Breakfast run & Broken leg

Our plans fizzled out a bit last weekend and we stuck close to home with just a flight Saturday morning for breakfast to Bolivar, MO.

Final approach into Bolivar

FBO/Restuarant at Bolivar

Downtown Ottawaw, KS, our home town.

In other news.... I broke my leg (fibula). Sandi and I wanted to get back to playing a bit of paintball for some exercise. (I used to be big into it and played on a team for a couple of years.) We have a friend up in Leavenworth, KS who has a field on his property and they play every other Sunday, and have for 15 years! So we headed up last Sunday to play and the 3rd game into the day I found a hole on the field and rolled my left foot inward. At first, I just thought it was severely sprained or posssibly pulled some tendons/ligaments. I hobbled around Sunday and Monday and finally visited the doctor on Tuesday. He didn't think it was broken either but because of the swelling and bruising and the location of the pain, he shot a couple of x-rays to be sure... and well.. it's broken. The fibula is broken down low, close to the end of the bone. So I'm in a cast and on crutches... not sure how long. Going back in 2 weeks for a follow-up x-ray.

Flying..... I think the hardest part will be getting in/out of the plane. RV's don't require much in the way of rudder input except on take-off and some taxing. This will be a good excuse for Sandi to do all of the flying. Our plans are still in place for this weekend.

EAA Chapter 91 Meeting

I've been a member of EAA Chapter 91 in Lee's Summitt, MO for several years. Larry, the chapter president, is a real go-getter and the chapter is a money-making machine. They just finished building their 2nd 80x80 hangar for chapter members. The first hangar they built has a kitchen and meeting area. I arranged my engine rebuild seminar and also Bob Nuckolls electric seminar at the hangar. Lee's Summitt is about 80 miles from where we live, so I don't often make the meetings. Now that we are flying I can start attending more of the meetings since it is a quick 25 min flight.

Sandi tagged along with me to the meeting tonight. We left early so we could give our Builder-Buddy-Bill a ride! (Bill is building an RV-7) We went out for a quick 10 min flight and then landed and attended the meeting.

When we departed LXT the sun had set but it was still a little light in the sky. Arriving back home it was pretty much dark where I greased my landing. Sandi was a little nervous about my night landing ability but I think I put that notion to rest. :-)

Fighting Forecasts & Flying For Food

Two weekends in a row, we have cancelled our plans due to weather forecasts and both weekends we have kicked ourselves for not going. On the 10th we were planning on the EAA flyin at Independence, KS but decided not to go due to forecast high and gusty wind conditions. This past weekend we had planned on Boone, IA but forecast thunderstorms and high winds kept us close to home. I think we are slowly learning how to better interpret weather forecasts.

Saturday morning we made a quick (< 10min) hop over to Miami County (K81) for some breakfast and then back home. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around downtown Lawrence, KS and then on to my mom's for a b-day party for my Aunt Linda.

Sunday dawned to low overcast but the afternoon cleared up nicely with blue skies and light winds. I was itching to go flying. While Sandi likes to fly, she usually likes to fly somewhere.. or have some sort of destination. I'm happy just being in the air. We decided to fly down to Hutchinson, KS (KHUT) to have some dinner at the steakhouse restaurant on the field. Nice restaurant, good food! This would be a nice place to stop and eat if you are ever nearby. I flew there and Sandi flew back and did a beautiful job landing the plane... her 3rd landing in the RV-9A.

It was really disappointing to not get more flying in this weekend but we did get some. Hoping the weather holds up for this upcoming weekend for our trip to Magnolia, Arkansas for the Purple Hull Pea Festival and Tiller Championships!

New hangar & Prop balance

Last week, Nathan came down with his prop balancer. He bought it to balance his MT prop on this RV-9A. Initial vibration was .17 IPS and we got it down to .10 IPS. I haven't flown since so I don't know how much I'll feel the difference. I do know that while were were testing, I couldn't definitely feel when it was out of balance.

In other news, I now have a T-hangar. This is bitter-sweet. The maintenance bay I have been in is heated, well lighted, and big. I would love to stay in that hangar but long-term the t-hangar is the wise choice. If Tony, the FBO manager, ever decided to leave the airport or buy a new airplane I may not have a place to put my plane except the community hangar. The new t-hangar is in an old building but it is all concrete floor. Sliding doors on the front. It is also an end unit that has a small furnished 'office'. It's maybe 12x6 or so. Probably won't have much use for it now but may be real handy later when we build another airplane.

We had planned to fly to Independence, KS this past weekend but the winds were gusty in the morning and forecast to get worse as the day went on. We decided it wasn't worth it and found something else to do. Next trip is planned for this weekend to Boone, IA.

Young Eagles Photo Gallery

Kevin Hanson, a chapter member, took some great photographs of our Young Eagles event last weekend. You can see all 98 pictures here. You can't buy smiles like some of these kids have.

Young Eagle Photo's

Here is a shot of each kid I took up flying.

Young Eagles Flights

Every since Sandi and I started on the RV project, I've looked forward to giving YE rides. (For those of you who don't know what the Young Eagles program is, you can visit the website at www.youngeagles.org). With the seat configuration on the passenger side for Sandi, it made the perfect setup for flying kids.

This weekend was my first opportunity to do some YE flights and it was looking like I'd be busy was we had 40 kids and only 4 planes committed to flying. Sandi and I departed Ottawa at 7:30 and headed north 25 miles to Johnson County Executive (OJC). The rest of the group was already there, so we held a pilot briefing and talked about where we'd be flying. Several kids arrived early and were ready to go, so we got started after we did our briefing. Sandi was great... she did the paperwork on the kids while I was up flying and spoke with the parents during and after the flights. A reporter from the Kansas City Star was also there taking some photo's, sounds like I'll be in the paper on Wednesday.

For airplanes we had 2 RV-9A's, Cessna 152, and a Bonnanza. Later we added a Tripacer and Super Decathalon. I'll note here that I got harrassed about my arrival for using the entire runway length. My landing was fine and in the first 500 feet of the runway but if I'm in no hurry, I'll keep the nosewheel off the ground and not use any brakes at all, which means I'll use up a good portion of the runway.. that and there was no wind and if you miss the third turn-off you have to go another 1,000 feet to the next one. Oh well.. the rest of my landings that day were all shorter, making the 3rd turnoff. Nathan had to show-off in his RV-9A by making the 2nd turnoff on all except one.

I flew 6 kids from 8:00 - 12:00. I had one young lady back out after getting in and starting up. I certainly wasn't going to force her to go fly.. that's no way to introduce them to aviation. Rick, our Bonnanza pilot, spent some time with her later but to no avail. All of the kids did really well. I seemed to get the quiet ones. I had two young boys who really got a kick out of it and asked a lot of questions.

I personally had a blast giving these rides. It was fun to share the flying experience with young people and just enjoy the flying. I look forward to doing this again. The other chapter I belong to (91) does YE flights almost every month.



Flight time total was 3.7 hours.