Rainy weekend…

Housebound for most of the weekend, although the rains did abate for just long enough to mow the lawn. While I was out there putzing about in the yard, I also decided to unclog one of the rain getters that I had seen overflowing during the downpour:

“I’ll take ‘Things That Shouldn’t Have Been a Surprise’ for $500, Alex.”

“And the answer is, ‘You get drenched with cold water.'”

“Ooh, I know that one! ‘What happens when you stand under an overflowing rain gutter and remove the clogged down pipe?'”

Ding ding ding! $500!

Later in the day, it was a trip to the mall with Co-pilot Egg for to procure a spiffy dress for the Homecoming dance. At Macy’s. On a Sunday afternoon. I thought it was bad enough when I was surrounded by a pack of ravening, giggling teenage girls, but no, the worst of the pain was yet to come. It was the 20 minutes that she was in the fitting room trying on dresses that really made me uncomfortable. Because, well, Macy’s thought for some reason that the optimal area to put the fitting rooms was deep in the heart of the ‘intimate apparel’ department. I retreated as far as I could without running the risk of losing the co-pilot, but that was only a slight improvement: night gowns and robes.

Salvaging as much of my masculinity as possible after that ordeal, we stopped at Lowe’s and bought pieces/parts required to build a work table for the RV-12 project. That marks the official beginning of the build process, in my opinion. But you’ll have to read about it at the Schmetterling Aviation blog.

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Baby steps

Walk before you run. Dip in a toe before diving in. Slow and steady wins the race.

All well and good, but here I am sitting inside on a rainy, gloomy Saturday with nothing to do when I could be deburring the vertical stab ribs.

I’ve been pacing myself on the RV-12 so as to minimize the shock to the normal family routines and pace of life, but I decided this morning to make a major step forward: I printed out and filled in the Vans Order Form for the RV-12 Empennage.

All that’s left to do now is fax it in.

I should have that done by early December at the latest.

Baby steps.

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New RV-12 Site

It makes sense to have a separate site for RV-12 related topics. There is a new image at the top of the right side bar showing the logo for the fictional Schmetterling Aviation. Click the logo to go to the new site.

The Papa Golf Chronicles is not going away; I still have an RV-6 to fly!

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On building an RV-12

If nothing else, I think I will build the tail over this winter. I’m not a very outdoorsy type in the bitter cold weather anymore and I need a project to keep myself occupied. The beauty of the RV-12 tail kit is that the vast majority of the work can be done in my basement. Because it includes the tail cone, the final assembly of the tail would have to be performed somewhere above ground. I’m not keen on leaving the cars out on the driveway so using the garage is out of the question, but I have plenty of room in the hangar to do the final riveting.

The advantages of starting with the tail are related to cost. The kit is $2,150 plus shipping which is a very small initial expense when compared to the overall cost of the kit. Another benefit is that there is resale value for the tail should I decide that I don’t want to proceed with the rest of the build. There will be a very large number of RV-12s built, so there will therefore be a ready market for a completed tail. Why not buy one already done for the same cost as the kit itself?

The more important and difficult decision will be whether or not to continue to build the rest of the airplane. As the build process progresses, both the cost and the physical size of the components increases dramatically. I would be reluctant to build an entire wing or fuselage in the hangar, but if there is a reasonable ratio between time spent fabricating or preparing individual parts before assembling them into or onto a prohibitively large structure, well, that would be different. If I could take a bunch of deburred and fluted ribs out to the hangar to final rivet onto the spar, for example, the time spent in the hangar would be minimized. That’s only really important for the three or four months of bitter winter cold; a good fan would keep the hangar at a suitable temperature for all but the worst of the summer days.

Along that line of thought, I asked Wingman Ted, who is currently building an RV-10, what that ratio might be. His estimate is 50-50. So, half the time would be spent preparing parts in my basement, the other half would be spend assembling them in the hangar. This would inevitably slow the pace of the project somewhat, but I think it’s important to note that I have an advantage over the more typical builder: I already have an airplane to fly. What do I care if it takes five to seven years to finish an RV-12? And with the option to bail out and sell the partially complete kit any time I want, I don’t see much financial risk to the endeavor.

So, why an RV-12 in the first place? Well, I ain’t getting any younger and the LSA airplane has the benefit of removing any worries over losing my medical. That is, after all, how I got my RV-6. I think the guy that built it only put 155 hours on it before losing his medical. And, although the RV-12 is 30 knots slower than the RV-6, it is more capable when the winds get higher than my comfort level in the taildragging, small rudder RV-6. And with a nosewheel, the RV-12 would be suitable for flight instruction. That would be a boon to co-pilot Egg!

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Papa Golf meets his maker…

Papa meets his maker? That sounds pretty ominous! But it’s true only in a strictly literal sense; I flew Papa Golf up to Urbana to attend the 42nd annual Mid-Eastern Regional Fly-In (MERFI) this morning. I don’t go to many fly-ins anymore for various reasons, one of which is that it can be quite hectic in the landing pattern when a few hundred airplanes all converge on a quiet rural airport all at once, but I wanted to go this time because the guy that built 466PG was going to be there. I call him the guy that built my airplane and he calls me the guy that bought his airplane, but Papa doesn’t much care about the distinction either way.

I know to get an early start on these things but found myself to be inordinately tired by Friday night, even with the holiday-reduced four day workweek. I slept in a bit longer that I usually do and lugubriously lingered over my morning coffee for almost an hour before heading to the airport. The Weather-out-the-Window&trade was gorgeous and I knew that I was going to face a stiff penalty in the form of a traffic pattern full of other arrivals for indulging in such an extended morning lassitude, but it was a fair trade.

I arrived at the hangar to find Luke, the owner of a nice looking Yak, getting ready to make the same short trip to Urbana that I was planning, albeit with a brief stop at MadCo for gas. He had a passenger, Dave, going along for the ride. Dave’s a big fan of RVs, so I suggested that he ride with me over to MadCo where I would replace the fuel used on last week’s trip to Chicago. He could then jump in the back of the Yak for their trip up to Urbana. Hard to beat a deal like that, he said, so off we went. As long as both planes were headed to the same place, I suggested to Luke that we form up for some air-to-air photos. I did the flying while Dave used my camera to take the pictures:

Luke landed first, but I made the first turn-off from the runway in a devious attempt to be the first in line to get gas. They have two 100LL pumps, though, so that turned out not to be much of an advantage at all. I had a pretty good-sized bounce on the landing (inexcusable given how calm the air was) but made a nice recovery. I needed far less fuel than that big, thirsty Yak so I was back in the air just as they were climbing back aboard for their departure.

I dialed in the Urbana Unicom while still 15 or 20 miles out, and it was a very close thing: I almost turned around an went back to Bolton. The radio traffic painted a pretty ugly picture: there were so many planes calling position reports and intentions that it seemed impossible that anyone was hearing anything others were saying. I counted at least three planes that were on left base to runway 2 simultaneously and another half dozen scrapping for a spot in the downwind.

As I got closer I heard a Mooney pilot flying a long three mile final griping about planes cutting in front of him. That really ought not to have been a surprise to him; there’s no justification for making a long straight-in approach with that many planes flying a full pattern. He started getting pretty snippy about it, too. While it seemed that tempers might start to get pretty short, it all settled down and for the most part everyone was behaving civilly and trying to work out their positions in the scrum by the time I got close enough to care.

By the time I got to the airport area, there were two on left base to runway 2, a maroon Stinson that was making a 360 degree turn out of the downwind to increase the gap between himself and the two other planes on downwind in front of him, and two more entering the downwind on a 45 degree angle behind the Stinson. I slotted in behind the Cessna that was two planes back from the Stinson. Other that having to fly the pattern much slower than I’m used to, it wasn’t too difficult once I had a spot in line. I greased the landing, too. That’s always nice to do in front of a few thousand critical witnesses.

I taxied in and was directed to park next to a very nice looking RV-6. As I climbed out of Papa, happy to have gotten through the hectic approach and landing, I commented to the other RV guy that nothing makes your day like a near death experience before breakfast. He chuckled at that; he had just landed too and had a pretty similar experience.

I hung around the plane for awhile and eventually a golf cart pulled up in front of Papa. I could overhear the driver talking about his old plane. Aha! He must be the very guy I’m looking for! We chatted for a few minutes about how well everything was going with Papa, the few changes that I had made since I took over the care and feeding, and how we both would like to be building RV-12s:

I also found out where the antique eight day clock in Papa’s panel came from: it used to fly in an F-100 Super Sabre. Cool!

(Look close – I put a white box around it)

It’s not that he hasn’t got anything else to work on, though. He spends a lot of time working on the B-17 restoration project that they have going on at the airport. So you could say that he’s already building another plane:

They have an amazing shop:

Restoring a plane that big is a huge undertaking, but not all of the tasks are big. There are plenty of small details to take care of:

You can’t just order parts. You have to fabricate nearly everything:

That will eventually end up being the engine control stand.

Unlike some homebuilders that agonize over the decision as to what engine to use, these guys already have it figured out:

Apparently there are still some open questions. I hope they get this figured out, whatever the question is:

There were quite a few restored warbirds that had flown in. This is what the B-17 being restored will eventually look like:

There’s also an old DC-3 sitting in the new museum hangar:

No one was guarding it, so I helped myself to a little tour of the interior. There’s not much nose on a DC-3 so you get a pretty good view out the front:

The panel has been modernized, but a lot of the radios have gone missing, maybe due to the lack of a guard:

Ha, just kidding. I think. It looked like they didn’t mind if you took a peek.

Here’s an old checklist and the required airworthiness certificate:

After walking around absorbing the history and ambiance of all of those airplanes, it’s not too surprising that this impromptu Rorschach test elicited a response of ‘airplane’ from me when I saw it:

So there I was, tooling along on a relaxing flight back to Bolton when it happened: The mid-air collision that I had been so nervous about in the morning:

I was at 3,500′ at the time, and I hit that bug so hard that I could hear it over the sound of the engine and wind noise, and despite the noise reduction of my headsets.

I don’t like insects very much to begin with, but over-achievers that want to fly at 3,500′? They really bug me.

I got home to find that the photo that I had ordered from Shutterfly had arrived. I really liked one of my Chicago skyline pictures from last week and had had it enlarged in order to frame it and enter it in next week’s annual photo show. I rushed up to Hobby Lobby and had them frame it while I waited – it has to be dropped off for the competition by Wednesday. I think it came out great:

Wish me luck!

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The Windy City: Part 3: Riding Around

We still had a few hours to spend in Chicago, the transportation to do so, but nothing even remotely close to a plan for what to do. Step one was the easiest: find a place to park. Lisa works downtown and had a parking card for one of the garages, so we enjoyed a short drive from the Meigs area to a parking garage just a few blocks away. With my head hanging out the window of the Prius like a well-pampered poodle, I took pictures of various buildings that we went by. And, with the same comprehension level of the aforementioned poodle, I don’t have the least idea what any of them are. Hey, at least I didn’t bark at squirrels! Not that I wasn’t tempted, mind you.

Once parked and out on the sidewalk, I was surprised to discover that there is a river flowing through downtown Chicago. Hey, don’t laugh. How was I to know? Did you know that we have two or three flowing through land-locked Columbus? You did?? Oh. Never mind.

With a river running right down the middle of a major metropolis, there are bound to be a few bridges here and there. Because the rivers offer access to and from one of the Great Lakes, the boats traveling through can be quite large. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise to learn that there are dozens of drawbridges in Chicago. And interestingly enough, they’re rather scenic. They have little huts on each end, presumably for the draw bridge operator to nap in during the long spells between openings. The huts at each bridge are architecturally diverse. Some are bland concrete while others have a Victorian feel to them:

Close on the revelation that there are rivers in Chicago came the introduction to the idea of “water taxis.” Yes, rather than sitting in the back of a swelteringly hot, smelly cab, you can take a boat up and down the river for just a few bucks. Which, by the way, Lisa paid for. I found that even with all of my preparation for the trip, I had failed to bring any more cash that a single $20 bill. Sigh. Still, the cab was just pulling up to the dock as we got there, so it was a mercifully short wait before boarding for a trip down the river to China Town.

What? Did I know that there’s a China Town in Chicago? No, of course not!

There were a lot of diverse boats moving up and down the river. All this one needed was a drunk skipper, a shrill missionary, and a bigger smokestack to be cast as The African Queen:

The hierarchy of command on the boat was starkly apparent. The three-striper stayed at the helm the whole time while the two-striper sold tickets, marshaled landlubbers on and off the boat and, for all I know, swabbed the decks at the end of the day:

I’m sure that people that ride the water taxis frequently become oblivious to the views eventually, but I found the variety of bridges and views of the city to be intriguing:

Lisa said this next one is the Trump building.

I said, “That explains the Phallic nature of it.”

The guy across from me chuckled.

Too bad they couldn’t add a bad toupee to it somehow:

Lisa wasn’t too proud to be seen with a pair of tourists:

You can ride along, if you’d like to:

We pulled into the nifty little China Town dock after about a fifteen minute ride:

It’s a five minute walk from the dock to the China Town commerce district. This square is bordered by the twelve Chinese horoscope animals, and each has a plaque defining the traits of those born during the matching lunar cycle. I am a Bull. In a competing horoscope, I am a Leo. Hmmm, a Leo and a Bull. That explains so, so much! There might be something to all of this. Read the words I underlined in red:

Ha ha ha ha ha! They sure got that right!

I caught some odd looks for doing my Bull pose. Or maybe it was for standing there saying ‘Tatanka. Tatanka‘ like the Indians in ‘Dances with Wolves’ said to Kevin Costner when they were trying to learn each others’ language. Either way, I’m sure it looked pretty silly:

At this point I think I was stretching Lisa’s patience with my touristiness pretty close to the breaking point but the funny thing is that just a few moments later, as we were walking across the square, I saw a girl by the Year of the Monkey statue doing a monkey impersonation. So there.

China Town seemed to primarily a collection of Chinese Restaurants, something I have access to at home. Still, I love Chinese food and we were getting hungry so we initiated the prolonged search for a restaurant. We didn’t choose the restaurant whose food is so gelatinous that they can display it in the window:

There was no way I wanted this much fluid, particularly after the Bladder Capacity issue of the morning flight:

I’ve seen smaller hot tubs!

We eventually found a very nice little place. They had a very well made menu, and it fulfilled my requirement that I be able to order by number:

C12: Braised Grass Carp Tail in Brown Sauce.

Ummmm, no.

Rick and I played it safe with relatively tame food. I had Mongolian Beef, and Rick went with Chicken Lo Mein:

Lisa, who had no obligation to fly that afternoon, took a walk on the wild side with a 非常辣 (according to Google Translator, that means ‘very spicy’) chicken and red chili dish:

My choice, in contrast, was 适合小女孩. Google says that means ‘suitable for little girl.’ I believe that to be synonymous with ‘pilot that knows better through prior experience,’ but I defer to Google’s 通过试点，知道以前的经验更好 for that. My way is shorter, though.

After lunch we made our way back to Gary for the trip home. Papa was pretty hot after sitting in the sun all day, so we were pretty uncomfortable sitting in the RV greenhouse with the canopy down and the engine running as we waited to squeeze a word in edgewise with the gregarious Tower controller. He was playing “guess who this is” with a group of guys in the Cessna 210 that was taxiing out in front of us. I finally leveraged in a transmission requesting a taxi clearance during a brief moment where they were both taking a much-needed breath. Hey, it’s one thing to be a nice, friendly airport, but it’s quite another when two hot (thermally, if not aesthetically) hot guys sit stewing in an airplane waiting to conduct a little business.

We were ready to go at the end of runway 30, but the Cessna was waiting for an instrument release. By that time I was really steaming (again, thermally, not temperamentally) and ready to go.

“Gary Tower, 466 Papa Golf, we can take an intersection departure at Alpha 4.”

“466 Papa Golf, hold short.”

Well then. Guess I’ll just set here a spell.

The Cessna departed a minute or so later.

“466 Papa Golf, clear for takeoff runway three zero, [mumble mumble] on course.”

“466 Papa Gold clear for take three zero and was that a left turn on departure?”

“Six Papa Golf, why, did you want a right turn?”

“No, just wanted to be sure what you had given me.”

We took off and made a left turn out. As we were heading on course east of the airport:

“Six Papa Golf, if you’re going to have to cross the extended centerline on course, cross over now. There’s a plane coming in on the ILS.”

I had forgotten that they had radar up there!

“Wilco,” I replied, and turned Papa to the North and out over the lake. I should have just taken the right turn out in the first place. Oh well.

It’s pretty cool having radar in the tower. We were a few miles outside of Gary’s Class D when we got another call from the tower calling out some traffic to us. It was hazy and the clouds were dark and low at 4,200′, so I really appreciated that they gave us a head’s up on that one. That said, I heard another guy waiting at the end of the runway ask if he could go back and take a Alpha 4 departure rather than wait behind the plane in front of him.

“Sure, go right ahead.”

Sigh.

It was hot and bumpy by then and the low clouds were going to keep us down at 3,500′ for most of the trip. Yep, that means exactly what you think it means: Rick’s turn to fly.

The weather smoothed out just past Fort Wayne and from there it was just a routine flight back to Bolton. I was getting pretty tired by then, so this was a welcome sight:

Almost there!

It was an adventure packed day and what is most amazing about the whole thing is that we just barely scratched the surface of things to do in Chicago. It’s a 1.5 hour flight each way and there is no landing fee at Gary. Transportation isn’t even the issue that I thought it was: there’s a train that runs from Gary right into Chicago. It only runs every other hour on the weekends and the train stop is about one mile from the Gary airport terminal, but those are small details. It’s a $5.50 fare, far less that what a cab or car would cost. It’s probably less that what it would cost to park a car. As mad as I still am at Chicago’s mayor, I can see myself going back for more.

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The Windy City: Part 2: Meigs Field

During the early morning hours of March 30, 2003, a crime was committed against society. And, to the utter consternation and disgust of all affected, the perpetrator got away with it. In the middle of that night, the Mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, illegally ordered the destruction of the single runway at Meigs Field, an airport known and loved by millions of pilots and virtual pilots all over the world. As a result of the illicit nocturnal destruction of one the world’s most famous airports, more than a dozen airplanes were stranded, an airplane enroute to the airport had to be diverted, and an uncounted number of pilots swore that they would never again visit Chicago. Myself included. A visceral anger ran deep in the pilot community and was by no means salved by the measly $33,000 fine levied against the city of Chicago by the Federal government.

Why was this airport so well known? Why was it so popular? You might think that the sentiment for this airport arose from the convenience if offered for access to downtown Chicago. You might think that it was world famous for the same reason. You would only be partially correct. The primary reason that Meigs Field was known and loved by a vast population that may never even sit in an actual airplane or visit the United States was because of the Microsoft Flight Simulator. The Microsoft Flight Sim has a history dating back the earliest days of personal computing.

My first version pre-dates even Microsoft’s ownership of the development rights, back when it was developed by a company called subLOGIC and ran on my TRS-80 Model I. In those days, the flight environment was limited to a flat, featureless area of about 10 square miles. The graphics were extremely primitive and by no means realistic. By 1984, however, graphics were beginning to improve and it became possible to render real world geographies, albeit in a very crude manner. And that is when thousands of virtual pilots were introduced to Meigs Field. The simulator could only model small geographic areas, but one of those areas was Chicago. With the default installation settings, all flights started on runway 36 at Meigs.

Here is a progression through the years:

It’s hard to understand why Daley would want the airport destroyed. The contemporaneous explanation is at best transparently disingenuous: he claimed that safety concerns required the closure, due to the post-September 11 risk of terrorist-controlled aircraft attacking the downtown waterfront near Meigs Field. (per Wikipedia) No moderately sentient being could be fooled by such a ridiculous statement. The same “reasoning” could at a minimum be used to force the closure of O’Hare Airport, one of the largest and busiest airports in the world, and located just a few miles from downtown Chicago. Taken to its logical conclusion, protecting Chicago from terrorist-controlled aircraft would require the closure of every airport on the planet. Ironically, the closing of Meigs Field made the airspace around the Chicago lakefront more accessible to small airplanes than it had been previously.

Here’s what it looks like now:

I’m glad I managed to get there before it was too late:

That’s all history now, though, and I’ve recently begun to wonder what the city had done with their new-found real estate. As I found out yesterday, not very much.

As we left the story in Part 1, we were about to drive to the old Meigs Field from Gary International Airport. As we rode along the highway, I took some pictures of the same area of Gary that I had taken aerial photos of not long before:

As I said before, it is unlikely that Gary will ever be known for its scenery. That said, Gary has a long and storied history of providing much of the steel that drove the 20th century’s industrial revolution. Today, however, the steel industry has mostly fallen victim to the increased competition inherent in a global market. You could say that today’s Gary is an awful place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

By the time we got to Northerly Park (Blech! I’m going to have to continue to refer to it as Meigs Field), the fog that we had seen north of Chicago had moved down the shore line and was covering most of the island.

While there seemed to be plenty of people around the aquarium and planetarium, the former airport area was nearly bereft of visitors:

Every now and then a pack of Segway riders would trot through:

I’d never seen Segways in the wild before and didn’t realize that they ran in packs. Lisa was unable to provide any more information about their behavior in the wild. I was curious as to whether they periodically had challenges for pack leadership in the manner of wolves, and what kind of exotic mating rituals they may have. Wikipedia is surprisingly quiet on those topics as well. Perhaps with appropriate levels of government research funding I could undergo an in-depth, full immersion study project like Dian Fossey, the “Gorillas in the Mist” chick. Something to think about, that. Hmm: “Segways in the Mist” has a ring to it, doesn’t it?

As we worked our way deeper into the isolated, unpopulated areas of the “park,” we came across artifacts left behind by a more advanced civilization:

The only thing going on in the old terminal building was a girl sitting at a table renting fishing poles.

Saddened and with a deep sense of loss caused by the waste brought upon us by an imperious, dynastic government, we retreated back to what’s left of Chicago civilization:

Fortunately, there was plenty of time left for us to visit the city itself and have a grand time riding the Chicago Water Taxis.

Click here for Part 3

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The Windy City, Part 1: Getting There

The early days of September traditionally present some of the finest flying weather of the year. The clear skies and generally temperate weather are like those we enjoy in the Spring, but without the high winds. These late summer days are made doubly dear to us because we recognize them for what they are: the relaxed yet bitterly sad hospice days of a dying summer. We husband them as we would the last few drops of water in our canteens on a trek through the desert, knowing full well that it will be a long, hard march before we see their like again. These are the days made for memorable trips, trips that we can reflect back on during the coming hostile winter months to keep our inner fires stoked against the seasonal depressions we inevitably suffer during the bleak Ohio ice/sleet/snow days to come. In other words, we are NOT flying to Urbana for breakfast. We want, need more robust, hearty fare.

The brilliant weather we had last week was, while probably not the last good weather of the year, most assuredly a sign that we’d better get busy with the job of planning and flying the bestest, coolest flight of the year. That’s harder to do than it sounds. Where to go, where to go? Fortunately, in this era of free, instant communication with like-minded people from around the globe, help is readily available with just a few clicks of the mouse. The “Where to go” question broadcast in the blind across the internet was answered at the speed of light: “Come to Chicago.” That, received from my long time friend, co-worker, and Oshkosh buddy Lisa, triggered an idea long dormant in my flying plans: visit the carcass of the sadly deceased (it was murder!) Meigs Field.

That’s a longer story and I’ll get to it eventually, but for now let’s just set it aside and concentrate on the logistics of getting to Chicago. It used to be easy: fly to Meigs Field. For reasons I’ll talk about later, that no longer works. There are other airports in and near Chicago, O’Hare being the best known to anyone unfortunate enough to have required a plane change on a commercial airline trip. It’s big. Very, VERY big. As such, it’s not the type of airport that one could enjoyably fly a small plane like mine into. I suppose it could be done, but there are better alternatives. Midway airport is much more suitable and the hectic-factor is much lower. Basically, it’s just you and Southwest Airlines. There is a third option, though, and with Lisa available to provide transportation to the city it is a very good option. We would land in Gary, Indiana.

Gary is located at the very bottom tip of Lake Michigan, just outside of the complex airspace surrounding Chicago. It’s a straight shot from Bolton to Gary; an extremely simply A to B direct flight. It’s a short flight, too, weighing in at a very manageable hour and a half. Still, even as a relatively simple flight I spent quite a bit of time planning it. And, as it turns out, stressing over it as well. I’m not sure quite why I was worried about it – in theory it would be no different than a flight to Fort Wayne, something I did decades ago as a student.

As I was looking at charts and maps of the Chicago airspace, I noticed something: as long as I was OK with stooging around at the 2,500′ level a little bit off the lakeshore and over the water of Lake Michigan, I could fly right along the downtown Chicago skyline. Why would I want to do that, you ask? Well, it’s coming upon the annual Arts in the Alley season and I have no new pictures this year that I’m thrilled enough about to enter in the photo show. Surely I could get some nice pictures of Chicago, although getting pictures unique enough to stand out from the crowd of very tough competing photos would be a tall order. But hey, why not try?

As I plotted courses and waypoints on the flight planning software, I came up with a workable solution, but there was a problem. Here’s the route that I planned:

Looks perfectly feasible, right? What’s the problem with that? Well, here’s a graphic example of the issue. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more piquant depiction of one of my more dominant personal traits:

(For more of this kind of work, click here)

Yes, we’d be backtracking. Small price to pay, of course, considering. I really mention it only because it presents the opportunity to post that comic. It is true, though, that I try to plan routes for even the most mundane errands that don’t involve backtracking or, to an even larger degree, the dreaded LTILTO. Nope, I just can’t stand the Left Turn In, Left Turn Out. I will not do it under anything less than the most dire situations. I’m also that way with bathroom stops, but we’re getting to that.

Between weather prognostication and other equally nebulous deciding factors, we agreed on Saturday as the target day for the flight. The regional forecast was for extreme goodness in the morning with a still-really-good afternoon to follow. Light winds and temps in the 80’s, albeit with the promise of some humidity, and a few clouds here and there. “Muggy,” to use the vernacular, but eminently flyable. Nothing to worry about, really, but I nonetheless found myself wide awake and feeling the need to check the weather for the umpteenth time at 0530 Saturday morning. That’s my normal get-up time during the work week anyway, so I got up and started the day. I didn’t have to meet Co-pilot Rick at the airport until 0730, so there was plenty of time to figure out what to do about the caffeine problem.

Caffeine is one of my unhealthy addictions and, as a pilot planning a flight lasting longer than 15 to 20 minutes, it causes issues. If I don’t drink any coffee, I get horrible headaches later in the day. If I do drink coffee, well… that presents a whole different set of issues having to do with bladder capacity and coffee’s undying need to seek sea level. Man may have a visceral need for freedom, but that need doesn’t hold a candle to coffee’s desire to keep moving on its path back to the ocean. When it wants out, it wants out now!

To address this issue, I usually use Espresso. Espresso tastes like mud (of course it does – it was just ground this morning) but it has the salutary trait of providing all (or more!) of the caffeine you need in a relatively low liquid volume. There’s a down side, though. Espresso is made under steam pressure, and the noise that the Espresso maker makes is deleterious to the weekend slumber of the rest of the family. At 0530, I don’t need a brewer that generates the sound of a steam locomotive bursting its boiler waking up the wife, child, dog, and cat. It’s bad enough already that I have to take the coffee grinder out into the garage to grind up the coffee beans; I’m not going to take the Espresso maker out there too. I decided that I’d split the difference and limit myself to a single cup of normal coffee. With almost two hours for the fluids to work through my plumbing, how bad could that be?

‘Twas all for naught. I had no sooner sat down with my hot cup of headache preventative when the Co-owner and the cat emerged. The Co-owner joined me on the sofa as I checked DUATs and read the news. The cat did what cats do: alternated between performing personal hygiene chores and staring at us as if he still can’t understand why we believe that we have domestic supremacy over him. Just to make his point, he looked at the Co-owner and said, “Meeowwf!!” She leapt from the couch in what I thought was a particularly subservient response.

“Wow, does he ever have you trained,” I said, thinking that he was squawking because he hadn’t been fed immediately upon awakening.

“No, he said he’s getting ready to throw up,” she replied.

Just as I was getting ready to ask just how in the world she could possibly be that sure about what the cat was saying, he threw up. Huh, my wife speaks Cat. Who knew??

As the clock rolled around to the time that I needed to head for the airport, I hustled through the normal last minute stuff I put off until, well, the last minute. There’s usually one print-out or another that I hadn’t gotten around to printing, or a piece of photo equipment that I’ve failed to retrieve. This is also when I make my final weather check.

“Hmm, visibility at Bolton is only four miles. I just need three to be legal, right? Better Google that to make sure.”

“Oh, look at the time!! Better get going!!”

As I pulled into the hangar area, I saw a guy pushing his plane back into his hangar. It seemed odd for him to be returning at 0725, so I stopped to chat. Well, I really just wanted to know if he had canceled for low visibility or something else I should know about. Nope, his radio transmit switch had broken and he couldn’t use the radio. Tough break on a gorgeous Saturday, but luckily I had one in the hangar (and even more luckily, I could actually find it) that he could have. I don’t know if he was able to make a repair and get some flying in, but I hope so. Here’s his plane – it’s an Ercoupe:

These are nice, old two-seaters and while they are not particularly fast, they are very affordable. In fact, I just recommended one to a Twitter friend that was considering buying a fabric and tube ultralight. For right around the same money, I’d take an Ercoupe.

The Co-pilot was as punctual as usual, which means that I hadn’t even gotten Papa out of the hangar yet, having spent the time reserved for that task chatting with the Ercoupe owner. Also yet-to-be-done was the preflight, and by that I mean the final trip to the Men’s Room where I would sacrifice as much coffee as possible in an offering to the great God of Continence in the hope that he would in turn grant me a comfortable flight.

With that done, we embarked on the journey. As we passed over Urbana and I commented on the relative scarcity of pushing past this boundary this year, I captured a picture of the Garmin:

Why? Because that is the exact spot where the needle on my Bladder Pressure Gauge moved itself off the lower pin. Not a good omen, that, and one that definitely portended potential problems during the next hour. And there was another problem as well: the little yellow inverted pyramid by the PADKE intersection was the weather indicator for Gary. Yellow means IFR. In other words, yellow means I can’t land. I pushed the buttons to get a more detailed (and as it turns out, ominous) report and was not happy with the result: overcast at 500′. Oh my! That’s not good! But, as you can see, that problem was more than an hour away and wasn’t unexpected. Those clouds would burn off by the time we arrived, or so we hoped.

The Co-pilot and I discussed it as we sailed along in the clear, smooth air. If we arrived at Gary before the clouds had lifted or burned off, we could still do the sightseeing portion of the flight and simply fly back to the southeast a little bit to the known good conditions we were currently in. And, it was decided, there would actually be benefit to that. First, there was some chance that Chicago itself would be fogged in, and that might provide just the stellar photo conditions we were hoping for. Second, the Co-pilot had done some research on local gas prices and found an airport (Starke Co. KOXI) that had fuel for $3.57 per, much cheaper than the $5.00+ fuel at Gary. Oh, and look at that! We were going to fly right over the top of KOXI on our way to PADKE! With the Bladder Pressure Gauge having moved through yellow and well into red, it was an easy decision: we’d stop at Starke to fill Papa’s tanks and empty ours! The perfect plan! And that, folks, is why Rick is the Co-pilot. Tremendous work!

Starke is a little different than most airports in that it was left traffic for one runway and right for the other. After a few minutes of trying to figure out just what that meant to us with regards to entering the pattern (and thanking the Garmin for alerting us to it in the first place) we decided that we’d cross over the airport to enter a left downwind for runway 36. Starke seems to be the place to land:

Wow, that’s a big bug!

Rick filled the tanks while I made the desperately needed trip to the bathroom:

I also walked around a bit looking at some of the other planes based there. This is a Moni motorglider, one of the planes I lusted after back when I was a teenager and first beginning to realize that the dream of flying my own plane someday wasn’t as far-fetched as it seemed:

There were a few friendly folks around the airport, one of them who was a transient that wanted to talk about his RV-7 that he’s just about done building. We had a schedule to meet, though, so couldn’t spend too much time chatting. That’s a shame; I love the chit-chat at the airport, especially when the topic turns to RVs. We got back into the air and I gave Papa as much free rein as he’d take:

163 knots!! That’s what’s known as boogeying right along!

We were soon over Gary, a city destined to never be known for its pleasant scenery:

In just a few more miles Chicago comes into sight:

That grass strip just east of the football stadium looks like it could be a runway. That’s because it was a runway. But we’re still not ready to dig into that, so to speak.

A closer look:

So far, it looks like a beautiful morning in Chicago. But then:

Wow! That is sooooo cool!

And last but certainly not least, my personal favorite:

We had planned to fly further north up the lakeshore, but everything was under a solid layer of cloud. It was looking pretty ugly in front of us too, so we turned around and headed back to Gary. I called the tower while we were about ten miles out and was instructed to enter a right base to runway 30. That seemed odd to me; we were perfectly positioned to enter a right downwind. ‘The Man’ gets what ‘The Man’ wants in this relationship, so I didn’t argue. I put us a little further north out over the lake in what was in effect a 3 mile downwind, figuring I’d enter the right base and give him a call when we where east of the aiport. As we were abeam the airport, the tower called and cleared us to land. Huh?? How’d he see us way out here over the lake? Oh, duh. Radar!

The runway at Gary is one of those humongous things like they have at big airports, and as such I did what I normally do: hunted and hunted and hunted for the runway in the flare, Papa’s talons extended in anticipation of touching the runway, eventually. The runway is so wide that by the time we actually touched down, the unfamiliar sight picture in my peripheral vision had me absolutely convinced that we had tunneled below the concrete surface.

We taxied over to park at the Gary Jet Center uneventfully, got the plane parked, and made an on-time rendezvous with Lisa. Off we went for our adventure in Chicago!

Click here for Part 2

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The beginning of the end

The recent temperatures have made it abundantly clear: Summer will soon give way to Fall. It’s readily apparent in the mornings now, when I have to put the top up on the Miata before my morning commute. No matter how much I enjoy watching the sunrise with the unfettered view from the car with the lid down, 47 degrees is simply too cold for enjoyment. The afternoons are still nice, though, and the top down drive home is still quite pleasant.

Something about the nice weather brings out the worst in Central Ohio drivers, though. I sat for twenty minutes on the highway yesterday afternoon, patiently waiting for my turn to crawl past a multi-car accident. I heard on the radio that there was another pile-up on the other side of town this afternoon, too. I myself almost T-boned a guy today as he pulled out right in front of me; he apparently was willing to bet that there wasn’t any traffic coming in the lane next to the semi that was turning onto the road he was pulling out of. He almost lost. These things always come in threes, too, so I’m going to have to be on the look-out for the next two. Well, one actually, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

With a clear blue sky, very light breeze, and temps in the mid-70s, it was irresistibly pretty this afternoon and the clarion call of the azure sky was screaming in my ears. I had to fly! I had no real destination in mind, but Papa was sixteen gallons short of full tanks. A refueling flight was just the ticket. I consulted AirNav to find a good price and decided the $3.79 per on offer at Fayette Co./Washington Court House looked good. I don’t normally go that far just for fuel, but with such gorgeous weather on tap it was an easy decision to make. Besides, I hadn’t been there since way back in the Tampico days.

The flight to the southwest was every bit as smooth and clear as I had anticipated and it seemed like no time at all before I was approaching the airport. I called the CTAF frequency and report that I was six miles northeast and inbound for left traffic to runway 5. The winds were light, but Bolton Tower had decided that runway 4 was the way to go, so it seemed that 5 would be just as suitable. Besides, landing on 5 would allow me to fly a full traffic pattern rather than make a straight-in approach to the opposite runway, 23.

Right after I made my position announcement, an airport attendant confirmed my decision by transmitting an advisory to me: “Winds 020 at 3, runway 5 favored.” I keyed the mike and thanked him. Just as I was entering the left downwind, I heard him transmit again: “Cessna whatever whatever whatever, runway 5 in use, landing traffic is on left downwind.” I went ahead and made my report too. As I turned left base, I again made a position report. As I was turning final, I could see the Cessna sitting on the taxiway waiting to take the runway for back taxi to departure.

“Hmmm,” I thought, “that guy sounds kinda student-ish, and he hasn’t acknowledged a single thing he’s been told. Better keep an eye on him, particularly since fate still owes me two more close calls.”

Nothing for it but to proceed, though, as Papa’s hovering capabilities are abysmal. Into the flare, everything was looking well aligned for one of those calm-air greasers that I love oh so much. Just as the wheels were leaning forward to gently kiss the runway, the radio came alive with “Cessna whatever whatever whatever, taking runway 5 for back taxi.”

Oh crap!

I was pretty close to the intersection he was entering from, and not sure a go-around would give me enough time to go over the top of him. And there was no way to stop. I immediately keyed the mike and, well, kinda shouted “Hold on a second, I’m in my flare.” That wasn’t the most descriptive or professional phraseology, but just as I thought my only hope was to wildly swerve to the right, he stopped. Amazingly, the landing was still pretty good!

I couldn’t remember where the gas pumps were at the airport and couldn’t see any, so I just pulled up next to the fuel truck. As the guy came out to pump the gas, he didn’t mention the near miss on the runway, but did ask why I had parked so far away from the pumps. As he pointed at the big metal box that enclosed the pump, I offered to move over there but he said the hose would reach. “Then why the big fuss?” I thought to myself rather uncharitably, but I was still a little torqued over the Cessna guy. Once we got busy fueling Papa, though, we had a nice conversation.

I asked him about the nice, new FBO building. Fayette County had it built a year or so ago. I asked about the miles-long construction a few miles north of the runway. I told him that I thought it was either a road going in or railroad tracks coming out. Neither, he informed me; it’s a 42″ natural gas pipeline running from Colorado to New York. So, with all of this chatter going on, I guess it’s at least partially my fault that he overfilled not one but both tanks, sending 100LL streaming down my wings.

That never seems to happen when I do self-service.

Tanks full and my Visa card abused to the tune of $63, I taxied out to depart on runway 5. As you can imagine, I took a good long look around before taking the runway. Nothing sucks the air out of a good justifiable pique like committing the same infraction yourself, after all.

The flight back to Bolton was just as nice as the outbound trip, and I even managed a greaser on the landing.

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