Kacy J's

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...  another military retiree landed.

That one is a T-34 Mentor.

Dr. Stan hasn't got one of those.

Yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Worst. Landing. Ever!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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


Him: "Of course."


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


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


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


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


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


Sigh.

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


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


Nope, we're getting to that.

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


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


I pointed at co-pilot trainee John.

The Furey Fly-in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That thing was FAST!

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

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

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

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

Hazards to aerial navigation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In other words, I bounced it.

A Fall Preview

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

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

No reply.

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

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

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

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

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

Renters.

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

Follow-on article from Oshkosh

Oddly, almost completely unrelated to airplanes.

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

Sailing on Lake Fiasco

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great. Just great.

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

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

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

I suddenly missed my kayak.

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

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

Captain Bligh made better time in his lifeboat.

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

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

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

 Great.

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

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

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