Inflight inspection

Ray (RV-10) and I did a little flying on Sunday. He took a couple of photo's while we were 'gaggling' our way over to Miami County for breakfast.

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.

Land of Enchantment 2006

Photo's - LOE 2006 Photo Gallery

Video - Sandi's Takeoff (Quicktime - 10meg)

Video - Flying On Top (Quicktime - 10meg)

Friday - Oct 13th

We've been monitoring the weather all week for El Paso and Kansas City as well. Forecast shows our trip down would be OK and the trip back on Monday should be OK but Saturday/Sunday was calling for rain. Certainly we didn't want to go if we were going to get rained on all weekend and potentially trapped in a hotel room. After attending the fly-in, our plans were to fly over to Tucson, AZ to visit Joe and Rhonda. They were pretty excited about having us come out, so that pushed us over the edge to make the trip. We decided we would push all the way to Tucson and then make the 1.2 hour flight back to LOE if the weather permitted.

We loaded up Friday morning and departed Ottawa around 11:00am. First stop was a short flight over to Miami County (K81) for some $3.10 gas. I filled it to the brim. We left Miami County fat and happy headed for our next stop of Borger, TX (KBGD). Uh-oh.. what's that.. ground speed of 111 kts. Ugh! It was going to be a long flight. 3.2 hours later we touched down at Borger. It wasn't surprising to see 3 RV-8's and an RV-4 at the ramp getting fuel. We took on 20 gallons ourselves which worked out to be about 6.5gals/hour burn rate. We departed right behind the flight of 4 RV's. We couldn't climb with them but we were keeping up with them pretty good until they leveled off and lost site of them. Center controllers kept calling unison traffic ahead 5 miles our altitude and same direction of flight. Told them it was a flight of 4 RV's going the same way. The controllers were pretty curious about all the RV's they were seeing and were pretty chatty with us. Another 3 hours or so and we touched down at Santa Theresa, NM (5T6), home of LOE 2006. Interestingly, we touched down right behind the flight of 4 and shut down at the same time they did. (Later I chatted with one of them who was pretty impressed we kept up with them.)

Following RV's out of Borger

Some of the hills we flew over.

Approach into Santa Theresa

Our intention was to stop here for a bit of fuel and push on to Tucson but a weather check for Saturday seemed to indicate we'd probably be able to get over to Tucson tomorrow afternoon, so we decided to stay. We unloaded and did a bit of socializing until the sun set. Local RV-9A'r, Nathan Larson had arrived a few hours before with his wife Tanya, so we hitched a ride into town with them. Had dinner at the Ranchers Grill and checked into the Red Roof Inn. (Pretty poor hotel.)

Saturday, October 14th

After a poor nights sleep, we woke up and headed next door to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. It was drizzling out, we didn't have a car and we were both a bit cranky. After a bit of discussion and several phone calls, we decided to rent a car and make a trip out to the El Paso Zoo before we headed to the airport for the afternoon. Right about that time, we got a call from some other RV'rs (David and Debbie) who had just missed getting a rental car after they arrived last night. They offered to share their rental and the cost with us. So they picked us up and we headed to the airport to get an umbrella and the camera.

Once we got to the airport, we couldn't get away from our airplane. Lots of builders and flyers coming up to ask us questions about the plane. The SJ cowl usually draws them in and the long range tanks usually keeps them around. :-) Even Sandi got tied up in conversation with another builder. So our trip to the zoo got canned. The weather was really bleary out and we knew there was no way we would get to Tucson in the afternoon, so we made arrangements for another nights hotel stay, this time at La Quinta Inn. We ran into town for a quick bite to eat, back to the airport we walked around and looked at the rest of the RV's on the field and chatting with various folks.

David and Debbie tracked us down and we headed back into town to clean up and for a quick nap before the evening banquet. La Quinta Inn wasn't much better than Red Roof. Our first room was absolutely unbearable with chemical deodorant spray. We changed rooms and rested a bit until we headed back to the airport.

We attended the evening banquet which had some pretty good TX BBQ. (We were interupted at the banquet with a phone call from Sandi's mom. Sandi's daughter Tenisha had just given birth!! That makes Sandi a grandma! Giana Alexis was born at 7:18pm and weighed in at 6lbs 12oz and 19" long) Lots of prizes were given away and a whole bunch of money was give to charity, over $14,000!! Back to the hotel for another poor nights sleep. Sandi was pretty much at wits end with the bad sleep and her worst fears of being trapped in a hotel for the weekend coming true.

Sunset at the airport

Sunday, October 15th

We awoke to rain yet again and pretty crummy weather. David and Debbie were trying to head east back to TX but that wasn't happening. Our trip to the west wasn't looking good either. We ate breakfast at CB again and then went for a walk. About 10:30 or so the weather was clearing up and we had somewhat blue skies overhead. A check of the weather along our route indicated we might be able to get to Tucson, it was supposedly better weather to the west. Weighing the option of yet another bad night in a hotel, we headed to the airport. Arriving at the airport, it appeared that just over the half the RV's had already departed. (Not sure which way the went though!) We said goodbye to David and Debbie and headed West. Cloud layer was at about 7,000 ft or so. We tried 6500ft MSL to stay under clouds. With the clouds being somewhat low, we followed the Interstate 10 West highway over to Tucson. This kept us from flying over several smaller ranges. We did have some light turbulence along the way. After zig-zagging around for 1.5 hrs, we finally arrived at Benson, AZ (E95) which was the closest and easiest GA airport for Joe to pick us up at.

A call to Joe to come and pick us up and we unloaded. While waiting for Joe, I wandered over to the hangars and met Robert who was working on a quick-build RV-7A. We chatted a bit before Joe arrived. We headed into town to pick up Rhonda and then to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner and then off to bed! Finally a decent bed to sleep in. :-)

Headed to Tuscon

Day 3 - The Trip Home

(To see all 170+ photo's from our trip, go here.)

Sunday morning... It rained during the night and there was some scattered clouds when we woke up. We piled into the car with sis, mom, gary, sandi and I and headed to breakfast. After some food and a quick trip back to the 'Inn', we headed to the airport. The family hung out with us for an hour or so while we waited for things to clear up a bit more. The plan was to depart and fly an hour west to McMinnville airport where fuel was cheaper. I had probably 16-18gals in the tanks so thought we could make it over there fairly easy. I looked at weather on the internet and it was kinda spotty with some areas be clear and others being overcast. I called the AWOS at McMinnville on my cell phone and they were reporting clear below 12,000. So we hugged the family and said goodbye and made our departure.

Pretty much as soon as we got out of the valley and up to 8,500 feet it was pretty much solid overcast as far west as we could see. We picked up flight following and then made a call to FSS to see if they could get us the weather at McMinnville. Unfortunately, the couldn't get us the actual weather but the nearest report was saying overcast. With the fuel gauges bouncing on 1/4 tank, solid overcast in front of us we kinda weighed our options. Knoxville was the closest airport with fuel but was also overcast. There was an airport directly underneath us but they were closed. Soooooo.. we turned around and went back to Macon County and paid $4.14 for fuel instead of $3.36. (If you want gory details about this little diversion... ask Sandi about this some time, her version is a little more dramatic!)

So back in the air we go, full fuel and snacks purchased (which Sandi forgot to do before we left the first time). With full tanks, we didn't have any good reason to stop on the way home, so we flew non-stop from 1A5 to KLXT! It was just under 4.5 hours total. We had a head wind coming home, so our ground speed averaged around 134kts. We stopped at KLXT because EAA Chapter 91 was having a cook-out and it was a good place to stop and get something to eat. We at and socialized for a couple of hours and then made the short 20 minute flight from KLXT to our home airport of KOWI.


This trip was really great. We got to see my sister, do a little sight-seeing, and did a lot of flying (10.6 hours). This trip also had a few 'firsts' for us:

First #1: Farthest trip east to date.
First #2: Longest distance traveled. (600 nm one way or about ~1200 miles total)
First #3: Longest NON-STOP leg of 4.5 hours or ~570 miles.
First #4: First mountain flying experience.