How far would you go?

For some things, I wouldn't walk to the end of my driveway. For other things, though, I'll go to great lengths. As odd as it sounds, a breakfast at Denny's is something I will go a pretty decent distance for. That is, of course, all down to its relative scarcity in my town. If we had one just up the street, the novelty would have long since worn off to the degree that I wouldn't walk to the end of my driveway for a free Grand Slam breakfast or a Moons Over My Hammy sandwich.

But we inhabit the world in which we live and in my world one has to seek out a Denny's if one wants to take half a year off of one's life in one fell swoop breakfast. I don't do it often, but now and then I like to jump in the plane and fly over to Zanesville where I have only a one mile walk remaining between me and a Denny's Classic Diner. And the one mile walk from the airport to the restaurant is bookended with a healthy one mile walk back to the airport which, in theory, returns five of the six lost months to my tenure here on the planet.

The weather was cooperative on Saturday morning, with the day dawning bright and clear with very light winds. The light winds were a bonus; I'd be flying with Co-pilot Rick for the first time in more than three months and my runway operations have yet to return to their late Fall glory. Calm air would be a boon after struggling to regain my footing on the crosswind plagued flights I've had of late. As expected, the flat, dead air allowed me to track arrow straight down the runway and give the impression that I actually knew what I was doing. You can't buy good press like that. Smooth air ensued for the rest of the ride which also bode well for a comfortable return trip, should it hold. Denny's has a way of tempting me to eat more than I can comfortably carry when the flying gets rough; calm air equals a calm tummy in the algebraic equation of breakfast flights.

It wasn't that there was no movement to the air, mind you. The eleven knot disparity between our indicated airspeed and our speed across the ground as measured by the trusty GPS gave lie to the idea that the winds were completely absent. We actually had a pretty decent tailwind behind us. That meant that there might even be some wind on the ground at Zanesville, which put me in a bit of a quandary given that there are four options for choosing which direction to land at Zanesville.

A little cloud of smoke that I saw rising from a burning brush or trash fire in one of the back yards we flew over indicated that the winds were light from the southwest, leading me to believe that runway 22 would be the best choice, but it was hard to be sure. As we crossed to the south of the airport, I could see that the tetrahedron (A device to indicate wind direction, and, in turn, landing direction. It is tetrahedronshaped—four triangular sides. This device is generally located at uncontrolled airports. The small end of a tetrahedron points in the direction of landing.) was end-on to our position, meaning that it was either pointed straight at me or straight away from me. The difference in the event would be pretty critical, but with the previous hint from the smoke, it looked like runway 22 was the winner.

As it turns out, the fact that my view of the tetrahedron was all orange was exactly the indication that I needed to confirm my choice of runway; as we taxied by, I noticed for the first time that the opposite side is painted white and black. You learn something every day!

Actually, I learned a couple of things; I've never really trusted the tetrahedron to swing in changing winds because it seems so large and misbalanced. It seems like there simply has to be far too much weight on its pivot point, and unbalanced weight at that, for it to swing freely. With that in mind, I took a closer look. While it might still be the fact that it is too heavy to swing easily, it is not an unbalanced weight. There are counter weights hanging off of the bar protruding from its nose. Fancy that!

The FBO at Zanesville was deserted, putting paid to the idea that we might be able to scare up a ride down to Denny's. Still, Zanesville has to have one of the most attractive FBO buildings that I go too. It's very tastefully decorated, yet it seems vastly underused. It might be busier during the week, though.





It was a nice walk to the restaurant and it sure worked up a big appetite; a big enough appetite to convince me to order the Meat Lovers Trio, a dish that falls just shy of the breakfast offering I have lived my life in eager anticipation of. That being, as you could have guessed, the Meat Lovers Septet. No one ever seems to get past the 'trio' level, though. I'll probably have to add The Meat Lovers Septet to my list of Very Obvious Things That Restaurants Don't Do. Also on that list is one item that simply boggles the mind with its simplicity and vast utility to a large portion of society: a senior's menu printed in a larger font. I can't fathom why they don't do that.

The Meat Lovers Trio had an issue, as it turns out, and it is one of those things that I typically shrug at and describe as the The Story of My Life: they were out of one of the meats. I order fish at Red Lobster, they're out. I ordered a sub at Subway once: they were out of buns. It happens so often that it's funny.

Well, Denny's was out of Chicken Fried Steak. And at Denny's, if you're a Meat Lover, you're there for the Chicken Fried Steak. CFS (as the waiter called it) is an odd preparation consisting of a dark brown mystery meat (laughingly referred to as "steak" - I think it's an intentional irony or something) breaded in fried chicken batter, deep fried, and covered in some kind of flavorless lard-based gravy. The waiter, utterly mortified at being out of CFS, made amends by offering me a chicken fritter. A chicken fritter is the same thing as Chicken Fried Steak, except that it uses white mystery meat instead of brown. They have to give it a nonsensical name like "fritter" because it would sound too stupid (even at Denny's) to call it Chicken Fried Chicken. And, of course, that would be too easily confused with regular old Fried Chicken, something no one eats for breakfast, for crying out loud. Not even at Denny's. It simply isn't done.



The smooth skies of the trip to Zanesville had held long enough for the trip back to Bolton. They were so smooth that I almost forgot to have Co-pilot Rick fly his leg, my wont being to save the bumpy return flight for his enjoyment. I'm generous that way. Known for it far and wide, in fact. With Rick at the helm, I was free to stare into the bottomless depth of the two gaping holes in my panel where the vacuum instruments used to be:



I need to get busy either plugging one of them with a Dynon D-6 or getting covers for them. They just look so sad all open and gaping like that.

I also was able to get a picture of a very unique bridge in downtown Zanesville:



Have you ever seen a 'Y' shaped bridge like that? Very odd.

The rest of the weekend was fleshed out with finishing my EAA workbenches (more details on that in a later article) and teaching Co-pilot Egg how to drive a stick shift. She thinks she's doing horribly at it, but she's actually learning it pretty quickly. She hasn't stalled the car once yet. It takes awhile to get the rough edges ironed out, but I know she'll be able to do it.



It's a dying art, driving a stick shift, but I think everyone should know how to do it just in case they inherit a Ferrari. You never know, right?

Great Moments in Pedometry

I started wearing a little electronic pedometer yesterday, mostly out of curiosity to learn just how far I walk in any given day. While in theory I have a desk job, the reality of it is that I am up and down all day responding to one thing or another from my user community. Life as the 'computer dude' is a lot like being the guy that owns the only pick-up truck: everyone needs your help, and they aren't shy about asking for it.

I mention this because I spent 45 wholly unproductive and extremely frustrating minutes stuck in the foyer of my office building, a victim of a recalcitrant electronic security lock that refused to recognize the authority of my key card. Repeated attempts were every bit as futile as my muttered curse words in swaying its opinion to my point of view. For that I dragged myself out of bed a little after 0500 to get to the office by 0615??

How does that little workplace drama qualify as a Great Moment in Pedometry you ask? Well, by the time the maintenance dude (whom I am never reluctant to ask for help, although he has yet to offer up the use of his pick-up truck) arrived and reset whatever system required resetting, I had toted up fourth tenths of a mile on the pedometer from pacing around in the foyer. From outside I probably looked like a fish circling in an aquarium. Minus the sucking of algae off of the bottom gravel, of course.

And here's the thing: that was the high point of my day.

It was a tremendous relief to liberate myself at 3:30, drop the top on the Miata, and head home under clear blue skies and a warm sixty (plus a handful) degrees. With the annual done and the airplane all put back together, it looked like I might be able to squeeze in a little therapy before dinner. The plane needed gasoline, so a quick trip over to MadCo for a fill-up seemed a good idea. MadCo is usually my first stop on the first flight after the annual, a habit I developed years ago when the Bolton mechanics had a propensity for not getting all of the cowl screws sufficiently tightened on my Tampico. I'd drop down into MadCo and tighten up any screws that had taken advantage of the eighteen mile flight to work themselves loose. While I don't have the same problem with the RV-6, it's still a good idea to take a short flight and land to ensure that everything that I took off with remained attached for the landing.

My end-of-winter annual inspection cycle preserves as much of the flying season as possible, but it has a down side in that it seems to always find me making that post-maintenance test flight when I'm also a bit rusty on my flying skills. That's two possible strikes against me from the get-go. I make sure to do a thorough preflight and concentrate on slowing my pace down from my normal flying season tempo. After only sporadic flying for three months, it's too easy to forget something that normally would be an ingrained habit.

It seems, though, that I never manage to convince myself to slow down my radio interactions with the tower. ATC speaking skills are every bit as dependent on regular practice as any other aspect of flying and they suffer a degree of atrophy from inactivity fairly rapidly. I realized that as I muddled through a sloppy read back of my takeoff clearance. I suspect that the tower had no idea whatsoever what I had agreed to, but he let it slide. After all, there's only one way you can go, assuming you're on the correct runway. That was just the first of what ultimately turned out to be a good half dozen flubs. Not to worry - it's a skill that recovers quickly.

There was very little wind to deal with so the takeoff was non-eventful. The flight over to MadCo was easy enough; one skill that seems to never really degrade is the actual flying of the airplane enroute. The only notable weakness after a lengthy hiatus is an inexplicable disregard for maintaining a constant altitude. That too will return to being second nature within a few hours, but for today I think I was lucky to be within 300 feet of my chosen altitude at any given moment.

Eighteen miles in an RV-6 at full tilt (well, knock off 10 knots from "full tilt" on account of my not having put the wheel pants back on yet) goes by pretty fast. It was time to get configured for the landing at MadCo just a little bit before my head realized that it was, well, time to get configured for the landing at MadCo. Long story short (too late?), I ended up high and fast on final. Both are easily rectified in a pantsless RV, though. With the wheels hanging out in the breeze and the flaps hanging down grabbing bucketfuls of air, the plane will both slow down and come down. In most planes you can't get both of those at the same time and often have to make a difficult decision as to which you want the most.

The RV-6 is happy to do both. In fact, it can be a bit of a surprise how quickly it will do those things concurrently after having been out of the saddle for a few months.

Now, I need to interrupt this narrative to point out that it's a little know fact that after changing the tires on an airplane, it is an accepted technique to deliberately make the first landing somewhat firm in order to seat the tire beads fully onto the wheel, and that's exactly what I did.

What?

You've never heard of that? Well, I did say that it was a little known fact, right?

What I didn't say is that it's such a little known fact because I just made it up. Out of whole cloth, as they used to say. A complete fabrication.

(cloth and fabric - get it?? Terrible, ain't it.)

My innate integrity forces me to come clean: I pranged that landing. It was so bad that I had to take a mulligan. I pulled off of the runway and made the Taxi of Shame all the way back to the end of the runway to take off and try for a better landing. As I was taxiing along, I noticed that I was being watched by an older guy preflighting a Cessna 150.

A witness, in other words. Inconvenient, that. Undesirable, the truth be fully told.

Had my airplane been suitably equipped, it would have been my second Great Moment in Pedometry in one day!

The second landing was better, considering, but still far short of what I would have expected on such a nice evening. As I was pumping gas, the witness pulled up in his car and approached me.

"I have a few questions for you," he said.

Now, I'm getting better about my airport paranoia. I no longer immediately assume that the questioner is an undercover FAA agent intent on yanking my license. That said, I always wonder with some degree of trepidation exactly what type of questions are going to be asked. Particularly after such an egregious demonstration of aerial incompetence, as you might imagine.

But no, they were questions about RVs.

He's an 82 year old that finds himself, after ten long years of work on a quick-build (a misnomer if there ever was one!) RV-8, only a few days from his first engine start and is starting to believe that he might actually be called upon to fly the thing in the not-too-distant future. He hasn't flown a taildragger since the late 40's when he flew SNJs, ostensibly while in the Navy. I didn't get around to asking - I'm always far more interested in talking about me. As a rule, I'm pretty much my favorite topic. I know how utterly shocking it is to hear that from a blogger, but... it's true!

His question was whether I knew anyone that would fly him through re-learning how to fly a high performance taildragger. In particular, an RV-8. I had to confess to him that I thought that was going to be a very tough person to find since no instructor is keen on taking his chances blind in the back seat and with no brake pedals to comfort him, and that the difficulty of that specific endeavor was a fairly large factor in my choice of an RV-6 over the much more desirable RV-4. It was the answer he was expecting, having previously asked the question on numerous occasions when talking to other RV folks. Still, we had a nice chat. It just goes to show you, even something as commonplace and mundane as buying gas is interesting and fun in an airplane.

My landing back at Bolton was the best of the three, but there's still room for improvement. And, as sad as it is, I also think I'm about due for a new lucky flying hat:

It's looking kind of ragged, isn't it. Just another tragic victim of a long, hard winter.

Annual inspection: done, done, and done

It was pretty easy this year. The normal chore of de-paneling was made easy with the new cordless drill that I bought for building the RV-12. Only a couple of problems were found by the inspector, none of which took more than a few minutes to fix. A leaky brake caliper was repaired with an O-ring that I already had stashed away from the last time I had a leaky brake caliper. The secret is to by a lot of things that are really cheap, like O-rings, even though you only need one at the time. It's the shipping that's expensive, so always buy more than you need! I already had the new tires on hand too, since I had considered changing them a few months ago, but decided to wait until the annual when everything would be all disassembled anyway.

It will all get put back together tonight and be ready to go by the weekend.

The weekend is, of course, forecast to be rainy.

While I have been on my extended building and flying hiatus, I have been occupying myself in the virtual world by flying combat missions on a PC flight simulator. I just recently started flying the F-86 jet that was the inspiration for the paint job on Papa Golf. It's been fun to practice formation flying in a consequence free environment. Consider this brief flight, for example:



I got a little too close to my flight leader. Vertical stabilizer? Meh. Who needs it??

Note: I am amazed at the quality and depth of that simulator, but what is truly mind boggling is its cost. Are you ready for this? It cost $9.99. Less than $10! Simply astonishing.

February

Let's face it. As it stands today, February is the worst month of my life. Not just this past February, mind you, although this one has to be near the top of the list with its "most single month snow in the last century" record (for which it seems to feel an inexplicable pride), but every February.

As far as months go, February just plain sucks.

It's March now, though, and the difference is already apparent. Today we had temps hovering around the mid-40s, light winds out of the northwest at eight knots (belying the "In Like a Lion" reputation of March, at least temporarily) and clear azure skies. "Carpe diem" being the order of the day, I hoped to get a little time in the air before having to tear down the plane for the annual inspection. My only concern was that the battery might not be up to the task of awakening the cold metal engine which, having lain dormant for yet another full, bitterly cold month, might be somewhat reluctant to start. The battery has been showing its age of late and will probably be due for replacement soon.

It's actually a bit of an untruth to say that the battery was my only concern, at least with regards to not being up to strength. To be honest, I had a different battery related concern, which was that it might actually be strong enough to wake the slumbering beast. If it was, I'd be hard pressed to find an excuse not to fly. And therein lies the rub: after a month since my last flight, which itself was the first in an equally long period and was merely a short series of touch & goes anyway, well... I suffer a large degree of trepidation when it comes time to bet the farm on whether or not I really remember how to fly.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained" goes hand-in-hand with "carpe diem" when you think about it, so once I had finished a goodly number of weekend chores, it was off to the airport. As has become the norm, the first time I tried to crank the engine the battery only had enough gumption to get the first blade to the top of the compression stroke. With an odd mixture of relief and dread, I tried again. Three blades passed by and the engine rumbled to life. Not keen on appearing overly eager, only three of the four cylinders joined in at first, but peer pressure finally persuaded the fourth to get with the program.

My fears about flying after an extended lay-off are not limited to concern over my personal capabilities; I also tend to lose some degree of faith in the airplane itself. At the end of the runway, I held the brakes firmly while I let the engine run at 1,700 RPM longer than I usually do. The eager straining of the airplane evidenced by its nervous bouncing around, much like a thoroughbred race horse straining at the bit in the starting gate, usually alleviates some of my doubt and today was no different. When it's that eager to go, things are probably all right. That speaks only to the airplane, however, not to my personal readiness. Which, as it turns out in the event, was somewhat wanting.

The winds, as moderate as they were, had the discourtesy to be coming directly from the left. That means that the pressure they applied to the vertical stabilizer would exacerbate the left turning tendency that is normal on takeoff. I was fine right up until the tail wheel lifted from the runway, but was not prepared for the sharp lurch to the left when the rudder became the primary directional control. My right foot was late to apply a corrective force, and by the time it did it required quite a bit more force that one would like. The weight was starting to come off of the tires by that time since the wing is not at all affected by the pilot's shenanigans and starts to generate lift right on schedule. That caused quite a bit of chatter from the tires as they struggled to get a grip on the runway with so little weight left to help them force the issue. That invariably ends up scuffing off some of the rubber on the tires, leading to undue wear.

I'm replacing them during the annual anyway. So there.

Heading west, I realized that I really didn't have anywhere to go. It really wasn't about having a destination today, of course, but still... how does one know when to quit if there's no goal? I decided to just keep climbing and see if I could get to 10,000', a rarefied altitude that I've only reached on a handful of occasions. Just fifteen miles west of the airport, I reached it 10,500. From that high, it's way more than legal to fly over downtown Columbus. That required a turn back to the east and an incumbent climb or descent of 1,000' to comply with VFR altitude requirements. Having gone as far as I had, it seemed a waste to give 1,000' back so I chose to climb to 11,500'.

From my perch more than two miles over the city, I could see the entire area within the I-270 outer belt. The surrounding countryside was still white with snow, but the city snow had all melted leaving an ugly dark gray in its place. Still, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and cruising along more than two miles above all of the day-to-day pressures gave me time to reflect on just how good I have it. I have an interesting and challenging job that provides a nice income, I'm not quite fifty years old and I'm on my third airplane (with another gestating in the hangar), my family and I are healthy, and, well, February is another eleven months away!

Thus relaxed and feeling ever more comfortable in the plane as the minutes passed, I made a slow turn back towards Bolton. I started a gentle 500 feet per minute descent as I worked my way out of the Columbus Class C airspace and over the top of Bolton's Class D and held it until I was seven miles southwest of the airport. I was still over 7,000' high at that point and needed to come down a bit faster, so I rolled into a 60 degree bank and made a pair of 360 degree turns, falling from the sky at over 3,000 feet per minute. It turns out that it is every bit as nice as having an airplane that can climb quickly to have an airplane that can come down even faster.

Bolton tower gave me a straight in approach and I was soon flaring over the runway.

And flaring. And flaring. And flaring. One of the things that's easily lost when I'm not flying is the memory picture of what the runway looks like when I'm landing. Bolton's runway is relatively wide, so when I've lost the sense of being close to the ground I tend to flare high. I just keep sinking, sinking, sinking until I start to wonder whether the landing gear had fallen off while I was flying around or if some miscreant had dug a canal down the middle of the runway while no one was looking. When it seems that I can't possibly get any lower, I get a little concerned that I'm really going to smack down hard, so I use some of the luxuriously long runway by adding a touch of power to reduce my descent rate. Just as I fed in a couple of extra RPMs today, the wheels lightly brushed the runway. A greaser!

Better than I deserved, but just what I needed.

The plane is torn down for annual now so I'm grounded again, but thankfully I was able to get a nice flight in today. That ought to hold me for awhile.

Not enough flying!

This is what happens when I don't fill my days with flying:

Meet Duke Cabot of Glenford.

Finally!

More than two months after starting what should have been a simple oil change, I flew again!

The temperature hit a high of 43 today, and while that wasn't enough to fully melt the skating rink in front of my hangar door, it was enough to shrink to a navigable one foot wide strip.

It wasn't quite as easy as just pulling the plane out of the hangar and going flying, though. The battery needed to be replaced as I had removed it and put it on a trickle charger in preparation for just the kind of weather we had today. The light winds were out of the south, helping to explain how we went from single digit temps to a nice 40+ degrees in one day. The sky was blue, and there was an unfamiliar burning orb in the late afternoon southwest sky. All conditions were favorable, which was an absolute must-have considering the circumstances: more than two months since I've flown, a lot of recent repairs and in-work jobs going on with the plane, and a general lack of trust in my overall relationship with Papa.

If nothing else, today was intended to be a chance to re-bond with my airplane and hopefully regain some of my faith in both the airplane's and my ability to fly, neither of us having had any sort of recent experience at all.

Getting out of the hangar was easy enough, but that's far less than half the battle. Coming out of the hangar gets an assist from gravity since the floor is slightly downhill, the better to drain any unwanted water. It's the going back in that's tough. Uphill, of course, and ice underfoot, ruining any purchase the soles of my shoes can get on the pavement.

Surprisingly, the engine gasped into life fairly easily, needing no more than three or four rotations of the prop to light up. The GPS was a different story, again playing the fool by refusing to locate more than a couple of satellites. 'Twas to be 2D navigation for us today which, us being surrounded by thousands of hectares of perfectly flat farmland, was no great problem. Still, one likes to have all of the gadgets performing to their capacity, particularly when one is flying with a little more trepidation on board than is the norm.

The taxiways weren't completely free of the remnants of our weeks of ice and snow covered surfaces, so I taxied out at a sedate pace, that being just fine with me as a result of the rudder pedals feeling so unfamiliar under my feet. I made a few small turns on the way down the taxiway in hopes of regaining some of the feeling in my feet before having to trust them to perform their duties during the takeoff roll. Being in no hurry to put my full faith in the total health of engine and airframe, I also spent a few minutes longer than usual doing my engine run-up. There was an airport acquaintance waiting behind me in his Ercoupe, but let's be honest: if he was in any kind of a hurry, he wouldn't be flying a plane that tops out at the same speed I routinely cruise the highways on my way to work. Traffic permitting, anyway.

You can only put it off for so long, though, without receiving taunts from the gang, so I worked up my nerves and called the tower for takeoff clearance. I rolled onto the very end of the mile long runway, making sure that every inch of it was available should something go wrong during the early takeoff and initial climb. The plan was to climb as the all-around best speed of 100mph in order to get as much altitude underneath me while still in the environs of the welcoming runway. None of that turned out to matter; we shot down the runway and climbed out over the white fields with nary a burp from the engine, and all parts (to the best of my knowledge) remaining attached to the airplane.

My normal routine when flying for the first time in ages is to head out west and just fly around regaining my feeling for the airplane. It was odd, though. I never realized how often I look at the directional gyro, and now that it's gone it's somewhat disconcerting to look for it and see nothing but an empty hole. I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to buy the Dynon to replace it, but I suppose I'll get used to navigating by reference to the magnetic compass and the GPS, assuming the latter gets over its fit of pique.

It never takes long to get comfortable with the flying, but the threat of the landing is always hovering over my head keeping me from truly enjoying the experience. As is typical, I figured I'd better head back and get it over with. I called the tower and told them I was inbound for a series of stop and goes, figuring I'd get in the three that the FAA considers to be sufficient evidence that I can still fly well enough to carry a passenger. They're easily impressed, I guess.

The first landing was a combination of feeling like we were going way too fast in the pattern despite only 120 mpg showing on the speedo and crawling along at a snail's pace as we flew down final towards the runway. The crawl of the final approach rapidly becomes a "Whoa! Here it comes!" as we entered the flare over the runway, but the touch down was smooth and we only had a couple of little bounces. There was a lurch to the right as I momentarily diverted my attention to the flaps to make sure they were fully retracted, and off we went for number two.

The second landing was under a bit more pressure as there was a Piper Arrow on final behind me and I wasn't sure he fully understood that I'd be stopping momentarily on the runway, but it turned out just fine. The third was a piece of cake.

All that was left was to get Papa safely back in the barn and that turned out to be easy enough. I slipped a little bit as I pushed Papa over the ice strip, but the momentum I had built up early was enough to carry us onto the dry pavement inside. A cursory inspection showed that all of the parts were in fact still attached to the plane, so that was a relief.

I hope it's not another two months before we get to go up again!

Maybe this will explain....

If it looks like this inside the hangar, can you imagine the outside?



There's plenty going on in the back of the hangar, though!