Paths

The Weather-out-the-Window&trade today was terrific! Amazingly blue skies, moderate winds in the 10 to 14 knot range, clear air, and a temperature that would be high on just about anyone’s “If I Could Only Have One Temperature It Would Be…” list. In short, the perfect flying day. But… I didn’t. Instead I checked something off on my “Waiting For The Perfectly Appropriate Day To Do It” list.

That item was to walk the Darby Creek Greenway Trail up to the Darby Dan “Round Barn,” a seven mile round trip. I’ve been curious about this barn since the day I noticed it while flying:

I was curious enough about that barn to engage Google in learning more about it and found a newspaper article about it. After learning that it was quite accessible should I ever choose to visit it as a groundling, I added it to the above mentioned list.

For years, Darby Dan Farm in western Franklin County served as a training ground for some of the country’s top racehorses, including champion thoroughbreds. It was a place that celebrities, a president and a princess visited.

Time and weather have faded its track, barn and grandstand, which were purchased by Franklin County Metro Parks in 2003 and 2004.

But the parks district soon will begin refurbishing the grandstand and barn and convert the area into a museum of sorts, with historic markers and photos telling some of the history of the Galbreath family and reflecting prominent developer John W. Galbreath’s love of horses.

On April 1, the park system opened a 4.3-mile trail connecting the Cedar Ridge area of Battelle Darby Creek Metro Park to the track, grandstand and “round barn” — a covered, 1/8 -mile oval that once housed up to 32 horses.

The start of the trail is only a few miles from my house so it’s eminently convenient, but the prospect of what was advertised as an 8.6 mile walk was enough to convince me to wait until a day that provided cool temps, no chance of rain, and time enough to allow a relaxed walk. Today turned out to be that perfect confluence that I had been awaiting.

After having found and utilized the appropriate parking area, I started looking for the trail entrance. My intrinsically superior map reading skills aided me in locating it after only a few minutes and I began the trek. Well, there was a slight delay. Last week I had somehow gotten on the topic of recumbent bikes. I can’t remember why I was thinking about them, but I can certainly remember why I think they’re more attractive to me than normal bikes: they offer both a more comfortable seat and much-needed lower back support. Actually, better seat padding could also answer to the call of “much-needed” when you get right down to it! As I was walking to the trail, I stopped to talk to the owner of this example:

I asked all of what are surely the usual questions he gets:

– Why a recumbent? Better seating.
– Are they expensive? Yes.
– Do they ride differently than normal bikes? Of course they do, you idiot! Just look at it – does it look like it would ride the same as a normal bike?

Well, that’s not really what he said. What he actually said was “try it.” I’m here to tell you, it rides very differently. I nearly fell off of it. I came so close to ignominiously flopping onto my left side that I actually ended up making what must have appeared to be a fairly normal turn.

“Hey, you picked it up with no problem at at all!”

“Yep, piece of cake.”

It’s just a fact of life: native incompetence can often be masked with false aplomb. Thankfully, it would appear that this would be one of those occasions.

I was somewhat taken aback at the very beginning of my hike, though. This is what awaited me at what I thought to be the start of the trail:

What tipped me off to the fact that this was not the trail I was looking for was a sign alongside what I thought to be a bike path warning that there is no water available on the Greenway Trail. “Hey,” I thought, “the Greenway Trail is exactly what I’m looking for!” I then astutely observed that the sign was located in a position that left no doubt that what I thought was just a bike path was in fact the trail that I was looking for. Not quite as astutely, I disregarded the warning that there was no place on the trail where one could divest himself of the water (or coffee) that he was already carrying, if you catch my drift. That would ultimately introduce a not insignificant level of urgency in getting back to the parking lot a few hours later. But that was hours in the future; at that moment I was just getting started on what looked to be a very well-prepared and -maintained trail:

I hadn’t even gone the first mile when I came across another trail user:

I’m so used to skittish creatures like Herons that I found myself sneaking up on this guy, stopping every few feet to snap a picture before he could run away. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to realize that him running away was the least of my worries. I mean, he’s a turtle! How fast could he go? As it turned out, he was quite comfortable with me being there and didn’t move a bit, although at one point it looked like he was considering closing up shop. As soon as I saw him getting ready to retreat into his shell, I stopped and waited a few moments while he calmed down.

There was quite a bit of scenery to stop and look at:

The trail remained smooth and mostly flat all the way up to the round barn. Of the people I saw on the trail, most were on bikes but there were a couple of runners that passed by. If I was actually capable of running, it seems like it would be a good place to do it. It ended up being about three and a half miles up to the barn rather than the 4.3 I had been expecting. Once getting to the barn, a runner could take a short break and look around before heading back. The scenery varies from what a sign called the “Oak Savannah” to a preserved wetland area to the barn itself. I think it would be great for a bike ride to, assuming I can ever solve the seat padding issue.

As far as walking, having now done it I doubt if I will do it again. After about a mile and a half I became aware that a couple of things were going poorly in my shoes. On the left side, I could feel a blister building on the back of my heel. I hadn’t tied that shoe tight enough and my heel had worn itself raw against the back of the shoe. I tightened up the shoe but the damage had already been done, and more was yet to come. Trying to ease the movement against the blister caused me to change my gait, which in turn caused a recurrence of the pain that I’ve been having in my planter fascia on that foot. Feeble, I am.

That was the left side. On the right side, one of the shorter middle toes had armed itself with a poorly trimmed toenail and was using it as a weapon against that taller jerk next to him that he hates so very much. By the time I found a place to sit down and remove shoe, sock, and offending toenail, that poor tall toe was in poor condition indeed. Feeble times two.

None of that discomfort was enough to dissuade me from my goal, however. I finally made it to the barn:

I had hoped that I’d be the only one around and that there’d be enough privacy to avail myself of the opportunity to, well, ameliorate the coffee over-capacity problem, but no such luck. I had counted on the 3.5 mile distance from the trail entrance keeping the number of people getting to the barn at a bare minimum, but it seems that there must be a shorter way of getting there. Perhaps there is another entrance at the top of the trail. It matters not; for whatever reason, the coffee that made it up the trail would be heading back down too.

For the last two miles of the walk back to the car, I distracted myself by thinking about that recumbent bike. As I thought about it, it seemed that the whole thing could be improved with the addition of another wheel or two. I was visualizing something like a recumbent tricycle or human-power quad runner. My path of thinking then led to the obvious question of whether things like that were already available, or if it would be something that would have to be kludged together. As soon as I got home, I would Google it to see. Well, that probably wouldn’t be the first thing I’d do, would it? No. No it most certainly would not!

Once I got home and had access to Google I started looking around the vast, deep reaches of the Internet, and finally came across this:

Perfect! Well, perfect in the sense of being perfectly suited to what I had imagined. Not perfect in the sense of “Oh crap. Here’s one more thing that I simply have to have!” At $879 they aren’t terrificly, unattainably expensive, but… let’s just say it’s not very likely.

Just to make it worse, look at how flipping cool these things are:

I console myself thusly: I just know, without ever even seeing one in person, that the seat would be hard and uncomfortable. That’s the story I’m feeding myself, anyway.

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MERFI’s Law

When it comes to the annual-when-they-have-one-at-all Mid-Eastern Regional Fly-In, the acronym MERFI lends itself to comparisons with Murphy’s Law. Last year the fly-in was hosted by Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport (KMFD) and Co-pilot Rick and I attempted to go, but we arrived over Mansfield (“No, I don’t think I’ll ever get over Mansfield”) to find the worst of the clouds still below us when we were left downwind for landing at pattern altitude. After trying to catch even a small glimpse of what is a relatively large airport with scant success, and being unwilling to press our luck, we made an expedient 180 degree turn to retreat to Urbana for breakfast.

This year MERFI has been moved to Urbana, presumably because the weather’s better. Fine by me, though, since it’s practically right next door. I considered going on Saturday but The Mighty Ohio $tate Buckeyes were playing in-state neighbor Ohio University. It pays not to second guess decisions like these in the clear knowledge of hindsight, but… well, flying may have been the better choice over staying home to watch the game. It was a sloppily played game on the O$U on side of the ball, and it was disconcerting to see how dependent their offense is on one player. The defense carried the day eventually, but their porosity on 3rd down bode ill for next week’s test against USC.

Today, the Weather-out-the-Window(tm) was adequate, but by no means inspiring. Low-ish clouds and cool temps, with the feel of rain showers somewhere just over there. And a promise of 11G17 in the early afternoon, but right down the runway where it would be in the no-harm-no-foul region. Not terrific, but with my having not flown for three weeks now, it would have to do. After a layoff like that it’s important to make a flight or two to keep the skills, if not sharp, at least less blunt.

Urbana is, of course, a flight I’ve made many times so there wasn’t much of concern there, but we were going to a fly-in. That always presents the issue of a lot of traffic, some with no radios, and is one of the reasons I don’t go to them as I often as I used to. That said, the Co-pilot is always on board for an early go so we could hopefully mitigate some of the traffic complexity simply by getting there early, and the extra set of eyes scanning for traffic really helps as well. Some of you may recognize this as the same strategy I used when going to fly-ins back before I learned how to land. Back then I called it “getting there before the witnesses.”

After not having flown for a few weeks, parts of the routine don’t always feel, well, routine. Knowing that I might have to air up the tires, I got to the hangar about 15 minutes before the pre-arranged departure time. Just a glance at both wheels was enough to determine that they’d both need service. Because of the tight aerodynamic wheel pants, though, it’s a little trickier to do that job alone than it is with someone there that can sight through the access hole cut into the side of each wheel fairing to watch for the air valve as I roll the airplane forward.

Having been through this before, I have spray painted a red strip on the inside of each tire to indicate the position of the air valve. That way, all I have to do is roll the plane out of the hangar until one of the painted stripes is at the bottom of the wheel. That seems like it would be an easy, routine thing to do, but every single time I rolled the airplane forward to align the paint mark juuusssstt sooooo, the plane rolled forward another few inches as I let go of it to move to the air hose and fill the tire. And I couldn’t reach far enough back to stuff a chock in without it moving. Hilarity and somewhat painful contortions ensued, but I finally managed to get the plane to hold still while I aired the tires.

The tires having finally been serviced and the plane pretty much all the way out of the hangar as a result of its little game of Mother May I?, I got through a pre-flight with no problems. Good to know that at least my head was in the game. We mounted up and put the key to Papa, and he greeted us with a single turn of the blade followed by a nice loping idle. Papa’s in the game! I called for taxi clearance, and replied back crisply with the appropriate “Bravo Alpha 22 for 6 6 papa golf” in response to the expected taxi clearance. Great, my tongue is in the game and I won’t be tripping over it.

So, we worked our way down to the runway and made the final checks before committing to the sky. Switches fell to hand readily: hands are in the game. Cleared for takeoff and away we go, skipping and swerving down the runway. Feet in the game? Not so much. That remained pretty much the situation for the rest of the day. The witnesses were already at Urbana by the time we got there, but I don’t think the kind of lapse in footwork that I see is very noticeable from a distance. The traffic wasn’t very bad, either. There were just a couple of planes in front of us, but one of them was, unfortunately, the type that flies a tri-county landing pattern. Huge patterns like that really bugger up the works for everyone else.

Once on the ground, the arriving traffic was well handled by the volunteers that were working the flightline. There was no hunting around for a parking spot and getting in everyone’s way here. We were met at the runway by a ‘Follow Me’ golf cart that escorted us directly to a parking spot. The same excellent service was in evidence later when we were leaving. We received another escort from the parking area back out to the runway, which is very welcome when taxiing a tailwheel airplane around groups of unpredictable spectators.

So, MERFI. Yeah, the pancakes were great, but I can get those at Bob Evans. No, the real reason you fly in to the MERFI Fly-In is to walk around and see what other people flew in to the Fly-In. That, and see what hides behind the normally closed hangar doors. For example, this B-25:

This is an A-26 that looks as if it might be waiting its turn for a restoration:

There’s also a decades long restoration of a B-17 underway:

It’s interesting to the Co-pilot and I to see the type of work they’re doing. As he pointed out, it all looked very familiar to the kind of work that goes into building an RV. Or, in my case, taking A&P classes where I learned about sheet metal, avionics, and engines.

When they get it done, I know where they can get a Norden bomb sight:

“Since the Norden was considered a critical wartime instrument, bombardiers were required to take an oath during their training stating that they would defend its secret with their own life if necessary. In case the bomber plane should make an emergency landing on enemy territory, the bombardier would have to shoot the important parts of the Norden with a gun to disable it. As this method still would leave a nearly intact apparatus to the enemy, a thermite gun was installed; the heat of the chemical reaction would melt the Norden into a lump of metal.”

Heh. Now you can find them unsecured and unattended in the seat of a Jeep. Technology is like that, I guess.

There were a few older planes amongst the fly-ins:

It’s tiring walking around all of the planes, so it’s nice to be able to rest a bit:

As mentioned before, the departure procedures were every bit as well handled as the arrivals, so we had no trouble getting out of Urbana to head back to Bolton. I reported to Bolton Tower as we crossed over Darby Dan airport as I usually to, but got a little wrinkle in the response from the tower.

I usually expect “report two mile right base to runway 22.” Instead I got “enter right base leg 22, report two mile final.” Those aren’t the same thing, but I didn’t know if he misspoke or if he really wanted me to get far enough out to the north to give me a two mile long final. As I got close to the base leg, I called that I was “two mile right base, but that will put me inside of a two mile final, if that’s OK.”

It wasn’t.

There was a touch & go Cessna way, way out there on a left base to runway 22, and the tower controller needed us to head up north a bit in order to stay outside of the wide pattern of what was more than likely a student pilot. That was easy enough to do, but it did put us in the position of having nowhere to go but the roof of Lowes if we were to lose the engine. I prefer a tighter pattern, but you get what you get.

The flare felt like it always feels after a few weeks without flying, which is to say “very fast.” It takes a few flights to get re-acclimated to the pace of things, particularly things that happen close to the ground and on those uncomfortable days when your feet still aren’t in the game. There was just a little swerve on the roll-out, but it was still a below par performance. You’d better get with it, feet! There are no permanent starters on this team!

Absent the poor footwork, though, it was a pretty nice day of flying. The skies were very smooth. So smooth, in fact, that the question of sharing the flying duties with the Co-pilot was moot. There were no flying duties. Papa rode along like he was on rails.

We caught a little rain on the way to Urbana which, despite repeated experience to the contrary, I always hope will wash the airplane as we fly through it. It really just rinses the crud out of hidden nooks and crannies and spreads it across the skin, leaving you with a yuckier looking plane than you started with, but I never seem to remember that.

The Eternal Optimist, I am.

So, having run out of ado and therefore being unable to provide further, here’s your (notably brief) moment of Fly-In eZen(tm):

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A swing and a miss

I alluded to an update on the porch swing project, and here it is. It was time to add the back seat slats. There are 14 slats cut from 1x2s. The plans call for a 1 1/2″ gap on each end of the cleat (the horizontal 2×4 that the slats are attached perpendicular to) and 1 3/8″ spacing between each slat. The cleat is 42″ long, so that should work:

14 (slats) x 1.5″ = 21″
13 (gaps between slats) x 1 3/8 = 17.875″
2 (end space) x 1.5″ = 3″

Total width: 41.875″

To get the spacing right, I cut 1 3/8″ spacers from left over 1 x 2. I cut enough for the first seven slats:

Once the first seven were securely screwed in place, I used the spacers to position the second seven. That’s when the problem showed up. There’s not a 1.5″ gap on the end of the cleat:

I checked the math a few times to be sure, but the fact is that I have spaced them incorrectly. The only way for that to have happened would be if the spacers I cut from 1 x 2 weren’t the right size:

Uh, yeah, you think that might be the problem? Some of those were cut on the bandsaw, others on the table saw. I’m not sure which is worse, but I’m guessing the table saw. The width of the blade is such that there’s a bit of a difference in each cut. I guess it all adds up. Easy fix, though: I didn’t glue the slats, so I just need to unscrew them and try again with more consistently cut spacers.

Unrelated, Co-pilot Egg returned from three days at band camp this evening, and on my way over to the high school to pick her up, I made my normal reconnaissance of Bolton Field. It was the strangest thing. Out of the corner of my eye, and at a distance of over a mile, I could have sworn that I saw one of the vertical stabs of a B-24. That’s impossible, of course, but the more I looked the more it seemed like it just had to be a B-24.

Insatiably curious about exactly this kind of thing, I dropped Egg off asap after picking her up at the school and headed to the airport. Lo and behold, my airplane spotting was, well, spot on:

Based on the sign they had hung on the fence, it seems that they are in town to sell 30 minute rides for a “tax deductible donation of $425.” While I think it would be very cool to experience a ride in one of those venerable WWII work horses, that’s a bit too rich for my blood. Now, if I were to get to fly from the right or left seat, well that would be different. I doubt if that option is available, though.

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Indy Car museum

There’s no Weather-out-the-Window(tm) observation today. This one was so blindingly obvious that we were able to utilize the far less accurate Human-on-the-Porch(tm) forecast. A bit of a role reversal for Brave Sir Hogarth and myself.

Espresso was the order of the day for getting the BCL (Blood Caffeine Level) up to a value suitable for the task of flying to Indianapolis, with the primary goal of that trip being to take a photo tour of the Indy Car Museum at the speedway. The right amount of regular coffee would have provided the same stimulus, of course, but with the additional benefit of not tasting like the mud scraped from the hooves of Juan Valdez’s mule. But as they say, there are no potties in RVs, so the additional fluid volume of the Espresso-equivalent quantity of regular coffee would be bound to cause difficulties later. Better to “man up” and get the needed caffeine dose compressed into the size of a Dixie cup now than to be dealing with the yellow “Bladder Capacity High Pressure Warning” light on the instrument panel later, I figured. Figuratively, that is.

The plan was to make an initial stop at Urbana-Grimes to get breakfast for Co-pilot Rick and myself, and a pair of full fuel tanks for Papa as long as we were there. Grimes was showing $4.60/gallon on AirNav (for advisory use only, usually, but accurate in this case) while just about everyplace else was charging well over $5.00. Easy decision, really, since Grimes was only a small deviation north of the straight line between Bolton and our destination airport, Eagle Creek Airpark. We were monitoring unicom while still a dozen miles out and it became increasingly apparent that the question of breakfast might have to be re-visited, the radio being alive with calls of other planes landing there. It’s a small restaurant, and they don’t handle large crowds well. And there was a schedule to be kept. Still, Papa needed fed even if we could forego ours, so we had no choice but to land and fuel up.

Grimes has those self service pumps that give me so many problems, and today was no different. I couldn’t read the little LCD screen to find the button I needed to push to get the pump turned on until I remembered to remove my polarized sunglasses, and then I failed to notice that they now keep a cap on the end of the hose nozzle. The cap must be to keep things out of the nozzle because it did a horrible job at keeping fuel in. All it did when left in place at the end of the nozzle whilst I tried to pump gas was cause 100LL to spray all over everyplace, with the only thing in the immediate area that didn’t suffer the ignominy of having fuel showered over it being the inside of the fuel tank itself. And how many times squeezing the pump handle and spraying fuel all over the place did it take for me to figure out what was going on? Well, more than one, and that’s all you really need to know. After the second, it’s really all just relative increments of dumbass isn’t it?

Fuel in the tanks and breakfast having unanimously been voted as “not worth it,” off we went to Indy. We climbed to 4,500′ and saw about 135 knots across the ground reported to us courtesy of Garmin wizardry. That wasn’t so hot, really, since I was running at 2,500 rpm, so I figured we were going the hard way against about a 15 knot wind. It was smooth and mostly cloudless, so there were no ill feelings held against the unhelpful wind. We’d get some of it back on the way home, I figured, and since I’m always in a bigger hurry to get home than I am on the outbound leg, it was all to the good. Money in the bank, as it were.

Eagle Creek Airpark is located due north of Indianapolis’s big airport, and sits under a 2,100′ shelf of the big airport’s controlled airspace. Since we were coming from nearly due east, it seemed to me that it might be prudent to avail myself of their ATC services rather than trying to duck down to 2,000′ to slip under the shelf. Not least because there are some very large radio towers that we’d have to fly over, and staying as high above their grasp as possible seemed a prudent course. I called Indy Approach as we crossed over Mt. Comfort airport on the east end of town. The controller didn’t have any special plans for me, so we were left to pretty much go about our business of following the yellow line on the GPS straight to Eagle Creek.

The automatic weather observer machine (Weather-Robot-at-the-Airport(tm)) at EYE said that the winds were out of the west at 6 knots, indicating that a landing on runway 21 would be the best fit for the prevailing conditions. When we were still a few miles out, a Cessna 172 reported an impending departure on runway 21, thus validating our decision to use that runway. Still, there was now the fact that we were going to be crossing off of the departure end to make our way across to a left downwind to consider, and I didn’t want a Cessna climbing into us.

To avoid that happening, I aimed for the middle of the runway, figuring that there aren’t many Cessna 172s that can reach pattern altitude halfway down the runway. Still, it would be a good idea to watch the takeoff. Just the other day at Bolton, a Beechcraft Baron landed on runway 4 while I was just a few miles from flying directly across the departure path on my way to a left crosswind/downwind. I kept an eye on him in what seemed to be an abundance of caution, and good thing I did: without saying a word about it, he made a touch & go rather than a full stop. I was able to scoot out of his way, but it was still a bit of a nasty surprise.

In any event, I thought that I ought to know where that Cessna was and searched the runway for it, and was I ever surprised when I finally found it. I had expected it to be rolling down the runway from left to right, but there it was sitting on the numbers of runway 21, facing right to left! Wait, did I say “21??” Why, that’s the runway I’m landing on, except…. “I’M HEADING THE WRONG WAY!” And, should anyone care, I have the video that will prove that that is exactly what I said.

For some reason, I had visualized having to cross the runway to a left downwind for runway 21, but that notion was 180 degrees wrong. Luckily, I had aimed at a midfield point to go over the runway, and that worked out just fine for an immediate conversion to a non-traditional 135 degree downwind pattern entry. Kind of an “I meant to do that” moment, although no one on board the aircraft was fooled. Tough room! The more common 45 degree entry being for renters and students, after all. Us accomplished pilots can handle more degrees with complete aplomb. Right? Patting myself on the back for such a masterful recovery having taken priority over the more uncomfortable (but probably more beneficial) question as to how I had managed to get that backwards in my head in the first place, I thought we were in fine shape for a good arrival.

Yet… there we were on short final, fighting bumps and gusts and a little bit high still, with airspeed maybe still a little too high as well, in the flare, holding, holding, and… the bottom fell out. If the 1960s-era Batman were to have a landing like this, one of those KERSPLAT! screens would surely follow.

The result was an unwanted return to the sky to the tune of six feet if it was an inch, and us being already a third of the way down the runway. Two choices, and two choices only, with no time for a prolonged internal debate: 1) try to save the landing by applying a burst of power to level out the parabolically inevitable firm arrival back on the runway, or 2) go around. Easy decision: go around! And, should anyone care, I also have some video evidence from this event that conclusively proves that the sound made by striking a Van’s RV-6 onto a concrete runway sounds exactly like someone forgetting about the live mike in the camcorder and yelling “Damn!” Eerie how much it sounds like that. Truly amazing.

The ensuing second landing was graded as “nearly survivable” which, considering the first, was a stellar improvement. So, we were finally on the ground and looking for means of transport to the speedway. I was hoping for a courtesy car, but had brought along the number for Yellow Cab as a fall back. It looked to be a $20+ trip each way from Eagle Creek to the speedway via cab, though. The courtesy car was denied (planning on using it for three hours or so having been unilaterally decided to be a bit too much of a courtesy to ask, after all) but an alternative to the cab offered: a $25, four hour rental car. I didn’t even know things like that were available. That was a much better approach than the cab because not only was it cheaper, it offered far more flexibility and efficient use of time. And it was much, much nicer that a courtesy car. I wish more airports would do that!

We eventually found the track after a few mis-turns on my part, those caused by the effects of the Espresso finally having worn off more than any failure on the part of the navigator. He can hardly be held responsible if I turn right in response to a directive to turn left, after all. Once found, the entrance to the museum is on the south side of the track between turns one and two. There’s a tunnel that goes under the short chute on the track, a security shed populated by a guy whose entire job seems to be to wave at you as you pass, and voila, there it is. It’s $3 to get in, open 364 days a year.

I got busy taking pictures, and it’s a good thing that I chose some of the less populated areas first. After shooting a couple of hundred pictures down in the lower area, I moved into the upper area, which seemed to be the province of the old-guys-with-else-to-do. I was approached twice by red-jacketed museum attendees asking whether I was a professional photographer or taking pictures for myself. It seems that anyone using something other than a cell phone to take pictures these days is something of an oddity. Anyway, I took it as a compliment (in my normal self-serving way) but it would have been better if they’d asked after looking at my pictures instead of my tripod. It would have been far less of a stretch to eke a sincere compliment out of it that way but hey, I take what I can get.

I don’t use a flash for indoor places like these because I get much better pictures using a tripod and ambient lighting. But something about using the tripod gets them all worked up. I’ve had the same thing happen at the Air Force Museum. One of the guys, after again explaining to me that I couldn’t take pictures for commercial use, also told me that normally they don’t allow the use of tripods, the reason being that people could trip over them. He said didn’t mind me using one (for non-commercial use only, mind you) since it wasn’t very crowded at the time and the tripping risk was therefore minimal. The third guy to approach me on the topic wasn’t nearly as lenient as the first two, though, and asked me to stop forthwith. So that was the end of the picture taking. Eh, my eyes were getting tired anyway. So there!

We made it back to the airport with plenty of time to spare on the four hour rental, but at least I got away with not gassing it up, as I had been directed to do by the officious matron of the FBO desk. We had only put 14 miles on it, and I just wasn’t keen on stopping to buy $2.25 worth of gas. By the time we were out to the plane, it was 85 degrees and the plane had absorbed every degree of it. It was one of those days in the RV where you have to be very careful about what you touch, or about what you allow to touch you. One wrong move with a seatbelt harness tab, for example, and you’ll be trying to find a way to explain that hickey on your neck at home.

Taking a look at the chart, and considering that prevailing traffic was now using the runway pointed to the north east (they call it “3” there, not “21”), it looked like we could depart straight out and stay below the 2,100′ shelf for a few miles. That would mean that I wouldn’t have to mess around with calling clearance delivery and working with the approach controllers on the way out. I had to make sure to keep reminding myself to stay at 2,000′, though. Or would I? As it turns out, we were well clear of the shelf boundaries before Papa, full of gas and lethargic in the mid-afternoon heat, was able to climb himself up that high. We slogged up to 5,500′ and settled in for the hour long, slightly bumpy ride home. We had the extra 15 knots I had hoped for, so we had a good 165 knots on the GPS at 2,400 rpm.

But… it’s an unwritten law that if there are going to be any clouds at all on the way home, they will be at your chosen altitude. Up to the even smoother air, and maybe a couple of more knots to boot? Or down into the hot, bumpy air under the clouds, and more than likely a longer ride? Easy choice: Angels seven-point-five it is. That was high enough to take us completely over Dayton International instead of the circumnavigation that would have been required at the lower altitude, too. And, it was high enough that I could satisfy my flying ego by starting our descent into Bolton just as we passed over Springfield Municipal, nearly fifty miles away from Columbus.

Bolton was landing 22, and it was so-so, with a right side crosswind at eight knots complicating matters to a minor yet discernible degree. Bugs to remove, canopy to clean, and a couple of cold MGDs to dispatch: the usual routine. And so, so gratifying!

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Redemption, at last

You may have noticed that at times, the PapaGolf Chronicles could be just as easily categorized as a “photo blog” as it is a “flying blog.” This is really not surprising; for as long as I can remember, I have been interested in both flying and photography. Well, I think the flying actually came first – I have clear memories of whiling away my early academic career daydreaming about airplanes.

The photography bug was more or less dormant in me for the most part, right up until Jr. High. At the time, my brother had a friend named Brad, and Brad was the school photographer. It was all film back then, of course, so there was a bit more to it than taking the shots and loading them onto a computer. Back then, you had a choice: develop them yourself, or take them to a processor to have it done. With color, it took a significant budget to develop your own, but Black & White was far more attainable. Brad had a B&W darkroom at his house where he developed his own film and made his own prints. And it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. And, naturally, I had to learn how to do it myself. I’m like that.

And I did. I had a darkroom set up in our laundry room, and I learned how to use a manual camera. There was no auto-focus back then, and exposure was set by reading a light meter built into the camera in order to set the correct f-stop and shutter speed. When Brad left Jr. High for bigger pastures, I took over the role of school photographer. I attended the basketball games, the track meets, the cross-county races, the whole works. I took and developed hundreds of pictures to be used in the year book. I suspect most of the kids in the school recognized me as “the kid that always has the camera.”

A full year of shooting pictures, developing them, and printing them led to the ultimate day: the last day of Jr. High, and the day the yearbooks came out. What should have been one of the proudest days of my young life turned out to be anything but that, though. They had sent the yearbooks to a tech school for printing, and they had somehow managed to print them in stark black & white – absolutely no shades of gray. The pictures looked awful. Just awful. I was crushed. All of that work, wasted. The money spent on paper, chemicals, equipment. Wasted. It was devastating.

I remember being hassled by a lot of kids about it, but one in particular stands out in my memory for his cruelty. He was a minister’s kid, and his firmly held faith was that I should not have volunteered to be the photographer if I didn’t know what I was doing. There was no convincing him that the fault was with the printing, not the photographs. He spent the entire 20 minute bus ride home from school berating me and accusing me of ruining his year book. I never spoke cordially to him again.

So where am I headed with this? Well, Friday was Co-pilot Egg’s last day in Jr. High, and she brought home her yearbook. They’re much nicer these days: full color, glossy pages, chock full of pictures. I was paging through it, and there they were!

In full, glorious color, were some of these pictures:

Ok, it’s not Sports Illustrated, but… a part of me that I had long forgotten had been damaged was healed. Redemption, at long last.

Oh, and Mr. Tim Kirk: it was the printers that ruined your yearbook, not me, you miserable son of a….

Oh well, bygones. I hope you’re enjoying your preaching job at Trinity United* where your innate compassion and empathetic nature can be put to good use…

Ok, sorry. Now bygones.

* I made that up. I have no idea where he works, or even what he does for that matter.

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The Power of Google

(Note: some of the pictures require reading – click on them for larger images)

I can’t remember exactly how long ago it was. Something like a year, I think. I was idling away the time Googling my name for the umpteenth time to see if I had yet attained the preeminent position on the results list (I have now, but at the time I think I was still pretty far down the list) when it struck me: if I could Google my own name, surely I could Google other people’s names. I know, I know: Duh! I decided that I’d see if I could track down some of the people that I’ve lost touch with over the years. One such person was “J,” who had been a fellow student in the Computer Science program at THE Ohio State University. It’s hit or miss, this Googling thing. It’s not uncommon to get no hits at all, or to get far more than can be dealt with if the name in question happens to be something common like Ken Smith or Bob Jones. The other thing that can happen is that you find a manageable list of names, and even find an email address, but it turns out to be a dead address or the wrong person. The great thing about Google is that it remembers everything, but of course the biggest problem with Google is that… you know it’s coming… it remembers everything.

In the case of J, though, the address was valid and my test email was quickly replied to with a confirmation that I had found the right person. More emails followed as we got caught up on some of the twenty years that had passed since we last talked. At the time, J was working (or visiting – my memory is its normal untrustworthy self on the specifics, so bear with me) in California and the question came up as to whether it would be a good idea to take an open cockpit biplane ride up the California coast around San Diego, to which I replied that it would be a fantastic idea to do so. We bounced some emails back and forth about getting a pilot’s license and the like, and it was apparent that there was certainly some interest in aviation on J’s part.

Fast forward to early last week when J told me that a visit to Columbus was forthcoming, and that there might be time to get together for a reunion. That opportunity came today, and since the weather was forecast to be eminently flyable, I proposed that we fly to Urbana for breakfast for us and gas for the plane, then head north for a visit to Put-in-Bay. That plan was deemed acceptable. The Weather-out-the-Window (tm) forecast did not disappoint:

It was clear skies and only moderate winds, and the forecast for the afternoon predicted nothing worse than a high overcast. Good to go! The winds, such as they were, were coming from the north, so Bolton tower sent us down to runway 4. The controller was far more specific with his taxi directions than normal:

“Taxi to runway 4 via Bravo to Alpha.”

I don’t mention that because it’s an abnormal routing; it’s actually notable because it’s the default path to the runway, and normally just assumed by all parties to be the way it’s done. It’s not normally spelled out. In fact, it’s pretty much the only way to do it. I’m wondering if they have a new tower chief or if there was some kind of audit done by the FAA because I’ve noticed distinctly more formality from them lately.

Take off went fine, and we were soon at our cruising altitude of 3,500′. I gave J a few lessons in holding straight & level and making gentle turns along the way, but even with those deviations we were setting up to land at Urbana in what seemed like just a few minutes. Just as I was getting ready to report that we were five miles out and setting up for a midfield crossover to the left downwind for runway 2, I heard a flight of three RVs check in with their intention to overfly the field in formation. I waited until we were a couple of miles from the airport and asked for a position update – they were circling over the field and we easily picked them up visually. They were moving back out to the southwest to come back in and make an overhead break for landing. I was able to squeeze in behind them and make it to downwind just as they were overflying the runway to enter their landing break. I tightened up my pattern to avoid holding them up, which worked out well for all involved, but I ended up bouncing the landing. Why do I never get the greasers when I have guests on board?? Ach.

After breakfast we headed north to the islands. The sky was clear and there was just a little haze, and we had a glass smooth ride at 5,500′. With the wind being kinda-sorta out of the north, I knew we’d be landing on runway 3 at Put-in-Bay, so I made my usual dogleg to the east in order to allow for a three mile gap between us and the pattern. PIB can be pretty busy on nice days, so I like to be off to the side of the landing pattern and come in at the traditional 45 degree downwind entry angle. It turned out to be completely unnecessary today since there were no other planes in the pattern, but you never know. The common frequency was a cacophony of people talking on top of other people, so I hadn’t been able to tell if there were any other planes in the pattern until we got there. Better safe than sorry, I figure.

PIB has a relatively short runway if you respect the displaced thresholds (which I don’t), and the wind tends to bet a bit burbly as it blows through the trees just to the west of the runway. I caught an inconvenient updraft on short final, and ended up higher than I would have wished for as we came over the approach end of the runway. The runway length being what it is, I try not to argue too much about it and don’t try to rescue a greaser – I just get it down. This is, of course, all in explanation of my second bounced landing of the day. I love having company with me on these trips, but as far as the topic of the landings goes, there are certain benefits to being alone. The lack of witnesses being one of the primary, as it turns out.

We paid the $10 landing fee and started our walk of the island. Usually I just head north to the town, but during the approach I had caught sight of what looked like a lighthouse on the southern tip of the island so I thought we’d try something different and head south instead. The furthest south on the island that I had ever been before was the bicycle rental place just down the road from the airport:

Just beyond that, we came to an open pasture populated solely by a couple of windmills and a collection of antique farm equipment:

I’m not sure why the pasture was populated solely by a couple of windmills and a collection of antique farm equipment, but there it is. It’s a mystery. The lighthouse was eventually found to be just past the Mysterious Pasture of Antique Farm Equipment. It seems to be a somewhat unique in its design (remember, click on the picture for bigger):

There was no one around to enforce the “Open for Photography after May 25” restriction, so we went ahead and had a look around:

Rahther than head back on the same road we had used to get down to the southern tip of the island, we took an easterly course and found another (much quieter!) road that headed back north up to the town. It’s Spring Spring SPRING in Ohio, so there were a lot of nice flowers and shrubs along the way:

Even the little 9 hole golf course was looking nice:

We walked past the cemetery and I stopped for a picture:

So, who was this De Rivera who warranted such ostentatious accommodations? Well, we found out later when we were walking through the waterfront park:

I also enjoy looking at the older houses sprinkled around the island:

After walking for a couple of hours, the light breakfast we’d had at Urbana was long forgotten and it was time to find someplace for lunch. Two places looked nice from the outside, but both were noisy with bar patrons inside and we were looking for something a little quieter. We ended up at the diner that Co-pilot Rick and breakfasted at last Fall when we weren’t able to get into Urbana, but over the winter it had morphed into an Italian place:

I don’t know much of the Italian language beyond “Ciao,” but I’m pretty sure “Quattro” means “four.” The menu cast doubt on that belief:

Mozzarella… one.
American… two.
Swiss… three.
Cheddar… four.
Monterey Jack… five!

Still, five cheeses or four didn’t really matter – it was a fine sandwich anyway:

By the time we had finished lunch, it was getting late and we were expected back in Columbus. The high overcast had come in by that time, and it was getting a little chillier. We still had a mile long walk back to the airport to look forward to, so the decision to head home was made. The flight was a little bumpier on the way back, but not to the degree I’ve come to expect when I make the same trip later in the summer. We had a little tailwind, so the trip back to Bolton only register .83 on the tach. Oh, and I went three for three on crappy, bouncy landings. I’m nothing if not consistent!

We had a great time and it was wonderful to spend time getting reacquainted with my friend. Thanks, Google!

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Travels with Egg

Co-pilot Egg is out of school for the week for the so-called Spring Break. Being 14 and all, she hasn’t the Caribbean option for recreational activity, so is stuck here in sunny Columbus for the duration. I try to take at least one day off during her sojourn in order to make our annual-when-we-think-of-it trip to the US Air Force Museum in Dayton.

I like to take my camera, but it usually turns into an exercise in futility. There is very little light in the museum, and what little there is is usually yellow. Because it’s so dark, the flash on the camera can’t do an adequate job of lighting the entire airplane, and because of the color, everything ends up with a wicked tint. Here’s an example:

(Reminder: click on picture for larger view!)

There wasn’t much that I could do to get a useful picture out of that in color, so I made it black & white and added some grain to it:

That turned out fairly well, but only because of the nature of the subject. I wouldn’t want to do them all that way. What I decided to try instead was to bring the tripod with us, and use it to hold the camera steady enough to allow the use of a much longer shutter speed. With a long enough shutter speed, the ambient light should be enough to light the entire airplane. That worked for the most part, but I found a new problem right away: the pictures all had an overall deep tint of orange or blue to them, depending on the type of lighting the museum had selected for any particular exhibit. My camera has a selectable/customizable white balance, though, so I experimented with different settings until I got what appeared to be acceptable results in the LCD screen:

I really like this one:

Egg liked this one because it’s purple/pink:

I’m considering getting a parachute for Brave Sir Hogarth after seeing this:

A challenge to photography equally difficult to the lighting issue was the schedule Egg was enforcing to ensure that we weren’t late to the Imax movie (one of our annual events), so I didn’t stop to read the placard to learn exactly why a dog needed a parachute. Later Google research explains it:

BERLIN AIRLIFT DOG PARACHUTE

This parachute was specially made for “Vittles,” a dog that flew 131 missions with his owner, 1Lt. Russ Steber, during the Berlin Airlift. Gen. Curtis LeMay named the dog and ordered the parachute made for him. Vittles, a boxer, accumulated around 2,000 flying hours, but never had to use the parachute. His owner, Lt. Steber, did have to bail out of a C-47 over the Soviet zone on one occasion, but Vittles was not with him on that trip. Steber was captured and returned to the West a few days later.

So there ya go. Of course, without the use of opposing digits (i.e. thumbs), I’m not sure how old Vittles was expected to pull a rip cord.

We also visited one of the airplanes that I worked on when I was in the Air Force:

We also found time to visit some of the more interactive displays:

I used my new flash for these since it did a much better job of filling the light. Here’s the same picture from two years ago using a lesser flash:

Egg is trying to perform a spacewalk using a rocket backpack- you’d look intense too:

There are more pictures, of course. You can see them here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/HogarthKramer/AFMuseum3_2008

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