A-10 Sim, Flight Training and Pima Air museum
Joe is my old flight instructor who taught both Sandi and I to fly. He's currently based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base flying A-10's for a living. Knowing we were coming out, he scheduled some time for me in the A-10 Flight Simulator. The only time he could get was 6:00am Monday morning for 30 minutes. (New class of students hogging the simulator.) So we got up around 4:45 and headed to the base around 5:30. They have two simulators for the A-10. I was in one and the base Wing Commander was in the other! I spent 30 minutes in the sim, flying, shooting down other A-10's and strafing a control tower at some small airport. I even pulled off a halfway decent landing! It was quite the experience!
Done with the sim flying, we headed out to Benson so Sandi could do a little flying with Joe in the RV. She spent an hour and half doing some touch-n-go's while I yacked it up with a couple of A&P's who were finishing a ground up restoration of a C-150 Aerobat. Sandi finished up with Joe and since he had a little more time, I hopped in with him.
Where the fun begins! Having flown the RV now for 135+ hours, I'm pretty comfortable flying it, so I wanted to do some advanced stuff with Joe. I had emailed him before we left about the possibility of doing some true 'engine out' flying. He responded by saying he'd think about it. Well, we departed and after doing some steep turns for the fun of it he said let's do the engine out. We climbed up to 7500ft and turned the engine off! I had already slowed down to 70mph indicated and it didn't take long for the prop to stop. That's kinda of an interesting picture to see your prop stopped. :-) We did a few glides at 70mph and 65mph just to see descent rates and then with mixture back to rich, keyed the starter and away she went. Absolutely a non-event! The anticipation of doing it was much worse than actually doing it. We saw about 1,000fpm at 70mph and around 700-800fpm at 65mph which was just over stall speed at this altitude.
With that out of the way, Joe wanted to some rolls. He gave me some verbal instructions and then demonstrated a roll for me. I then did 3 rolls on my own and he finished up with one more. (NOTE! The RV-9A is not designed for aerobatics and Van's Aircraft, nor I condone such activities. Perform at your own risk.) That being said, she rolls really nice! I've only be in a rolling airplane one other time and that was in my first RV ride which was a -6A. Very cool!
With flight training done for the day, Joe had to head to base for his afternoon mission, we headed back to the house for a quick nap. After a nap, a bite to eat, we headed over to the Pima Air Museum just down the road. This museum is the 3rd largest museum next to the Smithsonian and Wright-Patterson. They have 250 some airplanes over 80 acres. We walked through a few of the buildings before we hopped on a narrated tram tour of all the airplanes outside. This is definitely the way to go. A couple of hours later, we were back at the house where we just relaxed for the rest of the evening.
Tuesday - Oct. 17th
Our original plan was to return on Monday but the weather that was at LOE over the weekend was now sitting on top of Kansas City. So we opted for a Tuesday morning departure. Rhonda and Joe got up early and went out to the airport for a ride in the RV. Rhonda hadn't been flying in awhile and Joe wanted to give her an RV ride. (He's on my insurance policy, so he's good to fly it anytime.) We arrived shortly after they finished and had breakfast before heading home. We put in a little fuel at Benson and then departed for a 1 hour hop over to Deming (KDMN) where we put in another 20 gallons. We departed Deming and climbed to 11,500ft and headed to Borger again. We picked up some great tailwinds with ground speeds averaging 185knots with a short trip at 200kts! We couldn't get through a hot restricted area, so we had to go south back over Santa Theresa and El Paso and then north up to Borger. We stopped at Borger and took on some gas. We took the courtesy car 4 blocks to Loraines Mexican for some lunch. Very over-priced Mexican food in my opinion. Back at the airport we checked on weather. It was clear where we were but it wasn't look so hot back home. Scattered and overcast layers all around back home, mostly showing marginal VFR stuff. Wichita was showing clear, so we departed and headed towards home, knowing we could stop in Wichita if we had to. (Aunt Gwen lives there!)
We climbed up to 7,500 and flew for 30 minutes or so before we encountered an overcast layer below us a 6,500. We made a call to Flight Watch to get current cloud conditions at Wichita just to make sure it hadn't clouded over and they reported clear below 12,000, so we pushed on over the overcast layer. It was pretty but I think it made Sandi a bit nervous being up on top. We could see the southern edge of the overcast layer but certainly not within gliding distance if something went wrong. Eventually we saw some clear skies ahead and had passed over the overcast layer. Wichita had actually gone to 'mostly cloudy' at 7,000ft by the time we passed over ahead but was just a small patch. As we began our descent into Ottawa, we had to drop down to 3,000ft to stay under the overcast layer about 15 miles out. Was actually kinda pretty. The airport south of Ottawa about 20 miles was in the sunshine but Ottawa had an overcast layer at 3,500ft. Wheels down at Ottawa, we unloaded and tucked the plane away. The hobbs reads 145.0 hours which puts 44 hours on the oil, so we popped the cowl off and drained the oil since it was already hot.
Trip Summary
We put a total of 15.7 hours on the hobbs for the whole trip. Overall the trip was a good one. Our visit to Joe and Rhonda really made it worthwhile. The plane did great! It is truly amazing what you can do with an RV. I'm sure we'll make the trip next year to LOE 2007 if the weather forecast is good.
Done with the sim flying, we headed out to Benson so Sandi could do a little flying with Joe in the RV. She spent an hour and half doing some touch-n-go's while I yacked it up with a couple of A&P's who were finishing a ground up restoration of a C-150 Aerobat. Sandi finished up with Joe and since he had a little more time, I hopped in with him.
Where the fun begins! Having flown the RV now for 135+ hours, I'm pretty comfortable flying it, so I wanted to do some advanced stuff with Joe. I had emailed him before we left about the possibility of doing some true 'engine out' flying. He responded by saying he'd think about it. Well, we departed and after doing some steep turns for the fun of it he said let's do the engine out. We climbed up to 7500ft and turned the engine off! I had already slowed down to 70mph indicated and it didn't take long for the prop to stop. That's kinda of an interesting picture to see your prop stopped. :-) We did a few glides at 70mph and 65mph just to see descent rates and then with mixture back to rich, keyed the starter and away she went. Absolutely a non-event! The anticipation of doing it was much worse than actually doing it. We saw about 1,000fpm at 70mph and around 700-800fpm at 65mph which was just over stall speed at this altitude.
With that out of the way, Joe wanted to some rolls. He gave me some verbal instructions and then demonstrated a roll for me. I then did 3 rolls on my own and he finished up with one more. (NOTE! The RV-9A is not designed for aerobatics and Van's Aircraft, nor I condone such activities. Perform at your own risk.) That being said, she rolls really nice! I've only be in a rolling airplane one other time and that was in my first RV ride which was a -6A. Very cool!
With flight training done for the day, Joe had to head to base for his afternoon mission, we headed back to the house for a quick nap. After a nap, a bite to eat, we headed over to the Pima Air Museum just down the road. This museum is the 3rd largest museum next to the Smithsonian and Wright-Patterson. They have 250 some airplanes over 80 acres. We walked through a few of the buildings before we hopped on a narrated tram tour of all the airplanes outside. This is definitely the way to go. A couple of hours later, we were back at the house where we just relaxed for the rest of the evening.
Tuesday - Oct. 17th
Our original plan was to return on Monday but the weather that was at LOE over the weekend was now sitting on top of Kansas City. So we opted for a Tuesday morning departure. Rhonda and Joe got up early and went out to the airport for a ride in the RV. Rhonda hadn't been flying in awhile and Joe wanted to give her an RV ride. (He's on my insurance policy, so he's good to fly it anytime.) We arrived shortly after they finished and had breakfast before heading home. We put in a little fuel at Benson and then departed for a 1 hour hop over to Deming (KDMN) where we put in another 20 gallons. We departed Deming and climbed to 11,500ft and headed to Borger again. We picked up some great tailwinds with ground speeds averaging 185knots with a short trip at 200kts! We couldn't get through a hot restricted area, so we had to go south back over Santa Theresa and El Paso and then north up to Borger. We stopped at Borger and took on some gas. We took the courtesy car 4 blocks to Loraines Mexican for some lunch. Very over-priced Mexican food in my opinion. Back at the airport we checked on weather. It was clear where we were but it wasn't look so hot back home. Scattered and overcast layers all around back home, mostly showing marginal VFR stuff. Wichita was showing clear, so we departed and headed towards home, knowing we could stop in Wichita if we had to. (Aunt Gwen lives there!)
We climbed up to 7,500 and flew for 30 minutes or so before we encountered an overcast layer below us a 6,500. We made a call to Flight Watch to get current cloud conditions at Wichita just to make sure it hadn't clouded over and they reported clear below 12,000, so we pushed on over the overcast layer. It was pretty but I think it made Sandi a bit nervous being up on top. We could see the southern edge of the overcast layer but certainly not within gliding distance if something went wrong. Eventually we saw some clear skies ahead and had passed over the overcast layer. Wichita had actually gone to 'mostly cloudy' at 7,000ft by the time we passed over ahead but was just a small patch. As we began our descent into Ottawa, we had to drop down to 3,000ft to stay under the overcast layer about 15 miles out. Was actually kinda pretty. The airport south of Ottawa about 20 miles was in the sunshine but Ottawa had an overcast layer at 3,500ft. Wheels down at Ottawa, we unloaded and tucked the plane away. The hobbs reads 145.0 hours which puts 44 hours on the oil, so we popped the cowl off and drained the oil since it was already hot.
Trip Summary
We put a total of 15.7 hours on the hobbs for the whole trip. Overall the trip was a good one. Our visit to Joe and Rhonda really made it worthwhile. The plane did great! It is truly amazing what you can do with an RV. I'm sure we'll make the trip next year to LOE 2007 if the weather forecast is good.
posted by Matthew at 7:32 PM
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