High Speed Pass

See what happens when you put Sandi in an airplane!

http://www.n523rv.com/FLYBY.AVI (Caution: 11 megs)

Memorial Weekend Flying

It is the first Memorial Weekend we've been around home in the last 5+ years. Typically we make our way down to southern missouri to go camping and canoeing. This weekend's plans were to watch Ray's first flight on his RV-10 and hopefully get Sandi some time in our plane with Joe, our instructor.

Joe was scheduled to fly commercially into MCI on Friday afternoon, so I took the afternoon off to go get him... in the -9. I flew into K34 Friday morning where Ray loaned me his car to get to work. I left work around 11:20 and met the RV crew for lunch at Wally's in Gardner. Lunch over, I hopped in our bird and headed north to MCI, Class Bravo airspace. As soon as I got off K34, I called KC approach and got my clearance to MCI. Straight in approach to runway 1 Left and taxi'd up to the GA ramp. Ground controller commented on my fine approach and landing. He's building an RV-8. Small world sometimes! (We chatted a little more on my nearly 1 mile taxi.) I arrived early and so I waited for Joe to arrive. After his arrival, we hopped in and departed back to K34.

Back at K34, Ray prepared Joe for the first flight. Sandi called from work and asked that I come pick her up, so I taxied behind Joe and watched the first take-off sitting in my own plane. As I was departing, I heard Joe announce he was returning to land, so something wasn't right. Flight to Ottawa was short, and Sandi and I were on our way back to K34. When we landed, Joe was sitting off on one of the runways with the chase plane and a small crowd. Seems the oil temps were WAY to high.... 250's. They had the cowl off to let the engine cool off. As we taxied for the ramp, the taxied behind us and departed again, only to return once again. RPM's weren't high enough and the oil temp was high again. Back at the hangar a dozen shade tree mechanics tried to diagnose the problem. :0-)

With the RV-10 flying done for the night, we moved over to the party hangar, where Ray's wife Michelle was grilling. We had some dinner and yacked for awhile. Since Joe couldn't fly the RV-10, it was the perfect time for Sandi to get a little time flying with Joe. They departed for 30 minutes and returned to the airport with a couple of LOW approaches down the runway with a magnificent climb out and steep turn to go along with it. (May have a video of it.. we'll see.) They did a couple of landings and I found out after they taxied up that Sandi did the 2nd take-off and landing on her own! We spent a little more time hanging out and then headed home.

Sandi spent about 45 minutes flying with Joe which really boosted her confidence. She's ready to start getting some more stick time and really get into flying some more.

The rest of the weekend was a bit of bummer from a flying point of view. The winds were blowing like crazy! We drove up to K34 on Saturday afternoon to have some lunch with Joe's family and hopefully watch the RV-10 fly! Ray discovered an incorrect tach setting in his Dynon that was causing an incorrect RPM reading. When we arrived, Joe was up flying... the oil temps were still high though. Sunday morning came and winds were blowing at 19kts and gusting but it was right down the runway. Itching to fly, we dpearted for Gardner (K34) to get some gas and see how the test flying was going. The climb to 5,000ft was in moderate turbulence that Sandi wasn't enjoying too much. Once up above 5k, it was smooth.... but we had to come back down, right back into the turbulence. On our downwind leg to 17 at Gardner we caught a pretty big burble that put the right wing up 45 degree's or better which put Sandi over the edge. With Sandi's nerves already frayed, we headed back home. First attempt at landing on 17 back home resulted in a go-around as the plane was all over the place. I called for winds and they were 19 gusting to 29! Ouch.. this would be interesting. Our second landing approach was much more stable and we put it down safely and put away for the afternoon.

Monday wasn't any better... only we were smarted and didn't even attempt to fly. We stopped by Gardner on our way into town and said goodbye to Joe and see how things were going. Turns out the high oil temp problems were a software bug in the Dynon and corrected with an update. Saying goodbye to the gang, we headed for the theatre where we watched the new Robin Williams movie "RV". Pretty funny movie!

Certainly not the weekend we'd planned on but there are many more weekends to come. I think the hobbs reads ~79 hours now.

TEX RV Fly-In and Petit Jean

We logged another great weekend trip! We departed Ottawa just after 2:00 on Friday heading south to Farmersville, TX where we would stay with Mel & Ann Asberry for the evening. We picked up a nice tailwind going down with ground speeds around 160kts. At that speed it took us just over 2 hours to get there. Mel & Ann have a private strip at their home. It is a 1500ft gravel runway. (I've been practicing short/soft field T/L) Builder-Buddy-Bill and I flew down last year in the Cessna RG and landed here. Bill did a decent job of getting it on the ground and we used most of the runway getting off.:-) I wasn't too worried about landing but taking off had me a bit concerned. Turns out my landing was crappy but the departure out Saturday morning was beautiful. My landing was crappy because I got it too slow and it fell out a bit as I was flaring. I had plenty of room, I should have just landed normally and not worried so much about it being short. For the departure Saturday I put in 15 degrees of flaps (per Mel's recommendation) and we were off the ground in 600ft and climbed right out. Whew! We had a great time with Mel & Ann. Aviation people are good peole!

Mel & Ann's place

On our way to Midlothian Saturday morning, we stopped at Mesquite airport for $3.40 gas and then on to the fly-in. The fly-in was great... 81 RV's came in throughout the day. Quite a few RV-9's this year. I was glad to see I wasn't the only unpainted RV on the field. Mike Schipper parked right next to me, reinforcing the fact that I need a PAINT JOB! Mike's plane is gorgeous. Sandi evern had a good time at the fly-in. We walked around looking at paint schemes. She also spent some time hanging out in the hangar with a few other ladies, showing off her airplane scrapbook. I met Brian Sowell and his RV-9A and saw Clay Rossimer's newly painted RV-9A as well. I spoke with a lot of other RV builders as well.. many asking about the SJ cowl and the long range tanks.

After lunch time, planes started heading out in droves. One interesting plane came in... it was HUGE. Check it out! When it took off 10 minutes later we thought it was going to fall out of the sky... it was slow and wouldn't climb. Not sure if the pilot was showing off or it is just a beast of an airplane.

With everyone heading out, we followed suit saying our farewell's to everyone and heading towards Arkansas to Petit Jean State Park. This is the nations first state park and it has an airport on the property. Nice long runway up on a hill. We landed only to find a couple dozen Cessna's! We landed in the middle of a Cessna 170's fly-in. A bunch of 170's with some 195's sprinkled in and another RV to boot. We were quickly invited to hang out with the group if we wanted. We called the lodge and they sent a van out to pick us up. We checked into our room and took a short nap and had some dinner. We then headed out on a short hike to see a waterfall. Nice little hike, very pretty in the Arkansas mountains. Our plan was to spend most of the day Sunday doing some more hiking, maybe get out on the lake but like every one of our trips so far, weather put a kink in our plans. Sunday morning we watched the weather channel to see a whole host of t-storms rolling through Oklahoma and southern Missouri. A call to FSS didn't paint a rosey picture. It wasn't awful but it wasn't blue skies either. We went for another short hike and then decided to head to the airport. We loaded up the plane and pointed towards home thinking we wouldn't get very far. As we climbed up it really didn't look bad at all! It was certainly soupy/hazy. We punched in direct OWI, got on flight following and let her rip. We made it home without running into any weather at all. Visibilty wasn't too good by the time we got home but certainly VFR. Per routine, we landed, unpacked and went for lunch at Applebee's. :-)

7.1 hours of total flight time, 5 landings, 4 new airports visited! A great weekend indeed!

Just a bit of flying..

Did a little flying on Saturday morning. The winds have been blowing like crazy here the last week or so. I was going to meet Josh, a KU journalism major, who took some air-to-air photo's a couple of months ago around 9. We got to the airport and there was a big crowd. The local IAC group was there to do some practive aerobatics and stuff. Al Stuber was there in his RV-6A and Matt Burch was on his way down from Lawrence to get a ride. Al and I went up for a few minutes in my bird. We headed back where I picked up Matt for a ride and Al launched right behind us in his RV-6A with Josh in the passenger seat. We were really getting tossed around, so we headed up to 5k where it smoothed out. Al did some maneuvering around us so Josh could get some shots. We headed back and I put the plane away for the afternoon.. it was just too rough to do any pleasure flying.

Later in the day I went back out to the airport and changed the oil/filter. I also made up a rudder gust luck with a piece of 3/16" rod. The rudder horn already had a hole in it where I think the tailwheel chaing would attach if you had a tail dragger, so I just drilled a hole in the rudder stop angle and bent the rod in a U shape. It works really good and it weighs almost nothing. I'll need to attach a "remove before flight" flag on it.

Pella Tulip Fesitval

While the local Kansas City RV contingent was gearing up to head south to attend the Rebels Bluff RV Fly-in, Sandi and I were struggling to get to Pella, IA for the 71st Annual Pella Tulip Time festival. Weather wasn't cooperating on Friday. We attempted a 7:00pm departure but picked up some rain and it didn't look very good ahead, despite what computer said. So we went back and started to drive up instead of flying. I made a quick call to Wichita FSS and discovered the forecast was supposed to be better in the morning. Let's see.. 5 hour drive or 1.5 hour flight in the morning?? Sleep in a hotel bed or stay in our own bed?? Hmm... so we headed home for the night.

5:00am Saturday morning came early and dark. A quick call to FSS again just to make sure the weather held up during the night revealed an overcast layer at 6500 until we got north of KC and then clear thereafter... so off we go. Departed in the dark and watched a beautiful sunrise over Missouri. The ride at 5500 was smooth but we had a headwind so groundspeed was around 133kts. 20 miles out we cancelled our flight following and began our descent into KPEA. The traffic pattern was getting full... a couple of Cessna's, a Minimax and a hot-air ballon off the departure end of the runway. By the time we crossed over mid-field we were by ourselves in the pattern. A nice landing and we were guided to a parking spot in the grassy area that was beginning to fill up with planes. The linemen handed me a free breakfast card and we met Sandi's parents walking across the tarmac. They were having a big pancake breakfast at the airport as part of the festival, so we stuck around and ate breakfast. Sandi's dad, Chuck, and I went wandering looking at airplanes. The FBO had a Cirrus SR20 and an SR22 out for display. We looked at a Challenger ultralight and a couple of Minimax's. An RV-6 taxied up and parked, so I chatted with him a bit. Wives were getting restless, so we headed to the hotel and then off to the Tulip Festival.

Early morning sunrise departure.

Fog over the lake.

Approach into Pella

Lake shot while on final approach.

(This is the same lake you'll see further down during our departure from Pella.)

This festival is big doins'. 100,000+ people during the 3-day event. We spent the morning in the Pella Historical Village which has a full-scale 1850's style Dutch grain mill. (They actually grind wheat for flour that the local Dutch bakeries use.) Of course being who I am, I'm asking all sorts of 'engineering' style questions of one of the hosts. He asked if I was an engineer and said I wasn't a typical tourist given the types of questions I was asking... hmm... :-) The village has a blacksmith workshop, pottery shop, bakery, and a Werkplaats. The Werkplaats is where wooden shoes are made... by hand and machine. Toured the childhood home of Wyatt Earp.

Us w/ her parents.

Unfurling the sails.

Sweetie in the park.

From there we headed to the West Market Park so the ladies could do some shopping. It's a city park with all sorts of vendors hocking their wares.... not much guy stuff. Sandi and her mom bought a few things and then we caught a golf-cart ride back to the sqaure where we had lunch at the Windmill Cafe. At 1:30 we headed to the grandstand to watch the festivies begin. They go through a bunch of pomp-n-circumstance introducing the Tulip Queen and her court. Then they gear up for the parade by scrubbing the street. Kinda of a neat event. Then the parade starts which is pretty darn good for a small town.

Some goofball got roped into dancing with a Dutch lass.

After the parade we went on the hunt for Stroopwafels. These a a dutch cookie that Sandi brought home last year that I LOVE. 'Stroopwafels' (Dutch for "syrup waffle") are Dutch cookies made from two round waffle-like wafers with sweet syrup in the middle. They are about four inches in diameter. Stroopwafels are an old Dutch treat, invented in Gouda in the 18th century. The traditional way to eat them is with a cup of coffee or tea. Before it is eaten, the stroopwafel is placed on top of the hot cup in order to soften it up. We found the vendor that makes them but they got swamped and were only making to order. :-( I ordered a pack of 6... MMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmm... hot, fresh Stroopwafel!

Needing to see some guy things, we settled down on the east side of the square to watch the Tractor Rodeo. The local tractor club brought out their old JD's, Farmall's, Oliver, etc to show off and have fun. They did a tractor balancing act which was funny to watch. They had a egg-balancing event where they driver held an egg on a spoon in his mouth and drove the tractor over pieces of 4x4 blocks of wood. Some pretty nice tractors on display.

Tractor balancing

Egg balancing

Says it all!

We headed back to the hotel for the evening. There was a night-time parade scheduled but we were too worn out to head back. I ran out the airport to stick N523RV in a hangar for the night. Classic Aviation is the FBO on the field and had a hangar spot for me for $10. Back at the hotel, I looked at weather and called FSS. Not good news. Sunday weather wasn't looking good at all back in KC. Oh... and the Rebel's Bluff Fly-In got rained out I believe. I hear a few planes made it in but I'm sure not as many as Les was hoping for.

Tired, sore and sunburnt, I crawled into bed and crashed.

Sunday morning... gorgeous blue skies, no wind. Awesome. Hoped online only to find the forecast from the night before held true.... 500ft overcast and mist. TAF was calling for ceilings to get up to 2500ft around 4:00 in the afternoon for a short period but going back down after that. We ran into town for breakfast and the off to the airport. We decided we would fly as close to KC as possible and set down to see if the weather cleared enough we could get home. We chose Trenton, MO as our destination. When we flew over Trenton, we raised Columbia FSS to inquire about weather in the KC area. Not much improvement, IFR conditions. We pushed on from Trenton just a bit and stopped at Chillicothe, MO. The town seemed bigger and put us 15 miles closer. We landed to a deserted airport around 11:30am. Sunday hours are 1-5pm. An old cop car was parked out front which we took for a courtesy car. We waited until just before 1:00 when the local airport teenager came out to man the airport for the afternoon. Shortly after he arrived, a aviation local came in and showed me around a few of the hangars. He had built a couple of ultralights and the airport had a small EAA chapter as well.

With nothing to do but wait, we hoped in the car and headed into town to see what was around. Not much be we staked out a couple of hotels, bowling alley and movie theatre in case we had to overnight here. A stop at Walmart to grab a couple of puzzle books for Sandi and we headed back to the airport. I took a short siesta in the pilots lounge and Sandi played on the computer and did her puzzle books. At 3:00 I called the ASOS at New Century which is close to home. Sandi wanted the ceiling to be at least 2500 but might settle for 2300..... ASOS reported ceilings of 2500 with a scattered layer at 1900. I checked the METAR's at a couple of other local KC airports and saw similar observations but without the scattered layer. We packed up, had some fuel put in and headed home. We cruised at 3500 initially and just kept going lower as the clouds pushed us down. By the time we got into Ottawa, we were at 2500ft with clouds we could have stuck our hand up and touched.

A smooth touchdown at our home base, tucked her back in the hangar and called the local pizza joint for some carryout pizza.

Departing from Pella.

Fueling up in Chillicothe.

Under the overcast layer at 2500ft.

Final approach at home.

Flight time: 1.8 hours up and 1.9 hours back = 3.7 Total

Night landings

I knew going to the EAA meeting would probably force me into some night landings. I tried to convince builder-buddy-Bill to come to the meeting and then go shoot some night landings but he didn't bite. At the meeting, I tried to twist Nathan's arm (RV-9A flyer) into going up with me but couldn't get him to bite either. So I left the meeting just after the sun set but was still light out.

I made it to Ottawa and it was still light out so I started doing some landings as it progressively got darker. The first 3 I could still make out the numbers on the runway and reached the point where it was dark.

Fly Your Airplane to Work Day

Weekend plans to Tulsa got scrubbed to very crappy weather. Rained all day Saturday and high winds on Sunday.

We have an EAA Chapter meeting tonight at our local airport, so I kinda flew to work today. Instead of driving in and then back home and then flying to the meeting, Sandi just told me to fly in the morning. So I got up early and made the quick 10 min flight from OWI to K34, where Ray picked me up to head to work.