Cruise: Day Two - Morning

It’s common, I suppose, to play the “where would I be, what would I be doing” game while on vacation. As I stood at the stern of the ship this morning looking at our wake (this particular ship being configured in something of a metaphor on life in that it’s easier to see where we’ve been that it is to see where we’re going) and enjoying my first coffee of the day, I couldn’t help comparing the fresh ocean breeze and the unlimited view with my normal Monday morning. Rather than a hectic, early dawn drive to work, I had a leisurely stroll along the nearly deserted decks. Rather than staring out the office windows at a sunrise that I could only experience as a picture of a day’s promise that I would forego in the pursuit of sustenance, I was able to take deep breaths of the morning air, knowing that the pleasures of a day spent in a tropical late spring day were mine for the taking.

It’s early, still, and while we have already had a pre-breakfast delivered to us at exactly the requested hour and minute (there’s no “Island Time” here, Mon), we are relaxing in the room and on the balcony with mimosas in hand looking forward to a more substantial breakfast in the main dining room. It is already obvious that cruise ships are made for those that like to eat every bit as much as for those that wish to travel to exotic locales. The range of feeding options runs from pizza and burgers all the way up to the five star Surf & Turf dinner we had last night.

While nearly all of the food onboard is “free” (in that it’s all included in the overall cruise price), there is one upscale restaurant available for an additional fee of $30 per person. In what is either a stunning display of truth in advertising or an equally surprising naiveté in the connotations of the English language, it is called The Golden Fleece. Having dined there last night, I can unequivocally state that the latter is the correct choice. It was very, very good.

In retrospect, my having already become accustomed to the high degree of customer service that Carnival provides, I should have known that the abnormally high bar of service would be raised to stratospheric heights in the upscale steak house. I learned a valuable lesson in being very careful in what you say to a server on board the ship, even jokingly. As we were seated at our table by a curved wall of windows that looked out onto the passing ocean, our hostess asked if we would prefer to be on the other side of the ship, although she warned us that should we choose to do so, the setting sun would likely be so overbearing that we’d have to pull the blinds. I told her we’d be fine where we were, but she night have to ask the t-shirt clad guy sitting in a deck chair right outside the windows to move as it felt like he’d be sitting at the table with us.

I swear I was just joking. I told her at least three times that I was just joking. But a few minutes later I saw her leaving her station and heading forward towards the bridge. She came back with a couple of white uniformed crew members who proceeded to make the dozen or so folks sitting out there pick up their chairs and move away from the windows.

I don’t think I would make a good King. I felt like a total jerk! I did overhear some deck workers later as they were gathering up the chairs as they were talking back and forth with each other about the passengers that had untied those chairs and moved them to places where they weren’t supposed to be, so it seems that there is an actual ship’s policy that precludes people from sitting where they were, but still. What an amazing power to have! I shudder to think about what I’d be like if I ever got used to having that kind of control.

Our waitress was a cute young brown-eyed blond from Belarus named Yulia. The dining room was extremely empty; there were only two other couples in addition to us. In fact, we later learned that they wouldn’t have opened at all that night (they normally require at least eight people to have made reservations) but they opened anyway because they knew it was our anniversary. With just us to serve, she was able to spend a lot of time chatting with us. The food was marvelous, from the Ahi Tuna Carpaccio (for me) and Baked Onion Soup (for her) starters, the Caesar salads with fresh-made dressing, the filet mignon and broiled lobster tail (for both) to the chocolate sample dessert.

The Bread Service

Ahi Tuna

Chocolate Sampler (and rare open flame)

Me, with "The Ugly Tie"

It was probably our best anniversary dinner ever!

Cruise - Day One

As I sit down to write, the sounds of calypso music compete with the periodic grunts and groans of mechanical equipment being called back to work after what have must seemed like an all too short respite after a seven day sojourn through the tropic wonderland that is the western Caribbean, a couple of thousand strangers having disembarked this morning and replaced with a new group of passengers, myself included. Myself, I too am feeling the effects of a long day, mine exacerbated by the eighty percent completed Long Island Iced Tea by my side.

While my cruise ship, the Carnival Legend, was still off-loading thousands of tanned and well-rested revelers early this morning, I was rising from a restless night at the La Quinta Inn, just a mile or so from runway 36L at Tampa International. Being a creature of habit, my first inclination was to seek out the nearest source of caffeine, preferably in the form of a hot cuppa. The nearest source to hand was the germ habitat that is the motel room coffee maker and a package of Maxwell House. It's a well known fact that La Quinta is a Spanish euphemism for The Dysentery and that the original Maxwell House was a hospice founded by Sir Maxwell of The Trots, Surrey, England.

Beggars not being considered to be the best of choosers in polite society, I made do.

Having gained sufficient caffeine-enabled sentience to make a conscious decision, it seemed obvious that the best place to break our nocturnal fast would be the IHOP next door to the Quinta. Having arrived at a booth, I decided on the sirloin tips with eggs, hash browns, and hotcakes over the ever more delightful yet far more risky smoked sausage. Caution having been already thrown far enough into the wind for one day with the motel room coffee, right?

As we gain speed through the channel that will lead to the ocean, the mechanical sounds have abated as the ship bows to the bit, and the calypso music now fights, oddly enough, with the ensuing WHOOP-WHOOP of fellow passengers, themselves exhibiting a somewhat different reaction to the sudden onslaught of alcohol than my own. It is to be more than tolerated; it is to be empathetically shared and forgiven. For it is not easy getting aboard, what with a couple of thousand other folks attempting to do so concurrently. Still, it is the WHOOP-WHOOP that I simply cannot tolerate, that being for purely personal reasons having to do with a simply awful vacation in Cancun a few years ago. My empathy and tolerance in the immediate situation will deteriorate as the hour grows later.

Lest I give the wrong impression, allow me to say that it is not by any means horrible getting aboard. We left the motel at 11:00 am and by 1:00 pm we were seated at an outdoor-ish table on the port side of the Legend, partaking of a buffet lunch. I had some kind of Asian seafood dish that I strongly suspect was comprised of the types of seafood favored by island nations like Japan. In other words, scallops (which I’m okay with) and squid/octopus (which I am not thrilled with). It’s a buffet, though, so unpalatable dishes are easily dispensed with and replaced by a different ethnicity. I did so. Italy won.

The two hours between the leaving and the seating were mostly spent in one line or another. There was a line to get into the pier side embarkation place, a line to get through something very similar to airport security, a line to get checked in and receive our room keys and ship credit card, a line to get on the ship, and a line at the buffet. They all moved efficiently, though. The two hours wasn’t horrible, but it did feel a bit like the kind of thing that should be rewarded with a dollop or two of alcohol upon completion. My imbibing of slightly more than a couple of dollops might explain my inability to type and/or spell all that well at this particular point. It might also explain the uncontrollable rage I feel for the idiot that insists on orbiting the ship on his noisily obnoxious jet ski. Get over yourself, dude!

WHOOP-WHOOP!

That is really wearing thin!

An airport just slid by. I swore that someday I will land there in my RV-12, once I get it built. I’ll have to figure exactly what airport it was when I get back. Paying $.55 per minute of internet connectivity is bring to fore the old habits developed in the pre-Internet years of CompuServe.

I am downwind of the smokers on the adjoining balcony. I could do without that too, but it’s their right. I can deal with it.

So, having fed at the buffet and feeling somewhat anxious to explore more of the ship I took a quick photo tour. You’ll have to come back next week to see them, though. Internet minutes don’t grow on trees, at least not out here on the almost-ocean.

At 3:15 we found the library which, having no more that a few dozen actual books, has the primary function of providing internet access. Unfortunately, it is also the worst possible place to be when the mandatory muster drill gets called. It was an unfortunate place to be because by the time we got there, I was so twisted around that I didn’t know port from starboard and was increasingly starting to question up versus down. Still, we managed to find our muster station where I ended up being the only person to bring hot dogs. Everyone else, it seems, knew that it was ‘muster’ and not ‘mustard.’ We were all (over a thousand of us) formed into lines running the length of the ship. I figure that when Carnival; does this at their port in Galveston, TX, people spontaneously break out into line dances. No one thought that to be as clever an observation as I did, sadly.

Muster having been accomplished, the entire ship’s population was released all at once to go wherever it is they wanted to go. This naturally flooded (ooh, poor choice of words, that!) the elevators and stairs. I thought a drink in the ten-story atrium would be a great way to kill time until the rush abated. Hence the Long Island Iced Tea, internationally recognized as the quickest way to relieve stress and impair spelling/typing ability in the known world. We made it back to our balcony cabin in time for the 4:00 sailing. Of course, after drinking eighty percent of the “tea,” I had a hard time determining if the movement I was feeling under my feet was due to the movement of the ship or to my rapidly failing equilibrium after downing an amazingly strong drink. Or, possibly, both.

I now think it was the alcohol. The movement of the ship is nearly indiscernible, although that too could simply be the numbness that inevitably follows the initial instability from a strong drink. In any event, we’ve been sailing for nearly an hour and it would appear that we’re soon going to run out of coastline. We will cross under the bridge that officially demarks bay from ocean in another 45 minutes or so, but I will likely be getting dressed for dinner by then. We’re dining in the super fancy steakhouse tonight in honor of our eighteenth anniversary. As I said while bantering with a few co-riders in the shuttle van that took us from the hotel to the pier, our twenty-three year old is so proud! They didn’t bat a eye, of course, what with that kind of banter having become obsolete nearly four decades ago.

I console myself with the fact that I’ve actually been pretty good with my jocularity thus far; it’s nearly as good as alcohol at helping me tolerate this much close proximity to the WHOOP-WHOOP crowd.

Trepidation and hot dogs

I didn't think it would be this way, but I guess I should have known. Brave Sir Hogarth should have been the clue. When younger, back when his name was just Hogarth and he had yet to be saddled with the ironic/sarcastic sobriquet "Brave Sir," there wasn't much of anything that he was afraid of. These days, a thunderstorm will send him to the basement where he attempts to dig himself an even deeper bunker through solid concrete. He is shy of the baby gate that we use to constrain the movements of the still periodically incontinent Cabot. Rather than growing less trepid with age, the reverse has happened.

I'm seeing the same thing happening with me and flying. With over 700 flying hours behind me, it seems odd that there are more and more things that I prefer to avoid because they scare me. One of them is fly-ins, or any other event that might cause a normally sedate uncontrolled airport to become a nexus of activity in the landing pattern. In short, they scare me. I avoid them. But...

Today was the day of the annual fly-in at Sporty's. That would normally, if history is any predictor, be a complete and total "don't care" to me. This year, though, a relative-by-marriage was going to be there selling his wares. I married into a flying family, at least with regards to some of the cousins and an uncle. Bill hasn't got his own plane (yet - I'm wearing him down), but he is able to bum some left seat time in an airplane that basically flies itself.



It's not like I have to sell him on the idea of flying a plane that responds directly to the pilot's wants, desires, and demands without first consulting with an electronic committee of decision makers since he used to fly Boeings and still remembers what it was like to fly a plane rather than manage it, but I think he still needs some convincing on this whole concept of flying below 30,000 feet and having to get your own coffee. I suspect that it's going to take an RV ride to really set the hook.

In any event, I figured I couldn't go wrong flying down there on a nice Saturday morning for a visit and a couple of free (well, free to me. Actually paid for by people that buy air tugs from Sportys) Brats and/or Metts, as long as I got an early start and beat the rush. I'd have to get a really early start, though, since there wasn't enough gas in the plane to get there and back. Unwilling to buy gas down there at the unconscionably extortive rate of $4.85 per, I opted to stop at Circleville for a dram or two of their rapidly dwindling $3.99 vintage. There's no way that price can last and I wanted to get some of it while the getting was still good.

We all know by now how much I likes me irony, right? I'm going to ruin the punchline and just tell you right now: it was far more difficult getting into Circleville than it was getting into Clermont Co. And harder to get out, too, but for a different reason.

As is my wont, I was monitoring the traffic at Circleville (CYO) while still 15 miles out in order to develop a mental picture of what was going on. I didn't expect there to be much traffic, and there wasn't. As I was approaching from the northwest, there was a Piper Warrior on left downwind to runway 19 (I would have preferred the opposite, but the wind was still light enough that it wouldn't matter that much) and a Cessna coming in from the west. The Cessna was a few miles in front of me, so I'd be following him.

When I was still ten or so miles out, another Cessna (we'll call him Hotel Delta, mostly because that's the plane he was flying - a rental from Bolton) called in that he was on the VOR approach to 19. For most weekend pilots, that is a distinctly useless piece of information. I knew what it meant, though: he'd be making what is in essence a straight in approach to the runway; he wouldn't fly a downwind - base - final pattern like the rest of us. Assuming, that is, that he intended to land at all. Given the startlingly clear weather, the only reason to be flying such an approach is for practice. A practice approach seldom ends in a landing.

As I got closer and had heard no further updates from Hotel Delta, I asked him where he was.

"Four miles north, planning a low pass."

Ah, good. That was helpful, particularly since it indicated that we might be at the airport at around the same time. Hard to tell without knowing his speed. But at least I knew what he'd be doing. Just to make sure we had plenty of separation, I asked him what altitude he'd be using as he went down the runway.

"One thousand, four hundred."

Since I had to cross over the airport (Why? To get to the other side!), I told him that I'd stay at 2,000' until I was on the other side and then descend in the downwind.

No reply.

"You're welcome," I thought.

When I got to the airport, the Warrior had landed and the Cessna was on left base. I called that I was turning left downwind, had Zero Two Alpha (the other Cessna) in sight, but did not know where Hotel Delta was. There had been no further calls from him, but it shouldn't have mattered. If he was down at 1,400' flying a low pass down the length of the runway, he was no factor.

He wasn't, and he was. He wasn't flying a low pass down the length of the runway, and he was most certainly a factor. Rather than doing what he said he was going to do, he had continued along the VOR course and started a climb right after crossing the runway. What he had done was basically fly into the downwind pattern where he knew another airplane was going to be. I knew all of this because I looked to the left to see the runway and was greeted with the sight of a Cessna heading right at me. I got on the radio and told him that I was at his twelve o'clock (right in front of him) which I hoped would alert him to the need to change course.

Nothing. No reply, no amendment to his current agenda item of killing us both. Being the gracious sort, I got out of his way. I'm nice that way.



In the picture above, the yellow line indicates the path of the VOR approach. I've always found nice weather days to be the absolute worst time to practice instrument approaches, and that they require the utmost in caution and communication if you're going to go ahead and do it anyway. The green line is what I would have expected from a "low pass," what with the whole idea of flying an instrument approach being to get aligned with a runway and "low pass" having a well defined meaning.

The red line is what would be the most dangerous thing to do.

He chose the red line.

It is what it is, and the rule of the road is see and avoid. I saw him, I avoided him. I was just a little surprised at where I saw him, but I shouldn't have been. I know that approach comes in at an angle, and I know the temptation is to just keep following the VOR course, and I know that there is also the temptation to make the left turn on the missed approach right after crossing the VOR (or in this case, less than a minute), but I also know how I would have done it. It's likely that he had always intended to make the missed approach and not make any attempt at all to align with the runway.

But... I also know that I would have communicated all of that to the planes that I knew were already in the pattern. They might be interested, after all.

Did I mention the problems with getting back out of Circleville? Well, one of the reasons I like going there is because of all of the older guys hanging around there that like to chew the fat and share their flying stories and the history of the planes they've owned. But when I'm kinda in a hurry? Not so much. But what can you do? Who wants to be the Type A that comes blazing in with his fancy little hot rod and buys gas without so much as a how ya doin'? Not me. It took a bit longer to get back out that I would have hoped, but it was worth it.

I wasn't so sure it was worth it once I started listening in on Clermont's unicom, though. It sounded pretty crowded! It doesn't matter until you get there since the situation is very dynamic, so I just kept going. Eight miles out, just as I was starting to get a feel for where I would fit in, I started to hear pilots announcing that they going around. A Cozy's nosewheel had collapsed, stranding it on the runway.



I guess they're supposed to look like that. But only when commanded to, not on the runway. That's simply not done in polite company.

I briefly considered just going back home. My last experience with a runway incident had me sitting at MadCo for a couple hours while the runway was closed. Clermont is an uncontrolled airport, though, which means that there is no control tower, and thus no one to close the runway. I orbited around for five or ten minutes to see what would happen. Once I heard airplanes starting to land again, I headed in. It wasn't too bad at all.

Anything for a free hot dog, right?

But I was too early. They were still lighting the grills. I knew that had been a crosswind on the landing!



I hung around waiting; I figured the line was going to grow fast once they started cooking. I was right! I was second through the line, turned around, and saw this behind me:



I did a little walking around. It was like a .0000001% Oshkosh.





Lane Wallace and some AOPA bigwigs flew in to give away Sporty's sweepstakes Cessna LSA:



Lane is a terrific aviation writer, but despite my best efforts I don't think I was able to do anything notable enough to get her attention and have a glowing article written about me.



Not that I found that surprising; I've been invisible to hot chicks for a long, long time now. You know, like forever! (Except for one, Dear, in case you're reading this)

As long as it was sitting there, I took a close look at Cessna's LSA. Since performance between my RV-12 and Cessna's factory-built plane is nearly identical, I wanted to see what you got for twice the money. Other than not getting the chance to build it yourself, that is. I thought that it might be more refined, for example.

I don't think it is.

Cowls attached with screws. They're going to be replacing those a lot!



Fairings attached with blind rivets. These would be fun to remove if you needed to get to something under them.



All kinds of stuff just hanging out in the open. I thought cables and fuel lines would be hidden behind a veneer. Not that I would want them to be hidden, mind you, but for all that money...





Simple bent-tube pitot, just waiting to be bent or knocked off by a careless passenger or line boy.



Not flush riveted. That's not a problem, neither is the RV-12. I just like the picture.



The RV-12 is not a large plane either, but I don't think I'll need to hunker down to get in it.



To be fair, it does have one heck of a nice collection of Garmin avionics in it.



And I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer the Continental engine over the Rotax. Still, I'll happily keep the extra $40,000 it would take to buy one, assuming they ever actually get around to selling them.

The flight home? Would have been a piece of cake if the line boys hadn't made me push Papa back so far. I'm going to feel the pains of pulling him out of this mess for awhile.



I should have known: plenty of people there in the morning, none to be found in the afternoon. I pulled him out while a guy stood there watching me struggle and asking questions about the plane. I was a good ambassador for Van's today.

It was bumpy and a little hot on the way back. My ears even got hot. I let the vents cool them off a bit, until the noise got to be too much.



Back at Bolton I was the only plane in the pattern. And the landing?

Greased it.

A mother of a day

I wanted to go flying today, but there were certain obstacles. One might think from the title of this posting that today being Mothers Day might be one of them, but unfortunately that's not the way I meant it. I left off the second half of "mother" so as to preserve this blog's PG-13 rating.

Obstacle number one was the fact that there was no oil in the airplane, that crucial fluid having been drained out on Thursday in preparation for a full seven quart replacement thereof. As long as the cowls were to be off, I also wanted to see if 1) there was anything I could do about the oil pressure reading I've been seeing on the eponymous indicator on the control panel, and 2) find a better way of securing one of the hinge pins that provides the thankless yet important function of holding the top cowl to the bottom cowl.

Replacing the oil was easy. Nothing else was.

Safety wiring the oil filter has been very difficult ever since I removed the vacuum pump, improvements in the ease of maintenance as a result of a change in another area being known as what's called a "zero sum game." You can click on the Wikipedia link that I provided, or just use my definition: win-lose. While it's easier to get the filter on and off with the increased accessibility, there is no longer a convenient object to safety wire it to. There's a little tab (a very little and, as it turns out, brittle tab) formed into the engine case for this purpose, but I have yet to own an engine that didn't have that tab broken off. It now takes much longer to get a good wiring job in place because there just aren't all that many suitable places to wire it to.

Once that was (finally!) done, I adjusted the oil pressure relief valve in hopes of correcting my high oil pressure problem. What's been happening is the oil pressure is indicating at 90 psi and occasionally above, which is right up against the allowable limit as determined by Lycoming. It's their engine, and I figure they ought to know what's best for it, oil pressure apparently being one of those good things that it is possible to have too much of. You know, like vodka. I talked to my mechanic about it and he suggested a quarter turn adjustment. I also consulted Google - my go-to second opinion:

Pressure relief out of adjustment: If the pressure relief valve is not operating properly, the oil pressure follows the throttle because the oil pump is engine driven and speed sensitive. Lycoming limits are 60 to 90 pounds, with a range of normal 25 when idle go to 100 psi during starting and run-up. See oil pressure specifications in the applicable operators manual before making adjustment.



Lycoming engines: External adjustable type (part number 77808) increase oil pressure by turning adjusting screw clockwise, and to decrease turn counter-clockwise.

I've long suspected that the relief valve was sticking, but it was worth trying the simple adjustment first.

To fix the cowl hinge, I simply made a new one out of some hinge pin material I kept from the rivet repair on the top cowl. It just needed to be a third of an inch longer. That was actually as easy as replacing the oil, so I was actually being a bit too dour when I stated that pouring seven quarts of oil down a tube was the only thing that was easy all day.

I test ran the engine and monitored the oil pressure - it worked great! At 2,200 RPM (an uncomfortable level of power to hold in restraint with the brakes), the oil pressure was reading between 70 and 80 psi. Perfect! As expected, there were also no indications of oil leakage. It's pretty good about staying in there once I get it in there.

All that was left to do was put the cowls back on. Unfortunately, that is my most hated job in the entire encyclopedia of Jobs I Can Do. It's listed under 'A' for Aww, Crap, I Gotta Do That Again?? I usually enlist the aid of a helper for replacing the bottom cowl as it requires someone to lift it into position while the other slides the hinge pins in during the rare and brief periods when everything is in alignment. Doing it alone requires the patience of Job and the dexterity of a circus gymnast. I possess neither.

It took forty-five minutes, and half an hour of that was trying to get the left side bottom pin to go in. That pin has to fit between the very small gap between the exhaust pipe and the bottom of the fuselage, and requires three hands to be able to work in an opening insufficient for only one. That part of the cowl is getting pretty beat up as well and requires some professional work. Since I will probably be trying to sell this airplane right around this time next year, I'm thinking of trying to find someone with more experience with this facet of the plane than I have that I can hire to fix it up for me. I eventually got it done, to which I credit the lubrication of exotic curses applied quite liberally.

The top cowl can either go on easily or fight like a Marlin.



Today was a Marlin day.

One of the things that can go wrong is for me to forget to put a couple of pieces of loose safety wire through the first hinge loops of the hinge strips that run along the back top seam of the cowl and the front of the firewall. I need those wires to twist around the end of the hinge pins to keep them from backing out in flight when the vibration of the engine shakes them loose. Many is the time I have fought the cowl into place, only to reach in for those wires and find that I have forgotten to put them in place. What I do now is put them in as soon as I remove the cowl so I won't forget.

The last wire to go in is the hardest to get at. It is the one that goes from the center of the cowl and down to the right side of the fuselage. I have to reach in through the oil door to get it in, but that means I can't see what I'm doing because the oil door is too small to accept both an arm and a pair of inquisitive eyes concurrently. In this case, the eyes don't have it. I have to feel around with one finger trying to get the pin started in the first hoop while trying to hold the pin with the rest of my fingers. If I drop the pin, the cowl comes back off to retrieve it.

I got the pin started and the first six to eight inches went in okay, but then I hit a wall of resistance. That usually means that the front of the pin has reached the part of the cowl where it starts to curve down towards the side of the plane. When there's resistance, it usually means that I have to use my free hand to wiggle the cowl a little bit to line up the hoops while pushing harder on the pin with my captive right hand. That worked for about an inch and then stopped cold. No amount of pushing and wiggling would budge it. I pulled out my arm and grabbed a flashlight to peer through the oil door to see what the problem was.

The pin had not been started in the hinge hoop after all. It had actually worked its way between the hinge hoops and the edge of the cowl. That worked fine (as far as pushing the pin in - it hadn't done one iota of good as far as holding the cowl onto the airplane) right up until it got to the curved part. Unfortunately, it was well and truly jammed in place. I couldn't pull it back out. After a prolonged struggle, I finally got it loose. I looked back through the oil door before trying to put it in again. I didn't like what I saw.

The safety wire had come out with it.

If a first date had gone like this, not only would I never have called her again, but I would also have burned the dinner receipt, shredded the credit card that I used to pay for the dinner, thrown the cell phone that I called her with into a septic tank, torn her page from the phone book, and dedicated my life to building a time machine so I could go back to the day before I met her and become a Tibetan monk.

Next obstacle: mowing the lawn. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate string trimmers, aka Weed Whackers, and how awful those little self-extending string hub thingys are?

I'll say no more about that.

Finally, though: ready to fly. The latest DUATS observation had the winds at 7 knots, and at that speed, who cares where they were coming from.

When I checked in the with tower for taxi clearance less than half an hour later, the winds were 14 gusting 19, directly across the runway.

Someone, somewhere, has the observational skills of Mr. Magoo.

My personal limit is 15 gusting anything. Anything equal to or greater than that keeps me on the ground. I could have either said "too close to my minimum" and
shut down the plane, or decided that the whole point of having a minimum is to have a solid line drawn in the sand that I will walk up to but not cross.

I flew.

The first thing I noticed at the end of the runway was that the oil pressure was reading right up against the red again. It had been fine during my test run and while taxiing out, but was reading too high again. It was within the allowable limits, of course, but it was being inconsistent and that's something I can do without. I am back to suspecting that the valve is a little bit sticky. Being as it was still within limits, I went ahead and took off.

Wow, was that a ride! With a 14 knot wind from the left, I knew I'd have to hold a little left aileron and a LOT of right rudder to track straight down the runway with both the torque of the engine and the wind pushing on the vertical stabilizer trying to turn me to the left. The wind wasn't at all constant, though, and was in fact pounding at me like a howitzer:

BANG......BANG.......BANG......BANG

Each pummel changed the pressure needed on the rudder. My feet were doing a St. Vitus' dance trying to keep the runway more or less centered in front of me. The left aileron that I had pre-fed into the wing was too much - once we picked up a little speed, the right wing lifted more than I had expected it to. When I released the aileron, the wing dropped back down hard enough to bounce the right wheel back up into the air, and the wing went right back up with it. The rudder was still moving like a hyperactive eel and the wind was still firing cannon bursts into the whole operation. I jabbed some right aileron in to get everything settled down, but that only served to bounce us up into the air about 5 mph too soon. Naturally, with the cool temperatures and the high atmospheric pressure, the engine was doing a fabulous job of making all of this happen quite quickly. With a lurch, we were in the air. Not that the contortions lessened once we broke the cloying bonds, mind you - it's just that the ground was no longer involved. That's always a relief. Air can be brutal, but it's seldom solid.

I went eight miles to the west, decided the flying wasn't going to be any fun with the Domaclesian blade of the impending landing hanging over me, and turned back.

This put the wind at my back and we fairly scooted back to the airport. Figures, doesn't it? I was sure in no hurry to get there, but man were we flying!

I reminded myself that I'd have to make my turn onto final much earlier than normal since the wind would be pushing me towards the extended centerline of the runway at a prodigious clip, and it's good that I did. This is where bad (and nearly always fatal) wrecks come from; a pilot starts his turn onto final, the wind keeps pushing him further away from the centerline until he overshoots, he steepens the turn to try to get back, the view out the window is totally screwy, and he ends up in the classic stall and spin into the ground. The right thing to do is start the turn early and just let the wind blow you onto the correct approach path. Worked like a champ.

With the wind as strong as it was, I elected to make a no-flaps landing. That lets me keep my speed up to penetrate the gusty wind a little better. It also has another salutary aspect which became apparent once I got to the runway. Before that, though, I had to fight my way down the final approach. When it's gusty, I hold a little extra airspeed in case I need it. Today I did. The gusts were hard enough to periodically knock a 15 to 20 degree bank into the wing, and the extra speed of the air across the wings gave me more aileron authority to correct it. I was also using quite a bit of rudder to counteract the left bank that I was using to keep from being blown off to the side of the runway and that too was made more effective with the increased air speed. Finally, when I inevitably hit a sink hole, I had enough energy left to correct with a little back stick and a small burst of power.

The landing itself was ugly. Without the flaps and with the extra speed, the runway approached FAST. I misjudged the flare at right around the same time I got hit with a gust, the combination of which gave me a pretty healthy bounce. The second bounce was smaller, and without the flaps to give the wing increased lift, the third bounce was enough to sap enough energy out of the wing for it to give up any further thoughts of flying. I was ready to quit after the first bounce. I was glad the wing finally saw it my way.

All in all, the landing was about as good as can be expected. It was safe and fully under control, but definitely not one for the Hall of Fame as far as aesthetics go.

It was outstandingly good practice, too, and confirmed that I have my personal minimums set appropriately.

That said, it was also the first time I can remember hearing my heart thumping even as I was bringing the hangar door down.

I'm not flying enough

"I'm not flying enough."

There. I said it. It's not an uncommon thing to hear, but it's more commonly heard from people that don't have 24/7/365 access to their own airplane. It's more understandable when you're renting or in a crowded partnership, but in my situation I don't have any built-in excuses for not flying more than I have been.

That's not to say that there aren't reasons, but the reasons that I have are such thin gruel that they border on being excuses. Sure, the weekend weather has been either grungy with threats of rain or too windy to consider flying a taildragger. But I have to admit that while most of them have been questionable, there have been some that were good enough. And there have certainly been ample opportunities in the evenings.

So why am I not flying? I'm not sure. Partially it's because I'm tired in the evenings. Very, very tired. I get up at 0515 during the week and the fatigue from that starts to set in as early as Tuesday. Sure, I can take a short nap after work and often do, but that causes a restless sleep during the night and I wake up even more tired that I was before. It's a vicious cycle that culminates in my being too tired to do much of anything by Thursday. Lately, I've found it to be just as satisfying to spend an hour or so working on the RV-12. Keep in mind that there is a 3:2 ratio between working on the plane and writing about the work I did, so even an hour directly working on the plane is more than an hour and a half taken out of my few, short disposable hours on a weekday.

Another thing working against me is that over the last two years, I've gotten in the habit of needing a reason to fly. With the cost of gas being over $4/gallon and the O-320 being a somewhat thirsty beast I've found myself feeling guilty about flying around with no destination or goal in mind. Sure, between hangar, insurance, maintenance, and general capital depreciation, gas is the cheapest thing that I put into the airplane. That said, it is also the most immediate and recognizable cost as it doesn't blend into the forest of routine monthly bills. The problem is that I have run out of destinations.

Even with a destination in mind, though, I now feel like I have to have someone with me. That too has been difficult. In a few more months I will be able to take my new dog Cabot with me, but that has to wait until he's a little more mature. I'm going to need to buy a set of MuttMuffs for him and at $60, I only want to buy them once. I'm waiting for his head to get as big as it's going to get. The smaller ones are cheaper, so I am deliberately withholding any kind of praise - I don't want him getting a bigger head!

I will grant you this: $60 is pretty cheap if only to get a picture like this:



Note: that is not Cabot. This is Cabot:







He weighs in at over 30 pounds now, all of it pure, rippling idiot. He'll only get up to 45 or 50 pounds, so I suppose I could go ahead and order him a set of Mediums. If he won't wear them, I will. He and Hogarth bark at each other a lot.

A LOT!

Having recognized the problem of insufficient flying, I strove to address it this week. The first night I flew, I used the goal of re-learning how to land as my rationale for the fuel expenditure. It was good that I did - the first landing was so bad that I had to be extra cautious on my second landing lest I run over any pieces of the airplane that I may have left behind on the runway. A set of four landings got me back to where I was making fairly decent arrivals.

The second night was intended only to heat the oil prior to draining it out for an oil change. I also wanted to get the cowls off in order to attempt to paint over the repair area from the rivets I had to replace over the winter. This will be my first ever attempt at HVLP painting and I fully expect to make a bollocks of it.

As long as I was flying and the weather was conducive, I thought I'd do a "two birds, one stone" thing and climb over the CMH Class C to get some pictures of downtown and THE Ohio $tate University:









It's hard to get good pictures from 5,500' and a couple of miles slant range. From that distance, it doesn't take much for the focus to be horrid. I try to compensate for the weak autofocus (which I use because I'm also busy flying the airplane) by using a smaller f-stop. The way I remember f-stop is that the larger the number, the more things will be in focus. Less intuitive is that the larger the f-stop number, the less light is admitted through the lens. That means that the camera has to compensate with a longer shutter speed. I try to get the f-stop number as high as I can (which, again counter-intuitively, equates to a smaller f-stop) with no more than a 1/125 shutter speed. In this case, that came out to be around an f-stop of 9.

That's about normal for a regular fully automatic picture, so I was still going to end up with a lot of pictures out of focus. But, the benefit of being way up high is that the scenery below is moving by pretty slowly. That means that I will be able to take a lot of shots, especially if I turn on the "just keep clicking until I tell you to stop" mode on the camera. With dozens of pictures, I hope for get a handful that turn out good enough to use. That handful is on display above. Keep in mind that I had to crop very, very tightly; those pictures above are akin to 2" x 2.5" out of an 8" x 10".

Back on the ground, I drained the oil. I'm always surprised at how much oil is trapped in the filter:



Before I removed the vacuum pump, I would never have been able to get that out of there! As it is, I was reminded about a few traits of hot oil:

- it's HOT. Ouch!
- it's thin and will spill quite readily.
- it's slippery, and even slipperier when a thin film gets on the edges of, say, a plastic water bottle.
- it's a good idea to have some cat litter handy in case some gets spilled.

With those lessons in mind, I'll leave it to you to guess how well the draining went with regards to not spilling any oil.

Why drive when you can fly?

Because of the walking, that's why.

I was looking for someplace to fly today after I finished the mowing, a small repair on the tail light fairing on the RV-6, and the breaking down of the crate that the RV-12 fuselage kit came in. It was getting late, but there are plenty of airports nearby. What there's a shortage of, though, is airports nearby that offer some excuse for choosing them as a destination. Not that it's needed, mind you, but still. It helps salve the conscience when burning $4.00/gallon fuel. A truly impecunious situation not always being a staunch requirement for a frugal lifestyle when one is engaging in ostentatious and conspicuous consumption, as it were. It's all about appearances, you see.

I had never taken a close look at Newark-Heath, an airport over on the east side of town. Through the miracle of Bing Maps and its fancy new Silverlight-based "find the closest grub" feature, I found a Skyline Chili just a short walk from the airport. Short being relative, as it turns out, because my co-pilot of the day quickly evidenced an aversion to any walk of greater than five minutes duration. In her defence, she was probably still a bit wobbly from the atrocious landing that I made upon arrival. In my defense of the landing, I too was still a bit unsettled after a brief hallucination in which I thought I saw a tremendously large basket, of all things.



Well, actually, part of that is untrue. I did see a really huge basket, but that doesn't explain the bad landing. That was due to a shifty right crosswind that was boiling across the tree line north of the runway. No complaints, though, since that wind was keeping the air nice and clear and providing one of those rare days when the horizon is clearly visible and the light makes the ground shine. Even though it was just a few minutes of flying, it was enough to shake off the burdens of the week past and improve everyone's mood.

Well, until that landing, anyway. Oh, and the looonnngg walk to the restaurant down a narrow but busy road, diving down into the drainage trenches every time a car came along. Which was a lot. At the end of the narrow road, we found yet another challenging hazard: we had to get across to the other side of an even busier road!



The flight back was a little bumpier, but that was no big deal. It got a bit hectic as we got back to Bolton, though. We were about seven and a half miles southeast of Bolton and I was just getting ready to call the tower, when:

"Bolton Tower, Meridian [whatever] is ten miles southeast, inbound, landing."

Uh-oh. That's pretty much the neighborhood we're in, and a Meridian is a big, fast turboprop.

"Meridian, report a two mile right base, runway four."

Hmm, I better get in this game before I get shut out.

"Bolton Tower, experimental four six six papa golf, seven miles southeast, inbound, landing."

"Six papa golf, report two mile right base runway four."

Uh, no. Bad idea.

"Tower, six papa golf, why don't I head for a mid-field right downwind instead. That Meridian is going to over take me."

"Six papa golf, you can do that if you want to. (Chicken!)"

I wanted to. I really wanted to. I had already slowed down to dump the altitude that I had kept to cross over the Rickenbacker Class D airspace and now had to lose before getting to the pattern at Bolton. I didn't want to hit the pattern with a gigantic basket full of airspeed, so I had slowed down to buy myself time. Getting in line behind a Meridian would be no big deal since it's a big, fast turboprop. And he'd still be boogeying along at 120 - 130 knots at least, I figured.

Just as I was thinking how odd it was to see two Meridians in one day (a different one had been taxiing out for takeoff when we arrived at Newark - he didn't see my awful landing, though) when I hardly ever see one, the radio came alive again.

"Bolton Tower, Cessna six two two six six over downtown, inbound, landing."

Hmm, about the same distance as us, but since he's pretty much pointed straight down the runway the tower will put him in a left downwind.

"Two six six, enter a right downwind, runway four."

Whaaaaaatt?? Why would he do that?? Oh, I had forgotten about the student that was doing his first solo. (He's sitting at home right now writing one hell of a blog posting, I'll bet) He must be on the left downwind and the tower is keeping him out of the fray. Great, something else to worry about. He'd be turning left base at just about the same time I'd be turning right base. Nose-to-nose with a guy making only the second solo landing of his life. Sounded like fun.

A couple of minutes later I caught sight of the Meridian off to my left screaming along in a wide right base. He definitely would have caught up with us. A glance to the right and there was the Cessna coming in from downtown. I wasn't quite to the point where I would usually make my turn into the downwind (I normally get pretty tight in so I can glide to the runway if for some reason I ever need to) but I went ahead and started my turn while simultaneously telling the tower that I had both the Meridian and 266 in sight.

Six papa golf, follow the Meridian. Meridian [whatever], cleared to land runway four. Two six six, your traffic is an experimental in front of you on the downwind."

At that point, everything was lined up nicely and I figured the only potential wrench in the works was the guy doing his first solo, but...

"Eight three nine, taxi back from taxiway alpha four via alpha."

Oh, he was doing stop & goes. That nicely solved for one of the variables in the equation, but left as an unknown why 266 wasn't on a left downwind. I'll never know that, and it didn't really matter anyway. There was one more nagging thing, though: in my opinion, "follow the Meridian" does not carry the same legal weight as "cleared to land."

"Tower, Papa Golf is right base.(hint hint)"

"Papa Golf, cleared to land. (didn't I already tell you that??)"

In the flare I thought it was going to be another horrible bouncer, but I somehow finessed it into a fairly decent arrival. It's almost as if the runway at Bolton is padded in some way that other runways aren't. As I was rolling out on the runway, still going pretty quickly because 266 was coming down final:

"Six papa golf, left at alpha three, hold short at the parallel."

Ah, there's yet another Cessna taxiing out. I made the left off of the runway onto Alpha 3 and was just reaching up to pop open the canopy for a little air, when:

"Six papa golf, WITHOUT DELAY continue across the parallel on Alpha 3 onto the ramp."

"Without delay" is something I'm particularly good at, and so is your typical Van's airplane.

"Wilco, six papa golf."

I love saying "Wilco," especially when it's followed with a blast of throttle. Makes me feel like, I don't know... a pilot!

Hedging my bets

It's one of life's cruel ironies that the weather most suited for flying is also most suited for far less desirable activities such as spring cleaning and yard work. If it's nice and cool under clear blue skies, there's a lot to be said for getting work done that would be far more uncomfortable once the temperature and humidity rises to oppressive levels. But... flying! The temptation is to defer the flying for the next day and get the chores done today, right? Well, no, that's not at all right. The temptation is to ditch the chores and go flying while the gettin' is good.

I opted to do the chores. I suffer brief episodes of maturity that are every bit as concerning (and thankfully rare) as blackouts. And really, those hedges haven't been trimmed in the six or seven years since they were planted and they've grown so out of control that Japanese film makers are considering using them as city-destroying monsters in their next series of films. So, start with the hedges and see how that goes.

It's a horrible job, particularly for those hedges that have spiky foliage. I don't know the official name of them; I just call them Those ^#$#*%$ Bushes.

Whenever I'm out doing yard work on a beautiful day, I'm reminded of one of the very few downsides to living near the airport. The planes out doing touch & goes that I normally enjoy as one of the benefits of being so close to the airport taunt me, teasing me with their freedom to enjoy such fine conditions. Oh, how I hate them!

But eventually the job is done, and the job after that (scrubbing the winter road gunk off of the garage floor) is done too. It's too late in the day to go anywhere, and I'm planning on flying somewhere tomorrow anyway, but what if the weather doesn't cooperate and I end up grounded? Ugh, a fate to ugly to ponder! So I decided to hedge my bets and take a little ride around the local area. The winds had picked up to 14G18 by then, but they were conveniently oriented right down the runway.

I've owed Bob the Neighbor a ride for awhile since he has twice served as the on-call lifting buddy for the receipt of RV-12 kits, so I asked if he'd like to ride along. Indeed he would, probably in aid of getting out of yard work, but who am I to judge?

It was quite a nice ride. The wind only made things bouncy down low and once we climbed to 5,500' to make a touristy deviation over downtown Columbus and THE Ohio $tate University it was perfectly smooth. Bob enjoyed his ride, but darned if he didn't ask the worst question a pilot ever wants to hear which is, of course, "Do you have a bag?" We made it back without him needing a sick bag, which is good because I didn't have one. I really ought to get one; it is not at all rare for a little queasiness to arise (so to speak) in the RV simply because it's a lot different than the flying most people are used. Which is to say, I tend to fly it in a manner that most planes wouldn't tolerate. Which is to say, well, somewhat thoughtlessly at times. After 400 some hours, I tend to forget that it's an acquired taste.



Bob's problem came from his request for me to lower the right wing so he could get a picture. We were in the "channel" between the Rickenbacker and Bolton Class D airspaces and I needed to keep the plane headed in the right direction, so as I lowered the right wing I had to compensate with left rudder. That's a sliding, slipping, uncomfortable flight attitude at the best of times, but it is even more so if you have your head turned and your vision restricted to the viewfinder of a camera.

Surprisingly, given the fairly strong winds, the landing was a nice, light almost-greaser. And after me having warned him that it would probably be a pretty bouncy one. Oh well, under-commit and over-deliver, I always say.