It’s hump day!

And no, by ‘Hump Day’ I do not mean Brave Sir Babyhumper will be “entertaining” guests again. No, I mean it in the traditional sense, which is that it is the day that I begin looking at the weekend weather forecast in the hopes that I can do some long overdue flying. The Weather-out-the-Window&trade isn’t overly promising, though, with a light dandruff of snow and a chilly 15&deg F, but if I know anything at all about Central Ohio weather it is that the weather we have today tells us nothing at all about what we will have three days from now. Or three hours from now, for that matter. 

We’ve had a few days in a row now with highs in the 38&deg to 44&deg range and this has melted away most of the frozen precip that was blocking Papa’s way out of the hangar. It doesn’t appear that the dusting of snow that we received last night is going to have any significant or lasting impact on that,  so hopefully access will not be a factor.  If everything aligns such that I can actually get out and fly, I have two or three possible destinations lined up. Interestingly (or not – you can vote with the little check box thingies at the bottom of this post), they all involve eating. 

I could go to Zanesville (KZZV) where, as I recently learned, there is a Denny’s only a mile from the airport.  I really liked their Sopranos-like Super Bowl commercial, so I’m in the mood for a Grand Slam. We don’t have Denny’s in Columbus for some reason, so I only ever get to eat there when I go to Oshkosh. I could also fly out to Salem Airpark (38D) where there reportedly is a very nice diner. Finally, I could try (yet again) for the Flying Turtle at Mansfield (KMFD).

Decisions, decisions. It doesn’t pay to agonize over it right now, though, since there is a very real chance that the weather will be cruddy, the taxiways will be icy, or Papa’s battery may be dead after another protracted period of disuse. I’m hoping for the best, though, as I am really starting to miss my time with Papa again.

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Mansfield: the fourth time was no more charmed than the third

Well, to be fair it is hard to blame the Mansfield Curse for this one. The forecast was never all that promising anyway, what with a bone-chilling 15F and high overcast in the offing. Still, it’s been awhile, and if Co-pilot Rick was willing to brave the frigid conditions, it would be undignified for the Capt. to be the one to wuss out. We arranged for an 0930 meeting at the ‘drome, but it just wasn’t to be. The initial Weather-out-the-Window(tm) observation looked promising: high, wispy clouds with a significant percentage of blue showing. One must consult a higher authority, however, when it comes to aviation forecasting and decision making. Off to DUATs to get the official view, once a cup of hot tea could be procured. Sadly, not only had the morning forecast not done anything to improve the below freezing temperatures, but it now also included a warning for “showers in the vicinity,” which was a new and unwelcome addition. With the temperature at 15F, one must assume that ‘showers’ means ‘snow’ and/or ‘ice’. That, and my normal aversion to starting Papa’s engine when it’s that cold out with only my sump heater to preheat, was enough to cancel for today.

As you can see, that probably wasn’t a horrible decision:

If that keeps up, I’ll be out plowing the driveway this afternoon – that will be enough of the outdoors for me today. As much as I hate the driveway clearing job, I can console myself with the idea that least it’s snow this time. My biggest beef with central Ohio winter weather is that it more often than not isn’t snow. Instead of nice puffy snow, we get ice or ice-byproducts like sleet or freezing fog. I don’t think I’d hate winter quite as much if we got real snow, the kind of snow you can do things with, things like riding snowmobiles or skiing. But, being as you have to go through winter with the weather you have and the weather that I have is more often than not utterly craptacular, I just stay inside and endure.

Saturday was pretty much the same story weather-wise, albeit with the exception of my having gone out long enough for an excursion to Lowes to pick up some wood and wood-byproducts. I’ve been struggling with the P-51 project because I’ve been using a 1/8″ piece of chipboard as a work surface. It is so thin and flexible that it doesn’t provide an even remotely acceptable work surface. It’s slightly better than a very large piece of typing paper, but not by much. The problem with getting something better is that we traded in our Durango for a Subaru Forester a few years ago and I haven’t been able to haul a large piece of plywood home without it. I finally decided to just go browse the shelves at Lowes and see if I couldn’t cobble something together out of materials that would fit in the Subie.

What I ended up with was three 5/8 x 12 x 72 particle boards. Being manufactured, they’re as flat as, well, boards, and plenty strong for what I’m using them for. A bonus trait was their price: cheap. I also picked up a few 2x4x96 to use to strap the three planks together, thereby forming a sturdy 3′ x 6′ worktop. It only took a few minutes to put it all together, although the job of lifting that heavy SOB up and onto Co-pilot Rick’s sawhorses took a little longer:

The kit is at one of those stages that are rife with danger. It’s time to bend the balsa top fuselage sheeting around the stringers, which is just the type of operation that inevitably ends in tears. Even thin balsa sheet wetted with warm water seems to maintain a preternatural bitterness (one could describe it as Pelosi-esque), so when I try to bend it, it invariably either cracks or breaks away from the fuselage at the lower glue joint:

It didn’t crack this time, although there were most assuredly some dire warnings in the form of cracking sounds emanating from the lower edge of both sheets. The glue will take the rest of the day to dry, so I won’t know until later whether or not it will all stick together once I remove the masking tape that’s currently holding it all together.

Oh, and those “showers in the vicinity?” Here they are, at just about the time we would have been returning:

I’m awarding myself a “Good Call” ribbon today.

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My annual burning desire to immediately reincarnate as a bear

It’s cold this weekend. Real cold. Not Minnesota cold, mind you, so it’s not like Ohio is going to elect an angry, failed comedian to the Senate or anything, but still pretty damn cold. It’s the kind of cold that makes me wish that I was a bear and could hibernate through the whole thing. It’s so cold that I think the electronics in my normally hyper-reliable Subaru have had a thermal lobotomy. The car is running fine, but the digital thermometer is now preceding the temperature reading with a hyphen. Odd, that.

Oddly enough, we’ve only had a smattering of snow so far this year. We had just enough this week for the airport plows to have built up a small but uncrossable wall of snow/ice in front of my hangar. Not that I’d be flying anyway; anything under about 25F is just too uncomfortable. It was also just enough snow to really bollocks up a couple of my work commutes. The interesting thing about winter driving in Columbus is that it makes the slow folks go slower and the fast folks go faster.

A large percentage of Central Ohio drivers seem to always consider the road conditions to be worse than they actually are, while a smaller (yet statistically significant) percentage insist on driving as if the conditions are far better than they are. The people like me that have an uncanny ability to unerringly gauge the precisely perfect speed for the conditions are stuck in the middle. We have to watch out for the yahoo that didn’t clear the snow from his car and is making seemingly random lane changes as he fearlessly blazes a trail through the drifts in the far left lane, slaloming around the overly cautious drivers crawling along with a nearly palpable cloud of fear emanating from their cars, and we also have to watch the we ourselves don’t run into the 15 mph rolling roadblock caused by a white-knuckled driver gripping the steering wheel as if it was his Harry Reid’s neck.

I’m not a big fan of snow, but I do prefer it over the ice that we have had for the previous two weeks. Snow at least offers the opportunity to do some fun things. Things like teaching your dog how to write his name in the snow during his periodic trips to the great outdoors, for example. It’s easier than you might think, actually, and requires very little intelligence on the part of the dog. The trick, you see, is to simply change the dog’s name to Yellow Spot. Voila! Now every time he goes out, he writes his name in the snow!

Today is the coldest day of the year so far (which, this being only the 16th day of the year, isn’t saying all that much) and for some reason the powers-that-be have decided to close the schools. Now I don’t want to get into my I-walked-five-miles-to-school-through-conditions-that-would-be-too-harsh-for-Todd-Palin mode, but really: I don’t remember my school ever being closed because it was cold outside. Of course, Global Warming hadn’t been invented yet way back then, so perhaps it just never got this cold. Really, I’m just saying. Too cold for school? It’s not like they’re in an old wooden shed behind the church using the dry corn husks that weren’t used in the outhouse to burn in a hub cap to keep warm, after all.

So, after making a short story long, I’m just here to tell you not to bother reading this blog this weekend. I won’t be flying.

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Can Ohio winter weather get any weirder??

They have this weather phenomenon here in Central Ohio that they call a Wintry Mix. Basically, it means you’re screwed. Take the worst possible winter precipitations such as ice, snow, freezing rain, sleet, snow on top of ice, ice on top of snow, etc. and throw it at us for both the morning and evening commute and you have it: the Wintry Mix.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I checked the DUATS forecast for tomorrow, myself being the eternal optimist and hoping that I might do some flying over the weekend. Here it is, in all of its Wintry glory:

wind 070° at 10 knots, visibility 1/2 mile, snow, freezing fog, 500 feet overcast.

Are you effing kidding me?? Freezing Fog??!?!?!? [holding_head_in_hands]What will they think of next?[/holding_head_in_hands]

I soooo need to move to New Mexico. They get snow there, of course, but snow in infinitely preferable to the Wintry Mix.

Looks like another weekend of cleaning the basement…

Really, I can hardly wait. Doesn’t that look like wonderful fun??

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Devoted to the cause

A couple of days ago, I was slightly shocked to realize that the calendar had yet again rolled through to the three-weeks-with-no-flying phase of the moon without my having really noticed it. The days are short now, and there’s just no time for an evening flight before dark anymore. I don’t enjoy night flying, so all that’s left of the weekly available flying days is limited to the weekend days, which through their unfortunate scarcity are particularly susceptible to falling prey to bad weather or conflicting time demands. I can make it through three weeks easily enough, but at the three week point I start to get twitchy about my currency. Luckily for me, I had both a free morning and clear (but brisk!) weather in the forecast.

Co-pilot Rick checked in as available for a breakfast hop to Urbana. Winter is notable for the change it has on my choice of destination; when the weather gets too cold for stomping around on a walk-about, it becomes all about the food. Urbana is nice and close, and while avgas prices are starting to recede, they’re only down to $4.69 at MadCo, and Urbana is still working their way through a $5.60-ish load. In other words, distance still matters and close is better than far. Economics meshed with mission as we departed on a “three landings for currency, cheapest-available-gas for the wallet” trip to Ubana via MadCo.

This was to be our first cold weather flight of this winter, but lessons past learned about warm attire vs. limited cabin space were well remembered. Long gone are the days when we’d both both arrive wearing bulky coats only to find that while we were comfortably warm, we couldn’t both fit into the airplane. The proper way to dress for a cold weather RV flight is in layers. To keep my legs and feet warm I had on two layers of long underwear, two pairs of socks, and loose jeans. For the top I had a long underwear t-shirt, a long sleeve regular t-shirt, and a hoody sweatshirt. That’s protects me enough to at least get through a pre-flight and out to the runway without freezing, but it wouldn’t be enough for a hike or photo tour. Bigger jackets could be carried in the back, of course. The biggest risk, as far as I’m concerned, is the one that keeps me from drinking any coffee or tea before departure: I’m not sure I’m quite man enough to work my way through three layers of underwear and a pair of jeans should I need to utilize a urinal.

Don’t pity me, we all have our crosses to bear.

The cross we all bear as airplane owners, though, is the devotion that is required to the cause. An airplane doesn’t need constant attention, but neither can it brook negligence. Airplanes do not thrive on extended inactivity and need to be exercised regularly. It’s not just my personal level of competency alone that starts nagging at me right around the three week mark; I start to worry about the health of Papa at about that time too.

In the summer I worry about the humid air rusting his engine from the inside out. In the winter I worry about the battery dying and/or the mechanical brutality of the cold-weather engine starts. The latter is usually mitigated by using an oil pre-heater, which is nothing more than an electric heating pad glued to the bottom of the oil sump. It’s easy-peasy and works great at keeping the oil at least somewhat warm and ready to flow when I start cranking the starter.

Easy-peasy, that is, as along as you remember to plug it in. I don’t like to leave it plugged in all the time because I’ve read/heard that keeping the oil hot for all that time will ‘coke’ it. I don’t know what ‘coking’ is, but it doesn’t seem to be a benefit in the context of the statements mentioning it, so I avoid doing it out of conservatism. Besides which, the Miata was using the extension cord for its new trickle charger and I figured I’d just go swap the plugs whenever I needed to.

Not surprisingly, I forgot to go over to the hangar and do it. Forgot, that is, until 2:00 in the morning while I was mid way through the labyrinthine path between me and the bathroom that winds its way around all of the spots on the floor that are likely to contain a sleeping Brave Sir Hogarth. If he’s not too deeply asleep he’ll let out a mournful warning moan to let me know where he is, much like a fog horn on a lighthouse, but it’s best not to count on that. I follow the path. Halfway through, I was hit right between the eyes with a stunning bolt of lucidity: it was then that I remembered that I hadn’t plugged in the pre-heater.

And here it was: a test of my devotion to the cause. I could go back to my nice, warm bed, get up early and go plug the heater in, and just hope that an hour or two of heat would be enough. Or I could brave the cold 0200 weather (140 degrees Sled Dog)* and go plug it in. It was no decision, really. The thoughts of the damage I could to by starting Papa with 20F oil would keep me awake anyway. I grabbed the Walmartts(tm), cranked the Subie seat heater to FULL, and headed to the airport. It was 0215 by that time, a time that roughly coincides with the government-mandated closing hour for our bars. In other words, any cars on the road should be assumed to being driven by a drunk. There was only one other car on the road, though, and it appeared rock steady. In fact, he was probably more worried about the guy in jammies and Walmartts yawning like Sleepy the Disney dwarf. It only took a few seconds to swap the plugs and I was on my way home.

After all that, the rest of the morning went easily. The co-pilot maintained his strong reputation for consistent and precise punctuality, and worries about the health of the battery were unfounded. Papa started on the first blade after a generous four stroke priming. He never fails to impress! The winds were nearly right down the runway but light enough for their direction to not really matter. The ambient pressure was high, the temps were low, and we were light on fuel – the very recipe for a strong takeoff and climb. The takeoff run exhibited the symptoms of a three week layoff, though, with a bit of swerving as the tail came up and a tendency on my right foot’s part to unintentionally apply a little brake when we needed it least.

The air was very calm and clear, but it was hard not to notice that the verdant green fields and vivid orange forests of the last two seasons have given way to the brown corduroy look of winter:

The landing at MadCo was nothing to write home about. It was a nice flare and touchdown, but again I had a little work to do to maintain directional control. It’s always amazing to me how narrow rural runways look when I haven’t used one in awhile. The roll-out also had quite a bit of the “mechanical” bounce that I get when I forget to relieve some of the back stick pressure that I held through the flare. MadCo is self-serve at the pump now, and today was a good day for me to lament that fact. I would have been perfectly content to wait in the office while someone else did the pumping, but those days are gone. Truth be told, I always stood out there chattering with the guy as he pumped anyway; perhaps it is that that I miss.

It’s only a short hop from MadCo to Urbana, although with the additional 130 pounds of fuel in the wings Papa wasn’t the same airplane we had departed Bolton in. With the full weight of the new fuel he was much more reluctant to climb, and equally averse to accelerating to cruising speed once sufficient altitude was gained. It seemed that we had no sooner built up a nice Bucket ‘O Inertia when it was time to start slowing for the approach into Urbana.

There was very little traffic in the pattern upon our arrival and that’s always a treat. The landing was better than that at MadCo, although there was still a little of the bouncing, and I had also exhibited an inability to remember if I was landing on runway 22 or 20 while making position reports. ’20’ is the correct number, but I think I kept lapsing back to ’22’. That’s no surprise: I’ve known for years now that one of the competencies that erodes quickly with a lay off is ATC comms.

Papa looked good in the crisp, winter light while we ate breakfast:

The air was still clear and calm as we headed back towards Bolton. On the way, we saw these guys working on we thought was a pretty late start on the harvest. It certainly looked like it would be done by the end of the day, though:

Back at Bolton I made a middling good landing. I think that of the three landings, each was better in some way than the one the preceded it. And I successfully purchased avgas at less than $5 per! I think that’s enough to declare today’s two-purpose mission a success.

Oh, and I left the pre-heater plugged in: I’m off work all of next week and I am sure about two things: I will want to fly, and I will not want to go to the hangar at 0200 to make it possible.

* You know that the multiplier to convert degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Sled Dog is the same as converting people years to dog years (7), right?

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Well, that figures…

I’m looking at the weekend forecast now that AvGas prices have receded back to the $4-ish level: it looks to be typical late fall, early (and mid to late, for that matter) winter weather. The kind of weather that reminds me of a $1.99 buffet: there’s plenty of variety, but none of it is palatable.

Sunday morning was a case in point. The temperature/wind chill combination is 34F, the skies are cloudy, and so is my mood. Every year there is a day that you just know is the first day of the rest of the winter, and today is that day. Winterization projects abound, including taking the front porch rockers down to their winter den in the basement, taking the snow plow (as of today it is the snow plow; up until today it was the lawn mower) out of the shed and putting it in the garage, and putting the BBQ grill in its place in the shed. The snow plow has to be kept in the garage for two reasons: first, the battery will die in the frigid cold of the uninsulated shed and second, because the snow will pile up in front of the shed doors and I won’t be able to get them open to extract the plow.

Last year I just moved the Miata to the very back of the garage and blocked it in with the plow, but ironically enough that positioning left me with a dead Miata battery on one of the rare nice weather days when I tried to drive it. This year I decided to try keeping it in the hangar. The battery will die even more quickly there, but without the plow blocking it in I should be able to drive it now and then. If the battery dies before I can next drive it, it will be easy to jump start since the battery on a Miata is located in the trunk (Or “boot” to you Irish folk – it’s an international set that frequents The Chronicles):

The pear trees were the last to finally lose their green, and I thought it a colorful opportunity to provide an update on the health of the duct tape tree:

It seems to be doing fine, but the first big test will be a windy/icy storm. Either the wind will blow it down, or the ice will be so heavy that it hasn’t the strength to hold it. Time will tell, as they say.

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Enhanced Weather-out-the-Window?

Sometimes the Weather-out-the-Window(tm) forecast doesn’t give the entire picture. Today, for example, looked pretty nice. But out of an excess of caution, I decided to deploy a secondary predictive device to garner a bit more detail. One can’t be too careful, you know. I therefore deployed the Weather-on-Hogarth’s-butt(patent pending) sensor:

Analysis of this precision instrument is more of an art than it is a science, and depending on whether or not other dogs, rodents, or pizza delivery drivers are in the cone of detection, there can be false-positive indications present. I, however, have mastered the reading of the raised-hair indicator and was confident in my analysis: it’s windy today.

No flying, what with the wind only forecast by the professionals to get increasingly strong throughout the day, but I had hoped that plan B would be effective. The idea was that if I couldn’t fly, I could at least take the kayak down the river. Temps in the low 60’s made that idea unattractive as well. I have to say, the weather thus far this has been quite disappointing.

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How the other half lives flies…

Anyone who has read the writings of Ernest K. Gann know how false the derogatory “glorified bus driver” description is for airline pilots, but these days not that many people have read Fate is the Hunter or any of his other fabulous books. As I’ve mentioned before, people don’t appreciate the complexity of the environment; all they know is that “we’re late!” or asking “why are we stuck in this damned tube sitting on the ramp??” Someone ought to make a law!

As is becoming increasingly common, a more realistic, in-depth, and accurate picture than that presented by the media is available on a blog:

The hop to MSP was just about the longest 45 minute flight of my life. It was turbulent, the radar was filled with yellow returns, heavy snow alternated with a deafening rain of ice pellets, St. Elmo’s fire danced up and down the windscreen, and ATC was barely audible above all the static in the radios. We kept the cockpit floodlights up high in case we took a lightning strike. We diverted around the heaviest precipitation and then ATC turned us around and vectored us for a 40 mile final.

In this case, an accurate, honest, and extremely detailed pilot’s-eye explanation as to what goes on in seats 0A and 0B on a small regional jet caught out by bad weather conditions is yours for the asking, right here.

I found it fascinating.

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A life lesson from Brave Sir Hogarth

A lesson on the topic of knowing when to quit, that is.

I let Brave Sir out to play in the snow this afternoon, but after two brief laps around the back yard, he headed for the back door in the hopes of being admitted and heading back to his spot by the fire place. It’s not that he doesn’t hear the Call of the Wild anymore, it’s just that he has caller ID and doesn’t always pick up when the wild calls.

As I was out plowing the driveway for the fourth time (!!!) today, I reached the realization that I was pushing around snow that I had no place to put, using gasoline that I did not have. (Yes, I failed to plan ahead well enough to fill the tank on the tractor, but to the positive, I did manage a preparatory trip to the local grocer to stock up on victuals) I parked the tractor and decided that the driveway was as good as I could get it, and if we get anymore snow we will have to use the Power of the Subaru to get through it. As if by divine intervention, the Sun emerged at long last:

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Ah, that lion…

March, in like a lion… I was scoffing at that just a few, short days ago. When will I learn? When will I learn not to ignore decades of conventional wisdom packaged into handy bite-sized nuggets for my convenience? In like a lion, indeed:

Weather-out-the-window(tm):

It’s so bad, even the local bath house is closed:

Windy, too. 35 gusting something huge, and as it would be on just about any day, the wind is my enemy. The snow is not yet done falling, but what with my snow removal equipment limited to clearing accumulations of a mere 3 to 4 inches at a time, I have to keep up with it mid-blizzard. We’ve already had more than that, which in itself would be an increased difficulty, but to add a layer or two of even more increased difficulty the wind has blown it into much higher drifts.

And here, as you’ve come to expect from this writer, is my self-inflicted tale of woe: in years past, I have put out orange sticks along the edges of the driveway to outline the boundaries of the area I need to plow. The last couple of winters have been relatively light on snow, so the effort of putting out the markers went unrewarded. I didn’t even think about it this year. Yesterday, when the first few inches had fallen and the doom-and-gloom weather guessers were calling for another 10 to 12 inches, I decided to go out and plow while I could still see the tips of grass poking out through the ground cover. Thus would be created some mounds of removed snow outlining the areas to be plowed. In theory.

What actually happened is those little mounds acted as accumulators for the snow being driven by the 35 mph winds. In other words, much of the 5 inches of snow laying on the open areas was blown into a nice trough between the mounds, creating a very deep pile of snow, in exactly the worst possible place.

So, on with the nice, warm Walmartt’s (tm) that I bought in lieu of the very pricey Carhartt coveralls and out to the mighty 25 hp tractor and attached 48″ snow blade. Only to get about 4 feet outside the garage before getting stuck behind the wall of snow that I was pushing. That was pretty much what went on for the ensuing hour (or more, I lost track of the time) of pushing, prodding, coercing, and downright begging of the snow to succumb to my will and get the hell off of my driveway. Going down the driveway was miserable. Turning around and coming back up, right into a 35 gusting infinity wind, itself propelling tiny little grains of sand-like ice directly onto the surfaces of my eyeballs, was miserable times ten.

But finally, FINALLY, enough of the driveway was cleared to get a car down to the impassable, unplowed road. Warm beer, that. A tediously created road to nowhere. It was like digging the Panama Canal, only to find that the Pacific side was only 2 feet deep, and thus useless to the ships that had traversed the canal.

Still, good work has its own inherent satisfactions, right? I backed the tractor into the garage, and as I let it idle for the 30 seconds required to keep it from backfiring when I shut it down, I walked out to survey my success. Which, as you can imagine, was already being filled in by the blowing snow.

Could be worse, though. Brave Sir Hogarth’s “relief area” has snow drifts so high that the poor fellow is actually injecting liquid byproducts into the snow.

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