Finally!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Schmetterling CEO Visit

As a major milestone approaches with the imminent completion of a major aerodynamic surface and flight control, it seemed that it might be a good time for the CEO of our parent company to come for a visit to the production facility. VIP treatment is standard for situations such as these so I took the company plane out to pick him up.

Or, put another way, the weather was gorgeous today and was almost irresistibly beckoning me, but the RV-12 rudder is on the cusp of completion and I really wanted to spend some time doing that. But… there’s just no denying the call of a sky that appears as if it may have once or twice heard whispered rumors of these new fangled things called ‘clouds’ but was believing none of that wild gossip, thank you very much. And calm winds in the forecast as well! Astounding! What better way to kill two birds with one stone (hmm, this seems like a wildly inappropriate time to use that expression) than to fly out to KVES and pick up my Dad and fly him back to Columbus for a shop visit. Sure, it would mean flying him back as well, but seriously, isn’t that just a cherry on the sundae?

It was a relaxed morning what with the DST ‘found’ hour to buffer the time between having a hot cup or two of Vitamin P infused coffee and having to head to the airport for departure. There’s no lav in an RV-6, remember? Timing is critical.

The extra hour came from Daylight Savings Time ending later in the year than ever before because our Congress, always eager to flaunt their dominance over us, legislated a seemingly random change in when we shift time. They meddle in so many things anymore that I think a House bill to coerce water into flowing up hill is expected to get voted out of committee next week.

In any event, no one bothered to tell my Garmin 396 of the change of schedule. Try as it might, it just could not find any satellites, my theory being that it was looking at points in space that wouldn’t be inhabited by GPS satellites for another hour. Or spots from which satellites had already departed an hour earlier. It could be either – I’m not very good at temporal calculations. If I had to bet, I’d say it was the latter case.

Whatever the cause, buggered if I was going to sit around waiting three months for the clocks to get set back ahead. I’d go without it – I have a nice spare built right into the panel. Although I rarely use it, I do dial in Direct To now and then just to remind myself how. That came in handy today since it was super simple to just dial in KVES and get things going. It’s a little less pleasant than the Garmin to use, though:

Always the forgive and forget type, I gave the Garmin another chance. And another, and another, and another. I diddled around with menu pages trying to find a place where I could set the time and, for that matter, the date. It was convinced that it was October 28th. Brilliant little box, but sometimes easily confused. I couldn’t find anything that would let me give the unit a temporal foothold on reality, but I did find a way to turn off Daylight Savings Time. I was optimistic about that, but the Garmin stubbornly continued to play the fool:

Finally I stumbled upon a ‘Set Location’ menu item. Just what I was looking for! You just pick a spot on the map or type in an airport identifier and Bob’s your uncle. Well, not so fast: it seems that rather than give it a location as you’re pounding through the air at a blistering 3,139 inches per second, you have to be sitting still. I typed in a couple of airports as I flew over or by them, but no luck. As soon as I stopped at KVES, POW!, it found all the satellites it could ever want.

That solved, I got the CEO settled into the right seat and we were off on the trip back to Columbus. The whole VIP thing kind of went sour, though, since I had forgotten to bring the passenger headset. He had to endure the full, unadulterated cacophony of Papa at full gallop. At first I tried cruising at a sedate 2,000 rpm to keep the noise down, but I quickly got bored with that and poured on the coal. After a fuel stop at MadCo, we landed at Bolton and hangared Papa. It was time to visit the shop.

I had the rudder pretty much ready to go for final assembly. Just to provide a complete picture of the work involved, I hadn’t deburred the rudder skin yet. A few passes along the Scothbrite wheel made short work of dressing up the edges of the skin and the deburring of the rivet holes is never all that time consuming. It wasn’t long at all before we were ready to take the rudder back to the hangar for riveting.

With the construction of the tail kit being well ahead of schedule and the lead time for the next kit (the fuselage) now hovering at somewhere around two months, and in consideration of the all too likely end of year price increase, the discussion turned to whether the order for the fuse kit should be placed. The timing of the tail is looking like I will be ready to assemble the too-big-for-the-shop tail cone by the end of December, just in time for the most inhospitable months of the year for working in the hangar. With the fuse kit on site, I could defer the building of the tail cone until Spring and concentrate on the first stages of the fuselage. Right up until the roll bars go on, the fuse is small enough to assemble in the shop.

As with CEOs everywhere in Corporate America, they need time to think about schedule changes. Deep in thought:

My only fear is that the vertical stab and rudder might be lulling me into over confidence. Maybe the horizontal stab is when this stuff really starts getting hard. I have to say, though, that the RV-12 so far has to be the simplest to build airplane in the world. Seriously, look at this:

The fronts of the rudder skin were already rounded into shape and fit right together with no trouble at all. The skin slid right onto the skeleton and the holes lined up with unconscionable ease. I don’t think you can build an RV-9 rudder in just a handful of hours, can you? This thing is amazingly well designed.

We hauled the rudder out to the hangar and pulled about 3/4s of the rivets before we started getting pretty hungry. Also, with the loss of an hour of daylight I had to keep a tight look on the time to make sure I could be back to base before dark. We decided that we’d get started back towards KVES with a lunch stop at Urbana. I always seem to end up at Urbana…

Hey, you know how you always want to impress your Dad? Well, I got a little help with that today from a couple of total strangers.

“See the kind of people that have planes at Bolton? The kind that drive Porsche and Rolls Royce:”

“I just drive a Subaru because I find spectacularly conspicuous consumption like that somehow demeaning.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.

After lunch, I had him stand next to his artwork for a picture:

The flight from Urbana to KVES went fine, although I wouldn’t say it was the best landing of the day. The best was a greaser at Urbana. The rest were so-so. The winds were a bit shifty and three out of the six landings were made with light quartering tailwinds. I’m not saying that’s what caused the bad ones, but it could be.

The Sun was getting pretty close to the horizon as I flew back towards home, providing perfect lighting to capture a late Fall tapestry:

Bolton tower had been using runway 4 for most of the day but as I was approaching I heard the tower clear a couple of departures to go out on 22 since they were heading southwest. That meant that I had to land on 22 also, and that meant another landing with a slight tailwind. And, it sucked. I sailed right on past taxiway Alpha 3 and couldn’t make the turn off until Alpha 4. That’s not a big deal as there was another half a mile of runway after Alpha 4, but it’s still a bit below my standard. Eh, it happens.

Once back I finished up the remaining riveting and headed home with a completed rudder:

Next comes the anti-servo tab. I’ll ‘splain just exactly what that is next time.

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Fall Colors

The forecast for this morning called for classic brisk fall weather, cool but clear. With that in mind, Co-pilot Rick and I planned for a trip down to Portsmouth for breakfast, hoping to grab some pictures of the stunning Fall colors we’re seeing this year. Unfortunately, the clear morning was running late – we had a light fog at Bolton and Portsmouth was reporting 1/4 mile visibility and 100 foot ceilings. Uh, no. That won’t do at all! We postponed our departure and I took the newly found time down to the Schmetterling Aircraft production floor to spend some quality time on the RV-12 tail.

Things at Bolton had cleared up by the newly established departure time of 10:30, but Portsmouth was still reporting horrible conditions. It’s an odd airport, though. They will sometimes be reporting conditions that would ground even the bravest horsefly on one end of the runway while the other end is sparkling clear. Worth a look, we figured. With the fallback plan of simply turning around and heading back, we launched ourselves to the south.

It was indeed a pretty Fall day:

At first, anyway. As we approached Portsmouth, it became apparent that we would be eating elsewhere. Still, it was pretty:

Somewhere down under that blanket of clouds lies Portsmouth.

We turned tail and fled back to the clear air of Columbus.

It was a nice day to fly, though, even without accomplishing the breakfast mission. And that left plenty of time in the day to get back to work on the RV-12. I got quite a bit done on that:

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Driving with Co-pilot Egg, Flying without Co-pilot Rick

I stated on Twitter Friday afternoon that the weekend forecast made it look as if the best flying day for the weekend was going to be…. Monday. And it was.

Sunday dawned with low-ish clouds and 12 knot winds. Flyable if I had somewhere to go, but I’ve found that Co-pilot Rick’s extended vacation in Maui has caused a rather sizable hole to form in the flying schedule. Sure, I can fly without him, but I’ve grown accustomed to the additional ballast he provides to settle Papa down in choppy air. And without Rick, well, just who would fly the bumpy legs? Me?? No, I’d sooner leave Papa in the hangar and fulfill my fatherly duty to pass down my driving skills to Co-pilot Egg in order to ensure that she will follow in my hereditary footsteps. Which is to say, to make sure she’s as obnoxious and aggressive on the road as her dear old dad. But, you gotta crawl before you can walk, and you gotta walk before you can run into other people, so we’re still working on the basics.

I’ve mentioned before that it helps to have a destination in mind (and programmed into the GPS) before departing, so we decided on a road trip to Yellow Springs. And by ‘we decided,’ I mean ‘I dictated’. She wanted to go to the mall. Again. I couldn’t take the chance of an honest debate not going my way. Daddy’s prerogative.

You may never have heard of Yellow Springs, OH, so I will help you visualize it. Have you ever heard of Berkeley, California? Ok, start with that, but remove the incredibly lush scenery and shrink it down to a postage stamp size. But don’t shrink the prevalent political viewpoints. There ya go: Yellow Springs. It’s where Ohio hippies that can’t afford to move to Berkeley live. Me, I’m all about exposing Egg to diverse viewpoints and encouraging her to keep an open mind. Well, an open mind to my explanations about why they’re completely wrong about literally everything, of course, but yeah, an open mind.

We took rural country roads on the way there and it was, for the most part, a relatively uneventful drive. By ‘relatively’ I mean that I only slapped my foot on the illusory passenger-side brake pedal a half dozen times. As opposed to doing that a handful of times while trying to avoid a wreck just getting out of the neighborhood, as I have in recent memory. She’s definitely showing progress. Daddy is proud!

As much as learning to drive has been a learning experience for her, it has been for me as well. Seriously, there’s not much to do while driving through Central Ohio other than talk. And as we’ve been going to places, I learn more and more about what she knows that I didn’t think she knew. You’re probably thinking that I’m talking about the swear words I use when she scares me, and she has surely learned a few of those as we drive, but that’s not really what I’m getting at. She already knew all of them (and more!) from school. Here, I’ll provide an example of what I mean:

The Import House. Sounds benign, right? Well, I forgot where we were. In we went.

“Hey, Dad, this place is full of bongs!”

You know how a series of thoughts can pass through your mind in the blink of an eye? Well, here’s how mine went:

Uh-oh.

Act cool.

Hey, wait a minute! She knows what a bong is???

How did that happen??

Omagawd, I’m getting soooo old.

She then said, “How is this even legal?”

“Ah, there you go: Daddy’s little Republican!”

So, yeah, we didn’t spend much time or any money in The Import House.

But you know what she had never actually seen before?

This:

Go figure.

So, off to the Comic Book store, filled with visions of Archie & Jughead, Richie Rich the Poor Little Rich Boy, and maybe a super hero or two.

Sigh:

As I was thinking that it might be time to beat another hasty and ignominious retreat, I heard her talking to The Comic Book Guy:

“Do you have any DeathNote,” she asked.

“Whhaaaaatttttt??? I thought. What the heck is Death Note???

Japanese “comic” books. Manga, in the vernacular.

Geez, now she not only knew more than I thought she did, she knew stuff that I didn’t!

Time.To.Go.

On the way back to our car, (she will undoubtedly note the use of ‘our’ instead of ‘the’ or ‘my’) I had to stop and read the political tenets on public display on a Toyota:

I really don’t think this guy fully understood the intent of this one:

I don’t think it is meant to be in favor of robbing Peter, but I can sure see how Paul might think it’s a pretty good deal.

We stopped to pick up a couple of racks of BBQ ribs to take home for dinner:

They were phenomenal, and the Meat Is Murder pamphlet that they included made for excellent dinner time reading.

Just kidding.

The low lying clouds were long gone by Monday afternoon so I took the opportunity to pop over to MadCo for some 100LL for Papa. It was a nice flight over, albeit a little bumpy (and me without a co-pilot!!), but the air was that kind of see-forever clear that makes the Ohio farmscape look like an extremely detailed HO train setup. A sign of the season was the number of combines out in the fields harvesting crops of soybeans and corn. Scenic, but such a sad foreboding of the winter to come.

Despite the choppy air, the ground winds were nearly dead calm and I made a very nice landing at MadCo. Papa took 21 gallons, but the bite in the wallet was somewhat mitigated by the $3.91 price.

Flying back, the air had calmed down and was providing a smooth and comfortable ride. Just as I was thinking how easy it would be to become complacent in this kind of weather, a Citabria (or Decathlon) went winging past at my altitude and about a half mile away. Surprise! I hadn’t heard Bolton clear anyone for takeoff, and the GPS showed that we were both well inside Bolton’s class D airspace. After the tower had cleared me to land, I asked if anyone had departed recently.

“No, why?”

I told him about the other airplane.

“Never heard of him, never saw him, and he didn’t come from here.”

Nice.

Thank goodness for the clear air! And, if nothing else, a great reminder of why we keep looking, no matter where we are.

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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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Weather Patterns

Our local cable TV provider offers an invaluable service that they make available even to their lowest cost customers on basic cable: they have a channel that does nothing but show Nexrad weather radar. The audio channel is used to transmit recorded weather forecast data. Lately it has sounded something like this:

“And now for the weather patterns affecting the Central Ohio Region: crappy, unflyable weekend weather followed by five glorious days that will taunt and frustrate you during the work week.”

This week, though, was a little different. We had a torrential downpour during the Friday homeward bound rush hour that slowed the commute significantly, but at least I wasn’t in the Miata with the top down this time. Saturday was forecast to be nice, and Sunday was promised to be even better. This weekend was planned to be another attempt at the trip to Niagara Falls with Wingman Ted, but unfortunately the bad weather we had on Friday reached the Niagara Falls region just in time to prompt yet another cancellation of the trip.

With fairly decent weather Saturday but the promise of better on Sunday, I decided to fly on Sunday and fill Saturday with a few hours of driving practice for Co-pilot Egg. Unlike when I was a teenager learning how to drive, the State of Ohio now has a requirement that a new driver log fifty hours of driving before being allowed to take the test and receive a license. We’ve been knocking out an hour here and there, most notably during our week at Oshkosh.

For her first ten to fifteen hours I’ve been very selective about the conditions she would be driving in. On our morning commute from West Bend to Oshkosh, I’d have her exit the highway for a driver change just before we reached a road construction area just south of Fond du Lac, for example. Yesterday I decided to up the stakes a little bit and let her try her hand at a more hostile environment: dealing with Saturday afternoon shoppers. But first, I let her try a few laps around the neighborhood in the Miata. I’m a firm believer in the idea that everyone should know how to drive a manual transmission. I’ve heard from others that weren’t taught how to drive a stick that it is very hard (bordering on impossible) to find someone to teach you later in life, so I thought I’d start broaching the subject with Egg.

That went about as well as you’d imagine, assuming you remember your first try at it. Once you learn it and get to the point that it’s as automatic (heh!) as using the turn signals, you tend to forget how difficult and confusing it was when you were first learning it. And to be perfectly honest, you probably shouldn’t try to teach someone else how to do it in a car that you care about. Having a sentimental attachment to the vehicle might lead to exchanges like this:

“Erika, you have to use the clutch if you’re going to stop with it in gear!!”

“I DID use the clutch!”

“Then, pray tell, why is the engine no longer running???”

So, yeah. That might have happened. Twice.

Still… after about the fifth lap of the neighborhood she was starting to get it. I think she’ll get a lot better at it with practice, but I don’t think we’ll try it on the roads quite yet.

Once done with that, we transferred to her preferred car. She seems more comfortable in the Forester than either of the other cars and with the challenges lying ahead I though there’d be great benefit in having her use the car she likes the most. The target of the driving challenge was a busy road full of strip malls and restaurants. And although this confession will likely spark a conflagration of “Why would you do that!” statements from the Co-owner, I told Egg that we could stop at CarMax and look at used cars in her price range. Hey, why should I be the only one harboring secret, unattainable dreams? With me, it’s the goal of building a plane; with Egg it’s the idea of owning her own car.

Speaking of building a plane, I really did some damage to that dream last week. It was a stupid thing to do, but it had to happen eventually: I measured the cellar door from the basement up to the back yard to see if an assembled wing would fit through. Well, it would fit through the door, but it wouldn’t fit the steep climb up the stairs. That pretty much kills the dream of building a plane. The only other way to do it would be to use two of the three bays in the garage. Those bays, inconveniently enough, are currently used to garage automobiles, and the idea of leaving one of the cars outside (the other would just be moved out as needed) for the three to five years it would take to build an airplane is unlikely to sit well. I’ve heard anecdotally that an arrangement like that causes significant friction. So, that’s that.

Although… I’m still tempted to build an RV-12 tail kit. That’s small enough to be built in the basement. Even if I never went on to build a full airplane, it would be easy enough to sell at cost. According to the guy for whom the garage situation is anything but anecdotal, all you lose when selling an in-work project is the cost of your time. That seems a good trade to me. I want to spend the time on it.

So, back to the driving with Egg. Having a firm destination in mind helps with the driving in that it provides an opportunity to not only practice driving, but to learn some of the local roads and routes as well. We started out on the highway where Egg capably dealt with a bit more traffic that she’s used to. I also pointed out areas along that route that she will want to remember in order to be in the correct lane. Little tidbits of advice like “stay in this lane because that one is going to be ‘exit only’ in a mile” should help avoid the dangerous situations you see when someone unfamiliar with the roads gets in a panic and tries to make a last second lane change, often with tragic (yet predictable) results.

Picking a destination that’s very hard to get to also afforded the opportunity to show her how to find alternate routes when the shortest way is not truly feasible. In the case of CarMax, getting there the shortest way involves coming off of the highway to a continuous lane, then having to get across three lanes of heavy traffic to make the left turn. Because you don’t have to stop as you come off the highway, people behind you get a little pissy if you stop to wait for a gap to make the lane changes. It’s better to just go down to the next intersection, make a left there, and work your away around the block back to the dealership. And other than some knucklehead pedestrian with a death wish (seriously, this guy just strolled across four lanes of traffic without a glance in either direction, his attitude essentially being “dare you to run me over”), the alternative route worked out very well.

Being a Saturday afternoon, CarMax had all of their sales people prowling around the lot. You don’t get very far without being intercepted. “So, what are you looking for?” is a more common pick-up line than “do you come here often?”

“We’re just window shopping today, but we have three requirements:

– $10,000 or under tag
– no sports cars
– no large horizontal spaces.”

Sales guy: “[LOL] I understand that last one – I have three daughters myself. I suspect at least one grandchild probably came from that.”

Oh, and I told him that Egg was just training and we came all the way up there just to practice difficult traffic conditions, and how we’d gone around the block rather than try to make those lane changes right off the highway.

“I do that too!”

He also told Egg that he had taught all three of his daughters how to drive a manual transmission and that although it may seem impossible now, it would get much easier with practice. And, because he’s a salesman and therefore required to agree with everything I say, he agreed that a Mazda 3 would be a good choice for her.

We weren’t there long, but it was long enough to get caught. I responded to a text message from home requesting that we bring food back with a terse “We’re all the way up on Sawmill Rd.”

To which I received a very predictable reply: “What are you doing all the way up there?”

And here’s where I unintentionally taught Egg a very bad lesson: “Going to Trader Joe’s.”

Which was the truth since I needed to go buy more coffee beans, but not quite all of the truth. Some day I’ll get hoist on that petard. If I’m lucky, at least it won’t involve the inappropriate usage of horizontal vehicle space.

We stopped for lunch on the way back which unintentionally put us in place for another valuable lesson: how to get out of the way of a speeding fire engine. Closely followed by the “what do I do to get around this car wreck instead of sitting here all afternoon” lesson. So, good experience for her. Bad experience for the poor folks that inadvertently constructed the learning opportunity.

Three hours of frantically pushing at a non-existent brake pedal on my side of the car was enough; we called it a day.

Sunday dawned with a very nice Weather-out-the-Window&trade forecast:

The remainder of the day was forecast to have a scattered layer of clouds at 3,500′. Being as flat as Ohio is, we’d be OK just staying under them if we didn’t want to spend the time climbing over them. The winds were expected to be out of the northwest at 8 knots, which is just fine. Departing on runway 22 put the crosswind on our right side, and eight knots of it was pretty much just enough to completely moot the need for the normally required boot full of right rudder. We had a pleasant, smooth, and scenic flight down/over:

We stopped by Rick Gray‘s RV shop, although I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be there:

He wasn’t, but that didn’t stop us from peaking through the windows. What a great workshop! Color me jealous. From there it’s just a short walk over to the airport terminal where the restaurant is. Now here’s something you don’t want to arrive to:

Closed!! How could that be??? Fortunately, I walked a little further down the hall and found the ‘Coffee Shop’ entrance. They apparently open that on the weekends when they think the whole dining room is too much bother to open. That’s fine, really, but they ought to put a sign on the other door. I wouldn’t have walked down the hall if I hadn’t been going to see this:

I asked Co-pilot Rick if he knew why the bear was waving. He didn’t. Seems obvious to me: “Because he’s gotta split!”

Seriously, I don’t know why he flies with me.

We departed out of Parkersburg and headed west along the river:

As we started heading northwest towards Bolton, we found ourselves just under the promised puffy clouds at 3,500′. Puffy clouds mean bumpy air, and bumpy air means it’s Rick’s turn to fly. I busied myself with diddling around with the Garmin 396 checking weather observations. Bolton was reporting sky clear while Rickenbacker, just a few miles away, was reporting a ceiling at 1,900′. Both were wrong. I guess I have to learn to take the XM METARS with a healthy grain of salt. Here’s what it looked like the whole way:

It’s neat to fly below the clouds. We have to stay at least 500′ below them to comply with the federal regs, but that’s still close enough that they lend a real sense of speed that you normally don’t get. The RV was cooking along at 140 knots, so that visual indication of just how fast that really is was pretty cool. But yes, it was a little bumpy.

I took over the controls from Rick after I accidentally put a wingtip two feet into the Columbus Class C (a fact that the Garmin dutifully informed me about post haste) and managed a pretty good landing at Bolton, considering the conditions. Sometimes entering on the base leg as we did today will result in me being a little high on final, and today was one of those days. It happened at Parkersburg too, but with the hostile terrain down there and the very-long runway, that’s no big deal. It’s actually a good thing.

But back at Bolton, the effort to rid myself of inconvenient altitude ended up making me fast on final too. The flaps were able to absorb that excess potential energy, but I allowed them a little too much latitude. By short final I was at 70 mph and dropping like Paris Hilton’s pants (ooh, sorry about that one!). Landing a short-winged plane like the RV-6 in an energy state like that is similar to an auto-rotation landing in a helicopter: you have enough energy for one, and only one, attempt at the flare. You’d better get it right the first time!

I did.

Of course, it’s not like the engine wasn’t running – I could have added a blip of throttle if I didn’t get it right. Still, good practice.

As I pulled into my driveway at a little before noon, I couldn’t help thinking that I probably would have stayed home if the Weather-out-the-Window&trade had looked like this:

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