Friday, February 28, 2020

Oh Spring, 2020, Wherefore Art Thou?

We see signs on the field:

The winter has been wet and unusually warm on average. Looking north-ish along RW 33, the bog is especially hard on landing gear with spats and mushy as well. It's easy to dig into the soft ground. 

So we stay home. Comfy, relatively dry. The hangar leaks a bit here and there (to be fixed when Mark gets back from accumulating enough travel diseases to incapacitate the Fairweather Flyers plus some.

In spite of Mama Nature, there are a few dry days strung together .. enough to bring out the machines and aviate. 

Last weekend's foray was to a  private grass strip just South (always capitalized) of here, beyond our protective mountains, where an engaging fellow gives tailwheel transition instruction in a beautiful Cessna 140 and it was worth the visit. There are new subdivisions being built around the airstrip - I hope they can hold on to it.

Meanwhile, the Fairweather Flyers fly on .. searching for signs of spring wherever they can be found.

Monday, February 03, 2020

Steve's RV-10 First Flight, Leo's Loon-y, etc

It's official ... Steve's RV-10 is not only an airplane (the paperwork is done), it flies!

Darwin and Steve did the first flight test on the 30th of January, just in time to miss the first snow of the year (One day's worth, mostly gone a couple of days later. After all, this is North Carolina. South enough). All was well and good data collected to tweak Steve's high tech fuel/engine setup. More on that some other time.

Leo's Corby Starlet is now the flagship of the Fairweather Flyers fleet ... Loon is proudly flying into the wind on his rudder surfaces.
Yesterday's snow that began in late morning didn't quash Leo's desire to fly -- he made it back to the airport in time to miss the real action. The weather guessers missed it across the board and it was a real surprise.

I managed to get the Glastar out for a short flight around the valley on Thursday ... Mark and Steve did some high engineering math and found a way for me to rearrange the hangar stack so I could pull it out and put it back in without a lot of trouble. (Mark is traveling for awhile so I have the run of the place.) Not trusting one good result from my ADS-B performance flight, I took advantage of Thursday's to pull up another report from FAA and it was good. 

Another hour on another day in the Glastar to see what it's like to be bashed around with the winds we get here in the mountains .. a short run over to a close by airport beyond the rim of these hills and an exercise in crosswind landings. All in all, good for me and good to get the airplane outside in the elements.

There are more hours of light than yesterday ... more time to go FLYING !