Wild Onions & Wild Fires

The weather managed to hold together for the most part letting us depart southbound in a very light mist for the 18th Annual Wild Onions n' Eggs Flyin down in Oklahoma. Trip down was pretty uneventful, cruising along at 148kts. We arrived in the pattern with 4 airplanes ahead of us and one behind. A decent landing on the grass runway and we were shuttled to the "RV" parking area. It's pretty nice flying an experimental to flyins as you usually get the special treatment instead of getting relegated to the south 40. We were warmly greeted and signed in for breakfast. Allen Barrett was there to greet us as well. We ate our breakfast of wild onions with eggs, sausage, potatoes, and biscuits. 7 RV's made an appearance with maybe 40-50 other airplanes of various types. Alan Judy arrived in his nicely done RV-6. There were two RV8's, RV-4 and 3 RV-6's. After some breakfast, we stuffed Allen in the passenger seat (forgot to bring our spare seat cushion) and we went for a little tour around the area. Later he went up with AJ and had some serious fun.

Trip down.. notice the weather the 496!

Short final into 44M

Allen Barrett and I taxing out.

We left 44M around 11:30 or so headed back home. Just south of Grand Lake there was a HUGE grass/forest fire. Not sure that was a controlled burn as it was pretty windy and put up a cloud of smoke a mile wide and miles long. We landed at home around 1:00 ready for a serious power nap. Sandi was hoping we could get up to Illinois later that afternoon.

Fire on the ground!

Up at 3:30 and in the plane by 4:15 we winged it northeast bound to MO8 for some cheap gas. About 25 miles out we ran into a overcast cloud layer at 5,000ft so we had to dive down through a hole and leveled at 2,000 to say under the clouds. Was kinda looking like we wouldn't make it Illinois. We filled up and started looking at the METAR's on the new garmin and it was showing the weather SKC 30 miles north of our position and at our destination, so we departed for another run under the clouds at 2000 and 30 miles later we broke out in clear skies. Climbed back up to 5500, picked up flight following again and landed 5 mins before 7 at MLI. Sandi's dad was waiting for us.

This really shows you the power of the RV. Oklahoma in the morning followed by a 2 hour nap and then Illinois by sundown! By car that would have been 5 hours to Oklahoma and then 10 hours from OK to Moline. Holy Cow Batman! We did that in 5.5 hours in the RV! Very Nice!

PS - We rolled 180 hours on the hobbs on the way up here!
PPS - For Google Earth fans, here are the flights for the weekend.

RV Ride

Today I had the opportunity to give local RV builder Doug M. a ride. Doug has been working on his RV-6 for 18 years!! Talk about commitment. He's currently working on the canopy frame. Anyway, he's only been in an RV-4, so it was time to get him in the air and behind the stick a bit. We left Ottawa and just flew around the countryside circling over some property he has. We finished off with a circle around my house to say Hi to Sandi.

With the new 496 I can capture flight data. I downloaded the data into MapSource from the Garmin and then saved it out in a .gpx format, then used the GPS Visualizer website to create a Google Earth .kmz file. Below is a picture of the result. Very cool!

KCRV Flying / Data Logging / Garmin 496

The weather here in the midwest has been pretty crazy. Hail, tornado's, wind, snow, sunshine. Snowing while the sun is shining and wind.

I have a new addition to the airplane.... a Garmin 496! Looking forward to using it this flying season. I mounted it on the glareshield to fly with today but concluded after flying that is a horrible place for it. It really blocks your view. It will have to come off and get mounted elsewhere.

The weather improved enough today to get a few of the local RV crew out and about. I spent some time this morning wiring up a new data logger gadget (see below) and then headed to K34 to meet up with Ray. He was just doing his run-up as I entered the downwind, so I peeled off and waited for him to depart with Brian (RV-7A builder) as a passenger. We met up and did a little straight and level formation flying of sorts. (Neither of us have done any formation work.) I had my camera so I took a little bit of video. (MOV Format) We then hooked up with Paul and Chuck Stratman and 4-shipped it into K81 for breakfast. Just as we were getting up to leave, Vic Syracuse showed up in his RV-10. We all were wondering how they got from Georgia to podunk Miami County Airport in the middle of nowhere and it turns out his brother-in-law lives in Paola. Small world some times. Done with breakfast, Ray and I headed back to K34 to update my data logger and do some testing and then an uneventful short trip back home where I had a 15knot direct crosswind landing that came out great.

Ray in his RV-10

Update: Here is a visual of the flying we did. The red line starts in the upper left shows me departing OWI, then up to K34 while I waited for Ray to take off. Then we flew formation south and then back up and landed at K81 for breakfast. The green line departing K81 up to K34 where Ray updated my data logger. Finally the blue line is departing K34 for home where I did a couple of passess over Doug's house and then over our house.

Google Earth Map

Data Logger: Ray is a EE and microprocessor guru. He made his own flap/trim controller for his RV-9A and the RV-10. Most recently he has developed a 4-port 'data logger'. It will take up to 4 serial inputs (2 outputs) and log the data to a SD flash disk. You can capture your engine data/GPS data or whatever spits out serial and log it. Right now I have the KLN-89B, EIS 4000 engine monitor and the TruTrack ADI hooked up and will eventually get the Garmin 496 wired in. Long term I'll probably only log the Garmin 496 and EIS-4000 data. Ray has the Dynon EFIS and Engine monitor he is logging as well as the Garmin 430. If this is something someone might be interested in, let me know as he'll be going to market with this unit sometime this summer.