him the go-ahead.

In the RV-6, I can pull a loop from straight and level cruise. And I can make them big and lazy, too, since the engine doesn't have to fight a bunch of drag to get us up to the top of the loop. Not so with the Stearman. It took a long (well, it seemed long. It was probably no more than five seconds) steep dive followed by an abrupt pull-up to get us through to the other side. It was fun, though. Dave followed that up by slowing us into a stall and kicking the rudder over to drop us into a spin. We made a two or three turn spin and pulled out when we got back down to our original 1,500' altitude.

Our half hour was just about up so he asked me if I'd like to try landing. I shared that I thought that was asking a bit much since I had completely lost track of the airport in the spin and simply couldn't see it anywhere. That should have been a clue - there's only one blind spot in a Stearman: straight ahead. It's the definitive "he never knew what hit him" airplane; you could hide a mountain out in front of one of these planes. With that navigational problem solved, I agreed to give it a try.

We entered the pattern directly over the center of the runway and heading for a left downwind. I timed the turn to downwind well enough, but every time I tried to start bringing the plane down lower, Dave stopped me. We ended up on what I thought was short final at 600' AGL. I say that I "thought" we were on short final because the entire airport was blocked by the front of the airplane. That's when I found out why Dave had wanted to keep all of the altitude in the bank; he rolled us into a left-wing-low forward slip and voilà, there was the airport.

I'd like to be able to say I made the landing, but I have to confess that after the first bounce I was just along for the ride. Once Dave had gotten us settled onto the runway, I took over and got us slowed down to taxi speed. I taxied us back to park right by Papa. Shutting down the engine was the same as in most piston engine planes: mixture to cut-off and magnetos off. The only difference was the abject relief that the noise and wind had stopped.

And that was it. All done.

I'm going to do it again next year, I think.

We had done pretty good on time and I didn't have to worry about getting back before dark after all. Still, it was nice to sit in relative quiet and calm of my own plane while cooking along at a more reasonable speed, even if I did suddenly have a disconcerting tendency to over-control it.

It's a Blustery Year

2010-10-31T17:48:00.010-04:00

Yep, it's that time of year again. Late fall is when the bluster is at its worst, although there are some years that are certainly worse than others. 2008 was horrible and 2012 will likely be far worse, but the campaign season of 2008 has been plenty bad enough. Oh, you thought I meant blustery weather? Well, we've had that too. I had hoped to give a ride to a co-worker last week but the 23G30 winds were clearly too much; we had to postpone. That's the kind of wind that I only land in if I'm returning from a trip and I'm met with conditions far worse than forecast. I can do it if I have to, but if I have a choice? Nope, I stay home.

Today was better, but not entirely perfect. We had a reported steady 9 knots from the northwest, but one look at the sky was enough to tell that there was probably more than that going on at altitude. It was clearly blowing pretty hard up in the flight levels where the jets ply their trade; you can always tell it's windy when the clouds look like they've been applied to the sky with a brush. There's nothing wrong with a local hop with 9 knot winds, though. No reason to postpone this time, but I did suggest dressing warmly. It can be pretty chilly between the hangars when the wind forces its way between them and I knew we'd have to spend some time talking before getting into the plane.

The passenger, a future winner of the Caldecott Medal for her as-yet-unwritten children's book Everyone Knows a Dog Named Molly, asked if she could bring her family along with her in order to take some pictures of her daughter in the airplane. I could hardly refuse, what with some of my absolutely favorite pictures of Co-pilot Egg being those taken in one airplane or another. Egg, herself always eager to befriend younger kids, volunteered to brave the chill and go to the airport with us to help with the logistics of the photo taking.

She was quite happy in the plane until Egg tried putting headsets on her. That wasn't very popular at all!

To be fair, those ear cups are mighty cold when there's a chill in the air. I don't much like putting them on either!

While Egg was entertaining her guest, I did the preflight and explained a few of the things that I've learned to point out to passengers. Chief amongst those are things like:

1) The engine vibrates a lot more than what you're used to in a car and is quite loud. It also sometimes burbles when I throttle back to land.

2) I'm going to be pretty active on the rudder pedals during takeoff and landing. It's best if they're not being used as foot rests. This is especially important when it's windy.

3) And most importantly when flying with females: I will be reaching for the trim knob now and then, and any contact with your leg is purely incidental. In fact, I was thinking that one nice thing about the RV-12 will be that the trim is electric and actuated by a switch on the control panel, thus alleviating me of the concern that something might be misconstrued. My relief was short-lived, however, as I soon remembered that I'm going to have to brief the use of the crotch strap in the RV-12, something I don't have to do in the -6. That's going to require a level of delicacy that, simply put, I'm not exactly known for.

Not that it was an issue with Molly, but one of the benefits of explaining these kinds of things as we go through the process is to alleviate some of the nervousness someone might have when flying in a small plane for the first time. Confidence and competence, even if feigned, go along way towards calming jangled nerves. I remember one of my earliest flights in a small plane when I grew increasingly trepid as the pilot struggled to get the engine started. That's no problem with Papa, of course, since he always starts after pulling just one or two blades through. Such was the case today, although I just couldn't seem to keep the engine running after its normally easy start. I think it was the third or fourth time I had tried before I realized that I still had the mixture in idle cut-off. Oops! But, as I've always said, there are two people you never want to hear say "Oops!": pilots and brain surgeons. I put on my best meant-to-do-that voice and said, "Ah, I had it set a little lean."

Technically true, that, albeit in a somewhat Clintonian sense. It all depends on what the meaning of "a little lean" is.

Being early yet, we woke up the tower controller with our request to taxi but eventually managed to wrangle a clearance to runway 4 out of him. On the way out I explained that we'd have a left crosswind on takeoff which, combined with the normal right turning tendency from the torque of the engine, would ensure that there would be at least a few swerves as we accelerated down the runway. I also briefed my normal runway 4 takeoff method of accelerating to 120 knots over the runway before making a climbing turn-out towards the wide open farm fields just west of the airport. Doing it that way results in us being at 500' above the ground with best glide speed already showing on the airspeed indicator should anything happen that would require an un-powered, off-airport landing, but it's not the type of takeoff one would expect after hundreds of hours flying in airliners.

All went as planned and we were soon climbing towards the west. I had debated on the question of making my normal takeoff or foregoing that and climbing out straight ahead, the two choices pretty much differing mostly by how they would affect the passenger, but in the event my final decision to go with the more abrupt and potentially scary method was proven satisfactory by the gleeful laughing bubbling out from the right seat. That was a relief! If she enjoyed the takeoff, chances were that I wouldn't have to be ultra careful about banks and turns.

Once we got up to a safe altitude, I let her take the controls. My early impression proved correct. After just a few mild exploratory turns, she loosened up and rolled us into 30- to 40 degree banks quite readily. We were lucky to have a few scattered target clouds to play around with too. It's somewhat rare to have those bite-sized clouds lounging around at a convenient altitude, and when I do find them I like to play around with them a bit. As there was one just below and to the left of us and Molly was obviously getting more comfortable with controlling the plane, I had her put us in a descending left turn straight towards it. We brushed across the top of it at a good 175 mph. That's a great way for someone new to flying to see just how fast it is that we're going. It's hard to tell when you're a few thousand feet above the ground, but the close-up reference to a stationary cloud shows it very well.

She then flew us over another little cloud just behind the first and I took over as we zoomed on past it. I pulled us up into a left wing-over and dove back down towards the cloud we had just brushed over. After three or four of those, we had both had enough fun to last us the day. Which is to say, well, there was a little queasiness afoot. Pulling G's like that is an acquired taste and something you have to do pretty routinely to stay acclimated to it. She'd never done it, and I hadn't done it for a long time. It was time to move on to something more sedate.

I headed us back towards the east, the plan being to fly over The Ohio $tate University campus and downtown Columbus. Unfortunately we were over a pretty thick haze layer. While the sky was beautiful at 5,500', the view of campus and the downtown waterfront wasn't that great. I turned us back to the west and we descended back down towards Bolton. I called the tower as we crossed over Darby Dan and got the expected "report mid-field left downwind runway 4" in response.

As we crossed over my neighborhood, I made a continuous curving approach from downwind to final. We still had quite a bit of altitude, but with the throttle to idle and a good headwind component we had no problem losing the excess height by the time we reached the runway. I had covered my bases in preparation for a bad landing during the briefing, but it proved unnecessary. The touch down was smooth, and had it not been for a gust of wind that caused a little swerving and bouncing on the roll-out, it would have been a very good landing for a blustery 9 knot day.

There's no such thing as a routine flight

2010-10-24T13:55:00.004-04:00

I'm not the first to say that there is no such thing as a routine flight, nor is it an idea that I've but recently pondered. It's just that it was proven to me again yesterday as I made a trip that I have made more often than any other, if I exclude shorter hops like MadCo and Urbana. I'll modify the criteria by defining "trip" as a flight upon which I spend more than an hour on the ground and actually leave the airport itself. I make plenty of those, but none as often as I make the trip to The Farm. If anything in my aerial repertoire could be counted as a routine flight, that would be it.

The last couple of times I've gone, though, I've dealt with events that are slightly out of the norm. The last time I went, I ended up using the Garmin 396 and its XM-based weather radar display feature to circumnavigate an inconveniently placed storm cloud. This trip too involved dealing with a little bit of weather, but it was much more widespread. We had 11,000' ceilings for most of the day, which were easy enough to stay underneath with adequate visibility, but they unfortunately also produced some light to moderate precipitation. There was nothing all that difficult about it, but it is a stark departure from the days when even a hint of green on the radar was enough to me to just decide to stay home.

This is what it looked like on the way home. Note the ground speed displayed on the GPS - that's with the engine throttled back to an economical 2,200 rpm. The trip from Bolton to The Farm was also at a 2,200 rpm setting, but resulted in only 115 knots across the ground. So yeah, it was a bit windy at altitude.

The more interesting event was on the trip out when I saved a minimum of two lives, one (and if I'm honest, the more important) being my own. As I was flying along at 3,500', my normal scan outside the cockpit detected another airplane that was headed on an almost parallel heading, but about 500' higher than me. I say almost parallel because he was slowly converging on me. I watched as he crossed almost directly over me from right to left. Given his obvious fixation on his course, no demonstrable effort to avoid me, and the fact that he was 500' above me, I assumed that he was on an IFR flight plan. This notion was reinforced by the fact that we were just northeast of Dayton International's Class C airspace and he was headed right at it.

I decided to keep an eye on him. As we continued to the west, I could see him a mile or two off to the south. I kept expecting him to start a descent into Dayton, but his altitude remained constant. He made a couple of steeply banked course corrections, something that would be abnormal in true IFR conditions, but we were still in good visual conditions so there would really be nothing precluding him from an aggressive correction. I kept glancing over every couple of minutes or so until about five minutes later when it appeared that he might be getting closer to me again. I increased the rate of my glances to every 30 seconds; it soon became abundantly apparent that he was, in fact, closing the gap between us. Eventually he got close enough that I had to take evasive action. I descended a few hundred feet to allow him to cross directly over me. He never knew I was there! Had I not kept watching for him, there is a very real chance that he would have flown right into me. How close was he? I could have easily read a one-inch high tail number if it had been painted on the bottom of the fuselage.

This is why we look out the window!!

While I was at The Farm, I stopped by my brother's place to see what he's working on. This time around, it was his new race car for next season. The Schmetterling sponsored ride has been stripped of its goodies and relegated to jack stands. Reportedly, the Schmetterling logo will be even larger on next year's car!

Simplifying the equation

2010-10-16T21:45:00.003-04:00

Here's the equation that's been bothering me:

X + Y = ???,

where X = Will This Airplane Fly and Y = Can I Fly This Airplane?

Granted, it's a year away at least, but it will have to happen eventually. There will inevitably come a day when I have to fly this thing, and it's apparently never to early to start worrying about it. I wouldn't call it butterflies in the stomach at this distant point, but pupae in the belly wouldn't be too far off the mark.

I simplified the equation today. There will still be worries over the fundamental airworthiness of the completed airplane, but at least I will know for a fact that I can fly it. Today I flew a little more than an hour in the left seat of an RV-12 and made a total of three takeoffs and landings. As a bonus, I also made a fourth landing approach and a go-around. For practice, like. Or so I would have you believe.

In what has to me one of the most masterfully created win-win deals of the young century, I offered to assist a sort-of local RV-12 owner with an introduction to the operation of his Garmin 496 GPS in exchange for a little more time riding around and getting familiar with the flying qualities of the -12. He flew up from Lancaster to pick me up at Bolton and while we were chatting on the ramp in front of the tower, he shifted over to the right side and offered me the Captain's position. Yowza!

Before we started the engine, he gave me a quick tour of the Dynon D-180 so I'd know where to look for interesting tidbits of trivia such as our altitude above the ground and our velocity through the cool fall air. Good stuff to know, those things. The increased level of complexity and sophistication over the more pedestrian mechanical equipment in my RV-6 was in stark contrast to the amazing simplicity of engine management. Time to start the engine? Fine, show me the mixture knob. What do you mean, "there isn't one?" How can that be? Okay, fine. Turn the key? Piece of cake. Whoa! I was expecting to click through left mag, right mag, both mags, and then into 'start'. The last thing I expected was to turn the key straight into 'start'. And wow, it sure does start easy, doesn't it?

Taxiing was a little odd too. Rather than the steerable tailwheel I'm used to, there's just a castering wheel out front. Pressing the rudder pedals has no effect whatsoever on steering. No problem, though. I adjusted right quickly to getting turns started with a little jab at the brakes and stopped with a little jab at the other brake. At the end of the runway, I received a briefing on how to perform the takeoff with the least amount of stress on the nose wheel. The idea was to hold the stick back as I fed power in, and not be surprised when the nose lifted almost right away. Once it did, I was to lessen the nose-up stick and let the nose kind of find its own level. The plane would fly away on its own when it was ready. It sounded a little complicated, but in the event it was quite simple. It was a good thing that I had been forewarned that it would feel like I was going to bounce the tail on the runway with the extreme feeling nose up attitude or I would have panicked and plopped the wheel right back down onto the runway.

I fed the throttle in slowly, but even still it was only a matter of a few hundred feet before we were climbing away from the runway. I have no numbers regarding climb performance to share, unfortunately. I sure that data was available on the display somewhere, but as with the rest of the performance data I found it much more difficult to deduce values from a simply glance like I can with my old clock face gauges. I can tell you this: it was slower than in the RV-6. I knew that would be the case going in, though. It was not a surprise.

I was ready for the light aileron forces, having experienced them in my previous ride, but this time around I realized that the -12 is actually lighter in aileron than the -6. It's actually what I would describe as nimble. As we were climbing away from Bolton, I spent a few minutes explaining how to enter a destination into the GPS. With MadCo firmly locked in, I also took the liberty of reconfiguring the GPS screen to what I consider to be a more useful page setup. I like to split the screen between the moving map and the HSI direction indicator. I think it's a more natural way to look at it for old school pilots.

As we approached MadCo, I became increasingly aware of one thing about the RV-12 that I don't like. More specifically, it's something about the Rotax engine. For some reason that I'm sure would make perfect sense to somebody like a trial lawyer, there is a very strong spring on the throttle that is perpetually trying to pull the throttle knob to the full throttle position. That's all well and good for those times when you want to blast around at full bore, but for the rest of the time it's a right bugger. You see, to keep the throttle from working its way forward, you have to lock the friction control on the throttle down as tight as it will go. That makes power changes somewhat of a struggle. Not knowing any better, I loosened the friction and pulled back the throttle for our descent into the landing pattern. Imagine my surprise when I noticed a couple of minutes later that we not only weren't descending, but weren't slowing down either. The throttle had returned to the higher power position of its own volition. I was to be mildly irked by this behavior for the rest of the flight.

We entered a left downwind to runway 27 and were confronted by the challenge of my first landing with a wind that was blowing directly from.... the west. Right down the runway. What could be easier! As I dropped the flaps (accomplished quite quickly in the -12 by virtue of a flap lever rather than the glacially slow electric flaps of my -6) I hardly noticed any nose down movement at all. Lowering the flaps in the -6 has a far more pronounced influence on the trim. In subsequent landings I would notice that there is a pitch trim change required when lowering the flaps in the -12, but it's minimal. What's far more noticeable is how much heavier the ailerons get when the flaps are down. I don't know if that's by design or just a lucky fluke, but it adds a nice feeling of stability in the landing pattern.

I came down final at 65 - 70 knots and entered the flare at 65 knots. I deliberately flew a much shallower glide path than I do in the -6, correctly thinking that the -12 probably wouldn't be able to lose altitude as quick and easily as I can in the -6. I found out later that while it doesn't come down quite as rapidly as the -6, it is still pretty capable of coming down when you need it to. As I flared over the runway, I was pleasantly surprised at how much more feel I had than in the -6. With the -12, I could move the stick quite a bit in pitch with minimal yet predictable changes in the landing attitude of the plane. The -6 is, in comparison, very twitchy in the flare. The least little movement has a tremendous affect on the attitude of the plane, and in consequence can cause all kinds of embarrassing bounces and oscillations. At the end of the day, it came down to this: I greased all three of my landings, at least on the Richter scale that I use for grading landings in the -6.

I mentioned a go-around earlier. After MadCo we headed over to Circleville to try a crosswind landing. Without the wind coming right down the runway to abate our ground speed, I ended up high and fast on short final. I punched in a bootful of right rudder and held the wings level with left aileron and we dropped down like a brick, but I still felt that an awful lot of runway was sliding behind us and the plane wasn't perceptibly slowing. Discretion being the better part of valor (and me not wanting to abuse the generosity of my host), I poured on the coal and took us around for another try. Better attuned to the weather conditions and the performance of the plane, I squeaked on the second attempt. Two for two, if you don't count the go-around. Call that one a mulligan.

By the time we got back to Bolton, I was completely comfortable in the airplane. While it will take time to adjust to a 110 knot cruise speed, I will quickly learn to love the 5 gallon per hour fuel flow. The benign flight qualities will please, but the bouncing around that comes with the light wing loading will take some adjustment. I was again surprised at how quiet and smooth the engine is and how comfortable the seats are. And the improvement over the already exemplary visibility of the RV-6 is amazing.

All in all, I can say in all honesty that the RV grin that I wore for the rest of the afternoon was well earned by that wonderful little airplane.

Biennial Flight Review - FAIL!

2010-10-07T20:20:00.001-04:00

Well, no, I didn't actually fail a BFR. I don't think you actually can technically fail. That said, I found a way.

It all started a few weeks ago when I ran into a CFI at Bolton that was getting ready to do a BFR with the guy two hangars down from me. We had met before and he has actually flown with me in the RV. As we were chatting he asked when my BFR was due. I didn't think it was due until next year some time, but as I was unable to remember the precise date I decided to check my log book.

Expires: Oct, 2010.

Well then. I figured I ought to get it done asap. I'm hoping to take the RV down to Parkersburg later this month to have some more repair work done on the cowls (they're definitely showing their age, and it's not work I'm comfortable doing myself) so I needed to get the BFR out of the way. I tried to get it done this past weekend, but the weather was uncooperative. Today was the first day that met the conditions: decent weather, availability of the CFI, and my back is feeling back to normal. What happened to my back? That story is here.

We met at the airport a little before 5:30. As I was preflighting the plane, Tony looked through my log book. As I was pouring in a quart of oil, Tony hollered out at me that my BFR isn't due this month, it's due in May, 2011. I had mistaken the expiration date of the last CFI's certificate for the expiration date of my BFR.

Fail!

We decided to go flying anyway. I had been saving the gas for this for close to a week and I was feeling that I needed to get up and practice some landings. I was sure right about that! After working through same practice stalls, we headed over to MadCo. I entered a left downwind for runway 9 and struggled to figure out where the wind was blowing from (while wondering why wind socks are so darn small) with the idea that I could just cross over to the other side if the wind was favoring 27. After studying the itty-bitty windsock for a few moments, I decided that it looked like a direct crosswind and that runway 9 would work just fine.

I was wrong. I ended up high and close on final, but that's no problem in an RV-6. If there's one thing that wing knows how to do, it's to shed altitude in a hurry. Even after getting down to a landable altitude just over the numbers, it seemed like we were moving awfully fast. I often get that feeling when I haven't flown for awhile so I just shrugged it off as normal rustiness and landed. Well, while "landing" is the correct technical term for what happened, a more accurate description would be "bounced and swerved down the runway like an epileptic kangaroo." Once I finally got the plane slowed down and under control, I took a closer look at the windsock. While it may have been indicating a direct crosswind while we were on downwind, it was quite plainly showing a quartering tailwind from where we were sitting on the runway.

Good thing it wasn't an official BFR landing!

We went around again and landed on 27. That one went a lot better. In fact, it would have been a greaser if I hadn't pulled just a bit too much in the final flare. I ended up with a few more little bounces, but nothing near as bad as the first try.

Then it was back to Bolton where I actually made a good landing. Just in a nick of time, too. I think I was this close to having to find a different CFI to do my BFR in May!

Miami University - Middletown Campus

2010-09-18T16:56:00.001-04:00

I'm sure I'm not the first parent to go through this, nor will I be the last. I'm assured in my knowledge that I'm not the first because I put my parents through the same thing. When I was co-pilot Egg's age, I too had no idea where I wanted to go to college, or to be totally honest, whether I wanted to go at all. At that age it seems like you have done nothing but go to school; the prospect of even more doesn't really garner excitement. As with my father and me, I am the one pushing her to start planning for where she will matriculate next and what she wants to do with her life once forcibly ejected from the warm nest of public high school. When pressed, she vacillates between nursing, physical or mental therapy, and going pro on Facebook.

I think the latter is her preference.

I figure for at least the first two years of a four year program, there's not much difference between the core classes required for nursing or therapy. Anatomy, ethics, chemistry, and classes in managing third-party or government payers are foundational to both. With that in mind, I've been looking at nursing programs on her behalf. One of the locations I'm looking at is Miami University. To begin with, it satisfies the number one requirement: it's not THE Ohio $tate University. Egg has what I have taken to calling a Higher Education Donut Hole. Much as with the "donut hole" more commonly referred to in reference to the Medicare Part D program, it refers to areas where coverage is available. It's actually an inverse donut hole: she has to go somewhere outside of Columbus but inside Ohio. Note that when I say "has to" that it's just like when I say she "has to" help mow the lawn; it by no means conveys any type of actual authority on my part to enforce such a command.

Anyway...

I flew out and visited the Miami University campus in Oxford Ohio last year and found it to be quite pleasant. Very collegiate, architecturally appropriate, and a few nice restaurants. I was more or less sold on the idea but further research showed that the nursing program is only offered at two regional campuses, one of which is in Middletown. I initially balked at that idea, thinking that there was no way we would pay that level of tuition only to have her attending classes miles from the town of Oxford. Once I looked a little further into it, though, I discovered that the tuition is commensurately lower at the regional campus.

Well then. Now you're talking my language!

Parallel to my thinking that I'd visit the campus this weekend, I was also trying to track down an outfit that offers dual instruction in a Stearman. Having lunched with Dr. Stan last week and gotten the idea into my head that I'd like to fly one at some point, I poked around on the internet for awhile trying to see where I'd have to go and what I'd have to pay to try it out.

At first it looked like I'd have to travel as far as Florida or Maryland and pay over $300 an hour for the experience (and that's not happening!!) but I eventually came across a link to Red Stewart airport. They have a Stearman that they offer dual in for around $200 an hour, including the instructor. Better yet, I could get a shorter ride for $80. That seemed perfect! Now I've been around the internet long enough to know that while web pages may last forever, the things offered on them may not. I first had to verify that they still had the Stearman. I happen to know of a flying blogger that does all of his flying out of Red Stewart and figured that surely he would have mentioned that Stearman at some point on his blog if it was still there. He had, and it is.

Red Stewart Airport is close to Middletown, so I thought I could combine a trip to Red Stewart for a flight in the Stearman with the flight to Middletown to visit the campus. Unfortunately, I had waited too long. When I called to book my flight in the Stearman, I was informed that the schedule was already full. Not to worry - they told me that they will fly on any day when the temps are over 45 degrees. I still have time to get it done.

Without the Red Stewart stop, I was able to fly direct to Middletown. That meant that I could take a flying buddy with me. There'd be a lot of walking (Google maps reported a walking distance of 2.2 miles each way from the airport to the campus) but I knew just the guy that would be thrilled to take a walk that long.

Middletown is southwest of Columbus, and our route took us directly over KilKare raceway where my brother races his Nascar Modified.

It was perfect flying weather. High pressure and reasonably low temperatures make the engine and the wings happy, and the clear, smooth skies and calm air make the pilot happy. These conditions are perfect for flying, but they do present a challenge. With no wind to speak of, uncontrolled airports become difficult to operate in and out of because there is no clear deciding factor regarding which runway to use. That, and they bring out a lot of traffic.

To make matters worse, Middletown is in a region that I don't much like flying through anyway; there are quite a few airports in the area, both large and small. Traffic becomes a big issue in that area no matter what the weather. Middletown also presents its own unique challenge in that they use left traffic for runway 5, but right traffic for runway 23. What that means is that pilots flying the right downwind for 23 are on the same side of the airport and heading directly at pilots flying the left downwind for runway 5. With the winds being reported as "calm," there is a very real risk of a head on collision on downwind if two pilots choose differently on the question of which runway is preferred.

And if that's not enough, there is a high-end sky diving outfit that operates there. They're up and down all day in a pair of Cessna Caravans, dropping jumpers right on the middle of the airport. The end result of all this is that Cabot and I would have to be on the lookout for large jets, airplanes headed right at us on downwind (and, by extension, on the runway), and falling human bodies. Wow! That's a lot of responsibility for a nine month old puppy!

As we were approaching the airport a twin Cessna reported something or the other having to do with runway 23, which was concerning given that we were entering the downwind to runway 5. The Unicom was a nightmare of the high pitched squeals of two radios transmitting at once and a long-winded individual telling his life's story as he worked his way laboriously through a landing at Blue Ash, so the second half of the Cessna's transmission was lost to me. I tried to get the guy to answer my "What did you say???" calls, but he was oblivious. It all worked out and the landing was uneventful other than being a bit bouncy.

I blame Cabot. He stares at me. It's discomfiting.

Just after we landed, some of the parachuters did too.

The walk to the campus had been planned for me by Google Maps, which has a "find a way for me to get there by foot" function.

I had used the Google StreetView feature to determine that there were sidewalks the entire way. I've often found that what looked like an easy walk on the map is anything but because it ends up being on a narrow, busy road with no sidewalks. This walk was 90% through residential neighborhoods. Cabot was very well behaved on the leash.

As we walked, I evaluated the neighborhood as a place for Egg to live. The regional campus does not have dorms; if she elected to go to school there, she would have to have a place to live. That might work out well; I saw this well-groomed house for sale.

They're asking $82,500 for it. Buy it with a 20% downpayment on a 30 year fixed and the payment is $350 per month, plus insurance and the like. A roommate could halve that cost. Four years down the road, sell it. Would that be cheaper that living in an apartment or a dorm at some other school? Maybe. It seemed worth thinking about, and that's exactly what I was doing until I was distracted by this sign.

Really?? "Your juvenile judge?" We haven't got enough juveniles in government already?

It was a pretty long walk, so it came as a great relief when I finally saw this sign. Cabot was equally thrilled when I read it to him.

The walk was up a fairly steep hill at that time, and at the crest of the hill we found our goal.

Our climb up the hill was wasted; the campus road heads right back down. The first sign of being on a campus was this statue.

How was that statue an indication that we were on a college campus? Easy, it was there because the subject was a rich man that gave huge amounts of money and/or land to the university. Had we been in a public park, it would have been a politician that had done the same, albeit with someone else's money.

We worked our way down the hill and past the university buildings.

When we reached the bottom of the hill, I realized two things. First, in twenty-first century America our civilization has advanced to the degree that we no longer provide publicly-accessible water fountains. Cabot was panting up a storm and seemed very, very thirsty. I had brought a plastic bag with me to fill with water to give him a drink, but had come across no source of water. My second realization was that we had reached a dead end.

The prospect of retracing our steps to the top of the hill was not pleasant. I decided to keep going on a gravel path that continued on past the end of the paved road and see if it looped back around to where we had come it. Luckily, by doing so I discovered water!

I ran some water into the bag for Cabot to drink from, but he refused to do it. Nothing but tap water will do for him, I suppose.

Elitist.

We kept going and soon found a trail that looked like it headed back up to the road we had climbed earlier.

It did, and a little more than half an hour later we were back at the airport. I had packed a fabric fold-up water bowl for Cabot and a bottle of tap water to pour into it. He was much more receptive of that! Spoiled rotten, I figure.

Oh, and I was taunted about my failure to get a ride in a Stearman. For the second time in as many weeks, I was sharing the ramp with one.

He didn't share the panache that Dr. Stan had. Somehow blue hearing protectors just aren't the same as a leather helmet and jacket. Still, it sure looks like fun!

Cabot was one tired puppy, but he stayed awake long enough to enjoy the flight home.

Once we got home, though, there was only one place he wanted to be.

I soon joined him.

Kacy J's

2010-09-12T16:22:00.003-04:00

The MERFI fly-in was this weekend over in Urbana. I went last year, but this year I decided to find something else to do. I'm getting more and more afraid of things that I used to do without a second thought, much like Brave Sir Hogarth is as he too advances in age. For him, the new thing is the child gate that we've been using to restrict the movements of the as yet not-proven-worthy-of-trust Puppy Cabot. Hogarth won't go near it. For me, it's large groups of planes converging on uncontrolled airports. Besides that, there's very little there to attract me. Last year it was nice to go over and meet the guy that built my airplane, and this year it would have been fun to visit Lynda at her Girls With Wings booth, but it's getting late in the year and I still had not made it to Kacy J's, the new restaurant at the airport in Muncie, Indiana.

I think the original attempt at Kacy J's was back at the beginning of summer on or around Fathers Day. I was going to land at KVES (Darke Co. - Versailles airport) and pick up my dad for a ride over to Muncie. Airport restaurants have come and gone at Muncie, and the most recently departed of the bunch didn't have a very good reputation, but word-of-mouth had it that the new establishment, Kacy J's, was worth the trip. A perusal of their online menu showed that there was something there that would be worth the trip: the Indiana Classic,their name for a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich. I'm not sure where I heard it (maybe Man Vs. Food, a ridiculous but surprisingly enjoyable show on the Travel Channel) , but the pork tenderloin sandwich is reportedly an Indiana specialty and I wanted to try one.

The first trip fell through when my preflight planning showed that the Darke Co. airport was closed. A few weeks later after Darke Co. was re-opened and I wanted to try again, Muncie was closed to all traffic except helicopters. One thing led to another and before I knew it was counting the days until the end of the traditional flying season. As it is, today was plan B. I had hoped to fly out on Saturday but the final weather forecast check in the morning showed the strong possibility of rain and low ceilings. Today was better, although the wind was expected to pick up to as high as 15 knots in the afternoon. I'll fly with a forecast for 15 knot winds, but it's right on my borderline. Had the prediction been 15 gusting to anything, I would have probably canceled again.

The flight out to KVES was okay, but it was already starting to get bumpy. I could tell that it wasn't going to be smooth sailing coming back later in the day - it was only going to get worse. It was the kind of bumpy you get when the sun heating the farm fields and causing updrafts combines with the turmoil of wind-addled air to make it hard to even press buttons and turn knobs on the avionics. You reach for a button just as you hit a bump in the air and your hand goes shooting off in unpredictable directions. It is precisely that type of air that has convinced me that I will never give up my avionics that have real buttons in favor of the ill-advised move to touch screens. No, no, no, NO! I will NOT GO!

I tuned into 122.7 as I flew south of Urbana and mentally patted myself on the back for deciding not to get into that mess. There were no less than five planes trying to sort themselves into a reasonable line for the left downwind when some yahoo called that he was planning a straight in approach. Good luck with that, fella. That's rude on a normal Urbana breakfast Sunday. You gotta be kidding if you think that's going to fly during a high attendance event like MERFI. I didn't hang around on frequency long enough to see how that turned out - I wanted to get over to Darke Co's ASOS and see what the winds were doing. 320 at 7. Not bad at all! I made a pretty decent landing, although I didn't get stopped as short as I'd have liked to and rolled about 10 feet past the first taxiway. A quick 180 on the runway fixed that.

I wanted to get out and stretch a little bit before jumping right back into the plane for the short 40 mile hop over the Muncie. While I was out walking around, I came across the coolest canopy cover I've ever seen.

While I was taking pictures of the Piper, my dad was approached by one of the uniformed pilots of the big Cessna Citation 7 I had parked next to. He was looking for someplace to get some coffee and donuts for his expected passengers. Unfortunately he hadn't realized that KVES is a very rural airport and there's not much of anything nearby. In fact, that Citation was the largest jet I've ever seen there. The past competition was small for that honor though, as I don't think I have ever seen a jet there. As he wandered off to find the airport manager, my dad told me that the corporate pilot had asked what kind of plane I was flying, and suggested that he thought it might be a trainer of some sort. As if!! I explained to my dad that it's not uncommon for the guys that fly business and commercial jets to not know much about the smaller planes you'll find out in the boonies. They live and fly in a very different world. I think, though, that at least some level they envy us for our type of flying as much as we envy them for theirs. The grass? It's always greener, isn't it?

The ride over to Muncie was all too short. Before I knew it we were dialing in the ATIS and learning that the moderate winds were pointed right down runway 32. As we were approaching from the east, I figured we'd either get cleared for a pattern entry into a right base for runway 32 or into a right downwind for the same runway. I was hoping for the right base entry so we wouldn't have to fly up north to meet with the midfield downwind or, I suppose, try to negotiate for the entry I wanted. Muncie Tower responded as I had hoped and we were cleared to enter on the right base. Just before we got to the pattern, I heard another plane being cleared to land. It was a Stearman. That was lucky - I thought my dad would be interested in seeing a venerable old workhorse like that. And an actual trainer, no less! Albeit a trainer for WWII military pilots.

The landing was accomplished with no more that a light bounce and a gentle scuffing of the tires on the wide, wide runway. I easily made the first turn off to the ramp. And there it was: the beautiful Stearman was right there in front of the restaurant. I parked nearby.

My dad wanted to go take a look at it but seemed wary. I told him to go on over - other pilots are usually fine with people walking around and looking at their planes as long as there are no hands or feet involved. Look, but don't touch. They aren't Braille, after all. You can see just fine without climbing all over them or smearing your hands all over the canopy trying to look inside. Can you tell I have a little experience with this? It's another of the reasons I don't do many fly-ins anymore.

Note the lack of a GPS. I think he was flying via pilotage and a sectional chart: old school!

While I was doing my best to act as a Stearman tour guide, the owner/pilot returned. He was working his way back from someplace down south back up to his home in Wisconsin. That's a pretty long trip in a Stearman! He mentioned over lunch that he usually takes his T-6 (!!!) on the longer trips. A Stearman and a T-6? Wow! As I've always said, when it comes to airplanes you need at least two but no more than five. I often entertain myself on my long drive to and from work trying to decide what my five would be, and a Stearman or a T-6 always make the list. I probably wouldn't do one of each, though. I can tell you this: it would be mighty hard to decide between the two! I love them both.

We headed into the restaurant where we were greeted by the owner(?)/manager. The place was not at all crowded which came as something of a surprise to me. Muncie has a huge GA ramp, big runways, a friendly tower, and very little traffic. It seems perfect for a weekend lunch stop, but there was hardly anyone there. It makes me wonder if they're having trouble getting the word out that there's a new restaurant there and that it's not affiliated with the former place that had gotten such a bad reputation. It's clearly a pilot-friendly outfit - just look at the decorations:

The owner(?)/manager was particularly proud of the light on this corner table. The airport had recently replaced their runway lights with LED models and he was able to get ahold of one of the old lights. He had to find a fixture for it and step the voltage down from what it was expecting (3000 volts, I think he said), and his first choice of bulb, a 100 watt halogen, was far too bright, but he finally got it working. I wish I had thought to ask him if he could build another for me!

As we were working our way through our Indiana Classics (which, by the way, were every bit as enjoyable as the conversation with Dr. Stan)...

... another military retiree landed.

That one is a T-34 Mentor.

Dr. Stan hasn't got one of those.

Yet.

Awww, come on. I'm allowed to be just a little bit jealous, aren't I?

Kidding aside, I'll bet he's tempted. They're wonderful airplanes, despite their AD history. Use them appropriately and they're fine.

After lunch we headed to our respective planes. I suggested to my dad that we stick around long enough to hear the Stearman's engine start. They make a wonderful sound and I can't get enough of them. They kind of stumble into life, as opposed to the immediate blast of noise from something like my Lycoming. The restaurant owner(?)/manager, himself a pilot and owner of two airplanes (what is it with these guys???!? I had no idea that I wasn't alone in my "at least two" thinking, Harrison Ford notwithstanding) apparently agreed since he too came out for the show.

By the time we hopped into Papa for the short flight back to KVES, the wind had whipped itself into the type of frenzy normally associated with Puppy Cabot when he hears bacon coming out of the fridge. If the flight to Muncie had seemed short, the flight back was going to be no more than a chip shot. The ASOS at KVES unemotionally shared the bad news: winds were 320 at 15 gusting 18. That was going to be a treat! We hit the left downwind with 120 knots showing on the speedo, but 145 showing on the GPS. Nothing for it but to man up and work my way through it. It actually didn't turn out too badly, although I must have looked like I was simultaneously trying to churn butter and squash grapes while I wrestled our way through the landing flare and touchdown. One decent bounce and a lot of aileron and rudder work had us down and rolling on the runway, but there was no hope of making the first turn off this time.

I didn't mind. I was just happy to have it over with.

The trip back to Bolton was equally brief, at least relative to the normal ride. I was cruising at an indicated 140 knots, but the GPS was showing 168 knots across the ground. As I called Bolton Tower over Lilly Chapel (a reporting point 8 miles west of the airport), I was again showing 120 on the airspeed and 145 on the GPS. Now I've heard a lot of real whoppers this year ("It'll bend the cost curve down." and "Gee Dad, I don't know how that dent got in my car." and "He'll calm down once he's neutered.") but none of them hold a candle to this:

"Four six six papa golf, report two mile left base runway four, winds three zero zero at five."

Five? As in five knots?? Are you serious??? When I'm doing 145 knots across the ground and showing 120 knots on the speedometer, there is no way I'm facing 5 knot winds on the runway. It had to be at least 12 to 14 knots.

It was. Gusty, too. But again, it wasn't a horrible landing. Practice seems to be helping!

There was quite a bit of clean up to do in the hangar. It's late in the summer and the bugs are fat. I think the updrafts help to carry them up high enough for me to hit them, too. There were at least three smears on the windshield that had to come from bugs close to the size of sparrows. I wonder what happens when a bug like that hits an open cockpit Stearman. I shudder to think....

Worst. Landing. Ever!

2010-09-05T20:55:00.000-04:00

Well, with you having heard the punchline already I don't suppose there's any reason to tell the story, but I will anyway.

I've spent the last few days working on both of the airplanes. The RV-12 is ready for interior paint and the fuselage and will soon be joined with the ever-patient tail cone that has spent the better part of the year lying fallow in the back of the hangar. The RV-6 also needs some work. Last week it was reluctant to turn more than one blade when starting because the resistance at the top of the first compression stroke was more than the old battery could overcome. I've been putting off buying a new battery for months, mostly as a matter of cost rather than hassle of installation. They're $183 plus shipping; installation takes 15 minutes. I needed to order some parts for the installation of the Dynon, though, so I glommed it all together into a big Aircraft Spruce order.

Finding the battery that I needed was easy, but finding the fittings needed to plumb the Dynon into the existing pitot/static system on Spruce's massive web catalog was a real chore. It didn't help that I've never done any work with the plastic hoses and fittings that comprise such a system, of course. I didn't even know what the parts are called. I eventually tracked everything down by starting with the hose. In the description of the hose, the web site said something like "and you'll probably need some of this other krep too." That helped.

I elected to have the stuff delivered by a herd of FedEx hump back turtles, that being the cheapest method and me not being in any particular hurry. The package arrived in two days. Good on ya, FedEx!

I installed the battery right away. I had no idea if new batteries come with a charge on them or not and I wanted some time to get the thing charged up if it needed it - good weather was in the offing and I didn't want to go out to the airport all primed and ready to fly only to be shot down by a flat battery. I need not have worried. That new battery has so much oooomph that I think I could taxi the plane just by running the starter.

With the pitot/static fittings and a partially built (funny how they didn't mention that I would need to assemble on of the connectors my self - grrr!) wiring harness in hand, I finally have to take some time to figure out how to install it. I know that I'm going to have to install a 'T' fitting in the both the pitot and the lines. I also know that there's not a great deal of room to do it in. The pitot line is the one that already has a 'T' fitting in it:

I'll have to find a spot a little lower in the line. The static line is way back behind the panel where you can't see it in the picture. The Vertical Speed Indicator has an elbow fitting for the static line going into it - it should be relatively easy to replace it with a 'T'.

The actual physical installation of the Dynon unit will be a breeze.

The D-6 has a remote compass module that has to be mounted somewhere. I still haven't figured out where I'm going to put it. It has to be in an area where it won't be exposed to stray magnetic forces, so the most convenient place (behind the panel) is out of the question, as is another very attractive location on top of the battery box.

That will have to wait, though. With a new battery and unbelievably great weather today, I couldn't sit around in the hangar scratching my head figuring out where to mount the remote compass. I had to fly! I called ab initio co-pilot trainee John to see if he'd like to ride down to Portsmouth for brunch, and then hop a few miles east to visit the Jackson Two. Naturally, he was ready to go! The morning was perfect for flying, so I did exactly that. Co-pilot training was pushed aside in my own self-interest.

The winds were light out of the south, so it looked like a great opportunity to use the new left traffic pattern at Portsmouth. Left traffic is standard at almost all airports , but for some reason Portsmouth had elected to use a right traffic pattern for runway 18. True to the story of my life, I had finally gotten over not being able to remember that when they changed it. Now I have to remember not to remember that it's not left traffic to 18. We were set up for a nice overhead break into a left downwind, but there was another RV approaching from the south east. He was perfectly positioned for an entry into the left downwind too, so I told him to proceed and we would extend down the centerline of the runway and fall in behind him.

That would have worked perfectly, but just as I was yanking and banking into a nice trail position behind him, he called that he was entering a crosswind leg while he turned directly across the runway. That confused me. We then ended up parallel to each other on our respective downwind legs with him over on the west side and me on the east (and correct, I might add) side. He called that he was turning base.

Me: "Hey, are you flying right traffic?"

Him: "Of course."

Me: "Oh, Portsmouth uses left traffic on 18 now."

Him: "Oh, ok." After which he called right base again and proceeded to land in front of me.

Me, in a little mini-snit at being relegated to landing #2 behind the guy that's on the wrong side of the runway, but not showing it in my voice: "six papa golf, left base, number two."

No use getting in an air rage incident over it, and it's not like I could feel all morally superior about it - I only know about the change because Wingman Ted mentioned it to me. I also saw it in the NOTAMs before I left, but only because I was looking for it. If Ted had told me about it, chances are excellent that I would have flown right traffic too.

We had a nice breakfast, bought gas (and I learned that the special Sunday fuel discount is a cash-only deal - good thing co-pilot trainee John had a couple of twenties he could loan me!) and headed for Jackson. Sitting at the end of the runway waiting for takeoff, a Cessna Skylane called in from the south. He was planning right traffic to runway 18.

Sigh.

The visit with the Jackson Two was fun. It was interesting to see where they're at on their RV-12. They started months after me, but they're at almost exactly the same stage as I am on the fuselage. The big difference is that they already have their wings done. They'll be done long before me at the rate they're going.

This biplane landed while we were getting ready to head back. Is this the Worst. Landing. Ever??

Nope, we're getting to that.

The flight back was a little bumpy as we passed through the various up- and down-drafts you get on a warm sunny day. In fact, I could feel a big updraft as we were left base on runway 22 back at Bolton. The bottom fell out of it as we were coming down the final approach. Over the runway and in the middle of the landing flare, I felt another lifting surge, almost as if the hot air rising off of the sun-baked runway was keeping the plane from settling. I eventually ran out of airspeed and dropped the plane ignominiously onto the runway from a foot or two in the air. The bounce was predictably horrendous. It was bad enough that we porpoised down the runway for a good half a dozen bounces. It was, by far, the worst landing I've made in years.

Now here's the interesting thing about a nice Sunday afternoon at Bolton: there are scads of people sitting at JP's BBQ watching the planes land. In other words, there were dozens of witnesses. And there was no option left to me by the tower's taxi clearance; I'd have to taxi right by the crowd. There was only one thing I could do as we went by.

I pointed at co-pilot trainee John.

The Furey Fly-in

2010-08-28T22:29:00.000-04:00

I don't do fly-ins that much anymore. Truth be told, using this year as a reference I don't even do much flying at all anymore! Between the periods of inclement weather and an ever-growing collection of competing demands and distractions, I just haven't done much more than proficiency flights for most of the year. Having been blessed with a few wonderful days of eminently flyable weather, though, I made sure that I had everything arranged to attend the Furey Fly-in. This one in particular is one I hate to miss; it's held at John Furey's private airstrip out east near Canton, OH and is my clear favorite.

There are some things to note in the chart above. First, just to the west of the airport (the circle with the 'R' in it) there is a waypoint named MINER. That's important because it is the nearest navigatable spot to the airport that I'd be trying to find. Just to the east of the airport, there is a blue teepee with the number 1549 next to it.

You can't tell from the teepee-shaped rune, but there is a big hill there with a very unfriendly (to airplanes) tower on top of it. The 1549 indicates its height in feet. The hill is right in line with the runway. Inconvenient, that. It necessitates a somewhat non-standard approach in which the pilot kind of slides around the side of the hill to get lined up with the runway. One wants to get down onto the runway as close to the end of it as possible to leave plenty of distance to get stopped before the end, keeping in mind that tires don't have nearly the braking action on grass that they do on pavement. Let's just say that it's a somewhat more complicated operation than landing on 5,000+ feet of smooth, 75' wide pavement at Bolton.

I would be taking Sailor Jack with me on this trip. Jack is considering building an RV-12, and the only thing stopping him is that he is equally passionate about sailing as he is about flying. Yeah, so? Why can't he just do both? Sad as it is to say, the reason is that sometimes in life you simply have to choose one. He's torn between getting himself a nice sailboat and building an airplane. Until he decides, though, I'm doing my utmost to score another player on our team, and what better argument could I make than taking him along out to Furey's and letting him soak in some of the true RV experience? To really seal the deal, I'd let him fly us out there and save the bumpier return leg for myself. Uncharacteristically generous, you might say, and you'd be right!

There were no balloons crowding up against the edge of the airport like there had been the previous evening so the departure was non-eventful. I got us turned onto course and climbed up past 2,000' before handing the reins to Jack. He hasn't flown in twenty years or so, but it really doesn't show. While he held a steady heading and altitude, I did a little sight seeing.

The MINER waypoint is only a mile or two from Furey Field, so the GPS was able to get us well and truly into the correct neighborhood, but when it comes to grass fields, that's not always enough. They can be real buggers to find. Looking out the windshield, we had two candidates for the airport - both we open areas surrounded by trees. Odds were pretty good that one of them was the field we were looking for. I noticed a bright orange spot on one of them, and mistaking it for a windsock, declared that field to the one we wanted.

Then the windsock started moving. Now I don't mean it was moving around as the wind shifted. No, I mean it was moving. As we approached the field, I could see that not only was it not a windsock, it was also not alone. There were two or three of them, and they were buzzing around in circles and cavorting up and down the runway. I was finally able to discern that they were powered parachutes. I called on the radio a couple of times to see if I could get them to move away from the runway, but no joy. All I could do was orbit the field and hope they'd eventually notice us. After only a couple of times around the field, someone below took pity on my dwindling fuel budget and told us it was okay to land. The parachutists (that's probably not what they're called, but I'm at a loss as to what the correct term might be) were aware that we'd be landing and would stay clear of the runway.

That left only one big problem: making the approach around the side of the hill, getting the plane onto the runway close enough to the approach end to leave room to stop, and making a smooth enough landing to not be embarrassing. It was a few moments of very intense concentration and to be perfectly honest I can't remember most of it. My general feeling is that it went pretty well. My starkest memory is maneuvering the plane to get it lined up with the runway and thinking air speed, air speed, air speed! Being down low like that, struggling with a little tailwind/crosswind that threatened to tempt me into over-banking to get lined up with the runway, seemed like the perfect recipe for a stall-spin wreck. The most critical function in a situation like that is to be very careful not to exceed the stalling angle-of-attack. I don't have an angle-of-attack gauge, though, so I had to rely on its idiot-savant cousin, the airspeed indicator. As I'm sitting here writing this, it seems the case that the airspeed indicator was sufficient to the task.

The remainder of the day was spent socializing and watching other pilots make their landings.

Some didn't land - they just made low passes:

That thing was FAST!

There was plenty of food and flying talk to be found. You can always tell by the hands that they're talking flying, although sometimes those motions can also be about food. He was either describing his landing around the hill or sharing some of the finer points on how to make toast.

I didn't get an accurate count of planes that landed, but it was close to two dozen at least.

The takeoff to leave was, thankfully, back towards the hill. It's slightly uphill going that way, but by mid-afternoon there was a nice breeze from that direction to help get some air across the wings. The flight back to Bolton was a lot smoother than I had expected it to be. As I was pushing the plane back into the hangar, Jack busied himself with digging something out of the saddle bags of his motorcycle.

Hey, a couple of beers! I think he's got this flying thing pretty well figured out.

Hazards to aerial navigation

2010-08-28T21:24:00.001-04:00

It's completely unfair and almost entirely unwarranted, but ever since I almost busted my private pilot check ride by getting too close to a hot air balloon I have referred to them as hazards to aerial navigation. What can I say? I just hold a grudge, I guess. They're slow, expensive, and offend my delicate sensitivities with their innate and irreconcilable uselessness. For crying out loud, those guys hanging helplessly underneath the balloon in a wicker basket even have the temerity to refer to themselves as pilots! Pilots!!! When the only thing they have any control over whatsoever is the expulsion of hot air!

No, the irony of making that last statement after bloviating about balloons, the beautiful flowers of the sky, does not escape me. Expulsion of hot air indeed!

So what brought on this diatribe, you ask? Well, after busting my hump after work yesterday to get the lawn mowed, having failed to do so on Thursday, I thought I'd reward myself with a little flying. I arranged to have ab initio co-pilot trainee John ride along, the plan being to teach him how to act as my autopilot and voice-activated GPS destination enterer. If I remember correctly, John has only ever been in an airplane three times in his life, and all three have been with me. Without any other basis of comparison, I think the poor guy is convinced that the only way to land an airplane is to bounce it down the runway like it's on a trampoline. He's also a self-admitted addict of the Discovery and History channels, or any other channel that has shows about airplanes. I love flying with people that, like me, have been fascinated with airplanes for as long as they can remember.

The weather was great for it, too. The very light winds and clear blue sky would practically guarantee a smooth ride, and that would be beneficial for John's first experience with controlling the airplane. I had planned out a round robin flight that would give him good experience in plugging in a waypoint in the GPS and flying to it. I was a little over optimistic on the issue of how much evening light we get these days, though. I planned six different airports; we made it to three.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. For awhile I thought we might be thwarted from even getting off of the ground. As we were driving out to the hangar, it was hard to miss the fact that the sky just to the east of the runway was cluttered with the aforementioned hazards.

I wasn't sure that we'd even be able to take off. Thankfully, the wind, such as it was, was blowing them away from the airport.

The flight went off without a hitch. I made the takeoff and did the initial stage of our climb to 3,500', handing control over to John at the 2,500' level. He finished the climb and picked up the GPS course, then proceeded to fly us directly to the first airport on our list. He took to it like a fish to water. Of course, with it being his first time he had to concentrate pretty hard on not fixating on any one thing, but that's normal. It takes awhile to develop a good scan of the instruments, the GPS, and the situation outside the windshield. The temptation is to stare at the altimeter, or the GPS, or at whatever it is that you're trying to manage at any given moment. The trick is to internalize the fact that these things all change relatively slowly, and that you have plenty of time to take glances at other stuff to make sure all is well in those realms too. You can read a bit more on the topic of instrument scans here. While we weren't flying instruments, the concept is the same: you have to split your time and attention between a number of different things, and it takes awhile to learn how to do that.

It was starting to get late when we finally arrived at Circleville (KCYO), our only real destination of the flight. Papa needed gas, and Circleville is the cheapest within easy range. While I pumped the gas, John chatted with a student pilot that had found herself stranded at KCYO while on her long cross country. I didn't catch her entire story, but I think something had gone wrong with her navigation radio and she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to find her way back to West Virginia without it. I wish we had had more time to chat with her, but we were in a bit of a race with the sun. We had to be back to Bolton by sunset, and it was starting to look like it might be a near thing.

I had John fly us back while I fiddled with the camera. Here he is enjoying the coolest sunset of his life (as far as I'm concerned, but I confess to being quite biased).

You can't see it very well in the picture, but those sunglasses are awesome. I'm going to have to try to find some for myself. They have little reading glass type lenses embedded in the lower part of the sunglass lenses, almost like bifocals. That would be extraordinarily useful for me, Capt. Presbyopia.

The balloons were gone by the time we got back to Bolton and there was very little traffic to deal with. It was an easy approach and it culminated in what to John was a normal landing.

In other words, I bounced it.

A Fall Preview

2010-08-26T20:52:00.001-04:00

It's been an odd year weather-wise, and this August has followed that trend. I can usually count on a break from mowing in August as it gets hot and dry, conditions unfavorable to grass and in turn welcomed by those that need to mow it. Not this year. We're still mowing at least once a week. It needs it now, in fact. Mowing was one of my three choices for what to do after work today, the others being work on the RV-12 or go flying. I picked flying. I don't feel guilty about it at all. Here it is almost Labor Day and I have hardly flown all year. It's depressing.

Tonight I invited Co-pilot Egg to ride along on a short hop around the neighborhood. We didn't get a particularly early start; it was 7:23 when we called Bolton ground for taxi clearance.

No reply.

I never know what to do when that happens. They could be busy on another frequency or on the phone. How long should I wait before trying again? I have to balance between a reasonable wait versus being a pest and getting snapped at. After waiting what I considered to be a suitably long time, I tried again. No reply. It was 7:25 by this time and the tower is scheduled to close at 7:30. They're usually very precise about the timing, so I wasn't comfortable with just heading out on my own.

Then the rotating beacon came on. That can mean either that we are under IFR conditions, it's night, or the tower is closed. Two out of three of those were absolutely out of the question. Still, it wasn't yet 7:30. And I recently had occasion to ask them why it was on in the middle of a sunny afternoon. I just couldn't chance it.

What to do, what to do. I pulled over onto a ramp off of the main taxiway and waited. At precisely 7:30-ish (close enough to an indicated 7:30 to be within the bounds of believability should I be accused to leaving too early) I headed for the runway. A Cessna 172 was just departing on runway 22 for touch & goes, but the wind sock seemed to indicate that runway 4 would be preferred. A Cherokee coming down the ILS to runway 4 tacitly agreed. I figured I'd taxi to runway 4 and wait until the Cessna was somewhere on downwind before departing on 4. At the end of the runway, the 172 was turning base and the Cherokee was still three or four miles out. The 172 made a full stop and was off on taxiway Alpha 3 while the Piper was still a couple of miles out. Off we went!

We climbed up to 5,000 and headed for downtown Columbus. Egg flew for a little while, but soon reported that her nutritious meal of Kraft Cheese & Macaroni wasn't sitting too well. I figured we'd better head back before anything untoward of a gastrointestinal nature occurred. An explosive decompression, in the vernacular.

Descending from 5,000 down to pattern altitude over Bolton, there was a 172 coming in from the southwest repeatedly calling the tower. I guess I could have told him the tower was closed, but it was a rental from Bolton - the dude ought to know when the tower closes. A Cherokee on left downwind clued him in. The 172 acknowledged that the tower was closed and reported that he'd enter a right base for runway 4. That's not kosher, really. It's left traffic when the tower is closed.

Renters.

We overflew the Cherokee on downwind a couple of thousand feet above and made a lazy left turn in a fast descent to fall in line behind it on left base. We were set up for a good landing. Didn't get one. Bounced it. Luckily not hard enough to jar loose the Cheese & Macroni, though, so there is that.

Follow-on article from Oshkosh

2010-08-21T17:33:00.002-04:00

Oddly, almost completely unrelated to airplanes.

http://www.gamingnexus.com/Article/Apex-Racing-Simulator/Item2745.aspx

Sailing on Lake Fiasco

2010-08-18T20:42:00.001-04:00

I alluded to the challenges encountered in acquiring a simple little sailboat in my last post. Here's the whole sordid story.

It started yesterday when the seller of the boat called me and changed our scheduled 4:00 meeting time to 11:50. She thought (rightly!) that we ought to meet at the BMV in order to get the registration of the trailer transferred over to me. The BMV is typically much more complicated to deal with than the Ohio Division of Watercraft. The latter have been nothing but pleasantly helpful in my past dealings with them, and small boats are very easy to buy and sell because there is no title to them. The BMV, though. Shudder!

Meeting a total stranger at the BMV was pretty much what you'd expect. Is that her? Or how about that one? It didn't help that she was late (I later found out that she had gone back home because she had forgotten to bring the life preservers that she wanted to give me), giving me plenty of time to approach women that weren't the woman I was looking for. They were all probably left wondering how anyone could expect such an incredibly lame pick-up line like "are you the lady that's selling me her boat?" to ever work.

The non-commercial trailer registration process in Ohio is completely messed up. If you don't have a slip of paper providing an officially recorded weight, you have to pay the fee for a 3,000 lb. trailer. That fee is a hefty $43. If I had a weight slip to prove that my under 500 lb. trailer was officially certified to be under 500 lbs, with said certification being provided by an official called a "weight master," the fee would be $16. So why didn't I get the trailer weighed by a weight master? Two reasons: it had expired plates on it and thus couldn't be taken on the road, and because weight masters are only located at the weigh stations on the freeways way out in the boonies. Besides the impracticality of driving out to a weigh station, ask yourself this: have you ever seen one of those open?

The $43 was cash or check only. I had $33 on me. Luckily I was standing right next to a woman that I had just handed a few hundred dollars to. I hit her up for a $10 loan.

After work, I went to pick up the boat. Task one was, of course, to put the new plate on. Naturally the seller had dropped by earlier to retrieve the old expired plate. Sentimental value, I suppose. I can't figure out any other reason for her wanting it. Nor can I fathom why she took the nuts and bolts that were holding it on, leaving me with no way to attach the new one. The way I figure it is she just bought them from me for $10, she just doesn't know it yet.

The drive home was stressful. Not only was I towing an unknown trailer for the first time, I was towing it with a trailer hitch that had yet to be tested in action. And the masts were bouncing around in a most disconcerting way, looking every bit like they were going to fly off and impale someone. If that wasn't stressful enough, I felt that I had to limit my highway speed to the posted speed limit. At rush hour. Talk about stress! I don't know how you slow drivers handle it! You know who passed me while I was crawling along?

Everyone!

With the trailer licensed and the boat safely in the hangar, all that was left to do was to get the boat itself registered. I knew it was going to be tricky. I based that supposition on the fact that the seller had gone out of her way to gather up the entire paperwork history of the boat, including the letters she had exchanged with the Division of Watercraft explaining that a 12 number Hull Identification Number (HIN) simply was not available. She had provided pencil drawings of the factory identity plate in response to their request for a pencil tracing, to which they replied "Thanks, but no thanks." Well, they couched it in more formal language, but that was the gist of it.

She apparently had eventually worn them down because there was the registration card, resplendent with its four digit HIN. Unique in Ohio, that. I decided that it would be prudent to take a picture of the identity plate with me rather than try to re-convince them that four digit HINs were all the craze these days. Oh, and I brought cash, too. There wouldn't be anyone there to sell license plate bolts to.

It actually ended up being relatively painless, at least from a process point-of-view. They made copies of this, that, and the other, banged around in the computer files, ruffled through the paper files, and eventually decided that they could register the boat for me. Where they managed to scare up the requisite twelve digits from, I do not know and I do not care.

It cost $38. A power boat would have only been $33. Why the $5 difference? Sailboats pay a $5 "conservation fee." Which I suppose is to offset the additional damage they do to the eco-system by harnessing the wind rather than burning pollution-laden fossil fuels. It seems completely backwards, doesn't it?

With everything registered and paid for (I see a lot of bumper stickers and T-shirts these days that say "Freedom Isn't Free"; I think I can see their point), there was nothing keeping me from making my maiden voyage this afternoon. I rushed home from work and got ready to go. In my haste, I somehow managed to lose the key to the airport gate, but it was eventually found. I couldn't find my good life jacket and the waterproof box attached to it that I use to hold the boat registration card and my car key, but it was eventually found hiding in the trunk of the Miata. I had left it there on the day that I went to look at The Boat That Leaked. I was finally ready to go!

As I was driving out to the lake, my most fervent desire was that there wouldn't be anyone else out there. Knowing that the probability of fiasco was somewhere on the order of 90%, I thought it would be nice to not have any witnesses. And, given that I had not practiced backing up with the trailer, I thought it would be nice to be able to back down the boat ramp without having to deal with the pressure of people waiting for me to get out of the way. When I pulled into the boat ramp lot, I was greeted with exactly what I had hoped for: absolute solitude.

I got busy rigging the boat. That went pretty well considering that I had just practiced it the night before. I was just about ready to try backing the boat down the boat ramp when two pickup trucks pulled in.

Great.

The first truck contained a shaved-headed man carrying a six pack and a woman with a purple mohawk hair cut. The second truck was driving by a guy that looked like he could have been cast as lead for any biker movie ever made.

Beer guy: "Hey! I thought that was chew!"

Biker guy: "Yup. It's me!"

Mohawk girl: "When'd jew get out?"

Oh, great. Yeah, yeah, I know. He paid his debt to society and all that. But still.... great.

I went about my business, albeit quite a bit self-consciously. All was going well, though. I was having no trouble at all backing down the ramp. Until, that is, I heard a tremendous "THWACK!" and leaves fell through the open sun roof. The mast had brushed against an overhanging tree branch. Everything seemed okay, though, so I backed the trailer on down into the water. The rear end of the boat floated off of the trailer, so I stopped and got out. I floated the boat the rest of the way off of the trailer and started looking for something to tie it to so I could move the car up to the parking lot. There was nothing to be found.

Great. No help from the witnesses - I think they were comparing the relative merits of probation vs. house arrest.

I ended up pulling the boat around to the other side of the pier and yanking it up onto the bank. I didn't want to have to do that - that side of the pier was filthy with yucky green algae and floating trash, and it smelled horrible. There was no choice, though.

I went and parked the car ("How long was you in fer this time," I heard as I walked by the happily disinterested witnesses) and went back to retrieve the boat. I thought I'd go ahead and get my life jacket on and put my car key in the water proof box before putting the boat in the water. As I was trying to snap the buckle on the life jacket, I heard "PLOP," and looked down just in time to see my car key sinking below the algae.

Great. Just great.

If you think I was reluctant to pull the boat through that crud, how do you think I felt about reaching down into it to fish around looking for my car key?

Once I found it and rinsed everything off on the other side of the pier, it was time to launch the boat and finally do some sailing! I carefully climbed aboard and pushed away from the pier. And....

Just sat there. I had launched into absolutely no wind at all. Not even a light breeze. Completely dead air.

I suddenly missed my kayak.

I wobbled the rudder back and forth in an attempt to propel myself out away from the inlet, hoping that there would be some breeze further out on the lake. With no wind to fill the sail, there was nothing to hold the boom out. I had to push it out to keep it from flopping over on me. I tried moving to the other side of the boat, but it just followed me. The boat tips towards whichever side I sit on, so the boom just falls over to that side. There still wasn't even the whisper of a rumor of a breeze.

We were moving, though. I don't know if it was the current or if the boat was simply just falling forwards into the ever-increasing depth of my despair and frustration, but we were moving forward. Very, very slowly, but forward none the less.

Captain Bligh made better time in his lifeboat.

An interminable eon later as I approached the far bank of the lake, I was becoming concerned that I wouldn't be able to get back. I turned around and got the boat pointed back towards where I had launched. Very, very slowly we made our way back. As I finally approached the pier, I saw a small eye bolt that I had missed before. I'd be able to tie the boat to it while I got the sail down and readied myself for debarkation. I finally got close enough to tie the bow line to the eye bolt and busied myself with dropping the sail. Once I had it down, I looked up to see that a breeze had finally kicked up while I wasn't paying attention and pushed the boat away from the pier. The line I had loosely tied to the eye bolt had come loose. The witnesses, having finally finished their impromptu reunion with biker guy, were sitting there fishing. And, I have to say, looking quite amused.

I wasn't about to raise the sail again, so I had to ignominiously wobble the rudder back and forth in an attempt to push the boat back up to the pier. Once I managed to do that, I wasted no time at all getting out of the damned thing. I dragged it back around to the other side of the pier and beached it while I went to get the car. Backing down the ramp went fine again, and it wasn't very hard to get the boat back onto the trailer. I pulled the trailer out of the water until the mast was just shy of the overhanging tree branch and got out to bring the mast down. All that was left to do was pull the trailer the rest of the way up the ramp and over to the parking area so I could get everything taken apart and put away. Then I'd just need to strap the boat down and the whole fiasco would finally be over. That's when I heard a combination of "WHUUMP!!" and "CLANG!!"

The boat had fallen off of the trailer. It was at this point that I decided that I needed to take a picture.

Great.

I swear, I was sorely tempted to just leave it there.

I decided instead to just busy myself with getting the sail and the other various pieces-parts put away. Once I had calmed down a little, I'd deal with getting the boat back onto the trailer. It's not actually all that heavy and I was able to get it back up there without having to resort to asking for a hand from the witnesses, so there is that. A small shining victory.

The boat's back in the hangar now and I'm looking forward to trying again on a day with a wee bit more wind and a lot less fiasco.

Distractions

2010-08-17T19:08:00.001-04:00

To the untrained eye it may seem like I haven't been flying much. Those with a more discerning eye for this kind of thing will realize that the truth is, well, I haven't been flying much. Lately it's been short hops in the local area when the afternoon heat abates and I don't have a competing interest getting in the way. Last night was such a night; beautiful beyond description, although the broad brush stroke picture would be blue skies, light winds, and tolerable heat. The flying was for the most part unremarkable, although I hurry to add that being unremarkable should not be confused with being unenjoyable. Nothing could be further from the truth. Well, nothing but a New York Times editorial, but that's beside the point. It was a fun, relaxing flight, and it culminated in what had to be the closest that I've ever gotten to a perfect three-point landing.

If I could land like that every time, Chuck Yeager would be reading books about me.

The latest distraction has been the selling of stuff on Craig's List to fund the purchase of a small sailboat. I realized that it was mid-July and I had not yet had the kayaks on the water. That prompted me to sell one of them and start looking for a small, simple, affordable sailboat that I could launch, sail, and recover by myself. It had to be small enough to store in the corner of the hanger where I'm not storing or building an airplane. That constraint ruled out roughly 99% of the international fleet. I had the search narrowed down to a Force 5 or a Zuma. Both were somewhat beyond the budget that I has set for myself, although I did find one Force 5 in my price range. It was, unfortunately, a bit of a fixer-upper. Okay, I'll be blunt: it leaked.

I kept up the search and finally came across a boat that I had never heard of. It's a British import called a Topper. It was in good condition, it was on a trailer (essential for being able to launch and retrieve by myself), and it was in my budget. The only downside was the name, but being as I know very few Brits, it's unlikely that I will have to endure taunts of being a floating tosser.

Feeling secure in the knowledge that few Americans know that expression (well, until now, anyway), I picked it up tonight.

It fits perfectly in the hangar.

The secret to which is that the mast is in two parts. It's simple to rig, taking no more than ten minutes. The parts are simple, which is important should replacements be necessary - coming from England, they would not be cheap.

It has a clever kick-up rudder design.

Unlike the Force 5, it has a halyard for raising and lowering the sail. It seems like a good idea to be able to drop the sail if it gets super windy or whatever.

It also has a clever way of holding the mast. It just locks in there. That removes the need for stays (cables that hold the mast in place and take awhile to set up every time you want to rig the boat) so it's super easy for one person to step the mast.

Nothing is ever completely easy, of course. There's been quite a bit of preparation and negotiating to slog through, and I still need to get it registered. Hopefully, though, I'll get her on the water soon.

Back in the air post-Oshkosh

2010-08-01T15:37:00.000-04:00

Nothing makes me want to fly like seeing thousands of other people doing it. We got up at 0130 local for our drive back on Saturday, the net result of which being that we got home at a reasonable time but I was far too tired to consider flying. This morning dawned bright and clear and that could only mean one thing: I had to get the mowing done. After that, though, I could finally get back into the air. As always, I need some form of justification to make the fuel cost worthwhile, no matter how thin of an excuse it is. Today it was that I needed to fill the tanks over at MadCo. And, as long as I was going on such a short flight, to introduce Cabot to his Mutt Muffs.

We grabbed his harness, the muffs, and a camera. I also still had four cases of oil in the car that needed to be delivered to the hangar. All in all, it was looking like a wonderful confluence of reasons to go to the airport. As is often the case, Cabot was ready and willing with no more than the rattle of his leash to tell him we were heading somewhere.

Once at the hangar, I put him in his harness and lifted him into the plane. He isn't particularly fond of being picked up, but with the harness it's just like picking up a brief case. Grab him by the "handle" and up he goes. I strapped him in, gave him a treat, and let him sit there while I pulled the plane out and did the preflight. Once we were just about ready to go, I put on the Mutt Muffs (No, not on myself. On him, silly) for the first time. I gave him another treat in hopes that he will equate having those things on his head with getting dog treats. I climbed aboard and brought down the canopy. I started the engine and we sat there for a few minutes while he got comfortable. I had the harness belted in tight enough that he really couldn't move around much. Once he was happily situated, I called the tower for taxi clearance.

At the end of the runway I did my normal last-chance-to-back-out run-up of the engine, and Cabot seemed fine with it. I tried to get a picture of him but my preflight inspection hadn't gone far enough; someone had left the camera on and the battery was dead. No problem - I'd just make do with the camera in my cell phone.

I couldn't pay much attention to him during the takeoff, but once we were climbing away from the airport I was able to look to see how he was doing. He was just looking out the window, more than likely thinking that the animals below looked just like chew toys.

I was surprised to see that he hadn't knocked the Mutt Muffs off. Good boy! He does, however, have a somewhat awkwardly shaped head and the muffs have an annoying tendency to slide off the back.

It's only a few minutes over to MadCo and he was calm the entire way. In fact, the whole thing was kind of anticlimactic. I thought for sure that he would need attention and comforting, but he was calm as could be. Calmer, as it turns out, than a lot of humans who have flown with me.

We landed for gas and Cabot experienced his first of my style of landing. It was a surprisingly good landing considering that I haven't flown for a couple of weeks, but the air was very calm and that usually helps. Still, it was one of those very rare landings where it is so smooth that you can feel the wheels start to spin as they scuff on the runway. How nice to make a good first impression!

We re-arranged his muffs while we were on the ground and got him turned around the other way so he'd be more comfortable. The takeoff was a little less sprightly now that we had another 120 pounds worth of fuel on board, but none of that mattered to Cabot. He was having a great time!

He snuggled up against me and enjoyed our ride back to Bolton where, against all odds, I made another landing as good as the first one.

Oshkosh 2010 - Day 5

2010-07-30T20:42:00.000-04:00

Well, it's all over except for the drive home. Egg had her last day in the booth and I walked around looking at war birds before heading over to hangar B to finish my interview with the guy at the SimCraft booth. I'll be putting together an article about their product when I get back home - it's a fascinating gadget they've got and I'm going to enjoy writing it up.

We're back in the hotel room now resting up for our drive home. We'll hit the road at about 3 am - the secret to Chicago traffic is to get through there at 5:30 am.

There's not much else to say, so it's just going to be pictures today.

First, the Spitfire. I waited and waited to get that picture; there was a guy leaning into the cockpit either memorizing each and every knob or having a prolonged Walter Mitty moment. You won't believe this, but I just stood there patiently waiting while he did whatever he was doing. I wasn't in any hurry; by the fifth day at Oshkosh I've done pretty much everything I can think of to do.

Next is a TBM:

And a Tiger Moth:

Oshkosh 2010 - Day 4

2010-07-29T19:50:00.002-04:00

We broke Co-pilot Egg away from her booth duties for a few hours this afternoon to make our way over to the seaplane base. We had a nice, relaxing day over there last year and had hoped to enjoy the same today, but it was not to be. For some reason there were plenty of buses running to K-Mart, Target, and the outlet mall, but very few to the seaplane base. It was a long, hot wait of half an hour before we were able to get on a bus. The seaplane area was crowded once we got there, but I was somewhat pacified by being able to score a tasty Wisconsin quarter pound Brat. Egg had some kind of chocolate brownie/ice cream deal. The combo was expensive, totaling in at $10.50, but it was a nice change of pace, especially since I've been subsisting on Jack Links Teriyaki Beef Steak most of the week.

We then waited in another long, slow line to take the pontoon boat ride around the harbor, but it too was worth the wait if only for the photo opportunities it provided.

Egg needed to get back to work so we headed back up to the line to catch a bus back to the show. It was another lengthy half hour wait, but this one was orders of magnitude worse: we were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. Fortunately I had had the foresight to bring bug repellent with us when I packed, and even more fortunately I had safely left it stored in my camera bag back in the hotel where it was in no danger of being used. That was a close call!

She went back to work and I was left to my own devices. There comes a time in a full week at Oshkosh when you've seen just about everything and everyone you came to see, when the pain between your shoulders from carrying a camera and other stuff is exceeded only by the pain in your legs from all of the walking, and that pain is itself dwarfed by the agony of feet that have grown accustomed to a more sedentary lifestyle. When you reach that point, there's not much left to do but randomly select a forum to sit in, whether you know what it's about or not. The chair in the shade would make anything tolerable. Me, I lucked out. I plopped down and listened to Capt. Sullenberger and Jeff Skiles talk about their miraculous landing in the Hudson river.

Once that was done I wandered through the Federal Pavilion to, in the words of a friend, see how my tax dollars are being spent. I stopped at the Light Sport Airplanes display and was approached by an FAA person who wanted to know if I had any questions. I leapt at the chance to confirm once and for all that an FAA Commercial rating is NOT required to receive an Instructor rating for Light Sport. I really ought to get busy on that, but I guess it can wait until I actually have an LSA plane. Not, mind you, that I would be able to instruct anyone but a family member in the RV-12. E-LSAs have a lot of advantages, but being approved for any kind of commercial operation is not one of them. The conversation then took a few turns and it turned out that the FAA guy was assisting in the building of two RV-12s in Virginia and had in fact flown in a completed one. Small world at EAA.

With a little more time to burn, I strolled over to the Fly Market to pick up a few #30 drill bits. I've about used up the ones that I have, and there will be some tough drilling in certain parts of the wing. It did, however, just strike me that the holes that need to be drilled into the steel tube that acts as a counter balance on the flaperon may not be #30. Oh well, it's still a very common hole size and the bits were not very expensive.

It was time to go back over to hangar A to retrieve Egg but I never end up going directly to where I'm headed at Oshkosh. I'm as easily sidetracked as Cabot in the toy aisle at PetSmart. I detoured to take a look at the military replicas.

I love the look of them and I love the idea of them, but they fall into a very exclusive club: The Planes That I Have No Desire to Fly Club. Given the aerodynamics of them, I have to think that they are not very pilot-friendly in their flying traits.

It's been a long day and a longer week, and I'm banking on the hotel hot tub to ease away some of my aches and pains. Tomorrow will be our last day - we'll head back towards Ohio sometime in the middle of the night. I like to time it such that we pass through Chicago in the early, early am so as to avoid the murderous traffic. We're both homesick, too, and an early start gets up back home all the quicker.

Oshkosh 2010 - Day 3

2010-07-28T21:26:00.001-04:00

Today was shopping day. The forecast had predicted a cloudy and possibly rainy morning and that's exactly what we got. That was, surprisingly, good news to me. Egg wouldn't care since she'd be inside the exhibition building working at the Girls With Wings booth, and I would take the opportunity to get my shopping done. The morning rain keeps people at home a little longer, thus alleviating some of the crowding in the exhibition buildings. It's more than a little frustrating to have the opportunity to buy things at show-special prices but not be able to get within six feet of the vendors.

I was a little early for the shopping, though. I drop Egg off at 8:00 so she can go in and get the inventory unpacked and shelved, but the buildings don't open for business until 9:00. I wandered around a little bit and happened across an RV-6 that I recognized. It belongs to Doug Reeves, the founder and Chief Bottle Washer of the wonderful Van's Air Force web site. He provides an invaluable gathering place for all things RV. Lately he has been working with Garmin as a tester for their new line of high-end avionics for the Experimental market. Take a look at this:

You wouldn't have to search very far to find an airline pilot that would be insanely jealous of that set-up. Or, for that matter, an RV-6 owner that you're all very familiar with that would be equally desirous. Yeah, that's right. I'm talkin' about yours truly. While Doug's plane was there, Doug himself was not. A bit of a shame, that, as I like to say hi whenever I get the chance. He links to my blogs a lot from his site and I appreciate that. It takes a lot longer to write these posts than it does for you to read them, so sending readers my way helps make it worthwhile to me.

The goal of my shopping was to find a good special on a Dynon D-6 to replace the mechanical gyros I pulled out of the plane a few months ago. It hasn't been too horrible flying sans gyros in the intervening period, but I got to thinking a couple of weeks ago when I was skirting my way around some storms in a thick, hazy sky that it might be best to have some kind of attitude indicator in the panel in case I were to stumble my way into a cloud. With the shops not being open yet and Doug nowhere to be seen, I continued my walk. Lo and behold, I came across a local oil distributor selling Phillips 20W50 oil for a very attractive price.

Now I'm all for buying when the price is good, but there was the not-so-simple question of how exactly I was going to transport four heavy cases of motor oil all the way back to my car. "No problem," the guy said, "we'll deliver it for you. Just load it into that golf cart."

Hmm, a quandary. You see, I would be more than happy to not have to carry four cases of oil across a mile of airport, but, well, I'm not at all a fan of the ubiquitous golf carts. I have on more than one occasion fantasized about going all Mel Gibson on some knucklehead in a golf cart honking at people walking in posted vehicle-free zones. Could I in clear conscience become, albeit only temporarily, part of the problem?

In a word: yes. Yes I could. Oil is heavy, you see. And such a long way to go! I'd be able to live with myself. In fact, I argued, one should ride a mile in someone else's shoes before criticizing them, right? I'd just consider this an attempt to be fair. Yeah, that's it. It would only be fair.

Unfortunately, the oil guy was one of the rudest golf cart drivers I've seen. I was a little embarrassed to be seen with him. But I saved a lot of money on a two year supply of oil! Very mixed emotions.

Sure, the road looks wide open. That's because the wake of strewn bodies is behind us:

A bigger man than I would have refused the ride back, just on principle.

Me? I asked if I could honk the horn.

The problem with ~~walking~~ riding that mile in someone else's shoes is that you just might find them to be more comfortable than you had imagined.

Karma seemed to have been either okay with that or just not paying attention. I found a good deal on the Dynon too.

With the shopping done I was able to go for another walkabout. I swung past the RV section and stumbled across Mr. Reeves talking to my other favorite RV guy, Rick Gray. Rick brought his 16 year old daughter Lauren with him this year. She, as with all of his family, was heavily involved in the building of his airplanes. I hope Egg is inspired to help me now that she's had some good training and a positive example to emulate.

And to top off a very successful day, I found an RV-4 painted in the same colors that I'm planning for the RV-12:

Oshkosh 2010 - Day 2

2010-07-28T20:37:00.002-04:00

Still in the mood to seek out the grassroots side of Oshkosh, I only traversed downtown AirVenture for as long as it took to drop Co-pilot Egg off at her office in Exhibition Building A and cross over to the southern suburbs. I had to pass through the central square on the way and I found the light to be perfect for a couple of pictures of the DC-3s parked there.

Just south of downtown is the Vintage Planes suburb. I love everything about these old planes - the color schemes, the sounds of radial engines converting fuel into a rumbling yet appealing cacophony that modern engines cannot match, and the angular yet aerodynamic shapes achieved by the combination of steel tube, fabric, and hand-shaped aluminum. They are in many cases functional, flying works of art.

It was in this first ring of AirVenture suburbs that I discovered that I was wrong about the monopolistic homogeneity of dining options:

Never happy, I. I was as aghast at the prices as I was surprised by the variety. Vintage Planes wasn't my destination, though. I've been out this far before, but have always run out of steam before pressing even further out to the boonies. Today was to be the day that I went all the way out to the very far reaches of AirVenture: the ultralight area. It's a long walk out there, but it's worth it if you are searching for the real down-to-earth (so to speak) type of flying that got organizations such as EAA started. My understanding is that a pilot of a Part 103 ultralight doesn't even need a pilot's license. Here's how EAA describes them:

Flying ultralights is an exciting and exhilarating sport when done safely. Please take the time and learn the rules of flight before your feet leave the ground.
Flying ultralights is not a step up or down, but a step into a completely different and exciting sector of the flying community. Flying ultralights might be described as a step into high performance slowness. While there are similarities to other type certificated aircraft, there can be major handling differences.
The Federal Aviation Regulation that regulates ultralight flying is called Part 103. These are the legal rules we fly by; they are the most lenient rules in the world. Our privileges, however, carry responsibilities.
Part 103 defines an ultralight as:
1-seat
254 pounds max. empty weight (powered)
155 pounds max empty weight (unpowered)
5 gallons max. fuel capacity
55 knots max. full power speed
24 knots max power off stall speed

To my untrained eye, it didn't seem like there were all that many true ultralights out there. The influx of Sport Planes has changed that aspect of the genre significantly. If I had to guess, I'd say it might be because of the single-seat limitation of true ultralights. There were a few flying, though. Here's one:

Now that's flying for flying's sake! They almost all look spindly and fragile like that, mostly I suspect due to the severe weight limitation. There was one, however, that didn't share that design style.

Here's a close-up of the tattoo from three pictures above because, well, just because:

I had a forum that I wanted to attend at 10:00 and it was getting late, so I had to head back towards downtown and pass through to the norther 'burbs. I was already getting tired, so I hopped a ride on one of the trams.

And, of course, I was yet again reminded that the commercialization of AirVenture that I sometimes rebel against has had many positive results. Most of the paths are now paved, I've never had to wait in line for a Port-O-Let, and free transportation is readily available. It's a massive operation and it runs very, very well. I do get tired of being beeped at by VIPs (Very Impatient Persons) in golf carts, but as long as I can avoid the major arteries it's not so bad.

The forums area (and again, these forums are presented in a dozen nice, solid sheltered, concrete floored structures sponsored by corporations) is clear across downtown in the northern 'burbs, right in the area where the homebuilts are parked. The forums are free and cover a very wide range of esoteric subjects. I was going to attend a forum on the inner workings of the Rotax 912ULS that will power by RV-12. The preceding forum was not quite done when I got there, so I learned a little bit about the Terrafugia flying car (or, as they call it, "roadable airplane"). Now that's esoteric! Some of the questions from the audience were very astute and were well answered by the presenter. The depth and breadth of diverse knowledge present and ready to be tapped at Oshkosh is simply astonishing.

The Rotax forum was also very informative. I had no say in the decision to someday acquire the Rotax912; that decision was implicit in the selection of the RV-12. I had heard of the Rotax engine, but beyond that did not know all that much about it other than that some people love them, and others don't. The presentation spoke to many of the questions I had about the engine and how it compares to the more traditional Lycoming engines that I've always dealt with. Now that I know more about it, I'm sold on the idea of the Rotax. It is a thoroughly modern engine that now has years of experience and refinement spread across 36,000 flying engines installed in all types of airplanes. On of my burning questions (heh!) was about the auto gas that it prefers to burn rather than the leaded aviation fuel I have to use in the Lycoming that propels Papa. I was concerned that pump gas has ethanol in it and wondered if that was going to be problematic for the engine. The short answer is no. The engine couldn't care less. The issue with ethanol has to do with plastic fuel lines or non-metallic fuel tanks. Neither of those are a problem for the RV-12.

I was no sooner done with the forum than I received a text message from a Facebook friend that I had been hoping to meet in person for the first time. He works for Cessna and was going to be spending a couple of days selling Cessnas at the show. Suddenly finding myself afloat with gratitude towards the corporate sponsors that had provided much-needed transportation and a folding chair to sit (albeit mighty uncomfortably, but my lack of posterior padding is hardly their fault) on, I eagerly set my course towards the Cessna exhibit located right in the heart of downtown. Oh, and I really wanted to get a close up look at the $660,000 Cessna Corvalis, an airplane that began life as a homebuilt only to be acquired by Cessna for the commercial certified market. In other words, a homebuilt that had graduated to store-bought.

Now this is one plush airplane. First, we have the hand-rubbed, teak fuel tank selector knob:

Naturally, any vehicle costing well over half a million dollars has to have a cup holder:

And a color TV:

And believe it or not, central air conditioning. The control panel for the AC is below the throttle, prop, and mixture knobs:

You probably think that big smile I'm wearing comes from sitting in such an incredible plane, and I'm okay with you thinking that, but it's really because Jeff had just given me a cold bottle of water. With the going price for a bottle of water being $2.75 (Grrrr, and I was just getting over being resentful of the monopolistic concessionaire), it was quite nice to have one provided to me gratis.

It was early afternoon by the time I was able to drag myself away from the corporate-provided treats and great conversation in order to go pick up Egg at work. She wanted to get back over to the Kidventure part of town to finish up her projects from yesterday. Today she would be carving a propeller out of a block of wood. I don't think this particular project was entirely focused on education since it is not all that common even for homebuilt builders to carve their own props anymore. In fact, given that it took a full hour, I think this one was more about giving parents a break.

Oh, and she got to pretend to fly a helicopter just like I got to pretend to fly a Corvalis:

The Kidventure area is located way over at the EAA museum complex. It's a long walk so we rode over on a shuttle bus, but going back was going to be difficult. The museum area is equidistant with the bus drop-off area to where our car was parked. In other words, it was a long walk to the car from the museum, but it was an equally long walk from where the bus would drop us off. Insult to injury, the bus would pass right by our car on the way back, but wouldn't stop to drop us off. As we were debating what to do, one of the Ford sponsored free shuttle cars pulled up. The lovely young lady hired to drive (and ostensibly sell, although she made no effort to do so) the car had no objections whatsoever to dropping us right where we needed to be.

So, thanks Ford! I'm going to quit whining about the over commercialization of AirVenture now. Well, except for the $2.75 water. That really bugs me. Fortunately I have found a spot just outside the gate that sells a bottle for $1.00. Saints, those people. Saints.

Oshkosh 2010 - Day 1

2010-07-26T21:34:00.000-04:00

After a restless night of sleep interrupted by the constant on/off cycle of the room air conditioner ("Cry me a river!" yell the campers) and a filling if not overly palatable breakfast at the hotel, Egg and I headed north for our first day at Oshkosh. It's an easy drive, but once off the highway and on the road to the parking lots a stream of drivers that were seemingly convinced that we were all in competition for the only three parking spots left on the entire airport and that letting me over in front of them would dangerously reduce their odds of scoring one stood between us and our desired lot. Finally a kind fellow in a pick-up truck gave us a break and we were able to park in our usual non-EAA lot. We park there because Egg likes the kid that waves the attention-getting flag and the lot is close to the exhibit building she's working in. Besides, it's the same price as the EAA lots and I like helping out the poor guy that has to suffer this massive invasion of his neighborhood each year. The pick-up truck guy that had finally allowed us over to the lane we needed pulled in and parked right next to us and we shared a laugh at the expense of our less civilized brethren of the roads.

We had purchased our tickets online, and that is definitely the way to go. While the masses of "wait-until-we-get-there" folks stood in a massive queue, Egg and I went right up to the special window for those who had used the online option and were done in moments.I dropped Egg off at the Girls With Wings booth and headed off on my daily missions.

First was to start gathering pictures of retro paint jobs to assist in making the eventual decision as to how to paint the RV-12. I gathered up quite a few during the day, but the first was right outside the building where Egg was working.

My next stop was over at the Van's Aircraft tent where I had hoped to get a look at a RV-12 they had on display. For some reason Van's is considering selling quick build RV-12s, or so I hear. At first glance that seemed like a pretty ludicrous idea to me given how quickly the -12 goes together anyway, but after giving it some thought I can see how it would appeal to others. It's easy for me to forget that I have the luxury of a flying RV and that many, many others that are not so blessed are anxious to get into the air in one of these sprightly little airplanes. As I was peeking around the display plane doing what I swore I'd never do (comparing the quality of workmanship, if you must know. I'm ashamed...), I noticed an older fellow standing beside me. Why, it's the man himself!

I didn't hang around there very long. It gets crowded very quickly. As I continued my walkabout, I came across a new entry in the Ugliest LSA competition:

Oh my!

But as luck would have it, a couple of fine looking Stearmans were on their way out to do some flying.

Figuring that Egg would be in full swing back at the booth by that time, I worked my way back over there for a visit. Just as a matter of dumb luck, one of the booths that I was going to go hunting for later in the week was in the same aisle as Girls With Wings.

My boy Cabot is in for a real treat when I get home! Now that I have hearing protection for him and he has gotten used to wearing his harness, he's going flying with me.

As predicted, Egg was already dealing with a massive influx of customers. I think GWW is going to do very well this year.

Having verified that she was doing okay, I headed back out. I might have mentioned last year that the EAA annual extravaganza is getting ever closer to being all too extravagant for my tastes, and I feel it even more so this year. VIPs zipping around in golf carts and feasting in air-conditioned private tents, major airplane manufacturers selling business jets, and homogenized food concessions with a monopoly that ensures that the same bland food is ubiquitously available across the entire show may be good for EAA, but it all serves to leach away some of the grassroots feeling of the annual event. I seek out pockets of the old EAA whenever possible. Last year it was the seaplane base. This year it was the museum area. I hoofed my way over there, ducking under the incessant stream of $40 a ride helicopters.

I found what I was looking for. It was a veritable treasure trove of retro paint schemes.

This is also the area that best serves families with children. One of the tenets of EAA is education, and this is where it happens. They have an entire hangar full of booths where EAA volunteers spend their precious time at Oshkosh teaching kids about airplanes and piloting. Just as I was thinking that I ought to bring Egg over when she was done working the booth, she texted me to tell me that she'd be done at 1:00. I walked back across the airport to get her and we rode a shuttle bus back to the museum side. I guess extravagance isn't all bad.

She spent a couple of hours learning how to do all kinds of airplane stuff.

First up was riveting:

Then it was on to blind riveting. I hung around close enough to hear what the instructor was telling her and ended up learning a few things that I didn't know myself. Ironically, they were using an RV-12 wing for their training aid. She pulled a dozen or so rivets.

Then she learned about torque wrenches.

Followed by a quick introduction to safety wiring. There'd be more of that later, including an extremely important lesson.

She got to remove and replace a cylinder.

And learned what it feels like in the pit of your stomach when you find yourself with left over parts.

Then she removed and replaced a brake caliper.

Just before doing the brake job, she had another try at safety wiring. This is where she learned something critical about safety wire: there's nothing safe about it at all! It's sharp and pointy and always, ALWAYS trying to bite you. See her thumb? Ouch!

The nifty name badge is what she made in the riveting class. I'd kind of like one of those myself!

Oshkosh 2010 - Day 0

2010-07-26T19:31:00.001-04:00

A lot of preparation goes into a week at Oshkosh. For one thing, comfortable clothes and footwear need to be gathered. The Van's shoes have to make the trip, of course, just for their name. It's usually hot and humid up there, so I try to get as many loose-fitting and outlandishly colored shirts as I can. Most of my stock was getting pretty worn out, so I had to make a trip to Wal*Mart to replenish my supply. On a Saturday morning. Ugh! But better to get there early than to wait until Saturday afternoon, so we combined it with a trip to the Farmers Market. The market is also good to get to early; I nearly wiped out my favorite vendor's stock of pickling cucumbers.

Wal*Mart is always a treat, but this trip was extra special. As I was trying to find the most outlandish shirts possible, I was approached by an older woman driving one of those three wheeled electric scooters.

"Perhaps you can help me with something," she said. My first thought was naturally "Uh-oh." It's hard for me to imagine how I can possibly be of any help whatsoever. Was it a problem with the scooter? Did she want me to carry her groceries out to the car?? Nope, she wanted me to help her pick out a men's belt. She stated that she was clueless on the question of how to determine the correct size. Well then. That's pretty easy: the last belt I bought was adjustable. Just set it to your size and cut off the extra length. Not with these belts, though. They had waist sizes on them. "Well that's even easier!" I told her ."Let me see one you've got there."

44 inch waist, according to the tag.

"Well, what's his waist size?"

"36 inches. I'm sure of it since it's for my son and I buy his clothes."

"Perfect," says I, "let's go back and pick one out."

Mightily, I labored. We looked at black belts. We looked at brown belts. We looked at waist sizes from 34 to 38 inches, comparing them against my known waist size. It went on for at least ten minutes, until she finally announced her decision.

"I'll just take this one," she informed me, as she brandished the original 44" belt.

Sigh.

Packed and ready, Co-pilot Egg and I got a good night's rest and awoke ready and raring to go early Sunday morning. Well, I did at least. She was dragged bodily from her bed unceremoniously at 6:00 am and we managed to get on the road by 7:00. It wasn't a horrible drive at all. Downtown Chicago was uncharacteristically benign and we made it through with only one momentary pause. We had a horrible time on the toll portion of I-94 between Chicago and Milwaukee last year, so this year I decided to pass on the privilege of paying for the opportunity to drive on a slow, torn up highway (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Bringing American Highways to a Screeching Halt) and just stayed on hwy 41. Sure, there are stop lights on 41, but that's not much different than stopping to pay toll. Except for the toll part, natch. The big electronic information board just before the split between 94 and 41 was predicting a 55 minute drive on I-94 to Gurnee; we made it in far less than that on 41. Score!

We arrived in West Bend at about 1:30 in the afternoon (after accounting for the one hour time change), so we made it in 7 1/2 hours. Pretty good! We had an open afternoon in front of us, so I cranked up the laptop and spent a little time looking at maps. Looking due east towards the lake I found Port Washington, and the satellite map looked like there might be a beach there. Nothing to lose, really, although we were a little tired of driving, but the alternative was a boring afternoon in the hotel room. We opted for the drive to Port Washington. It turned out to be an excellent decision, not that the number one standing in trout and salmon catch was going to be any kind of boon to us. Scenic, though.

Egg was fascinated by Capt. Gorton's biography:

No. Not really. I think it was a monument to generic fishermen of the region. You'd have to ask her - she's the one that read the informational stuff.

There were a lot of ducks. There was a sign that said the ducks were attracted to Port Washington because it is a "hot spot." That seemed tautological to me. Unless "hot spot" referred to a climatic condition and wasn't just another way of saying "there are a lot of ducks here." Egg was watching a mother duck and her duckling try to climb up on the rocks to ostensibly bask in the hot sun.

I think this was by far the smallest boat in the marina.

I found a MacGregor 26. It was already my dream boat; the egregiously bad pun only served to seal the deal. What? You don't get it? Here, let me Google it for you.

luff (lf)
n.
1.
a. The act of sailing closer into the wind.
b. The forward side of a fore-and-aft sail.

I'm just going to have to hope you're aware of the Elvis Presley song that the pun is based on.

We even managed to find the beach. It was just a few, convenient steps down below the cliff.

Yep, just a few steps.

Copy cat: I think he was trying to write his nickname too.

I think I'll keep it

2010-07-18T20:16:00.001-04:00

While it wasn't the only reason I bought the used Garmin 396 GPS at Oshkosh last year, the ability to receive and display Nexrad weather radar imagery via an XM satellite transmission was a major contributor. After struggling futilely to get the PDA-based Anywhere Map (not a recommended system, in my opinion, but others have been able to get them to work better after a software upgrade that I flat out refused to pay for) to work with the XM weather, I figured the well-supported all-in-one approach of the 396 would work better.

It does.

But... I haven't been flying much this year and the monthly subscription went up from $30/month to $37/month, probably to subsidize the enormous salary of the excrable Howard Stern. Yes, I Sirius-ly dislike him. And thank you to the three people that got that pun.

Without the long trips, about the only use I was getting from the fancy weather display was to show people that I was giving a ride to the amazing capability of being able to see inclement weather five states away. Impressive? Yes. Worth the cost of dinner at Red Lobster? Questionably. As recently as this morning I was debating just having my account inactivated until I start flying places again. I decided that I'd decide later, when I was back from my planned trip out to the farm and had ruminated (Again? I'm ruminating again??) on it for a few hours.

I'm back, and I think I'll keep it.

I wanted to go out to the farm to deliver my brother's GoPro video camera. He's been mounting it in his Nascar Modified for his races at KilKare Motor Speedway but has not been able to get it to work reliably. I told him I'd test it out and see if I could find a problem. I couldn't:

Well, there was one problem. He had it very solidly mounted to a clamp that imparted a 45 degree angle, ostensibly that being the angle of the steel chassis tube he was clamping it onto. I was loath to disassemble that just to perform a test, so I left it as-is. That caused my video to be canted in a way reminiscent of the bad-guy lairs in the old Badman shows, so I rotated the image in my video editing software to make it more palatable. That rotation introduced the clipped corners in the video. But other than that it worked just fine.

I wanted to get it back to him since the racing season is just about wrapped up. The weather looked flyable, although the forecast for high humidity and even higher temperatures led me to believe that the return flight in the afternoon would not be pretty, fun, or even passably comfortable. I left for the airport a little before 10am and was in the air shortly thereafter. I tuned (Heh! Quaint, archaic, and a bit ironic term there) the GPS to the Darke Co./Versailles (KVES) airport and what did I see? Yep, there was a big, fat storm cloud bearing down directly on my destination airport:

I was still plenty far away, and the beauty of the composite radar is that it shows a satellite's eye view of the storm. That allowed me to determine that it was a highly localized storm and would very likely blow over by the time I got there, assuming I had sense enough to slow down a little. After all, there's no sense in rushing into getting your tail kicked. I was also far enough away to plan an alternate destination. The paper map ("sectional chart" in pilot lingo) showed the airport near Celina to be far enough north to be out of the path of the store. I selected it as my new destination, and the radar confirmed that it would be a suitable place to wait out the rain if need be. I also slowed down a little.

The store was easily visible as I passed by to the north of it.

As I began my descent and approach into KCQA (Lakeview, I think), I could see the sky to south starting to clear up as the storm worked its way to the west. It seemed that I would be able to go direct to KVES without having to stop at KCQA. It wasn't until later in the day that I realized that I had aborted my approach into KCQA without announcing that I was going to do so on the CTAF frequency. They're probably still wondering where that guy "5 miles south, inbound for left downwind to runway 26" is. Note that I had also slowed down a bit more. I still wasn't in any big hurry to get down south.

By the time I reached the airport, the storm was off to the east and I was able to line up for a landing to the west.

I could still see the back end of the storm moving off to the west.

I took the opportunity to try out my new Oshkosh hat in less than clement conditions.

Later in the afternoon, the weather was still pretty spotty. Just north of Dayton it appeared that I would have clear (well, clear-ish, as it was still very hazy) sailing back to Columbus. The storm over XUB (Yellow Bud VOR, I think) was heading towards Rickenbacker and looked like it would miss Bolton. It did.

I checked the AOPA flight planner when I got back to the house. It looks like I timed it perfectly! My route is the diagonal black line near the middle of the picture.

The Mansfield Open House and Car Show

2010-07-03T17:10:00.007-04:00

It happens now and again that it doesn't really matter where I fly to as long as I fly. Going is good enough, getting there only matters as a condition of personal survival, and what I do while there has no bearing on the entire trip. When the weather is just perfect, when it seems like it has been ages since it was even flyable, when the urge to feel the pulse of an aerial conveyance throbbing through my hands all gets to be just too much to resist, when I just have to fly, the questions of where, why, and when drop from pertinence. "Why climb Mt. Everest?" elicited the answer "because it is there." "Why do you want to fly today?" could have been answered with "because I can," but the truth of it was "because I need to."

When it just doesn't matter, a whole lot of options open up. So it was with a wide open mind that I sat down on the sofa this morning, cracked my knuckles, took a deep drink of coffee, and fired up the netbook to begin my search for a destination. It didn't take long.

Perfect! Mansfield is nearby, at least in RV6 terms. It would be nice to see Lynda again, and it might even me a sufficient motivation to get Co-pilot Egg to go with me (it wasn't). And finally, there were sure to be other RVs there. I don't do many fly-ins anymore since I've allowed myself to become frightened by the prospect of dozens of planes milling about in the landing pattern at uncontrolled airports trying to get lined up in some kind of order for landing, but Mansfield has a control tower. Better yet, Mansfield also has a radar-equipped approach and departure controller. Not only would that be a lot less hectic, it would also serve as good practice. It's been awhile since I've worked with an approach controller.

I launched out of an eerily quiet Bolton Field, wondering where all of the other pilots were. I imagine those that were going anywhere were already gone, and those that would normally be filling the pattern in rental planes doing touch & goes were grounded by the incredible costs associated with renting a plane these days. With gas well over $5.00 / gallon, it's getting harder and harder to justify the cost even for those that have the means. As I climbed to the north and worked my way around a banner tow orbiting over some indeterminable function on the southwestern side of town, I couldn't help but reflect on my good fortune. As an owner, I have a lot more options when it comes to where to buy my gas, and as an owner of a fast, efficient plane like the RV-6, I burn less of it per mile. Still, frugality is the order of the zeitgeist - I throttled back to a sedate 2,200 rpm once I had reached my 3,500' cruising altitude. The trade-off between spending a few more minutes enjoying the splendid view while riding along in smooth air versus a couple of gallons of saved gas was a no-brainer. Win-win, as it were.

I dialed in the Mansfield ATIS about 25 miles out and learned that they were landing every which way in the calm air, and sat through a bunch of other stuff I didn't care (or need to care) about. Oh, and they announced that the restaurant is closed. Again. As flying dies off, so too do the airport restaurants that don't draw in local, ground-bound patrons. Places like Urbana will likely survive. Others will not.

At 15 miles out, I called approach.

"Mansfield Approach, Experimental four six six papa golf, fifteen southwest with Tango, inbound, landing."

"Four six six papa golf, Mansfield Approach. Squawk four seven three one and ident."

I dialed the requested numbers into the transponder. This would place the numeric identifier they had given me next to my little blip on their radar screen. I pressed the little green button that would send an 'ident' signal, which I believe makes my data block flash or something to draw the controller's eye to it on a crowded screen.

"Four six six papa golf, Mansfield Approach, radar contact. Set up for a straight in to runway five."

Sweet!

From where I was sitting, I was perfectly located for either a right base to runway five or a left base to runway 32. They were using both. As far out as I was, it was a simple matter to just shave a few degrees off of my northeasterly heading and head a little closer to north to allow for a much more efficient straight-in approach. I held that line until I was eight miles out, at which point the approach controller handed me off to the tower controller for final instructions. I had no real expectations for what I'd get from the tower, but this was a little surprising:

"Four six six papa golf, cleared to land runway five, hold short of runway 14."

Wow! Cleared to land while still eight miles out! This was so much better than the normal fly-in!

The runways at Mansfield form a big X, and with the "hold short" he was telling me to make sure that I was stopped before crossing the X. Another plane might be using it. It's nice to meet new people at fly-ins, but not that way.

That left me with, oh, five thousand some feet to use. I felt pretty confident that I could do that.

I was lined up and cruising down my eight mile final at a good 140 knots when the tower called:

"Four six six papa golf, confirm cleared to land runway five, hold short of runway 14."

Well, I already had. I had read back the clearance right after receiving it. This is the kind of thing that can feel like a mild rebuke if you let it, but simply considering the consequences for all involved if there is any doubt at all that everyone in the choir isn't singing from exactly the same page makes it easy (and vitally important, for that matter) to resist the urge to defend one's self with an "I already read it back to you" and instead just swallow any such urges, take one for the team, and just read it back again. Which I did.

The thing about being cleared to land that far out on a runway that immense is just how long it seems to take to finally get there. It felt like I was going down final for half an hour! I was actually kind of surprised at how far out I was when they gave me the clearance, but I just attributed it to the relatively high airspeed they were seeing on their radar. I was cooking, baby! Interestingly, though, by the time I was talking to the tower controller I had gone from being "experimental six papa golf" to "Baron six papa golf." A Baron is a big, twin-engine Beechcraft more typically flown by self-important folks that consider themselves too special to rub elbows with the airport riff-raff who only fly tiny two-seaters (caution: I'm quite unfairly basing this observation on a sample set of one, who just happens to have the hangar next to mine) so if the controllers indeed had somehow convinced themselves that I was flying a Baron, well, I could understand why they wanted to give me the royal treatment.

I was right when I thought that there might be other RVs there. I was met at the plane by Wingman Ted and there were plenty of other folks there that I have met before. There were also a couple that, although we had never net in person, knew me already from my writings here - I always get a kick out of that. I also enjoy watching the small crowds that form around Papa.

I broke away for a few minutes to go visit Lynda at the Girls With Wings booth. When I got there, she had her back to me and was chatting with the vendor in the tent behind hers. This was the perfect set-up for one of my little (and often ill-advised) jokes.

Here's the set-up: Lynda is very active with her Girls With Wings blog, and every now and then she gets grief from a few closed-minded fools that don't understand what she is trying to do with her efforts to provide encouragement to young girls and women that are interested in aviation. She is working against decades of male dominance in the industry and the commensurate mindset that if women want to fly, they need to assimilate themselves into the male flying society.

Not too long ago, she had a couple of comments left on her blog that were simply embarrassing to me as a male pilot. One of them made sarcastic comments about the need for a Boys With Wings organization, little realizing that such a thing already exists: the 99.999% of male pilots have already formed such a de facto organization. So, I thought it would be funny to come up behind her and ask if she could help me find the Boys With Wings booth.

Hilarious, right? I really crack me up.

Anyway, we had a nice visit. We arranged for Egg's volunteer work schedule at Oshkosh and she shared some inside stories about her recent experience with aerobatics training. How incredibly awesome! As long as I was there, I also bought a Girls With Wings license plate frame for Egg's car. I've been looking for one that says "Don't blame me, my Daddy taught me to drive this way!" but haven't found one, so the GWW plate frame will work out just fine.

I decided to grab a quick lunch of a couple of hot dogs (nowhere near as good as Sporty's!!). As I was standing in line, the kid behind me was telling his dad that one of his friends had sent him a picture (presumably through a mobile device that would have been science fiction when I was his age but is now so ubiquitous that kids have them) of his Xbox and wanted to know why he'd rather be at a car show than playing video games in his basement. His dad and I both said "Car show?? Where, in the parking lot?" at the same time and enjoyed a laugh together. After lunch I took a walk around to look at some of the other planes. I thought the weather was perfect, but a few folks thought it was getting a little too hot.

There was one plane in particular that I wanted to look at, but as I was approaching it I heard the unmistakable whine of a jet engine spooling up. It turned out to be this guy.

The big cloud of smoke behind him isn't an indication of a bad set of piston rings; it's actually air show smoke. We're going to talk about that a little more in a minute. But first, take a look at this plane.

This is the kind of plane that I was referring to when I discussed the challenges that builders were up against in the early days of homebuilt airplanes here.

Back in the early 70's when Van's Aircraft was comprised of one guy and one single-seat airplane (the RV-3), building a kit airplane was nothing like it is now. By "kit" the manufacturer typically meant a box of raw materials, a set of plans, and a few pages of notes about how to put it all together. The raw materials were somewhat more advanced than a few boxes of bauxite ore from which you would smelt and shape your own aluminum sheets, but not by much. Even so, the fact that parts like wing ribs and the like were pre-formed was orders of magnitude better than the previous standard: the "plans built" plane. Those truly were old school. You would have to form every single piece from raw stock. By way of contrast, it is relatively rare while building the RV-12 to even have to drill your own holes.

As I was admiring the workmanship and pondering just what it would be like to fly in a plane like that, I heard the jet starting to taxi out. Now I spent quite a few years working around jets in the Air Force and I know not to stand directly behind them when they're running. That said, here I was standing next to a delicate airplane that had obviously taken immense effort and dedication to build, an airplane that was in plain sight of the guy flying the jet. Surely he would be aware of the need to control his jet blast. This is the last thing that I saw before being proven wrong.

Right after I took that picture, he continued his turn to the right. As he did so, he throttled up his engine and kicked on the smoke system. I heard it coming and got turned around quickly enough to protect my eyes, but not quickly enough to get a good grip on my brand-new, bought in the Cayman Islands Oshkosh hat. As it blew off of my head, I remember thinking "oh crap, there goes another hat." I opened my eyes to try to watch where it went in hopes of being able to retrieve it, but literally could not see my hands in front of my face because the smoke was so thick. It lingered long enough for me to rip off a pretty graphic curse directed towards the jerk driving that jet regarding his pitifully weak intellect, his direct maternal ancestry, and some flavor of forbidden, incestuous human copulation. If you catch my drift.

Now, here's an interesting thing about smoke that I had temporarily forgotten: it blocks vision but not hearing. As the smoke cleared and I was again able to see my surroundings, I couldn't help but note that a few people were looking in my direction somewhat accusingly.

See that guy in the orange and yellow vest? I pointed at him.

I found my hat under a nearby King Air.

So, here's my thought about air show smoke: having it does not mean you have to use it.

It seemed as good of a time as any to think about heading home. As I was working my way back to my plane, I ran across what must be the ugliest LSA airplane I've seen yet.

It reminds me of one of those so-called Smart cars that are anything but.

I wasn't the only one that was ready to leave. There was a bit of a line at the runway.

The trip home was, as is often the case, somewhat bumpier than the morning trip but still quite enjoyable. All in all, it turned out to be a very satisfying day of fly and socializing. As far as I'm concerned, that's just icing on the cake. It was a great, GREAT day to fly!

Reader Mail:

Thanks for coming to Mansfield. It was such a beautiful day. We'll forgive you the comments about Barron owners as we mostly hang out with the guy who restored the Buhl Pup that caught your eye. We have printed your blog in color for him. Next year walk through the extensive classic car show on the other side of the terminal to the hangars and visit Chuckie Lootens' restoration hangar, the one next to the Barron. It's worth the walk. We will be watching for you July 2, 2011.

Pam Fonseca

Well, it really is just the one Baron pilot that was behind those comments. It would be like if you only had personal experience with, say, only one Port-O-Let repairman, and he was a bit of a prat. He might, for example, walk past you on the way to his Port-O-Let Repairman's truck and completely ignore your salutatory "Hello" and accompanying wave. And not just once, mind you, which would be quite possibly an isolated incident. No, this guy is in his own little world and has no time for the riff-raff. If that was your in toto experience with Port-O-Let repairmen, well, you might be awfully tempted to paint them all with the same brush. Which, as I noted, would be quite unfair. I believe that I will now have to actively seek out more Baron pilots to expand my personal knowledge of the breed. And, you know, get a ride in a Baron. They're actually quite nice airplanes. (A moment of personal introspection.... am I simply jealous of my hangar-neighbors airplane? No, that's not it. Although that golf cart he uses to push it into the hangar? Yeah, that's pretty cool!)

There really was a car show? I'm sorry to have missed that! I'll check that out next year.

Oh, it's good to know the identify of the Buhl Pup. I've been curious about it and now that I know what it's called I will be able to Google it. I want to note that even though it is a restoration and not a kit plane (as I had assumed in my description above), it is still a fantastic piece of work. A restoration of an airplane that old (1930's, by the look of it) is an enormous undertaking, often requiring the fabrication of new parts to replace things that haven't been manufactured for more than half a century, or were hand made in the first place.

Oh, what the heck. I'll Google it right now.

The Buhl LA-1 Bull Pup was a light sports airplane developed in the United States in 1930. It was a mid-wing wire-braced monoplane with fixed tailskid undercarriage and an open cockpit for the pilot. Buhl developed the Bull Pup as a cheap aircraft through which the company hoped to remain in business as the onset of the Great Depression was felt. However, as the economic situation worsened, it became evident that there was no demand for even such a basic aircraft; when production ceased in 1932, all aircraft still in stock were sold off at half price as the company folded.

Wow! A pre-LSA LSA! I should buy one!

1931 BUHL BULL PUP • HISTORICAL AIRCRAFT FOR SALE • NC11161, SN#102. This is the oldest Buhl Bull Pup in existence. It last flew in 1943, was disassembled and placed in dry storage for over 65 years. This is an unadulterated significant piece of aviation history. Aircraft totally complete. Would be an extremely easy restoration into flying status or it could be displayed in unrestored/original condition as a rare artifact from depression era America. I will sell this aircraft outright for $29,900 or consider interesting pre 1940 aircraft and pre 1920 automobiles in trade. Qualified inquiries only, please. • Contact Brian T. Coughlin, Owner - located Cazenovia, NY USA • Telephone: 315-436-2217 . 315-655-5997 • Posted June 17, 2010

And that's what they call "an extremely easy restoration!"

I'll stick with the RV-12, thank you very much!

Touch & Goes

2010-06-25T18:02:00.001-04:00

Not always as easy as you'd think!

Cabot's Fathers Day

2010-06-21T17:10:00.006-04:00

It wasn't intended to be, of course. I like puppy Cabot well enough, I suppose, and he will fly with me someday when he gets over the canine version of the Terrible Twos, but I don't view him as "the son I never had" or anything as emotionally crippled as that. No, the plan was to fly to DarkeCo (KVES) and pick up my own father before continuing on to Muncie, IN to have lunch at a new entry in the never-ending chain of restaurants that have tried to make a go of it in that particular location. The menu looked as if it would be worth the trip. Bacon and Sweet Onion Alfredo? You had me at "bacon."

The Sunday weather, which heretofore this year has consistently found weekends to be the perfect outlet for a week's worth of suppressed lacrimonious outbursts, exceeded all expectations and defied all forecasts. In a word, it was splendid. The preflight DUATS session was nothing more than a formality, what with the Weather-out-the-Window fairly strutting its splendor. There is the question of NOTAMs, though, and one really ought look in order to keep the whole deal legal in the eyes of the all-knowing, all-powerful FAA. Just in case the need for a little CYA comes along, really.

So there I was, scanning down through the page after page of NOTAMs, mostly to ensure that Dear Leader had successfully repaired back to the cloistered ramparts of Washington DC and taken his onerous TFR with him, when I happened across this:

Versailles OH (Darke County) [VES]: June NOTAM #283 issued by Dayton OH [DAY]

Aerodrome closed except prior permission required 937 - 417 - 5907

There's not much you can say to that other than "Awww, crap."

Now my boy Cabot may just be a young whelp, barely dry behind the ears, but even he can tell you that there's more than one way to gut a $6.95 puppy toy. While flying would have been preferable, I was not about to allow the focus on flying take precedent over the goal of the day which, as we all understand, was to sacrifice some measure of refined petroleum in pursuit of comestibles. Sure, the letter of the agenda could be met through the simple expedient of cooking my lunch on my propane cooktop, but when it comes to sacrificing the efforts of billions of diatoms, my altar of choice is and will always be a motorized vehicle. And, as millions of penguins have discovered before me, if you can't fly, you drive. Or in their case, walk, but you get the point. Cabot and I would take the Miata.

I have a nice route that I take that avoids highways and almost all towns. It's scenic and fun to drive, although it can be marred by getting caught behind a slow poke. Being still somewhat early on a Sunday morning, we made it more than halfway before encountering any kind of obstructing vehicle. Much to my chagrin and Cabot's enormous delight, the blockage in question took the form of a very recently used manure spreader. Keep in mind that one of the defining traits of a convertible is that you can see, hear, and smell everything when the top is down. Cabot, who clearly felt that our time spent drafting in the malodorous trail of the farm implement was the very highlight of the day, was as annoyed at our eventual passing of it as I was overjoyed. Only to catch up with this behemoth just a handful of miles later.

Note that the brake lights are illuminated. They must have been on some kind of automatic flashing circuit since they came on every 50 feet or so. Naturally this was a nice, curvy part of road with double yellow lines prohibiting the resumption of fun driving. Not even Cabot found this in the least bit amusing. It went on for miles. But, as they say, this too shall be passed, and we eventually were able to get around it.

It could have been worse. We managed to avoid the worst of the equine rush hour.

Although I think Cabot may have enjoyed tailing behind one of those for awhile, given his odd tastes.

The rest of Cabot's day was spent trying to move fast enough to negate any advantage the auto-focus on my camera may have had over him. For the most part, he succeeded admirably. It was nearly impossible to get a picture of him playing that was anywhere near in focus.

He sure was worn out when we got home. It was a full half an hour before he was rested enough to get back to surgically removed the squeaky heart of his puppy toys.

.25 in a 12

2010-06-12T15:54:00.001-04:00

It probably seems odd that I would jump into building an RV-12 without ever having so much as sat in one, but it's not as uncommon as you might think. It happens all the time, starting with Orville and Wilbur, if you think about it. That doesn't mean it's a comfortable thing, mind you. You might think that the worst case scenario is that I spend years building the plane and then find out that I don't particularly like the way it flies, but if you think about it for a second you will realize that there's an even worse thing that could happen: my first flight in the airplane would also be my first flight in that kind of airplane. Learning on the fly, so to speak. So not only would I be wondering if the plane would actually fly, I'd also be worried about whether the pilot could actually pilot it.

That issue was partially resolved today. I've been helping a fellow RV-12 builder with the configuration chores for all of the electronic gadgetry in his plane. Today I hoofed it over to Lancaster (KLHQ) to set up the part of the Dynon display that indicates the trim position. I drove over rather than taking the RV since the weather forecast was typical Ohio weekend: thunderstorms with the chance of more thunderstorms. Better to drive, I figured. That said, the weather had not yet finished its slide into the forecast crud, so there was a small window of opportunity for my first ride in an RV-12. The fuel tank was going to need to be removed later in the day, so burning off a gallon or two was deemed preferable to draining it out. To be honest, I didn't need much arm twisting to talk me into it.

While Mr. Rush was preflighting, I was busy taking pictures of areas of interest. "Areas of interest" to a builder is defined as the parts of the airplane currently under construction. In my case, that is the bottom chunk of the fuselage, in specificity the steps used to climb up onto the wing to enable ingress into the cockpit.

You can, of course, read all about that over on the Schmetterling blog.

The RV-12 is a few inches wider than the RV-6, so the seating was quite comfortable. The Rotax was a little reluctant to start but finally got its wind up with the application of the choke knob. New stuff already - my Lycoming doesn't have a choke knob. Once the engine was running (very, very smoothly!) the avionics master is turned on and the light show begins.

As we taxied out for takeoff, I made some adjustments to the avionics. Having just gone through this with my Garmin 396 last year, I was able to find the menu page on the 496 to shut off the highly irritating XM radio commercial that plays through the headsets. I also found the page to increase the brightness on the 496's screen - it was set low enough to be nearly invisible.

At the end of the runway, I saw one of the really cool differences between the old mechanical gauges of my RV-6 and the modern computerized stuff in the 12. Consider this picture:

The oil temperature is at 100 degrees, still twenty degrees below the 120 required by Rotax for exceeding 2,300 RPM on the engine. The engine RPM is shown in the upper right corner of the display - it was 2,240 RPM at the time. Notice that the RPM needle is in a very small green arc region, with yellow and red at higher RPMs. Now look at this picture:

The oil has warmed to 128 degrees and the colored arc around the tach has changed accordingly. The green arc has expanded to the full operating range of the engine. Let's see a mechanical tach do that!

The takeoff was brisk, quite possibly even more sprightly than the -6. We climbed out at 80 knots, showing about 800 feet per minute climb on the Dynon (once I was showed where to look for it, that is). The view over the nose was something that I expected to be better than the taildragger RV-6 on the ground, but I was still impressed with the forward visibility in the climb, too.

I took over the flying once we got away from inconveniently close objects and any other obstructions that I might fly into. I found the handling of the RV-12 to be very similar to the RV-6. It is nicely balanced in pitch and roll, meaning (to me, anyway) not that the forces in each axis are identical but rather that they go together as well as macaroni & cheese. The roll forces are light and the wing is willing and responsive, much like in the -6. This is often confused with "twitchy," but that's not an apt description. It's more accurately described as "turning by thought." You think about turning, your hand makes a small gesture of agreement, and the plane turns. This is wonderful in the roll axis (for VFR flying, and with an autopilot available to lend a hand while you nap or use the potty bag) but not at all desirable in pitch. When it comes to pitch, I want the plane to be a little more reluctant about changes. I don't want it to feel stiff, but I do want it to feel stable. That's the way the -6 is, and to my immense pleasure, that's the way the -12 is.

The RV-6, as with most (if not all) of the RVs, is tremendously easy to see out of. The -12 is even better. The aft location of the wing clears a lot of view downward. It's going to be fantastic for a photography platform.

I removed my headset for a few moments to see how loud the Rotax is. I've heard it described as quite noisy, and I suppose it is if you're used to heavier, store bought planes. I didn't think it was any louder than the RV-6. That's not to say that it isn't loud; it is. It's just that I'm used to it.

This being an Ohio weekend, the current weather had exceeded its five minute sell by date and was starting to look a little nasty. The few gallons that needed burned off were gone, so it was back to the airport.

Trust me, I have an RV grin on the inside!

Back in the pattern, the plane slowed down nicely. Since we were close to very hard and immovable things again, Mr. Rush was back on the stick. I begged a few seconds to see what the controls felt like at the slower speeds in the pattern and found that the forces hadn't changed much. That's a good thing, I figure. It didn't feel mushy. Mushy controls at landing speeds are what convince pilots that they are going too slow. This is how airplanes like Mooneys end up getting a bad reputation for landing "hot" and being "floaters."

I didn't make the landing, but it looked easy enough. For all I know, Mr. Rush's 3,300 hours have resulted in a "greaser every time" capability, but what I know for sure is that the landing he made for me in the -12 was a real keeper. Hopefully that had more to do with the airplane than it did with some form of super human ability and I too can finally make landings that don't have their own designated Seismic scale once I get my RV-12 done.

Having had the dance, it was time to pay the piper and get busy on the Dynon work. As I get more comfortable with the menus and navigation on the Dynon, the easier it gets. It didn't take long at all to get the trim indicator working. Once you learn your way around the menus, it gets quite easy. You find the thing you want to configure and the Dynon provides step by step instructions. Very cool!

I'm glad we did the flying early; it wasn't long at all before the weekend weather arrived. These guys waited too long.

Finally - back in the air!

2010-06-07T22:36:00.007-04:00

The cruise was, as you might imagine, a bit of a time sink from the week prior until a day or two after. A lot of preparation goes into a trip like that, and I always find it relaxing and a bit entertaining to sit back and watch it all being done by the very capable co-owner. All that sitting and watching still eats up a good deal of time, though. My sole function during the run-up phase to the end-of-month cruise was to schedule my appointment for my soon-to-expire FAA Class III physical. The earliest available date after getting back from the cruise was June 3rd. That seemed plenty soon enough. Or at least I thought so until the afternoon of June 2nd - it was (or would have been, had my legal status been slightly different) a good flying day.

The physical was scheduled with the fourth doctor in as many inspections. The first, Dr. "Big Finger" Adrian (who received that nickname back in the day when the physical was a bit more invasive than it is now) had retired by the time I was due for a renewal six years ago. It's not that easy to find doctors that are willing to make the effort to get certified with the FAA to perform these things, and they don't do enough of them to make them very profitable. I found a doc down in Lancaster and figured I'd just drive down there after work, what with me working on the east side and all.

I always, always, always underestimate just how far away Lancaster is.

I got the physical there, but swore I'd never go back. He schedules the physicals in groups of four (or at least he did on that day) and runs us all through at once. I sat and waited while he counseled another applicant for ten to fifteen minutes, telling him that he had paid his debt to society (I think it was a DUI case) and that he was sure he'd make a fine pilot. When he finally got to me, he told me he had saved me for last because despite his best efforts, he had been unable to find what I was hiding.

"Huh? I'm not hiding anything."

And this is where he really pissed me off: "Well if that's the case, why were you going to Dr. Adrian?"

I explained that I had been going to Dr. Adrian for twenty years because 1) his office was close to where I lived when I first moved to Columbus and 2) he ran a very pilot-friendly operation where you didn't need an appointment and his office was well configured to do a quick, efficient exam. As it turns out (at least according to Dr. Doubtful), Doc Adrian was a bit too pilot-friendly - he had a reputation for passing anyone that could show a pulse. The explanation satisfied the doc, but his attitude did not satisfy me. Besides which, Lancaster is a long way to go.

The next exam was with a doctor close to home. He retired soon after doing my exam. Seeing me in my skivvies may or may not have been the primary cause.

This year, I was referred to a doctor up in Dublin. I think I'll keep this one, despite my little faux pas. He's a pilot and shares ownership of a Ryan PT-22 with his father. The PT-22 was my first airplane, as long as Cox .049 control line planes count. How cool is that??

Oh, what was my faux pas? Well, he had me disrobe and, while I was doing so, he was putting on latex gloves. "Oh, we're back to doing that again?" I said as I was turning around to present my posterior view to him.

"NO! This is a frontal thing."

Ah, turn head, cough. Get it. Thanks!

So, legal to fly again and it was simply a matter of waiting for an opportunity. The weather over the weekend was simply horrible, although I was able to fit in some lawn work and mower maintenance. Yippee!

Today was much better. Temps in the 70's, a light wind out of the northwest, a few puffy white floaters to give the sky some character. I've been pestering a co-worker to take a ride with me and she was ready and willing, so all conditions were aligned for a nice evening flight. But, and this is the perennial plight, where to go?

I was thinking "food!" I've been dieting for the first time in my life as a result of the immense amount of food that I had eaten on the cruise chip, most of which showed up in a picture taken of me on the beach in Honduras. This is a picture that you will never see. This is the kind of picture that is not suitable for a digital camera because there is no negative to burn. This picture could have been used for one of those old Sally Struthers "help this poor bloated-belly boy for just $5.00 a day" commercials. In short, this is the picture that had me eating tuna pita sandwiches all week.

This is the picture that made me very, very hungry. I didn't know this, but the defining trait of dieting is a nagging hunger. I wanted food!

The restaurant at Urbana is, I believe, closed on Mondays. I figured that was too short of a flight anyway, so decided to go to Portsmouth to eat at the Skyline. That's a nice flight because for the small investment of just a handful more miles you can go down a little further south and take a look at the barges working their way up and down the river.

After reaching the river and looking around a bit, I headed west to position us for a midfield left downwind entry to runway 36. Approaching PMH from the west is tricky since it's down in a valley and therefore completely invisible from the west (and, I suppose, the east) but the GPS makes it a lot easier to find. The only problem then is my tree shyness. I like to stay higher than I really need to over the wooded hills to the west of the runway. This leaves me very high on base and final. The RV-6 comes down like shares of BP Oil when I need it to, but it requires a bit of finesse to catch the descent at just the right time to smooth out the flare and touch down.

I nearly greased it - just a couple of small chirpy bounces.

I then proceeded to completely negate any lasting effects from my tuna diet by eating an entire plate of country fried steak, corn, mac & cheese, and a salad drenched in honey mustard dressing. I only ate half of the roll, though. So there is that.

Heading back to Bolton, we were listening on 128.1 as the tower closed at 1930. It didn't seem all that busy, although a Cessna Conquest called in eleven miles northeast and planning a left downwind for runway 4. We were about the same distance to the south. A Conquest is a big twin engine turboprop, so I figured he'd get there pretty quick and wouldn't really be a factor. I had been planning on a straight in approach to the runway, but in light of the fact that there'd be a big twin flying a normal pattern, I decided to head off to the west in order to set up for a normal midfield downwind entry, or an entry directly into left base if the twin was clear by the time I got there.

The Cessna called left downwind while we were still six or seven miles out. All was shaping up well. He was taking forever to call left base, though. Another Cessna (a 182, I think, named Fifty-one Mike) called in six miles north and planning the left downwind. That messed up my idea of getting far enough north to make a midfield entry so I just went ahead and entered a three mile left base. I still hadn't heard from the big Cessna yet, so I keyed the mike and asked "where the Cessna that was on downwind to Bolton was."

Actually it was something like "where yew at?" Good grammar falls by the wayside now and then.

The Cessna coming from the north (Fifty-one Mike) replied that he was still "five point five" north. Great, but that's not the guy I was looking for. I replied back that there was another Cessna on left downwind, but we had not heard from him again.

Then he pops up on the radio: "We're on the ground."

Thanks, Buddy. Good to know. Kinda wondering why you suddenly fell silent in the pattern, though.

The landing itself was a near boondoggle as I found the runway coming up from below at a prodigious rate, but I still had enough energy stored in the wing to catch the drop with a sharp (but small) tug back on the stick and a blip of power. It must have been the extra weight of that massive dinner that caused us to pick up that steep descent on final. Back to dieting tomorrow, it seems.

Caribbean Cruise on the Carnival Legend - May 23rd - May 31st

2010-05-31T10:22:00.003-04:00

Cruise: Day 6 - Sushi Watching

2010-05-29T16:38:00.001-04:00

The ocean has been as placid as, well, the eponymous lake all day. We have seen nothing higher than 5’ waves for the entire trip, but the sea conditions today are as flat as a pool of mercury. The temperatures have also been quite moderate, probably to a fault for the sun worshippers out at the pools. I have taken this opportunity to enjoy the most relaxing day that I can remember. With nothing at all on the schedule and the delightful weather conditions, I have spent almost all of my time either on the veranda or down on deck 3 watching the ocean slide by.

Watching the ocean might not be quite as uneventful as you might think. We were traversing waters that reportedly offer up whale sightings now and then, but none of the massive swimmers were to be seen. I did see quite a few of the flying fish again, although this time entire schools of them would blast out of the ocean’s surface rather than the soloists I had seen before. It really was a treat to see a couple of dozen of them come thrashing out of the water together, only to disperse in a peacock tail of trailing wakes on the water. I’m amazed at the distances they can fly, just glancing the surface of the water and periodically dipping in their tails to propel themselves ever faster and further. Their bodies glint brightly in the sun and they look just like dragonflies on a pond.

I had to get online to do early check-in for the flight home right at the 24 hours before flight time to ensure an early enough boarding number to allow for an open bin above our seats for our big carry-on bag, and while I was waiting for the magic second to roll around I Googled flying fish. I was simply curious as to why they fly. According to Wikipedia, it is to evade predators. Well and good, but it cost me hours of watching and waiting for the ultimate irony: I would love to have seen some poor fish fly across the ocean using its unique adaptation to its hostile environment only to have a bird swoop down or a bigger fish leap up to catch it.

And yes, that moment of glorious irony would have been worth a fish’s life to me. I’m like that.

It was unlikely to happen, though, given how hard I found it to even catch the little buggers on the camcorder. I was only able to catch flighting (heh!) moments of their all-too-brief flights and after awhile gave it up as being nearly impossible. Having thrown in the towel, I decided the rest of the afternoon could be spent far less productively (which was, after all, the goal) on the veranda with a book and a glass of vodka. Best, I thought, to keep the camera with me, just in case.

And that is how I managed to capture a minute or two of an entire (School? Pod? Group? Clan? Coven? Gang? Herd?) of dolphins swimming alongside the ship, jumping in the graceful arcs that are so much associated with the perpetually smiling mammals of the deep.

They are mammals, aren’t they? I’d Google it if I hadn’t wasted my last internet minutes on those damn flying fish.

Cruise: Day 6 - Heading Home

2010-05-29T10:24:00.001-04:00

Somewhere out the veranda window and over the horizon is Cuba. It was on the other side of the ship on Monday, and close enough to be seen. Today, as we work our way up the Mexican coastline on our way back to Tampa, it is invisible. We’re making 21 knots, but as with every other speed we’ve traveled at, the motion is not discernable. The only way to gauge our speed is to step outside and listen to the sounds of the ocean sliding by eighty feet below us.

It is in that way that I noticed the relatively slow pace that the ship took on the short trip from Roatan to Belize. We had only a few miles to go and all night to get there, so the entire trip was done at a sedate ten knots. With a good current, I could match that speed in my kayak. Not for long, of course.

The approach to Belize is not the same as the other ports. The water is shallow, apparently, and the ship had to slalom its way through a channel. We slept through most of that - it was only apparent when the cruise director found the short walk from the bed to the bathroom was suddenly much more downhill than expected.

My first impressions of Belize came when I stepped out onto the veranda and was greeted by bugs, high humidity, and ugly brown water.

Nothing throughout the day did much to change that impression.

I had not planned on leaving the ship to even go to port, but the lure of a fifteen minute boat ride on the powered catamaran that was being used as a tender changed my mind. Basically, my feet only touched Belize long enough to get off the tender, look at the same “mall” stores that we have seen at every stop, and get back on the boat. It was worth it, though, just for the boat ride. If I wasn’t a flying guy, I’d have a boat.

Being one of the first to get back on the boat, I went straight to the seat I wanted. It was right up front, and it was the only seat that had access to an open window. I had the camcorder with me and wanted to get some video of the immense Carnival Legend as we motored our way back out to it. A few minutes after I got situated, a family of three got onboard.

The child was a florid-faced, red-headed, twelve-ish year old porker who was clearly used to having things his own way in more places than just the dinner table. He decided that he wanted to sit where I was sitting.

“Dad, I want to sit there!”

To his credit, Dad informed him that there was someone already there, myself being of so little import to Young Sir Porkbelly as to be beneath notice.

“So tell him to move. He won’t care.”

Again, to dad’s credit, he was quite able to discern from one look at me that I did, in fact, care, and I think he may even have picked up on the not-so-subtle look that indicated that even if I hadn’t cared before, I damn sure wasn’t moving now.

As I was later to see as more people got on the boat, not much of anyone was thrilled with Belize.

As we sailed away later that afternoon, the waters of Belize offered up something no other port had: a glimpse of a dolphin cavorting alongside the ship. I also saw a few more of the flying fish that I had seen a day or two before. Once I get back to the Land of Always On Internet, I have a list of things I want to Google. Flying fish is one of them. Because I always want to know how things work and why they work that way, I’m curious as to what the Darwinian benefits are to a fish that can briefly fly just above the surface of the water. Perhaps they prefer bugs to other seaborne delicacies. But are there that many bugs out over the sea?

I’ve also spent a lot of time trying to figure out how things work on the ship. How do they feed so many people in so brief a time? How do the lifeboats get from being snugged right up against the ship to the water’s surface quickly enough to matter? And then there are the truly mundane questions like just how many pianos are on this thing? I know of at least five, but I’m betting that there’s at least twice that.

As we pack our bags for tomorrow’s arrival, there is one last question: how in the world are they going to get 2,200 people off of this thing?

I’m afraid that the answer is going to be “with a great deal of difficulty.”

Cruise: Day 5 - More Shopping!

2010-05-27T19:31:00.004-04:00

I’m sure that you’re just dying to know, so let me start out by saying yes, there was shopping at Roatan. If fact, if you ever want to get a chuckle out of an older guy who plainly has lost interest in the endless shopping on the third out of four stops, walk right up and ask him if he agrees that we could have just saved a couple of grand each and taken our respective spouses to the mall.

It's a very pretty mall, though

I think Roatan was by far the best stop of the entire trip. The shopping area, while suffering the demerit of being, well, a shopping area, had the advantage of being spacious and attractively landscaped. Plus there was a three-man xylophone(?) group playing calypso style music. We didn’t have a whole lot of buying to do, but the cruise director had seen an advertisement that intrigued her. It touted the benefits of a special type of nail polish that changes color when it senses ultraviolet rays. In other words, it changes color outside. She couldn’t seem to decide between one that changed to purple when outside or one that was purple while inside and changed to something else outside. Since it was intended for daughter Erika, whose favorite color must be purple, I suggested that we just wait until we get home and buy her some that’s purple all the time.

You know that look of disgust you can get from a woman? I got it from the cruise director AND the shop girl. That’s when I went outside (I remained the same color, disappointingly) and made the suggestion about just having stayed home and gone to the mall.

Approaching Roatan

Roatan Shrimpers

The shopping aside, Roatan also was the only stop with a built-in beach. Both Cozumel and Grand Cayman had beaches, but you had to travel to them either with an exorbitantly priced shore excursion or take your chances with a local taxi. Roatan’s beach was just a simple walk across a short bridge from the pier area. As with beaches around the world, it was hot and crowded. We stayed just long enough to wade in the ocean for a little while and to show the first stages of starting to change color to a sunburned red before heading back to the ship.

An easy walk to the beach

Once on the ship we did what old, noise-sensitive people do after being kept up late by a deck party on their roof: we napped.

Cruise: Day 5 - No sunrise over Honduras

2010-05-27T08:45:00.002-04:00

Sure, it’s been doing it for eons without me, and is very likely to continue doing so long after I have returned to the earthly elements from which I came. Still, with as much importance as I had placed on meeting the sun every morning this week, I would have hoped it would wait for me. I was late, though, due to an Ambien Oversleep.

For this I blame Carnival Cruise Lines. In their hyperactively schizophrenic (schizofrantic? schizofrenetic?) pursuit of every.last.penny, they provided an 11 pm until “whenever” deck party last night for their late risers. Where? On the Lido, of course, which is essentially our cabin’s roof. It was just before midnight when I decided that the THUMP THUMP THUMPADEE BUMP THUMP pause THUMP THUMP THUMPADEE BUMP THUMP pause THUMP…. wasn’t the only problem, although it was by no means the least of the problems. Nor was it the screeching WHOOOOP - WHOOOOP of the insanely vocal portion of the crowd. No, the last straw was the dancing on the steel deck. It was the rhythmic bone shaking WHOOMPS from dozens of people jumping up and down in synchronicity that broke this camel‘s back.

It was that most of all that drove me to unhappy memories of life at THE Ohio $tate University. I was considered an untraditional student, a term that mostly meant I was a little older than the norm and tool a lot of night classes because I was working full time to pay for the tuition. I was untraditional in another sense too, and I suppose I am considered untraditional today for the same reason: I am a morning person. One weekend a month I had to get up at 0500 for Air National Guard duty, a time that is routine for me now but seemed awfully, awfully early back then. That made no difference at all to the late-risers that lived upstairs. Their weekend parties would often still be going on when I was getting ready to go to drill. These were raucous parties, and many were the times that I had to re-hang pictures that had fallen from my walls from the vibrations coming from above. Those occasions were either biblical or satanic, depending on your point of view.

You can guess mine.

If one were to try to find the most blatantly discriminated against identity group in America today, one would soon come upon the morning people. Carnival is simply one of millions that discriminate against us. Ask yourself this: what do you think would happen if a few hundred of us got up at 6:00 am and went up to the Lido deck and started making the kind of racket those folks were making last night? Can you imagine the outcry? Heh, that’s nothing. More instructive would be to consider what they would universally say: “You must be crazy!!” Respond that you think they are the crazy ones for screaming and banging around well past a reasonable hour and they look at you as if they believe you should be in an asylum. And probably accentuate the point with a mighty WHOOP-WHOOP.

This is a long way of saying that I finally gave up and swallowed an Ambien. That kept me knocked out until well after room service had attempted to deliver the cruise director’s morning tea. And, as mentioned, after the sun had risen without me.

Sometime yesterday after a relaxing day at the pool and a good lunch/dinner, the cruise director blurted out a question that I know has been nagging her. “Knowing what you know now, would you go on another cruise?”

I demurred.

“Ask me later.”

The last time I answered one of her casual questions without truly thinking through the ramifications was when she surveyed my intentions and desires about getting a puppy. I took that as a statement of her wish to bring a new family member into the house and being one who likes to keep his spouse happy and enjoys the thrill of the hunt, I took the bit in my teeth and tirelessly pursued the finding and adoption for a new puppy for her.

The ornery little thing is now openly referred to as my puppy, and misdeeds of same whisked away with “Well, you wanted another dog!”

How I became the instigator in that whole thing is still a mystery to me.

I do know that I love that little bastard, though. So I guess it’s okay. I’ll take the credit and the blame. He’s going to be pissed next week when I get his cocky little ass neutered, though. I’m blaming the missus for that.

So, like I said: I demurred. I’ll have to think about it before taking another cruise. There are oh so many things to like, but there are also things that I don’t like. The “don’t likes” are small and petty, but as such they nag at me even more because they are so unnecessary. For example, we can eat as much as we like. I routinely order two appetizers at dinner, and the cruise director ordered two entrees when she couldn’t decided between prime rib and lobster tail. The buffet lines are open all day, and pizza is available 24 hours a day. Room service will also deliver 24 hours a day. There is no additional charge for any of that.

Contrast this to our experience at Grand Cayman. As we were leaving the ship, a Carnival employee was at the door handing out water bottles. It can be hot in Cayman, and I thought that this was just an instance of Carnival looking out for the health of their customers.

A charge of $2.24 was put on my ship credit card for a 16oz. bottle of water.

That’s not only tawdry and tacky, but counter-productive. How many of those do you think they sell on the second shore? The third? Once people figure out what they’re paying for the water, they’ll either do without or bring their own. In other words, the revenue opportunity was transient, but the memory of the ham handedness will linger.

It may end up costing Carnival my business. There are other cruise lines to try.

For the moment, I’m still quite content. I’ll reflect back on the cruise as a whole later. For now, it’s enough to sit on my personal veranda watching the coast of Honduras slide by as we make our approach to Roatan Island.

Where I will NOT buy water, and hope that there is no shopping to be done. Relaxing with a book is my plan for the day. Can I get a WHOOP-WHOOP? What? It’s too early? Are you crazy???

Cruise: Day 4 - Cozumel

2010-05-26T21:18:00.005-04:00

With three long, deep blasts of the ship’s thunderous horn, we are officially done with Cozumel. To be perfectly honest, I was done with Cozumel just before noon. Not surprisingly, the pier area was just a glossed-up, more mature version of the area around the docks in Grand Cayman. I am starting to see the appeal of shore excursions for people that have been here before; once the shopping is done, there’s nothing much left to do. I’m fine with that, of course, since my idea of vacationing is simply to not be at work. And, quite frankly, the ship’s amenities are far more enjoyable when the preponderance of other passengers are off snorkeling with the dolphins or piranhas or whatever.

Breakfast in the dining room was interesting. We’ve been enjoying different table partners each day, but today was the first time we’ve had eight at the table. The conversation invariably comes around to where everyone is from, and just as inevitably someone will comment that they meet a lot of people from Ohio. My standard response has become “Yes, it’s a great state to get away from.”

Today’s conversation also came around to talking about THE Ohio $tate University, I think because I was making one of my standard jokes about the Cruise Director’s girl-crush on one Kirk Herbstreit. I tell people that I’ve been trying to find Rogaine for Unibrows so I can grow a competing eyebrow, the two that I have apparently being one too many for her taste. That one always gets a laugh; I really ought to develop this stuff into a stand-up routine.

Anyway, talk about O$U often involves a discussion about my father-in-law, a former professor and director of the world-renowned Concert Band. I was mentioning to a guy across the table that my father-in-law was the first and only member of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra to sit First Chair on two different instruments, clarinet and flute. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the older woman sitting next to me nudge her husband and whisper something to him. He looked over at me and asked if I was talking about Donald McGinnis.

“Why, yes. Yes I was. You know of him?”

Indeed he did. He was a former student and had played first chair in the Concert Band when it was being directed by my father-in-law.

Small world, even smaller ship.

After breakfast we went ashore to do a little shopping. As I was strolling along taking a few pictures of the tropical flowers and palm trees, I noticed that the cruise director was looking at a pair of leather sandals.

“How much?” she asked the proprietor of the open air shop.

“Thirty-eight dollars.”

“No, thanks.”

As we started to walk away, we received a better offer: “Cash? Yes? Twenty-five dollars. They’re leather!”

I got involved. “Leather? Why so expensive? We have cows too and can get leather at home.”

This is why I don’t haggle - I go straight for the jugular.

“I’ll take twenty dollars. Are you trying to kill me?”

“No, I’m not trying to kill you. How about fifteen?”

“You are killing me! Twenty!”

“Eighteen.”

“Ok, Amigo. Eighteen.”

They probably cost him a couple of bucks at most. It was fun, though.

Once back on the ship I spent the day lounging around the nearly deserted pool. There are three pools, but the one on the very aft end of the ship is adults only. That apparently means age 79 and up, at least as understood by the ship’s population. I was the only person there not attached to an oxygen tank. More’s the pity, though, as it is also the only pool that’s downwind of the ship’s exhaust stacks. A little canned air would have been nice on the rare occasions when the exhaust drifted over us.

That aside, it was quite nice relaxing in the sun while reading a book. If I got too hot, I’d take a dip in the pool to cool off and return to my deck lounger for another stint in the sun. I’m not big on tanning in general, but one simply cannot return to work after a Caribbean cruise as pallid and pale as one left. It would be rude to those that had to enjoy our trip vicariously.

Returning from the pool dripping wet can be damaging to a book, so I typically won’t bring a library book due the risk of damaging or losing it. Books are expensive, though, besides which I don’t like paper backs. The print is too small and the book doesn’t ‘hold’ as well. What I do instead is buy one of the retired books from the library for a dollar and, if it survives, donate it back again for resale. At a buck apiece, it’s cheap enough to buy a couple in case one of the stinks and still be well under the price of a paperback.

As we were relaxing by the pool, dinner time was sneaking up on us. Neither of us were really ready to eat and I wasn’t keen on missing the sailing from Cozumel while being tied up in the dining room, so we decided to skip the scheduled dinner and hunt down the sushi bar instead. Doing that allowed us to catch the early show, which tonight was a very funny juggling act. All of the shows have been entertaining in one way or the other, but this one was my favorite thus far.

After the show we stopped by at the casino. We’ve been playing penny slots because it’s pretty hard to lose your life’s savings no matter how bad you are at it. The way it works is that you take a $10 at a time charge against your ship credit card and use that as your betting money. The problem is that I have failed to lose all of my money. I still had $14.28 left to my credit. Where’s the problem with that? Well, we don’t know how to get it back as real money. The cruise director suggested that I just sit down at a slot machine and lose it all. Easier said than done, that. I finally walked away with almost $16.00 of credit.

I can’t lose for winning, sometimes. A lesser woman would have berated me for just not being able to do anything right.

A bigger man would have refrained from gloating about it.

After the gambling, the buffet was still open so we went to the (finally quiet since the drunks had all passed out in their cabins) Lido deck for dinner. I hate the Lido during the day when it’s crowded with smokers and drinkers that believe to their very cores that the way to tell a singer that you appreciate his or her work is to yell over the top of it as loudly and screechingly as possible. But when it gets quiet in the evenings, it’s a great place to be. The buffet food is not quite as good as it is in the dining room, but only because it has been sitting in a warming tray for a few minutes. And it’s hard to beat for convenience, too.

As we settle in for the evening, we’re making 20 knots down the coast of Mexico on our way to Roatan Island, Honduras. I’m about to repair to the veranda, quite possibly with a glass of vodka for company. If I can hear any music from there, I’ll be sure to pass along a appreciative screech now and then.

There’s no shopping at Roatan, as far as I know. In fact, I don’t know if there’s anything there at all, but it’s enough for me just to know that there’s no shopping. (Update: Wow! Was that naive!) The pool will be quite enough for me.

Cruise: Day 4 - Morning

2010-05-26T08:20:00.003-04:00

I will enjoy this morning’s sunrise from the comfort of my chair on my private veranda. I had been calling it a ‘balcony,’ but veranda sounds ever so much better. Elitist that I am, I prefer the mildly exotic description with its rollable ‘r’ and soft, drown out ‘a’ over the more pedestrian description with its guttural ‘b’ and hard ‘c’.

The veranda is, ironically, both more and less private at the same time. It is more private in that it is far cozier, my field of view limited to a thirty degree arc by the walls on each side of it. It is less intimate than the sky deck, though, because when I’m up there all I can hear is the wind and the ship’s engines. The veranda is loud with the sounds of other early risers. If I was the only one out on my veranda and there were no other people out on their balconies, I would predominantly be surrounded by the hissing and splashing sounds of the water rushing by at 20 knots. There is still a bass undertone from the engines, but it is muted by the sounds of the water.

If, on the other hand, and as is the case this morning, anyone drags a chair across their balcony floor or has a conversation while sitting with their cabin mate, the sound is amplified and transmitted by the sounding-board floor of the steel ship. Should anyone in hard-heeled shoes walk across the floor of the deck above, I hear their sharp, staccato passage. While it’s cacophonous at first, all of that eventually blends into the sub-perceptible background noise of shipboard life.

The motion of the boat is the same way. The first day feels strange indeed. Even with the smooth waters that we’ve enjoyed thus far, there is a vibration that can be felt through the deck that reminds me of sitting next to someone with nervous foot syndrome. Until you get used to it, you’re looking around for the foot tapper so can ask them to PLEASE JUST STOP! As the water has been calm, the rolling motion is very subtle - you have to be sitting in the same place and same position for awhile to even notice it. I’ve found that if you can get the unsteadiness associated with having partaken in an alcohol-laced beverage in synch with the motion of the ship, it nets out to a rock steady platform.

Get those two out of phase, though, and it’s watch out below!

The sun is finally rising above the horizon off to the right side edge of my restricted view, just out of the corner of my eye. We’re headed just a smidgen north of west, so the sun rising in the east is perfectly positioned for my needs. And to top it all off, just in front of me is the Celebrity cruise ship, probably the Solstice that joined us at Grand Cayman yesterday, which we have just caught up and passed. Left it in our wake, literally.

The Captain must be reading this blog.

As this is the beginning of our third full day on the relaxing ride across the water, I find that I am finally becoming acclimated to Cruise Time and losing some of the overwrought tension and stress one associates with Eastern Daylight Get The Hell Outta My Way Time. That said, if those folks a few balconies down from my veranda don’t stop letting that door slam, I’m going to explode.

I think it takes a few more days to get over that kind of thing.

We will arrive at Cozumel, Mexico in a couple of hours. We have no real plans, but will probably go ashore anyway. I imagine that if we don’t leave the pier area we will find that in comparison to Cayman, it will be a lot like going to a mall in a different city - same stuff, different accents.