The Towbar Rig

This "invention" is born of necessity. Actually it's not much of an invention at all, since there are many towbars out there that could do the job. It's just that they are either part, or some or none of the things I wanted. All the thing had to do was make it easier for me to push the Bonanza slightly uphill and over a door track to get it back in the hangar.

The little units that have a gas or electric motor mounted on a single wheel with forks that clamp onto the front axle are really nice but they are expensive! The reason they are expensive is that they're for moving AIRPLANES. Any thing that has AIRPLANE attached to it is expensive. What I did was scrounge up a riding lawnmower ($325 on Craig's List) some adapters from a friend for my axle ($60), a hitch socket from Harbor Freight ($12.95), and thin-wall steel square tubing ($180, including welding). It comes out to about 1/3 the cost of a purpose-built AIRPLANE towmotor AND I can always earn a couple of extra bucks for flying by mowing grass!

Taking the "ail" out of "aileron" and other good stuff

First, let's take a look at a little airport that can, and does.

Williston, Florida, is a little town located southwest of Gainesville and northwest of Ocala. They have lots of nice, rolling land there which is great for growing crops, cattle, horses and families. They also have an airport, left over from World War II when the government paved a lot of Florida for training bases and antisubmarine patrols. X60 is the identifier.

The city fathers and mothers decided that the airport would be great for growing pine trees and today the renewable pine tree stands pay a handsome dividend for the city. Fortunately, the city Fs and Ms also decided to keep the runways and have improved upon the airport mightily over the past year. New hangars, a new FBO building with all the bells and whistles, a good maintenance shop and a terrific interior shop are all located on the property. I had the interior of my Bonanza done there last year and also had new windows installed by the maintenance shop.

All the improvements will be showcased on March 27, 2010, at the Williston Airport Fly Festival. Click on the picture to get a larger, more readable copy.



I had an opportunity to stop in on my way from home base to North Carolina last week and lo and behold the new airport restaurant is open! While the city owned FBO pumped some fairly priced fuel (3.89 on March 19th), I had some breakfast ....

Carol Bibby (picture below) has a real gem of a place ... they're open for breakfast and lunch every day from 6am-4pm and Friday night they stay open for dinner until 9pm. It's about 200 feet from the FBO, so it's an easy stroll and if the weather is right and you're so inclined you can eat under the outside cover and watch airplanes or spin yarns or whatever.

Here's that picture of Carol. I told her my vast readership would make her famous.

Onward:

When I bought the Bonanza, the right aileron was warped. I knew it at the time ... the airplane flew well enough with it like that but it was a condition I wanted to fix down the road. I began looking around for a replacement last year and finally settled on a rebuilt part through a company I had done business with in the past - Select Airparts of Weyers Cave VA. Select is proof positive of the notion that if you do good work and treat people fairly you can succeed in business even from the boondocks. Long story short, Jay shipped my replacement and Jeff painted and installed it and now I have an airplane that is more stable and a tick or three faster due to drag elimination.

One thing fixed, a few more to go ...

I'm finally in a hangar at my home base of Clearwater Airpark (FL). The hangar is one of the "old ones" that the city relocated from the other side of the field when they found out that golf courses are more popular with politicians than airports. We have golf balls bouncing on the runway all the time (grrrr), but God bless rust - that's the glue that binds these tin boxes together. Long story short - the maintenance on these hangers is nonexistent so the hangar tenants do what we can to try to keep all the parts in alignment. Any attempt to refurbish is promptly rebuffed but we soldier on, fixing here, patching there. On the plus side, it's a great place for hanging out with other dispossessed souls, tinkering with flying machines, etc, and as a side benefit it keeps the airplane out of the Florida sun and wind, which we get a lot of here by the Gulf coast.

One bugaboo I have is that the interior walls of these "T" hangars don't go all the way to the roof, leaving quite a space at the top open for carrying paint overspray, dust, motes of rust, etc from one neighbor to another. A lot of the tenants have closed off these openings in years gone by - mine hasn't been updated, so I'm in the process of doing that, painting the metal walls and eventually will seal the old asphalt floor. The city actually gave me 10 gallons of sealer but a neighbor who has refurbed three of these hangars says that won't go far. (So that's my first rant in a long time and I feel better now.)

Furthermore:

The apron to my new/old hangar slopes a little so that I have to enlist help when pushing the airplane in by hand. There had to be a better way, so I channeled my farmer friend Leland from North Carolina and began cogitating upon the problem and possible solutions thereto. I knew I wanted a towmotor of some kind but the pretty ones cost about 1500 smackers by the time they arrive in Florida with shipping and all. One of the fellows at the Table of Knowledge in Clearwater suggested a riding lawnmower for propulsion and a listing on Craigslist filled that bill ... then I began looking around at towbars. The kind I decided on goes for about $260 from two companies so another suggestion took me over to a steel fabrication shop a couple of blocks from my hangar and I had them weld up my towbar for me. My neighbor, Ron, precision-drilled for the adjusting pins and retaining bolts and we hooked everything up last week -- worked like a charm. My total investment is about a third the cost of the high-priced rig. Pictures may follow.

So that's the story of a great little airport, ailing ailerons, hungover hangars and airplane pushers and pullers so I'm signing off for this month. It's time to dust off the airplane and do a little FLYING!!!

Dope(s) and Fabric

First on this month's list is Bill's new-old Comanche! Hot diggety! We flew together one day last week and enjoyed it a lot. This is a great machine! Bill has plans for paint and some other goodies which will make it even better. Congratulations!



Bill and Stu picked the best day in a couple of weeks to fly from Fla to New York. At 7,500 feet most of the way the air was smooth as glass.

Bill, Stu and Gino ready to launch the Comanche for the trip to New York.

Next, I signed up for a refresher course in fabric covering at Orlando (where all the snowbirds like to go in February) and it was COLD and WET the first day - like to have frozen in that unheated hangar on Saturday ... it was a little warmer on Sunday. The turnout was good (16 for the fabric workshop) and we got some very good hands-on instruction. Bob's hangar was a great place to learn too, but my last and only lesson was several years ago and I forget stuff like ribstitching and tapes and things like that.

The workshops are put on by EAA through http://sportair.com ... the courses are varied and many and taught by excellent instructors.

I finally got the Bonanza in a hangar at CLW and will have some fun fixing the space up the way I want it.

Fly safe!

..

-Alex-

Gino's Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award

It was really nice to get a call from Bill to come out to the Clearwater Airpark and have a piece of cake to celebrate Gino's award from the FAA ... Bill drove down from New York especially for the event! (He helped his daughter move, too)

Ed and Bill flew over from Wellington for the festivities and we attended a catered luncheon at Big Fred's House of Boeuf right up the street.

Of course the first comment went along the lines of "who put the Monkey in 'Monkey Wrench'"

All kidding aside, there aren't too many of these given out. The award is named, of course, for the Wright Brothers' mechanic. Gino says he (Gino) taught him (Taylor) everything he knew. I can vouch for his workmanship after he wrought a miracle in Butyrate on my Cub. Rumor has it he knows how to fly, too.

Fortunately, somebody took a picture of the cake before I got there ... there wasn't much left.

The price of annual inspections just went up.

New Year's Day 2010

What could be better on a New Year's Day than to go flying with a friend?
Craig and Stu launch the Cub for a spin about the patch, so to speak.

Then, what to their wondering eyes should appear but Bill and the Bird! The same Bill who complains that the downwash from the upper wing goes right down the back of his neck in 80 degree weather, goes flying with ICE on the Great South Bay! Note: the front cockpit is EMPTY.

Steve and the Fleet were flying too but I don't have a picture as evidence.

The outer shoreline - no sun worshippers today.

There are stories of intrepid airmen who have landed on ice that forms in the bay but it didn't happen in the 14 years I was there. Global warming, I guess.

My hat's off to these guys who celebrate the fun of flying as often as possible, even when it's a bit chilly.

Mountain Flying

The finest moments spent are those in the company of good people, or in a good place. There are few places that can compare with the company of my family in the mountains I love, in a good airplane and on a perfect day.

I have a lot to be thankful for.

-Alex-

Triple Tree Fly-In 2009

This was my first trip to Triple Tree. What a place!

I didn't know if this was a travel trailer and motorhome park ...

A fishing hole ... (they were biting - catch and release)

An airport ....

A manicured golf course ...

... or a family park (kids and pets welcome if they're managed).

The answer is, it's all these things (well, maybe not the golf part) and quite an accomplishment for the owners.

Take a look at their web site: www.tripletreeflyin.com

Now, if the weather would only cooperate. The fly-in runs from Wednesday through Sunday; I was there on Friday and that turned out to be the only decent day - it rained cats and dogs all the rest of the time. Same thing happened last year.

This is a must-do next year.

Fly safely ...

One door closes - Another door opens

First off ... farewell to Champ! I really enjoyed the airplane during this past year. When I bought Champ (see May 2008 post) I was going through an awful case of taildragger withdrawal, having sold the Cub to friends at Bayport Aerodrome on Long Island. It would have been along way to commute to fly a share of the Cub so I bought Champ to retire to the NC mountains. Then I got bitten by an open cockpit bug. Dadgum bugs, they just seem to keep biting!

Champ Taxis out on one of its last flights at Hendersonville NC ...

There was a fellow at Hendersonville back in the day named Jesse Anglin who, it turned out, designed some really nifty airplanes. He was in good company. A couple of other Hendersonville residents were well known airplane people in their own right - Matty Laird, Leighton Collins, Oscar Meyer (not the hot dog guy) ... Anyway, the story goes, Jesse took a ride with my friend Chet in his PT-19, enjoyed it immensely, and set out to design a homebuilt airplane with the same wind-in-your-hair feeling he had in the PT-19. The result was the Spacewalker. It was a single seat airplane that was built with toughness in mind. A friend in the model airplane business - again, it is said - asked Jesse about a 2-seat version and the Spacewalker II was born

Voila! The Spacewalker II !

Cory and I talked back and forth for several months - he had to quell a family insurrection ... the kids didn't want to see the Spacewalker go! I can imagine. This is an airplane designed for fun .

Unfortunately, it wasn't designed for my long legs. The airplane is just terrific but when I went to get inside I was all squnched up ... by wiggling around I could get in - barely - but couldn't get my feet to work the rudder pedals properly and heels far enough back to use the brakes. I sat in that airplane and was so disappointed. (Cory said he wasn't heartbroken and wrote later that he'd put over an hour on the airplane a couple of days after I left.)

So I keep looking. There is another airplane out there with my name on it.

P.S. If you're ever in south Louisiana near Lake Charles, go to D.I.'s Cajun Restaurant. The food and family are just wonderful.

www.discajunrestaurant.biz

Bayport NY Antique Fly-In !!

This month we take you back to Bayport, Long Island, NY for the annual Antique Airplane Club of Greater New York Fly-In.

Bayport Aerodrome has been designated a National Historic Site

This sign is a really attractive billboard at the entrance to the Aerodrome.

A prize display is the actual "St. Louis" Curtiss Model 50 "Robin". This airplane set a remarkable record for time aloft. In July 1929, Dale Jackson and Forest O'Brine set an endurance record of 420 hours, 17 minutes in the air, using in-flight refueling. Later, they set a new mark of 647 hours, 28 minutes using the same plane, named St Louis.

Once the flying got underway, airplanes of all descriptions were going aloft. The AACGNY member airplanes are flyers! There are a few that are on museum display only (such as the Robin above) but most are actively flown all year round.

Mario "Yogi" Barra spent his professional life with the airlines and we found him very happy in his retirement, getting his Aeronca Champ ready for some fun flying ...

John and Max had a great time watching the airplanes. John is an instructor who has been bitten by the antique airplane bug.

Oh boy ... now here's a collection. Gene and Ed and President Stu and Dave ...

Kaitlin and Stu on their way to the wild blue yonder ... Stu just loves the Cub, which was pried away from an unsuspecting owner who was about to retire ... (me)

Some of these pictures look eerily like others from earlier posts ... "Ace" had his N3N and Ryerstahl out in the sunshine ...

The Ryerstahl - top of the line fighter in the Royal Vulgarian Flying Corps - is actually a tweaked EAA Biplane, complete with machine gun and - somewhere to be installed - a bayonet.

The south flight line on Saturday afternoon ...

This gorgeous PT-22 just begs for pictures ...

Our Russian colleagues, Vladimir and Andre, found this YaK-18 on the west coast and flew it back to NY ... many hours and 4-5 days. The engine is a Russian version of a Kinner. Brave men. Note the rotation of the engine is clockwise as viewed from the cockpit ... just like the American Kinner. Most engines of Russian manufacture turn the opposite way.

Steve's Fleet 16 with a new engine from Al Ball, exhaust collector and - gasp - a starter!

Here's another picture of the YaK-18 ....

... and the instrument panel from the YaK ...

Boy, was it hot in New York for this fly-in! Temps in the 90s had to be cooled at the Sheep Shagger Baaa ... doesn't this remind you of the bar scene from Star Wars?

Sunday morning was "Pancake Day" and Mike was on hand to cook 'em up ... Dick has a plate full and one of our guests is chowing down ... sorry mate - I didn't get your name.

The north flight line on Sunday morning with Tom and Eileen's pink L-16 right in the middle ...

What a treat to fly with this guy ... Jack is back in Cubs after flying them when they were new and graduating to Air Force transports and TWA ... at TeeWee he flew most of their inventory from Convair 220s to Constellations to the Boeing 747 ... and I got to give him his Biennial Flight Review in the Cub! Welcome back to the low and slow club, Jack, and Happy Landings!

Bayport Aerodrome is located just south of the Sunrise Highway at Bayport NY. For maps and more information about the aerodrome and the Antique Airplane Club of Greater New York, look them up at www.aacgny.org