True Confession #2 - I’m either (a) Lazy or (b) Out Flying: A Quarterly Report

How does it go? Like sands through the hourglass, so too, the Days of Our Lives. Disclaimer: I didn’t write all of that all by myself - I ripped, stole, unashamed from a stupidly addictive TV show. Please don’t sue me.

Winter was not so awful, but the wet and the cold did put a damper on my flying. Plus, Mark and I have been pretty busy putting a new face on the airfield after its purchase by the Western North Carolina Air Museum.

Our identifier is 8NC9; the Hendersonville Airport is 0A7. The runways are more or less parallel but ours is shorter by some 400 feet according to the FAA data. There’s a lot to be done to bring the turf back up to snuff, but it’s happening - little by little.

Along those lines, one thing we did not have, among other things, was a restroom to serve the hangar tenants (of whom we are two). It was a minor inconvenience for us but for any female pilots or passengers it was pretty damned inconvenient. Fortunately, the former owner had one in his hangar (of course) so we made some changes to the entry to that building and - voila! - a restroom! Not fancy, but it’s a start. 

Shifty winds are always a problem at both airfields but more so at 8NC9 (which, by the way, is called Johnson Field in remembrance of the family that owned the airfield). A bit of applied brainpower, a little work by two of our EAA/Museum members (who happen to be retired engineers and active airplane builders and pilots) and we now have a reliable wind indicator - a tetrahedron that is nice and visible from the air and the ground.

 Life just gets, as my children used to say, funner and funner.

We’ve added a paramotor club to the mix here. They usually set out in the early morning or late afternoon when conditions are most agreeable. Careful planning and orientation for both the paramotor operators and pilots has, thus far, led to a peaceful and mutually supportive coexistence. Check out Mark Huneycutt on his YouTube channel for a peek at a whole new (to most of us) aviation adventure.

Now to dry out after a spring rain - more like a deluge - and the flying will recommence!

True Confession #1

The Marquart Charger came to town from its resting place at Marion NC’s Shiflet Field. My intent was to put it back into flying condition and enjoy Red Hunnicutt’s airplane in the skies of Western North Carolina.

Once in place, friend Steve and I divvied up our purchase - he bought the engine for his RV-4 and I had the airframe.

Then, as luck would have it, just as I was ready to dig into the project (after much perusal and many trips to the Marquart Charger website, as well as parts suppliers) a fellow wrote to me out of the blue and wanted to talk about maybe buying it. It was a tough decision.

Long story short, I sold the airframe and it was on its way to West Virginia in the hands of a fellow who will do a much better job of restoring it - an Airframe and Powerplant mechanic with Inspection Authorization - pretty much the top of the trade.

I hope Red is looking down with approval for what I’ve done. He started our local EAA chapter and the Charger was a magnet for new members like me in the early 1990s.

 

Quarterly Report (4th, 2023)

 

It began as a couple of guys wanting to help out a lady who was in the somewhat enviable, yet not enviable, position of owning but not wanting an airport. Mark and I being the Boy Scouts we once were, decided to see what we could do to help her sell it. So we wrote a letter and before we knew it we were running errands and fielding all sorts of questions. All we wanted was to be assured the airport would remain an airport so we'd have a place to put our airplanes!

Long story short, the local Air Museum bought the airfield and now we find ourselves untangling years of handshake deals and some documented ones and making a consistent platform for the airfield to go forward and, hopefully, last a long time.

We're in a little corner of Paradise known as Hendersonville NC, on a plateau in the French Broad River valley of western North Carolina. The airfield is next to a 1932 airfield established by a local fellow named Oscar Meyer. Oscar built his first airplane in the late 1920s, a glider, and learned to fly it by having it pulled behind a car down the main street of town. There were objections, as you can imagine, so the teenager took it to a cornfield just outside of town and modified the glider with a car engine and that's how the Hendersonville Airport began. 

As a little boy I could see the light beam of the rotating beacon at the airport from my bedroom window as it traced across the sky. My first view of the airport was when my family drove by on our way to the nearby fairgrounds and I saw airplanes on the ground, just a quick view of them and they were gone, but I knew they were there. I believe it was from that point on I wanted to fly.

So now here I am, retired and still flying little airplanes from a grass runway next door to Oscar Meyer's and loving it.

One of these days I'll get around writing my book (they say we all have one in us) and we'll have a grand old time seeing the world together that once existed only in my imagination. For now, though, There's a fellow wanting a hangar . . . . . 

Where Does the Time Go?

 There is no more perishable commodity than time. 

In June I began my 79th circuit around the sun and looking at the photos on the walls of my barn office it seems only yesterday that three friends and I loaded the string bass, a couple of guitars and assorted nutrients into the $50, 1940 Packard and sallied forth to make musical history. (The music was pure fun, the history fleeting. I wish I had that Packard back). 

We played for Legionnaires and Governors and even the retired Commissioner of Baseball, met Colonel Sanders and were conferred the title of Kentucky Colonel ourselves before it was all over. We were young then and took time for granted. We had tons of it.

As men in our twenties we faced the prospect of war. The draft was very much on our minds. Two of us joined the Navy, two the National Guard. We all could have been deployed; one was, the others prepared but were not needed. The ploys of man did not deny us the gift of more time.

We each eventually found our career callings: One is a financial planner, one a real estate executive, one is a minister, and that left me to be a corporate pilot. Somebody had to do it. We're all retired now, but we haven't retreated.

I can't write about the paths my three friends took, only mine. What can be said in my defense is that I have wanted to fly since I was a little boy, growing up in the mountains of western North Carolina. The prospect of going up and looking down has never diminished and I practice that art every chance I have to this very day. 

Pranked!

Guru Steve is a nice guy; trustworthy, loyal, friendly, brave, helps old ladies across the street.....you get the idea. So when it comes time to tackle a project for a friend, replacing the old instruments and instrument panel in his airplane, there is no question as to the beauty and functionality of the finished product. Steve is an upright fellow who can be trusted. So when we went flying together to check all the elements displayed on the new instrument display we both remarked on the wicked sense of humor of the designers of the software, because in the place of an airplane which might show my present position on the globe, there was a donkey. Regardez-vous:

What a sense of humor .. we both laughed and, proceeding with our flight together, remarked at how the background of the cute picture blocked out some important information as we approached the airport and other airplanes.

Then, true confession time. The perpetrator of the joke was none other than the usually serious and reliable engineer who had spent the better part of his January, February, and March on this project for his trusting friend. Maybe it was because the trusting, gullible friend was about to call the manufacturer to find out how to replace that dadgum donkey with the outline of his airplane!

Fast forward (fast, as in slow) to most of the way through April, after several back-and-forth sessions with the manufacturer and the very helpful intercession of a great guy there (verifiably trustworthy, loyal, friendly, brave, etc) I now have an outline of the Glastar with a transparent background so when in close proximity to airports and airplanes I can see (electronically) what's going on around me.

I am such a dunce sometimes. As writ before, thank goodness for good friends and for the sense of humor that keeps us sane.

Time Marches On

 As in all things me, I decided to add a fuel flow transducer to the new Glastar equipage and that took a little time to work out. Thankfully, with a nod to good friends, the little red cube arrived and a plan was hatched with the help of Tom Swearengen at TS Flightlines who soon had my custom measured fuel hose on the way.

Room for new gadgetry is somewhat limited under the cowling but we were able to find just the right spot for the new fuel flow transducer and related hoses, hardware, etc...

Mark made a bracket to place the cube where it's supposed to go and Steve did the electronic magic to make it work. AFS has been great to work with and tech services is responsive.

One trick that had to be done early was calibration of the fuel quantity. 

The tanks are calibrated one at a time, but the Glastar's fuel system is such that we had to add fuel into the left and right tanks at the same time to prevent crossflow between the tanks so we could get even quantities, or close to it.

The next thing: My airplane is built with the simplified fuel system that is comprised of a 15-gallon tank in each wing and an on/off selector. Tank vents are nylon (or similar) tubing run out near the wingtips and sent vertically through the lower skin of the wings. They are then trimmed at an angle with the cut facing forward to provide positive air pressure in the tanks. Trouble is, no two cuts are precisely the same and the tanks will feed unequally. When the weight of the fuel in the tank with more fuel is enough to overcome the air pressure in the tank with less fuel, the fuller tank will feed. Not to my liking. I shopped for a 4-position fuel valve but lead times for the one I want are several months, and they come from England. Still looking.

The good news is the airplane is flying and I'm now running the EAA test cards (modified to reflect an upgraded airplane) with Mark and other safety pilots. Hopefully we'll have some good numbers very soon and I will be off to many new adventures (mostly for food).

Thank Goodness For Good Friends

For some time I've wanted to upgrade the instrument panel in the Glastar to a modern EFIS (Electronic Flight Instrument [or Information] System) with a nice, big D.U. (Display Unit) and lots of flight data on it. That technology has been around awhile but has reached a level of affordability only in the last few years. A wag once wrote that if someone wanted to see the airline tech of the future all they had to do was go to Oshkosh and the EAA fly-in to see it in action. Experimenters move the world forward; always have, always will.

The panel when we started. It was very well done for 2002 with all-electric gauges, no vacuum system. That bracket in the middle above the throttle is a mount for a hand-held GPS, a monochrome unit that cost, in 1998, over $1,000! Color displays and GPS come standard on cell phones now, giving truth to the tale that with innovation comes a reduction in cost and much greater value. The GPS incorporated in my new display tells me where I am, where I'm going and where most of the who-elses are flying near me.

My hangar partner, Mark, and Guru Steve planned the new component mounts very well. 

All the space taken up by the old instruments is now open, making room for newfangled network wiring and hub.

The network hub is mounted on the shiny aluminum platform created by Mark and wired up by Steve. Mark put edge protection on and that saved us a lot of cuts and scrapes.

While we had everything opened up I thought it might be time to replace the old wingtip lights and jump into the 21st century with all-LED units. There's no weighty external power supply to eat amps, no bulbs to burn out and the airplane lost about 3 pounds. 

The workings of electrons are pretty far outside my realm of knowledge. The beauty of experimental airplanes is the rules give nubs like me a chance to learn as we delve into those mysteries. This being my first foray into electronics and those electronics being essential to my continued health, I recruited Mark and Steve to do the heavy lifting. A project that took them, essentially, 3 weeks would have taken me much, much longer, as in months or a year. I might add that the reason they move so quickly is that Steve and Mark are both airplane builders and both are engineers. They understand this stuff.

The panel after. That 10.4" (diagonal) display has more information on it than the instrument panels on the jets I flew back in the day, and they were hot stuff. I have to calculate a new weight and balance for the airplane but I expect to lose 8-10 pounds with all the new equipment.

There is more to go. The next steps are to install a fuel flow transducer, added to the project after consulting with Steve and Mark and Dynon Avionics. I was thinking old school thoughts (Cubs, Champs, the CallAir Cadet)  which said these gadgets won't work with a carbureted engine. My engine has an engine driven fuel pump, so the flow can be calibrated. 

Calibrations are a necessity with the new systems, so I'll also be working with Mark, Steve and friends to verify my airspeed readings, measure angle of attack and determine accurate fuel quantities (to be cross-checked with the fuel flow transducer when I take to the air again). The Dynon guy said, half tongue in cheek, that fuel quantity gauges and fuel flow transducers both lie, just in different ways.

All this has been done mostly for the fun of it but also to give me the tools needed to measure the health and efficiency of my engine and the airplane as a whole. After all, I plan to hold onto this one for the duration.

My thanks to Steve and Mark and all the fellows who pitched in to bring this project to fruition. In the process I even learned a thing or two.

How I learned To Fly and Something I Learned From Flying

 My introduction to Ann Pellegreno was in the 1980s. I found a copy of her first book, World Flight, which detailed her reenactment of the ill-fated Amelia Earhart attempt to fly a Lockheed Electra around the world in 1937. Ann flew her flight in 1967, 30 years later in an Electra, and threw a garland of flowers over Howland Island where Earhart was supposed to stop for refueling. The ceremony was conducted on the date and hour of Earhart's ETA at Howland.

Ann's story has been written up many times over the succeeding years. My most recent encounter prior to buying her latest book was through an article last June (2022) by Paul Berge:

https://www.avweb.com/insider/in-the-presence-of-greatness-with-no-presence-of-mind/

Naturally, once smitten, I had to have that book and am about halfway through at this writing. 

I wanted the book to give to a young woman who is just beginning her journey into aviation. She is a former Young Eagle who took the burning coal to heart and is now old enough to get started. She has excelled in high school and has taken entry level college courses, ironically graduating from her college courses a week before she will graduate from high school! There are the usual stumbling blocks: Money, available instructors and airplanes, but she'll make it through. Sporty's Pilot Shop, through its connection with EAA and the Young Eagle program, will provide free ground school material for her. What a great candidate and a great path to aviation, no matter how she may choose to pursue it.

Here's where it gets sticky.

The book describes in detail Ann's experience with her first instructor and it's not a pretty picture. I had hoped the account would be more positive; instead, what I read was a description of a Flight Instructor who should not have been a Flight Instructor. Indeed, he should have not been flying at all. The attitude was pure macho hero. Demonstrations of "we shouldn't be doing this, but..." abounded in the initial chapters. Ann only soloed when her first instructor was unavailable for some time and another instructor evaluated her performance.

I could relate. I recall flying with a young woman over 40 years ago who had been strung out by her first instructor. In two lessons she soloed confidently, not because I was such a great teacher but because she needed someone who could communicate with her more effectively (and, perhaps, a more confident instructor). She could fly the airplane, she just didn't have the assurance to do so. I wonder sometimes what she may have done later.

SO I'm on the fence about giving this book to my Young Eagle friend. Perhaps not at the very beginning ... maybe after she is further along in her training. The more I think about it, that may be the time.

If you're interested in the Ann Pellegreno story, do an internet search and try her books. The Sky and I is available from:

www.specialbooks.com

Now we get to "Something I learned from flying":

Dave Nielsen lived down the mountain in a holler near a cave that is famous among some as a haven for bats. Naturally, we called him Bat Cave Dave.

Dave didn't have a lot of money, he wasn't famous, but he had a big, big heart. He built and flew a Kitfox and when he showed up at the north end of Johnson Field in Hendersonville NC with a loaf of bread and a pack of bologna, he started a weekly gathering that has endured to this day. The North End Gang sort of melded into the Fair Weather Flyers and we meet every Wednesday at the airport when it's warm and at other local, indoor spots when it's cold. Dave flew west in January 2016, not long after I moved back home to the mountains, so I hardly knew him but I think of him often. It occurs to me that Dave's spirit runs through all of us who love flying and love to gather with fellow flyers. Some of us came along earlier than others, but the essential thrill of personal accomplishment is still there and needs to be recognized. 

I didn't renew my Flight Instructor certificate when it came due. There is still a part of me that would like to experience the very real pleasure of watching the lights come on inside a student's head when a rectangular pattern is flown to perfection or a sight picture over the nose leads to a perfect landing. In the eyes of the FAA I'm afraid I'm a dinosaur. They're more interested in an institutional approach to flight instruction with its impossible acronyms and adherence to boxes needing to be checked off .. in order, thank you. Rather than being adjudged a loose cannon, I quit. But I won't quit.

Student pilots (we're forever learning) and experienced pilots alike can use a nudge occasionally. I prefer the less formal dialogue now that I'm getting the hang of being out of the "profession". There's absolutely nothing wrong with a qualified pilot passing along some helpful knowledge and I'll do that. I just won't be able to sign anyone off as a Flight Instructor.

And so we get to the most valuable lesson I've learned: never stop learning. That includes learning flying, learning your airplane and learning how to communicate with other people. It may be a rather narrow field of interest to some, but it's not; it's just a tight squeeze into a vast world of opportunity. As an internet friend opines: 

"A mile of road will take you a mile.

A mile of runway can take you anywhere."

OK, November and I'm Just About Caught Up

 

Well, let's see. 

Mid November I stepped down from the Presidency of the local EAA Chapter (1016) and am in the process of handing over everything to the new Head Man In Charge.

Working with the chapter has been a lot of fun even with challenges that come with rebuilding a flagging organization. There are more active building projects than I can remember and signs that members are willing to take on more chapter commitments such as resurrecting the Young Eagles program and funding scholarships on a case by case basis. That's good stuff.

The new instrument package for the Glastar is on the way from Advanced Flight Systems so I'll have something new to work on over the winter. I'm switching from round, analog gauges to a glass cockpit display that will give me more information, more accurately than the 1990 technology that I inherited. Very recent developments in LED lighting tech may be available soon that will allow me to replace the old wingtip and position lights, too, with lighter, brighter ones. This new stuff is simpler and easier to work with as well as being more effective.

Then there's the biplane. For years I've lusted after one open cockpit biplane after another and one in particular that was built by the founder of our EAA Chapter. It's a Marquart Charger and has been stored away for about 5 years, not flying. My friend, Steve, bought the engine for his RV-4 project and I bought the airframe to restore and re-engine. It's in my barn now, waiting for a patient hand to work some magic. I'll keep you posted.

As found in storage and now, during initial inspection 

So the upshot for this month's report is I've been freed up to work on two projects of my own! I hope to have the Glastar back in the air by February or March ... the Charger will take a couple of years. In the meantime, I'm ready to do what I've intended to do for quite awhile and that, in itself, is really satisfying. Fingers crossed.

What happened to September?

 

OK. I'm just lazy. September came in with seasonal changes like fog, rain, etc .. and we didn't do a lot of flying. Then, weather turned fair and warm and we got out more, then we had this hurricane that fizzled out before it got to the mountains. So much for September

The big news was Triple Tree Aerodrome's fall fly-in. Triple Tree is this 7,000' long pool table in the middle (ok, upper middle) of South Carolina where airplane people go to enjoy people just like themselves. It's very popular among pilots who would rather see airplanes than fight through vendor tables full of trinkets, even though some of those trinkets like autopilots, radars, radios of all sorts and purposes and such as that can get pretty pricey.

This was my first time at Triple Tree when the weather was absolutely ideal for a fly-in and the crowd seemed to agree.

I'm close to retirement from the EAA chapter presidency and even closer to receiving components for the upgrade of my instrument panel in the Glastar. The 2000 vintage instruments work perfectly well, I just want to upgrade to a glass display and provide for an eventual easy upgrade to IFR avionics. Plus, having a project over the winter means I'll become even better acquainted with my airplane and I can do it at home in the barn. More on that when it happens . . . 

WHAT HAPPENED TO AUGUST??

 

Peering into the afternoon sun, the PILOT winds his way among the mountain ridges toward a perfect (of course) landing ... as if.

I have no idea what happened to August. It's already September and the big winter project is looming: the Glastar is going to the barn for several months while its instrument panel is upgraded. While it's there, I thought, I might as well replace the on/off fuel valve with a four-position valve (on/L/R/off) which will allow me to manage the gravity feed from my wing tanks. As it is, my tanks don't feed evenly and that makes me nervous. Apparently it's a Glastar thing. Oh, and while I'm there I might as well replace the old Whelen nav/strobe/position lights on the wingtips with new LED lights. That will save me some weight and with Whelens being pricey I might be able to sell my old ones and make that particular upgrade at minimal cost. I dream a lot.

Hmmm .. what's new?

I decided to allow my CFI certificates to lapse at the end of August. I did not renew. This is  the first time in 42 years (if I have that right) I have not been a flight instructor. This came after quite a bit of agonizing over the decision. On the one hand, I earned those certificates (Airplane, single and multi engine, instrument) ... on the other, I haven't really used them in years. In June, I signed off my last student for his instructor certificate and he passed his checkride. Not a bad way to go out. He earned it; I did very little. One last flight review in August and I was done.

Touched base with old friends in the flying community .. that was nice. Some I haven't talked with in years. They ask sometimes if I miss the jets .. no .. I don't, but I do miss the places I went and the people I met. Once in a while - a great while as it turns out - I am on an airport ramp where a turbine engine spools up and I catch a whiff of burned kerosene .. that's when the nostalgia kicks in, but only for a moment.

I'm happy, flying little airplanes and having breakfasts and lunches in the hangar with a good group of people. And the mountains ... don't forget the mountains.

July is for Firsts

When the moment comes, we have to seize the day!

My friend, Sid, made his first ultralight flight this month .. at 90, he was thrilled. This is the same guy who helped build and then flew a LongEZ across the North Atlantic and back in the late 1980s! That was before we civilians had GPS. After a career flying Cessna 210s, a VariEZ and that LongEZ (among other types), interspersed with his day job as a neurosurgeon, Sid quit California and moved to God's country with his wife, Penny, also a pilot and a "99". Many Happy Landings, Sid!

The EAA chapter meeting had a couple of fellows from the Charlotte FSDO FAA Safety Team present a program on flights into and out of non-tower controlled fields. That was the first time in a long time that we had FAA at a meeting. The last time was an Airworthiness Representative who has since retired and moved to South Carolina. In this summer heat wave, I expect he is wishing he could be here in the mountains. South Carolina and eastern NC can be pretty warm even in a normal summer.

The morning after the meeting I was inspired to fly a Dawn Patrol over the mountains and the views were spectacular .. the early morning fog in some of our valleys was just beginning to lift and the air was clear with broken layers to keep it comfy.

Sid's now former neighbor also move to South Carolina to follow his wife's career as an OB-GYN. They had been all over the world and his flying included membership in military flying clubs in the Tokyo area and in Virginia. They've settled about 40 miles from here in Greenville and Matt completed his flight review this week at Greenville Aviation, so he's on his way again after nearly a year and a half! Of course he sent the picture above to show us how much he enjoys being back in the air.

Progress is being made on a number of airplane projects and I'm putting together plans for a revamp of my instrument panel in the Glastar, hopefully this winter if the supplier can get all their components with the shortages in the supply chains these days.

So July 2022 is almost in the books and August plans are fleshing out. More flying, more friends gathering and sharing their stories. 

Off the airfield, we had to say goodbye to a dear and faithful companion. Josie was a few months shy of her 15th birthday when she just ran out of steam. There is a hole in our hearts, all our hearts - mine, Anina's and her 2 canine pals - as we carry on without her yet keep her spirit alive. If you've been there, you know what I mean.

Josie. 2007-2022

Around the Patch - June 2022

 

We caught a break in June .. some really nice flying weather early in the morning when it was cool .. Winds tended to pick up in the afternoons.

Friend Sid, refugee from California and long time pilot, has been making the transition from regular garden variety airplanes like his VariEZE, Cessna 210 and LongEZ to ultralights. A broken hip put him back a little but he's back in the seat and running taxi tests as I write this at the end of June.

We had a great EAA meeting in June at a private airfield and environmentally friendly preserve owned by a fellow who has built airplanes and races his RV-8 in various venues. It was quite a pleasure to be invited into his private space. To take a look, go to www.eaa1016.org 

The Glastar went in for its annual condition inspection and came through it with no squawks at all. I'm ready to move forward with an update to the instrument panel and am just waiting for Advanced Flight Systems to help me write the specification. Fuel prices have a lot of owners looking for the new avionics to help us fly as economically as possible.

So that's about it .. the Fairweather Flyers and EAA members just keep on keeping on.

April Is Soooo Changeable

 What a difference an hour or two can make when it's April in the mountains of Western North Carolina!

Those are snow clouds a week ago (9th) .. ever since it's been in the 70s during the days and 40s at night ... Lots of rain before, a little since and tomorrow it'll be a deluge. But today .... TODAY.. it was FLYING WEATHER!

Mark and Sid took off from Hendersonville (0A7) in Mark's RV-8 and I launched the Glastar for Rutherford County Airport (KFQD) and a rendezvous at the 57A Café on the field ... Ron is a reformed ultralight flyer who whips up the groceries and it's a popular spot. The picnic tables under roof provide an unobstructed view of the runway and sharing tables is the order of the day. You never know who you might meet there.

We had a few bumps on the way back over the mountains as the breeze from the South picked up, but it was a delightful way to celebrate one of the few really good flying days so far this month.

Earlier in the month, on the first Saturday (2nd), a week before our Dogwood Winter snow day, a gaggle of mountain airplanes descended upon Morristown TN for EAA 1494's monthly breakfast extravaganza ... a very popular event for locals as well as fly-in participants .. 

The Glastar makes the 2.5 hour car trip pretty easy .. and the breakfast is well worth the flight ... where else can you pop up for 37 minutes and spend an hour or so with ~400 of your closest friends, all in good humor and eating a classic Southern breakfast?

We're going to have a lot of good flying days ahead .. y'all come now, y'heah?

False Spring, Winter With a Vengeance, it's March

 Whaddaya expect, the Bahamas?

Our false spring, with temperatures in the 70s and sunshine, was brief ... maybe a week. Now the coffee break is over and we're back on our heads (ask a grey beard to tell you the joke), the last gusts of a winter reluctant to pass are upon us. March is the month that gave the mountaineers of Western North Carolina the Blizzard of '93, vividly remembered by the talking weatherheads on TV who weren't born yet. 

What was covered, on and off, with snow is now underwater thanks to the beavers who dam up the streams that drain our airport, sending our floodwaters via Bat's Fork to Mud Creek, the French Broad River, the Tennessee River, the Mississippi and then, finally to the Gulf of Mexico. New Orleans will have to wait for this and while New Orleans waits, so do we.

And while we wait, we build airplanes. Here in Steve's workshop, we learn all about fitting wing ribs to the main spar of a pretty early Van's RV-4 kit. The early kits could be challenging. The components didn't always match up to the drawings and the instructions didn't either. Today's kits are much simplified with CNC dimensioned parts, pre-drilled and matched to fit precisely right. Steve is no novice builder, having built 2 other Van's airplanes, but he confessed he had used up the beer and wine pantry trying to figure out some of the bits and pieces of this RV. Fortunately, the kit had hardly been messed with during the 20-odd years other owners had it, though some of the parts have to be replaced due to corrosion, man or mouse made.

Mouse pee does not agree with aluminum.

All in all, March is a month when we begin to see the first glimmers of spring. We fix and fiddle and tweak in preparation for a season of flying. Then some damn fool starts a war and we have uncertainty and skyrocketing fuel prices and we start to wonder if there's a conspiracy to keep us from what we enjoy doing.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ... The more things change, the more they stay the same.

February 2022 - Winter Has Finally Arrived

 Here we are .. January has passed and weather has been remarkably good so far since the first day of winter. Then came February.

On the day I thought - maybe - I'd fly, this was the view:

Of course

That was the first blast and it was a good 'un. 11 inches of snow overnight and into the next day pretty much took care of a week's worth of melting before I might get to the hangar, and that would depend on some sunshine. That was last week.

This week's cold front with accompanying ice, snow and rain was much more civil. The Appalachian Mountains are our friends, sometimes, and split weather coming up from Texas so the bad cold stuff runs northeast up the west side of the range and the warmer, wet stuff runs along the south slopes, generally up I-85. We're at that blue dot, middle right in the screenshot below:

Mother Nature provides us with a snowplow of sorts when conditions are just right. As I write this, it's mid afternoon, the day after this was captured, and we have sunshine forecast for the next 5-6 days. There is hope.

Fly safely . . . .

Happy New Year - 2022!

 

Caught with his pants down, Kermit awaits new sparks

The LASAR ignition system that was originally installed on Kermit's Lycoming O-360 began hiccuping, defaulting from electronic to fixed timing (as it should in failure mode) during my last flight so I made a command decision to sacrifice some of the new instrument panel money for an up-to-date hybrid electronic ignition system. The winning combination is a Kelly impulse magneto on the left side and a SureFly electronic module on the right. That seemed to be the best for me as I don't like to put all my faith in electricity. In the event of a total electrical failure (admittedly a remote chance) I'll still have sparks coming from a technology that's well over 100 years old. What was good for tractors is good for me.

The new system works very well. SureFly mentions in passing that it may seem to skip a bit when doing the magneto/ignition check as part of the pre-takeoff checklist, but I did not find it disconcerting. In fact, when I slowed the test down a little (as they recommended) the skip was hardly noticeable.

The traditional Christmas Day flight was delightful, with calm winds and temperatures in the balmy, unseasonable 70s. New Year's Day was another story. Winds were blustery aloft, leading to moderate turbulence around the valley of the old French Broad (River). It was nice and warm, still in the 60s, but I was glad to get on the ground. All was well until I put Mark's airplane back in the hangar and learned the hard way how a wingtip can grow, putting a dent in the front fender of his Porsche. (Cringe)

Of course, Mark dug into the medicine kit and put a band-aid on it

Even with the gusty winds I did ok on my New Year's Day landing. I need some work on hangar operations, though.

The nice weather didn't last. It's a couple of days later when I'm writing this and a front came through last night that was pretty ferocious. Asheville, just up the road, reported winds in the 30-40kt range with gusts to 51kts, freezing rain, then snow. Temps that started today in the 50s are now, in mid afternoon, in the low 30s and we have snow on the ground, although that's going away with the wind, sun and residual ground temperatures.

I fear winter has arrived. There will be nice days, though, good for flying when we aren't tinkering with this or that. The air will be cold and, as Gordon Baxter once wrote, fat with lift. The Glastar will enjoy it and so will I.

Ho Hum .. Another Day, Another Pandemic

 It's somehow appropriate that I'm writing on the cusp of the shortest daylight of the year. I have this mental picture of a brainless millennial anguishing over global warming, pandemics and -OMG- the days are getting longer! If it weren't for stress there'd be no sign of life at all in these people.

Longer days mean more dayLIGHT, more time to poke around airplanes and more time to fly!

My ignition system has been replaced on the Glastar and the test flight went beautifully, though my electronic tach reads half the rpm .. Steve, an engineer friend, when he heard this, said "you've been to college", meaning no big deal; multiplication is not that hard. I suppose not, even for a theatre major, especially when the "times tables" don't extend past "two". I just pretend I'm flying behind a Kinner.

Our new pandemic iteration has the catchy sobriquet: "Omicron". Apparently it is more transmissible. I'm not going to worry until it gets to "Omega", the last letter in the Greek alphabet. In the meantime there's hot chocolate in the afternoon and Redemption Rye in the evening. What, me worry?

November, Late. 2021

Here it is, November already, and I'm just getting used to writing 2021 on things that must be dated. I'll join the chorus asking "where did the time go?".

This has been an interesting year. When our local EAA chapter found itself without a president I found a new job and it's been fun. We had our first meeting of the year in June and our number of attendees has increased every month since. The programs have been varied and interesting from local area ATC to 3D printing of airplane parts and accessories to a newly designed and flown 95% replica of a Ryan ST ... capped off with a Turkey Dinner night this month. What a great group of people!

The CallAir Cadet is gone after being a big part of my flying life for 9 years. It went to a fellow in Louisiana who is enjoying it immensely, along with his sons and grandsons. 

The Glastar is flying and flying well, although I ran into an ignition problem in the LASAR electronic ignition system earlier this month. It performed as advertised, defaulting to fixed timing from the special Slick magnetos, but the transition back and forth from electronic to magneto was disconcerting and probably not good for the engine. This prompted a decision to upgrade to a hybrid electronic/magneto system. Parts have arrived and the airplane is ready for the installation .. all that's needed is a warm-ish day and another project to move so I can get to it. 

There's not much else to report ... when it gets cold and the northwest winds howl through the venturi that is the valley of the French Broad River you don't see many light airplanes venturing out. A clear, crisp day sans wind, though, and the skies fill with airplanes and flying machines galore. Hope rises anew from days like that and the promise of spring has us fixing and polishing and sharpening our wits for the flying days ahead.