Oshkosh 2010 - Day 0

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

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

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

44 inch waist, according to the tag.

"Well, what's his waist size?"

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

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

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

Egg was fascinated by Capt. Gorton's biography:

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

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

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

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

luff  (lf)

n.

1.

a. The act of sailing closer into the wind.

b. The forward side of a fore-and-aft sail.

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

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

Yep, just a few steps.

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

I think I'll keep it

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

It does.

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mansfield Open House and Car Show

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

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

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

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

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

At 15 miles out, I called approach. 

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

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

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

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

Sweet! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hilarious, right? I really crack me up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I found my hat under a nearby King Air.

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

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

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

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

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

Reader Mail:

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

Pam Fonseca

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Touch & Goes

Not always as easy as you'd think!

Cabot's Fathers Day

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

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

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

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

Aerodrome closed except prior permission required 937 - 417 - 5907

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.25 in a 12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally - back in the air!

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


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


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


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


"Huh? I'm not hiding anything."


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


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


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


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

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


"NO! This is a frontal thing." 


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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