Midwest/East coast trip, day 17, the end

It was a bonus aluminum tube travel day as I stopped in Charlotte, NC and Las Vegas,
NV before getting home to Sacramento. A 12-hour/2-stop day but it was the lest expensive ticket given booking on short notice.

While it's been an amazing trip, I'm glad to be home. Living out of a suitcase and checking in/out of hotels every couple of days gets kind of old after a while.

Trip stats:

- Hours flying the Arrow: 9.1. Less than I'd expected but they all involved flights to places I'd never been before.

- Aviation museums/attractions visited: 6 (Chanute, USAF Museum, New
England Air Museum, Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, Udvar-Hazy, Fantasy of
Flight)

- Non aviation museums/attractions visited: 1, the naval museum in
Norfolk. While they did have some exhibits on naval aviation, the
closest thing they had to an airplane was a big model of an A6 Intruder.

- New states flown to (or over): 11 (Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
New York, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Florida)

Midwest/East coast trip, day 16

Day 16, Fantasy of Flight


We visited Fantasy of Flight today. The unique thing about Fantasy of Flight is that they restore aircraft to flying condition vs. static display. It's a fairly small facility but they have several unique exhibits, especially the walk through diorama type displays.

Any aircraft homebuilder would be in heaven here on the tours of the restoration hangar. At the moment, they have ten or so aircraft undergoing restoration but they have many more in several warehouses and shipping containers.

Admission is a bit pricey but if you hit their website, they have a two for one deal that takes adult admission down to the $15 range.

While there, two aircraft were flown. The first was a Feiseler Fi 156 Storch.


The second aircraft flown, though not part of the afternoon display, was a T6 that just came out of annual and Kermit Weeks himself was at the controls.

Midwest/East coast trip, day 15

Day 15: Leesburg, VA to Leesburg, FL via Columbia, SC

With 3 hours of driving and 6 hours of flying, it was a very long day. The alarm goes off at 4:45 and within 30 minutes or so, we're on the road for the 3 hour drive from Norfolk to Leesburg. This is the earliest we've been up and out the door on this trip.

Getting our IFR clearance out of Leesburg was a snap this time since we knew the secret to file and/or expect STILL intersection as the first point along our route. STILL is a fix on the approach plates for Leesburg and isn't on the low altitude IFR charts.

I wish this was my ride for the day...but no, in our lowly Arrow, Leesburg VA to Columbia, SC was a 3.5 hour flight. For me, it happened to be the first time using supplemental oxygen. Once you get used to the cannula tubes sticking up your nose, it's not all that bad. I can hardly imagine the rats nest of tubing though if using a 4-place system vs. 2-place.

After a quick gas and lunch stop in Columbia, SC, it was time to head to the other Leesburg, the one in Florida. This leg was 3.1 hours and we had to maneuver around some of the afternoon weather. Nothing too bad but it was interesting to use the 496 to watch some of the larger thunderstorm cells that were 50 miles from our path.

Welcome to Leesburg, FL. This storm cell was a baby one, topping out at a mere 17,000 ft. There was another one much farther away to the Southwest that had tops reported at 40,000 ft.

Other than the aluminum tube ride back to the West coast, I'm done flying anywhere for this trip. It will be a 12 hour day of airports/airlines but I'm looking forward to being home.

Midwest/East coast trip, day 14

Day 14: More of Hampton and Norfolk/third (and last ) of several non-flying days

A short list of accomplishments for the day:

- Slept in

- Breakfast at a place called "Pops" in (I think) Norfolk. Yum :-P

- Fired several .40 cal rounds at a local indoor gun range. My first time shooting in a very long time. First time firing two .40 cal pistols (Glock and Sig). Lots of fun.

- Internet access and getting caught up on e-mail and blog posts (the reason for three posts today)

- Discussed flying options for tomorrow and took a peak at the weather. It looks like a go for heading South to Florida.

- Played a ton with this little guy named Elvis:

Midwest/East coast trip, day 13

Day 13: Cruising around Hampton and Norfolk/second of several non-flying days

We get a guided tour of Norfolk Naval base as airplane partner's niece is in the Navy. Said airplane partner is a Navy veteran and was stationed at Norfolk many moons ago. The USS Eisenhower was in port and the best part of the day was that we managed to get a tour. As the Eisenhower was pretty close to deploying, there were a fair amount of crew aboard and lots of activity. The best part of the tour was going up to the flight deck. We were able to walk maybe half the deck before a master chief gave us the boot. It turned out that some NJP or Non Judicial Punishment activity was going on. A whole bunch of folks were at Captain's Mast and I guess the Navy figured a half dozen civilians walking around overhearing things wasn't a good idea. Not that I was listening all that much mind you. I was way too busy imagining what the flight deck would look like when flight operations were in progress.

Left the camera behind for the tour of the base. The only thing I missed was a couple of E2s in the pattern.

After the tour of the Navy base, we hit the Naval Museum in downtown Norfolk. The best part of the museum is being able to walk out onto the USS Wisconsin battle ship.

The least fun part of the day was dealing with the repair shop as I had to sort through bad sell phone connections and some confusion on my end in order to understand what the shop had done and what was/wasn't working. In the end, the airplane will be fixed by the end of the day but in talking to our regular A&P, it sounds like we may have an issue with a portion of our gear auto extend system (which we thought had been disabled...at least it functions as though it's disabled per Piper's recommendation).

Midwest/East coast trip, day 12

Day 12: The day after we broke the airplane and the first day of several non-flying days

Negative aviating on day 12. The plane is in the shop at Leesburg, VA and it's looking like it won't be done by the end of the day so we opt for the automotive form of IFR travel or "I Follow Roads" down to Hampton, VA to visit some of my airplane partner's family. While in Hampton, it's a waiting game on the airplane.

Midwest/East coast trip, day 11

Day 11, the day we broke the airplane. Sigh...another night in the DC area. Not that I'm complaining, I can think of much worse spots to be unexpectedly stuck with a broken airplane.

Upon raising the landing gear, the gear in transit light stays on while all gear down indicators go out and eventually, the landing gear circuit breaker pops. When the gear lever is returned to the down position, voila, three green gear down indicators. This little sequence of events happened upon departure from Leesburg today so we elected to return to the airport and have a local shop take a look at things.

The good news is that we now know what to expect for an IFR departure out of Leesburg. This morning we'd checked with one of the local flight schools for any preferred routing heading South out of the DC ADIZ and the answer was essentially "nothing special". I filed a route that would take us West out of the ADIZ then South then Southeast to our next destination, a route that avoided any restricted areas and got us out of the ADIZ as quickly as possible. I thought it was a nice plan until we called the clearance delivery folks at the Potomic Tracon. We get a different route and the initial waypoint is an intersection that doesn't appear to exist on the IFR enroute chart. Adding to this, in the end, we were unsure of the spelling. We thought we had it but it turned out that both of us copied it differently when getting our clearance. I then called clearance delivery a second time for further clarification and we let the GNS-430 find the intersection for us.

One very cool thing that happened is an impromptu arrival of six Army helicopters. Five OH-58 Kiowas and one UH-60 Blackhawk arrived as I was putting some gear into the plane. I look up and see multiple helicopters arriving on runway 35 and in no time, get my camera out of my backpack and start snapping pictures. They parked every chopper within 100 yards of where we
were parked. Very cool.




















































I can hear it now, "Honey, I'm going to be late tonight, had to stop in Leesburg for gas" :-)











No word from the repair shop so we call in the morning. I say odds are 50/50 that we wind up driving to our next destination while the airplane gets fixed. We'll see what tomorrow holds.

Midwest/East coast trip, day 10

Day 10: National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center and wandering the Capitol Mall.

I've always wanted to visit the Air and Space museum and that was before the Udvar-Hazy Center was built. Having now been to Udvar-Hazy, I still want (need?) to get to the Air and Space museum but that would require more time than we'll have in the Washington DC area.



On the drive to DC, we see a big Sikorsky helicopter and in an instant wonder if it's Marine One. In the next five seconds, I grab my camera, remove the lens cap, turn it on, roll down the car window and click four images. I was lucky since it was flying left to right and I was in the front passenger seat. This is the best image I captured. Sorry, no rotor blur as the camera was in automatic mode. I really didn't think I'd be taking pictures at sixty miles per hour on the freeway :-)



The Udvar-Hazy center is fantastic and definitely on any airplane nut's must see list of museums. The crowds were extremely light and we spent around four hours wandering the exhibits and taking pictures. With three levels, you have a variety of views and it's obvious that much thought went into how and where to position each aircraft, spacecraft, missile, and satellite. To see everything, you really need to walk each of the levels.

My personal favorite since my Dad flew the F-105 in Vietnam. Their F-105D is predominantly displayed on the museum floor along with several other Vietnam era aircraft. I like the fact that this (and every display at Udvar-Hazy) is uncluttered so that you get great views of the aircraft. I believe this is the sixth F-105 I've seen on the trip.































After Udvar-Hazy, we headed to DC as I wanted to see the Vietnam memorial. Little did I realize that we'd see much more since it is located on the Capitol Mall. Our trusty GPS guided us to the DC area and we found a spot to park near the Lincoln Memorial. We wandered from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. They were out of tickets to go into the Washington Monument so we walked back through the WWII memorial then made our way to the Vietnam Memorial and eventually to the Korea Memorial.

Going through all of the war memorials certainly causes one to pause and reflect upon the tremendous sacrifices made by those serving in our armed forces and their families. Say what you will about whether we should or should not have been involved in the various wars but the fact remains that thousands upon thousands of people serving in our military faced the horrors of war and way too many gave their lives in the process. Each person was doing the jobs they were assigned, whether they volunteered or were drafted. It didn't matter, they went, many died, and they all deserve our respect.

The closest I've ever been to facing the results of a war was when I was five years old and my Dad was flying the F-105 in Vietnam. I can still remember exchanging reel to reel tapes and hearing the different tone in his voice when he'd just come back from a hairy mission and with a battle damaged aircraft. My Dad was one of the lucky ones but he personally knows several of the names on the Vietnam wall.




To all of our veterans and current active duty personnel, I say thank you for serving our country so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have today.

To those who served in Vietnam and came home to a nation that, for the most part, failed to recognize your accomplishments and sacrifices, I think you guys/gals were robbed of the respect you deserve. Thank you for serving in an unpopular war, in one where our government and military leaders created an environment where winning seemed impossible. You have my deepest respect.

Midwest/East coast trip, day 9

Day 9, a travel day to the Washington DC area.

We entered the dreaded Washington DC ADIZ and lived to tell about it :-) Actually, a friend who has been through the ADIZ VFR says it's a piece of cake. While we did so today IFR, I'd have to agree. Well, there was that one moment about 10 miles from entering the ADIZ where Patomic approach said they'd lost our transponder. The funny thing is that the reply light was lit almost solid green with all of the replies. A few minutes later, they tell us all is well as they're receiving the mode-C replies ok.

It was pretty much an uneventful IFR flight from Poughkeepsie, NY today. We had to spend a few minutes on the ground figuring out the route we were given and there was one re-route about half way to our destination. Nothing too major but given the unfamiliar airspace, it was nice having two IFR rated pilots on board so we could split up the flying duties.

Tomorrow: The Udvar-Hazy museum.

Midwest/East coast trip, day 8

Day 8: Windsor Locks, CT to Poughkeepsie, NY and the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome

After a short 0.7 hour flight from Windsor Locks to Poughkeepsie, we headed to the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. Well, not after determining that I'd messed up the rental car reservation, having booked it for Monday instead of Sunday. As it turned out, the rental car company wasn't open Sunday. Fortunately, the guys at Millbrook Aviation worked out a rental car as one was due back shortly after we arrived.

As a kid, I'd been to Old Rhinebeck a couple of times. It was always a fascinating place to see the WWI aircraft fly. The simulated dogfights never got old.

Today the show consisted of several biplanes cutting a roll of toilet paper and bursting balloons, The Flying Farmer (aka Stanley Segalla), and some 1/3rd scale WWI remote control aircraft. It was an enjoyable couple of hours sitting in the shade, taking pictures, and remembering the times I'd spent there as a kid.






If you ever get a chance to visit Old Rhinebeck, I'd highly recommend it. http://www.oldrhinebeck.org/ for more information.

Midwest/East coast trip, day 7

Day 7, New England Air Museum, Windsor Locks, CT.

This is air museum #3 for the trip and it was a good one with many fine examples restored and living indoors.







My Personal favorite, an F105 greets you as you walk in the first hangar. Unfortunately, there are so many aircraft (as if that can ever be a bad thing) that you can't get a good shot of this F105. It's definitely one of the best examples I've seen, on par with the one at the Air Force Museum in Dayton.






My favorite nose art, on a great looking B29.













I had not seen an example of this particular B25 model. It was a 75 mm cannon mounted in the nose, along with four .50 caliber machine guns.










Overall, this was a great museum to spend a few hours wandering around. There is also an audio tour available which I would suspect is worth it. Unfortunately, I didn't realize the audio tour was available. I missed the big banner above the entry to the first hangar and didn't realize the significance of the numbered exhibits until it was too late.

I would definitely put this one on the "must see" list. If you fly into KBDL, I'd recommend paying the extra $$$ for gas at Signature in exchange for using a crew car for getting to/from the museum. They've treated us like we're flying a corporate jet even pulling our Arrow into their hangar without us requesting it (and not charging us for it).

Midwest/East coast trip, day 6

Day 6, Williamsport PA to Windsor Locks, CT

Another travel day today as we flew a fairly short 1.7 from Williamsport PA to Windsor Locks, CT. Initially we'd thought about hitting the New England Air Museum today but decided to put it on tomorrow's agenda since the rain will finally catch up to us. It was a nice flight and Windsor Locks was a reasonably busy place to get into.

Williamsport airport lies right next to a fairly long ridge line and the departure (as well as yesterday's arrival) was fairly bumpy. Once we get out of the vicinity of the airport, however, things were smooth. We did this leg VFR today as we once again needed another IFR chart but the local FBO at Williamsport didn't have it. Fortunately, we have the entire US VFR sectionals via Air Charts.

The FBO at Williamsport was a Piper dealer a long time ago:

Life Flight cranked up maybe 100 yards from us:

Midwest/East coast trip, day 5

Day 5: Dayton to Williamsport, PA via Ohio State. Posted on day 6 since the hotel did not have wireless internet access :-(

Today was a flying day. More F16s in the pattern. How come it's hard to get too much of that? After we'd cranked up, we received a few more waves from the pilots as they taxied by. Nice. I have since found out that the F16s are from the Royal Dutch Air Force (thanks for the tip Eric). Apparently friendly F16 drivers.

We had to make a stop at Ohio State for some charts as the local FBO in Dayton didn't have the particular one we needed.














If you ever need charts for this area, these guys have them while many other FBOs around may not.

So it was one 0.3 leg and a 3+ hour leg today. We could have gone farther but after lunch at the Williamsport airport, it felt like enough for one day.

Williamsport, PA, home of the Little League World Series. We missed it by a couple of weeks but that's probably not a bad thing as hotel availability was likely non-existent.

The journey East continues tomorrow. Weather should cooperate but I keep wondering when we make a right turn at the East coast where hurricane Hanna will be. Ike too for that matter since it's shaping up to be a much stronger storm.

Midwest/East coast trip, day 4

Day 4, the National Museum of the US Air Force














With over 300 aircraft and 17 acres of displays, this museum is absolutely HUGE and should be on every aviation nut's "must see" list. The best part is that most of the display aircraft are located inside which makes for much better quality displays.

We managed to get through the museum in one day but if you want to read all of the information on each display, you'd need at least two.

A highlight was visiting the Presidential aircraft displays and being able to walk through several aircraft that served as Air Force One. In particular, walking through the Boeing 707 that served several Presidents, was an amazing experience. There are not many places where you can experience such a unique piece of American history .

After walking around on concrete for several hours, my legs feel like they've had quite the workout. Time to prop them up and read for a bit. That and check the weather for tomorrow as we head further East. At the moment, things look fairly decent but time will tell where we may have to hunker down for a day or so depending on what hurrican Hanna does up the East coast.

Midwest/East coast trip, day 3

Day 3...and it really is day 3 so I'm finally caught up! Ah, the wonders of finally having internet access. Let's see if I can keep it that way for a while.

The Dayton museum didn't happen today as we arrived a bit too late to head over. What did happen, however was a series of takeoffs and landings by a bunch of F-16s. This after a 1.7 hour IFR flight from Indiana.


Got a wave from the pilot in this one. Too bad I chopped a bit of the airplane. Oh well...I was zooming in/out for the fly-by and taxi-by shots and missed this one by *that much*.


So the plan is to hit the Air Force museum when they open tomorrow and make it a full day affair. We'll see if we can get through the whole thing in a day. Then it's a matter of watching the latest hurricane forecasts for Florida to see how badly the remnants of Gustav and the new one, Hanna, might mess up our weekend plans.

Midwest/East coast trip, day 2

Day 2: The Chanute Air Museum in Rantoul, IL.


After an hour flight in our trusty Arrow, we landed at the former Chanute Air Force Base and taxi right up to the museum.

Chanute history goes back a long time, pre-1920's. The museum has an extensive time line of the base history and quite a few nicely done inside exhibits, one hangar, and a collection of fairly weathered aircraft outside. Overall, definitely worth the price of admission at $7.00.

Favorite aircraft on display: The F-105 painted in Thunderbird colors and the B-58 Hustler.

Another great part of this trip was that the gal working the front desk loaned us her car so we could grab lunch. We hit a local Chinese buffet. Mmmm, yummy :-P

It was nice visiting a place that my Dad flew T-33s and C-47s in/out of a long time ago. In addition, being a former Air Force brat, I always enjoy visiting an old base. There's something about the buildings and the way the streets tend to be laid out that feels very familiar.

Next stop: the Air Force museum in Dayton.

Midwest/East coast trip, day 1

Day one of my East coast trip, the aluminum tube ride to ORD. Not much to report on this front other than on time service from United. That and I started reading The Testament by John Grisham, a book I'd recommend.

The interesting thing about today's trip, at least to me, was when I booked mytickets. My final destination was Indiana so I wound up searching for airfares from Sacramento to Indianapolis. I found a reasonable fare on United with good departure and arrival times. I was a mouse click away from buying the ticket when I remembered my airplane partner telling me I should fly into Chicago then taking the bus to Indiana as Chicago is much closer to my final destination than Indianapolis. I quickly looked up direct Sacramento-Chicago flights. Hey, look, there's a direct flight on United but whoa, the fare is $330 *more*...but wait, what's this? It's the same United flight from SMF-ORD that I'd take if I flew SMF-ORD-IND. I looked at things several times and sure enough, a direct SMF-ORD flight was $330 more than SMF-ORD-IND...for the same flight on the SMF-ORD leg.

Hmmm, so why exactly would I want to book a direct flight? :-) Hey, I know, I'll book the SMF-ORD-IND flight then take the bus from ORD. So that's what I did.

Thinking about it after I'd booked the flight, I decided to call United and ask if there was any penalty for not boarding the connecting flight. I get the standard "If you change your flight, there's a $150 surcharge plus airfare difference" answer to which I reply "But I don't need to change my flight and I don't care about loosing any value of the ORD-IND leg". The answer is then "Well, ok, there's no problem with that".

So that's what I did. I still have the unused ORD-IND boarding pass in my pocket.

After arriving in Indiana, my airplane partner and I took a trip to the airport in order to clean up the plane a bit. As the sun is setting, what looks like a Supercub on floats lands and taxis in. It turns out to be a brand new Top Cub from Cubcrafters and is being ferried to Canada as the first Canadian certified Top Cub on floats. It was a great looking airplane.


Hopefully I'll post more interesting aviation stuff in the next day or so. Actually, the first couple of posts will be delayed somewhat as I don't have internet access. Life without the internet...what a concept :-) No internet access explains why a couple of days worth of postings show up all at once. No, I'm really not compressing time.

Trip plans

One of my airplane partners left almost a week ago on a coast to coast trip and I'm about ready to jump on the aluminum tube and join him for a couple of weeks. We're planning on hitting several aviation museums/destinations as we cruise the midwest and the East coast before I jump back on the aluminum tube back to the West coast. It should be a fantastic trip as we fly through a part of the country we've never done before. I wonder where we'll get stuck unexpectedly overnight and for how long? Time will tell. More pics, postings, and PIREPs to come so stay tuned...

Power off 180 spot landings

I had a chance to go out and practice some of these this past Saturday and man are they fun! Using the 1000 ft touchdown markers as my spot, I managed to nail five or six of them, had to cheat and add power on one, and left one maybe 200 ft. short. It sure is a different sight picture when you're 100 AGL and turning while coming in over the run-up area (I only will do these maneuvers if the runup area is clear).

In the Arrow, I'm finding that the following works pretty well. Of course, I've had the benefit of one partner already doing this for his commercial certificate:

- Power to idle abeam desired touch down point
- *Immediately* start turning to the runway. So far, I find about a standard rate turn works.
- At the same time, roll in one handfull of nose up trim
- Pitch for 90 mph (vs. POH best glide of 105 MPH)
- Flaps once you have the runway made
- Be ready to arrest the 1000-1200 FPM descent rate
- Leave the prop full forward unless it starts to look like you'll leave it short

I've had several folks tell me that the CP certificate maneuvers are fun. They were right...and so far, I've only been practicing the steep turns, 180 power off spot landings, and soft field takeoffs. I'm trying to do some of the required maneuvers each time I fly now.

Oshkosh '08 pics

So I spend a couple of hours today resizing my pictures so I won't exceed the 100 MB/month upload limits of my free Flickr account. After uploading an initial batch of pictures, I get a warning that I'm close to my 200 picture maximum. Hmmm, I didn't realize that. Quick, plan-B, create a trial Smugmug account. So, for at least the next 14 days, my Oshkosh '08 pics can be found here. I'll play around with Smugmug and see how I like it. It's more expensive than Flickr ($40 vs. $25). Either way, it's time to pony up something in order to have unlimited upload capability.

15 minutes of fame

As I'm packing up at Oshkosh last Saturday morning, Jack Hodgson, the guy that writes the "Around the field" column for the daily AirVenture paper stops by the campsite and interviews me. I'm thinking he probably interviews dozens of folks at Oshkosh and there's little chance I'd make it into the daily paper (or even see it for that matter since I'd be leaving that evening and didn't know anyone that would still be around). It turns out I was wrong on both counts: http://www.airventure.org/2008/8sun3/around_field.html

A far more interesting story is this one about a friend's 17 year old son flying into Oshkosh for the very first time.

Off to work on downloading and sorting through pictures...

Headed home from Oshkosh

Wireless internet at airports sure makes the time pass more easily. I'm sitting at Denver International awaiting my connecting flight home. The morning started out early at 5:00 am central time as my friend and I had camped at Dodge County Wisconsin after departing Oshkosh yesterday evening. Based on the times Oshkosh closes their airspace and my flight out of Chicago, we had to depart Oshkosh Saturday after the air show.

Wow, as usual, quite a week. Great weather, it only rained for maybe 20 minutes one night. Lots of picture taking. I think I took somewhere around 2000 pictures. I have a bit of post processing to do this next week. Once that's done, I'll post some highlights.

Even with general aviation activity down these days due to higher fuel prices, the field at Oshkosh was full. Fly in camping closed Monday which is earlier than I've seen in past years. I'd have to agree with friends that folks may be saving up their flying dollars for events such as Oshkosh.

Sorry I missed out on any meetups with fellow bloggers such as Aviatrix. As wireless access in the North 40 camping area was down more than it was up, it wasn't until Saturday that I read her post on the subject. Bah, maybe next year.

While I'm looking forward to getting home after a week of dealing with the Midwest humidity (who invented that stuff anyway?), I'm also looking forward to Airventure 2009. Yeah, sounds wierd but if you've ever been there, you know what I mean.

Required reading for anyone flying into Oshkosh

In addition to the NOTAM, here are two articles by Rick Durden that should be required reading for anyone flying into Oshkosh. Rick is very blunt and in your face about things but he makes several excellent points.

Original article

An updated reminder for this year

If you're flying into OSH, please first print out and read the NOTAM then read the two articles.

Oshkosh countdown

In a couple of days, I depart for Oshkosh. I'm going via aluminum tube vs. the Arrow this year. Not nearly as exciting but way more cost effective given a Left Coast departure.











My camping gear is packed into a huge 18"x36" duffel bag with some room to spare. New REI backpacking tent and sleeping pad included. Life in the North-40 should be dry and comfortable.

One very cool thing is that I should be able to arrive at Oshkosh the right way, in a Cessna Skylane. Well, ok, "the right way" is in a certain '71 Piper Arrow but I'll take a Cessna 182 arrival vs. bus/van/car any day. I lucked out as a friend is planning to pick me up in Chicago and we'll then fly to Oshkosh. How cool is that? Definitely the next best thing to actually flying there in my own plane.

Blue Angel ride

My brother sent me this today: http://www.terwilligerproductions.com/flyingfullcircle/ Absolutely an awesome experience...I'm seriously jealous! :-)

California burning

Just found this over at Pilots of America. Some amazing pictures of the recent fire fighting activity in California: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/07/californias_continuing_fires.html

Camera upgrade

A couple months back, my Cannon SD100 died. I may have dropped it or it was in my backpack and slid off the wing of the airplane to the ground...I really don't remember. What I do know is that I tried taking an in flight picture of an MD-80 landing on a parallel runway but the viewfinder was all messed up. Seeing as I was the acting safety pilot, the camera quickly went back into the flight bag. After I got home, the camera would take pictures like this:



Eventually, they started to look like this:


Nice, eh? Cool effects and pretty colors aside, either way, not good and tend to get in the way of cool things like airplanes...oh, and family, the dog, etc. Wait, the dog *is* family. The cat too :-)

What to do...what to do?

I've always wanted to get back into photography but never made the leap to a digital SLR camera. I asked a bunch of friends, the ones that take awesome pictures, for recommendations, what they like, dislike, etc. A couple weeks ago, a flight instructor friend and I headed to the Golden West EAA fly-in where I was able to borrow his Nikon D80. Wow, what a difference and extremely easy to use. Some of the results:

Relentless

F-18 demonstration

Hawker Sea Fury

Nice looking T6

In short, I was sold and wound up buying the D80 from my friend. Now it's time to learn as much as I can and experiment by taking lots of photos. At least it's digital so mistakes are free, right? :-) All that stuff from my high school photography classes is coming back to me. Mr. Schwerin would be well pleased.

I'm now set in the camera department for my upcoming trips to Oshkosh and down the East Coast.

Another cool EAA video

Just saw this on www.airventure.org



It must be the first day of summer or something...Oshkosh is just over a month away.

New milestone...

...unfortunately, non-aviation related. For the first time, I broke the $50 mark putting gas in my car.

It's a Civic.

11.7 gallons and it was just North of $51. I realize many folks with larger vehicles these days would love to have $50 fill the tank. I can only imagine what gas is costing some folks on a monthly basis.

Still...$50 to fill up an economy car? This is crazy. I'm still shaking my head.

Necessary Aviation Content: I hear gas is $5.60-something at my airport. Sounds about right as it's been running right at $1.00 more than regular unleaded.

Crazy I say...just crazy

And now for something completely different, installing an engine

Background: Brother is building an RV-6 and around Christmas time the big brown box from Lycoming showed up. An early Christmas present of sorts. He had a few items to contend with before hanging another 180 lbs off the front end of the airframe so he's been busy since the big brown box's arrival. Two weeks ago, I get the "Do you want to help hang the engine?" e-mail. Um...let me think about this for a nanosecond or two. Heck yeah, I'll be there. Last Saturday was the day.

After a 2.5 hour IFR (I Follow Roads, 0 AGL via non-flying Civic) trip to Bro's house, it was time to start the fun. In addition to my brother, his buddy, a fellow airplane builder, joined the festivities.

Baby Lycosaur waiting to meet Mr. Engine Hoist. This looks so familiar as it's essentially the same engine in our Arrow except it's not fuel injected (an extremely expensive option BTW).


Hooked up and ready to move:
The three of us were extremely careful not to bump anything hanging off the rear of the engine (prop governor in particular) against the RV's engine mount or firewall. There was a small bracket to remove from the governor that made things easier in this regard. In general, getting things to line up so that we could start fitting the upper mounting bolts through the engine mount and Lord mounts was fairly straightforward.

Inching closer, being extremely careful while moving 180 lbs of metal towards the engine mount and firewall:

Closer. This is where "bolt #4" aka "the evil bolt" holds the engine...but I'm getting ahead of myself :-)

We were working from some instructions written by another builder who had experience installing a few engines in RVs. Unfortunately, the instructions were not written up in a checklist fashion. Instead, you had to wade through several paragraphs that contained forward references to other paragraphs.

The top two mounting bolts installed with relative ease. A couple adjustments of the engine hoist, pull engine here, push engine there and we could thread the nuts onto the engine bolts.

Things are looking good:

The first of the bottom bolts was somewhat more difficult to line up in order to get the bolt through the required hardware. At this point, things are looking better and better. The three of us are thinking wow, this isn't all that hard. We were seriously wrong about this but wouldn't realize so until hours later.

At this point, it was time to make a parts run as one of the four engine bolts had a manufacturing defect. Parallel to the bolt, there were a couple of indentations that looked as if you'd crimped the bolt with a set of pliers. Seeing as any reduced strength from one of four engine bolts that secure a very expensive engine to the airframe would be a bad thing, it was a no brainer option to replace the defective bolt. Fortunately, my brother's friend has the same engine mounting bolts awaiting his future engine installation so it was a matter of a short road trip. For me, it was a chance to see an RV-8 under construction. Very cool.

Once we returned from the parts run, things started getting interesting. Ok, not really interesting, more like hard, difficult, a pain, less than fun, etc. since the fourth bolt hole just didn't want to line up. Here's what it looked like:

We push/pull/grunt/groan/lift engine/lower engine for a long time but the alignment doesn't improve. Some movement of the engine makes it worse, some makes it better. Since each engine bolt angles inward and down (top bolts) or up (bottom bolts), it's like solving some strange multi dimensional geometry problem but where certain movements had the opposite of the desired effect.

We try using a drift pin to line things up but it doesn't help much. The defective engine mounting bolt meets an untimely demise and is converted into a larger drift pin after it meets Mr. hacksaw and Mr. bench grinder. It's sacrifice was in vane, this doesn't help either.

Frustration sets in.

We bust out the Van's instructions for installing the engine. These are much shorter but don't offer a ton of help. Briefly, we contemplate removing the engine mount from the firewall, mounting it to the engine, then the entire assembly to the firewall. In short order, we're convinced that this doesn't really change anything. Hmmm, what to do, what to do?

We talk about removing bolt #3 (the other bottom bolt), and install bolt #4. Maybe bolt #3 going on last will be easier(?) It seems reasonable so we proceed. Unfortunately, it doesn't really improve things. It seems as if both bottom bolts are now looking like the above picture, maybe each is slightly closer to being centered. Better seems relative at this point.

More contemplation, more frustration, more reading of the installation instructions. At a critical point, Bro's friend takes him away from the scene for a much needed milkshake at In & Out.

I have an idea. At least I think it was me but by now, it's hard to remember the sequence of things. What if we can push up on the bottom of the engine to improve the alignment of the bottom bolts? A couple of 2X4s and the scissor jack from sister in law's car get added to the mix and things look better but not quite good enough for both bottom bolts to align. Things are better. At this point, that's a good thing.

Disclaimer: The details are starting to get fuzzy in my brain so the following may not be entirely sequentially correct. At some point, we manage to get bolt #4 lined up and the nut threaded on. Bolt #3 is not installed so we've essentially shifted the original problem to the other side of the engine. The bad news is that the misalignment looks maybe the same, maybe slightly worse. It's hard to tell. More pushing/pulling/grunting/groaning/etc. but things don't change a lot.

I think it was Bro's friend that thought of the next idea. What if we can move the Lord mount out of the cup like structure of the engine mount and get the bolt through the engine boss? We proceed.

In an almost anti climactic finish, less than five minutes after this idea was considered, shazam, Bro announces "it's through". He threads the nut onto the bolt and we wiggle the engine to get the Lord mount to seat into the engine mount. Tightening up all of the bolts, removing the scissors jack from below and the engine hoist from above and this is the final result:

And that's all there is to it! Take three Engineers and given enough time in one day, they actually can install a Lycoming engine on an airframe.

In the end, it was a fun and educational experience for me, the only non-builder of the installation team. The next time I'm at my favorite airplane repair facility, I need to ask my favorite A&P about engine installation tips/tricks. For some reason, I have a feeling I'll walk away smacking myself on the forehead and having visions of the "Wow, I could have had a v-8" TV commercials.

Passed CP written

I made the first tangible bit of progress towards my commercial pilot certificate today by passing the written test. As with the instrument written test a couple of years back, I posted my best score when taking the test for real. Weird but, ok, I'll take it. A pass is a pass. :-)

Now it's time to hookup with a CFI and plan the flying part. With the days getting longer and temperatures getting warmer, I need to start getting out for power off 180 spot landings, 60 degree steep turns, Chandelles, etc. Sounds like fun to me. If all goes according to plan, I'll exchange my private pilot certificate for a commercial pilot certificate sometime in early Summer. Cool!

One thing to mention re: written test prep material. A friend loaned me his Gleim test prep stuff and it was excellent. I already had the ASA book but found the Gleim had better explanations for some things. Also, I found the Gleim CD based test to be an excellent way to study and take practice tests.

A couple new photo sites

What, two blog posts in one day? Um...yeah, after a long silence, go figure :-) I suppose I could blame it on spending my time on the Commercial Pilot written test preparation and that would be partially true. Speaking of which, I figure I'm approx. a week or so away from actually scheduling the test. I've been spending a ton of quality time with the Gleim test prep on my computer.

Anyway, checkout Jay Beckman's photo sites I've added to my blogroll. Jay is a fellow pilot and hails from the uber-hot region of Arizona. While he's not frying in the AZ summers, he takes some very cool photos. Since he recently created a zenfolio site, I thought I'd do a little shameless advertising for him.

The reasons I go to Oshkosh every summer...

Ah, here we are in the middle of winter and EAA comes out with this video. It is absolutely the best description of why I go to Oshkosh every summer. This year, I might go via the aluminum tube route vs. flying the Arrow but that's ok. Being able to hang out in the North-40 with friends I've made over the years will be worth the price of admission.