The wing is connected to the fuselage by two brackets that bolt the spars to the fuselage. It also has two struts that attach from down by the landing gear and bolt into the wing almost halfway out, forming a triangle. These struts are reinforced and spaced by a jury strut, which bolts from about two-thirds of the way up struts into the wing, forming another smaller triangle inside the first one. In addition to critical reinforcement, it also provides a handy place to put your gun case and snowshoes.
But the holes in the wooden spars were drilled an eighth of an inch too high on the front spar and an eighth of an inch too low on the rear spar to attach the bracket. (Guess who didn't find this out until it was the last piece of hardware standing between her and a completely trammeled wing?)
Well, when dealing with a wooden wing, the answer is emphatically NOT making a larger hole in the wood. You want to keep the wooden spars as pristine, free of damage or holes, as possible. So, first I tried the bracket on the old spars. Nope, fit fine there. Then I tried the other bracket, hoping maybe that one had been repaired oddly over the years. No luck. So, what to do?
The answer is: take tape and make an inverted T around the holes, on both sides of the spars. With the help of a square and a level, draw lines exactly through the centerline, horizontal and vertical, of the hole on the spar. Then, re-attach the bracket, and put tape over the tab with the bolthole, while clamping it down with a C-clamp. Using the same square and level, complete the lines across the tape on the bracket, so you have the centerline drawn as crosshairs where the hole now needs to be on the bracket.
If I was in the field, I might just drill the hole a little longer, then weld a washer on top in order to reposition the hole. If I was a better welder, I'd weld an extended tab on the bracket, or fill the current hole, and drill a new one. As it's been six years since I was good at welding, I'm being smarter.
Monday, I'm going down to F Atlee Dodge, and having the welders there do it. See? Smarter cookie than I first appear. And because I'm such a smart cookie, I checked the bracket on the other wing so I don't have to repeat this when I get there on the other wing. But guess what? That one's fine - no, I don't get it either.
Progress continues.
Unrelated notes: Thirty Second's To Mars video for their song "From Yesterday" is extremely pretty - possibly too pretty for the song.
And Jenny? I adore your .22 rifle. I hope you don't mind I put a cheap little scope on it - but it's let me see far enough away that I'm now consistently pegging dime-sized targets at 25 meters. I know this because a certain lanky gent disappeared from the lane next to me, and reappeared with a roll of small orange dot stickers - so I had to put them on and promptly peg them!
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
Trammeled Not Trampled
I've now reached one of those highly important celebratory steps - trammeling the wings. This is again something that would take an accomplished A&P fifteen minutes to do, and has taken me three days. The first part is to draw a reference line on the top of the spar that marks the middle of the compression strut, and a crossing line at the halfway point. The easy way to do this is to take a square (which is actually a triangle-shaped piece of steel used for making things square), and lining up the top and bottom bolt holding the compression strut in, follow the line up and mark it.. You'll use these lines to measure whether or not your bays - the distance between compression struts - are square, and tighten or loosen the drag & anti-drag wires in order to pull the spar into a square shape.
Except, well, the holes aren't always - or even usually - straight up and down. There's a very slight angle that puts the line well off to one side. To make matters worse, the ribs and brackets get in the way and don't allow the square to easily lie there or line up. Also, your eyes are not in the center of your head - so if you look at something when standing directly over it with your left eye closed, your line will be way off to one side, or way off to the other if your right eye is closed.
Finally my IA disclosed some of the great truths in life:
1. Use a sharp pencil for a fine line.
2. You don't have to be absolutely precise or absolutely accurate - but you must be consistent. If the reference line is off by 1/4 inch, he said, that's fine - as long as it's off by 1/4 on every strut. So mark it as well as you can, and do it the same way, every time.
3. Loosen all your wires before you start, so the wing can be easily adjusted. Then start from the wing root and trammel out to the tip.
4. A piece of inner tube rubber cleaned with brake-kleen is slightly sticky and great for holding the drag wire.
5. If you have a 1/2 inch to square, only tighten the drag wire halfway (for 1/4 inch in this case) - the tension on the spars & other drag wire will pull it the rest of the way. It's geometry, Watson.
It went a lot faster after that!
But wait, there's more - after getting it all square, I have to go back, tighten all the bolts, and re-trammel after all the hardware is tight. This is slightly stymied by the two AN5-16 bolts called for actually need to be shorter than AN5-11. I don't have shorter bolts than that - parts run tomorrow!
I count today as four steps forward with only one small step back - measurable progress!
In other news, Lost Prophet's "Rooftops" is a good song, and I'd really like to hear it live, as it sounds like it'd be a lot better in person than car stereo.
Except, well, the holes aren't always - or even usually - straight up and down. There's a very slight angle that puts the line well off to one side. To make matters worse, the ribs and brackets get in the way and don't allow the square to easily lie there or line up. Also, your eyes are not in the center of your head - so if you look at something when standing directly over it with your left eye closed, your line will be way off to one side, or way off to the other if your right eye is closed.
Finally my IA disclosed some of the great truths in life:
1. Use a sharp pencil for a fine line.
2. You don't have to be absolutely precise or absolutely accurate - but you must be consistent. If the reference line is off by 1/4 inch, he said, that's fine - as long as it's off by 1/4 on every strut. So mark it as well as you can, and do it the same way, every time.
3. Loosen all your wires before you start, so the wing can be easily adjusted. Then start from the wing root and trammel out to the tip.
4. A piece of inner tube rubber cleaned with brake-kleen is slightly sticky and great for holding the drag wire.
5. If you have a 1/2 inch to square, only tighten the drag wire halfway (for 1/4 inch in this case) - the tension on the spars & other drag wire will pull it the rest of the way. It's geometry, Watson.
It went a lot faster after that!
But wait, there's more - after getting it all square, I have to go back, tighten all the bolts, and re-trammel after all the hardware is tight. This is slightly stymied by the two AN5-16 bolts called for actually need to be shorter than AN5-11. I don't have shorter bolts than that - parts run tomorrow!
I count today as four steps forward with only one small step back - measurable progress!
In other news, Lost Prophet's "Rooftops" is a good song, and I'd really like to hear it live, as it sounds like it'd be a lot better in person than car stereo.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
winter grey, summer green
An overcast arctic winter day is a study in a hundred thousand shades of gray. Most everyone drives with headlights on, as it's not much lighter outside the buildings in daylight than it is inside. (Even the camera wants to take a midday picture with flash). Somewhere beyond the clouds the sun comes up in the south, reaches the apogee of its arc less than a handspan above the horizon, and sinks down a few hours after it first showed: each day, we're still losing 5-8 minutes of daylight more.
Between the layers of clouds, recent snow, sanded snow, old snow with a layer of windborn sand and glacial silt, and freshly disturbed snow, a thousand shades of grey show - and the windsock swinging gently in the breeze seems almost unreal, almost glows with its safety orange brilliance. Staring at it as I drive by, it is too colorful - seems almost like a photoshopped object, misplaced bright splash of color on the right of the road. On the left, the stars and stripes glows red and blue as it ripples in the wind above the POW-MIA flag similarly cut from another world where colors exists, too vivid to be real.
I remember summer like a fever dream now, when these mountains are green...
Flying a PA-12 with tundra tires and flaps, supercub landing gear and every spare ounce stripped, we made our way through mountains with no roads out. We'd followed the right fork of the glacier up the valley it had carved out of the mountain, and past its gleaming blue-white swaths found the small U-shaped bowl in the mountains mostly free of snow. It was the height of summer in the arctic, and the sun rarely set - but it was low enough that it was on the other side of the mountain, making the world seem a rare dim twilight below blue-white skies.
We came around a massive rock, past a chunk of glacier not yet melted, stranded, and found the faint lighter strip of earth ahead, beside a winding creek fed by hanging waterfalls tumbling hundreds of feet down sheer drops to the valley floor. It seemed like a mere scratch in the earth from our height, as though a bear had raked a paw there - but that slightly crooked bare patch of earth was where we needed to land. A slight nudge of the throttle lever pulled back the power as we glided down low, swooping over it to take a look at the bare earth. It was rutted with tracks where prior planes had landed when it was muddy, but it was light, the color of dry dirt now. All around, low scrub willow and dwarf fireweed grew, flourishing in the short, intense arctic growing season above the treeline and setting swaths of pink-purple against a hundred shades of green.
The creek was a light blue-gray of glacial silt, a jewel set in wide green swaths of reeds, and we scanned for smaller, still pools or ripples in the reeds that might show the direction of the wind. Finally, one showed the light breeze was headed down the valley by a wide band of clear, calm water toward the up-valley side, and a patch of wind-stirred water to the down-valley side. In the absence of movement by the larger air mass, the cool air on the snow-capped mountains was sinking and tumbling down, like the meltwater from those snowcaps, gathering and spilling down to rush out as a strong breeze above the new-born river at the base of the glacier.
Coming back around, we paced the plane as though the scratch in the earth were a normal, if smaller-scale, version of a runway (at least three hundred feet if it was an inch - lots of room, but crooked, narrow). Pre-landing checks, going very slow but engine set up to growl and claw out of there if it wasn't going well, we came down with a flaps out and nose high like an eagle scooping air to nearly hover before landing. Only here, we straightened out and bled off a little more speed to gently touch her mains down, then drop the tail solidly and controlled, and roll to the end of the strip. It was rougher than I'd expected, with the ruts, and we had to add power to make it to the widest spot near the end. Only then did we apply brakes and lift the tail up and around by the force of the wind coming off the propeller alone, so she was parked off to the side. Whenwe left, we'd taxi down the strip, shut down and drag her tail back in the weeds for maximum distance.
Shutting down, we climbed out, and listened, looking around. The waterfalls made a distant background rushing noise, and the breeze blew gently in our ears, tugging our jackets and hair. A few birds chirped somewhere, unseen in the low willow scrub, and on the creekbank were the tracks from a single pair of moose. Otherwise, it was completely silent. If not for the friend next to me, I would be the only human in miles. If not for the ruts under our feet, our plane could have been the only sign of humanity had ever set foot here.
Between the layers of clouds, recent snow, sanded snow, old snow with a layer of windborn sand and glacial silt, and freshly disturbed snow, a thousand shades of grey show - and the windsock swinging gently in the breeze seems almost unreal, almost glows with its safety orange brilliance. Staring at it as I drive by, it is too colorful - seems almost like a photoshopped object, misplaced bright splash of color on the right of the road. On the left, the stars and stripes glows red and blue as it ripples in the wind above the POW-MIA flag similarly cut from another world where colors exists, too vivid to be real.
I remember summer like a fever dream now, when these mountains are green...
Flying a PA-12 with tundra tires and flaps, supercub landing gear and every spare ounce stripped, we made our way through mountains with no roads out. We'd followed the right fork of the glacier up the valley it had carved out of the mountain, and past its gleaming blue-white swaths found the small U-shaped bowl in the mountains mostly free of snow. It was the height of summer in the arctic, and the sun rarely set - but it was low enough that it was on the other side of the mountain, making the world seem a rare dim twilight below blue-white skies.
We came around a massive rock, past a chunk of glacier not yet melted, stranded, and found the faint lighter strip of earth ahead, beside a winding creek fed by hanging waterfalls tumbling hundreds of feet down sheer drops to the valley floor. It seemed like a mere scratch in the earth from our height, as though a bear had raked a paw there - but that slightly crooked bare patch of earth was where we needed to land. A slight nudge of the throttle lever pulled back the power as we glided down low, swooping over it to take a look at the bare earth. It was rutted with tracks where prior planes had landed when it was muddy, but it was light, the color of dry dirt now. All around, low scrub willow and dwarf fireweed grew, flourishing in the short, intense arctic growing season above the treeline and setting swaths of pink-purple against a hundred shades of green.
The creek was a light blue-gray of glacial silt, a jewel set in wide green swaths of reeds, and we scanned for smaller, still pools or ripples in the reeds that might show the direction of the wind. Finally, one showed the light breeze was headed down the valley by a wide band of clear, calm water toward the up-valley side, and a patch of wind-stirred water to the down-valley side. In the absence of movement by the larger air mass, the cool air on the snow-capped mountains was sinking and tumbling down, like the meltwater from those snowcaps, gathering and spilling down to rush out as a strong breeze above the new-born river at the base of the glacier.
Coming back around, we paced the plane as though the scratch in the earth were a normal, if smaller-scale, version of a runway (at least three hundred feet if it was an inch - lots of room, but crooked, narrow). Pre-landing checks, going very slow but engine set up to growl and claw out of there if it wasn't going well, we came down with a flaps out and nose high like an eagle scooping air to nearly hover before landing. Only here, we straightened out and bled off a little more speed to gently touch her mains down, then drop the tail solidly and controlled, and roll to the end of the strip. It was rougher than I'd expected, with the ruts, and we had to add power to make it to the widest spot near the end. Only then did we apply brakes and lift the tail up and around by the force of the wind coming off the propeller alone, so she was parked off to the side. Whenwe left, we'd taxi down the strip, shut down and drag her tail back in the weeds for maximum distance.
Shutting down, we climbed out, and listened, looking around. The waterfalls made a distant background rushing noise, and the breeze blew gently in our ears, tugging our jackets and hair. A few birds chirped somewhere, unseen in the low willow scrub, and on the creekbank were the tracks from a single pair of moose. Otherwise, it was completely silent. If not for the friend next to me, I would be the only human in miles. If not for the ruts under our feet, our plane could have been the only sign of humanity had ever set foot here.
Friday, November 28, 2008
steampunk in motion
I have to admit, I like the look of steampunk - each piece that comes up on the net is often creative, thoughtful, meticulously done with attention to detail, crafted with care and passion.
That said, I also have a great love of automated assembly - what robotic assembly lines lack in craftsmanship, they gain in interchangeability, reliability, and affordability. Now, the designers must craft the love and passion to be replicated a ten thousand times over - and when marketing doesn't understand the materials they're working in, you get cheap cameras that break in your hand, and cool-looking cell phones that do everything you could want poorly, and still drop your calls.
My plane was the best, or worst, of both worlds - even today, all planes are made by hand. You can tell - though made on jigs that allow very little variance, when you repair a plane, each piece has to be carefully fitted, often adjusted or slightly altered. For mine - I am just now replacing her spars, stamped with serial numbers from original installation at the factory. The replacements are close, but took some work with file and varnish to fit the hardware.
She came, once, with a lush headliner and insulation, probably wood veneer panel, leather-wrapped yokes, cushioned foam seat... But by the time she came to me in Alaska, every ounce that could not be justified had been stripped out to save weight. Now, sitting in her canvas sling seat, you can see the bare bones of her welded fuselage and wooden stringers between holding the shape of her skin, fabric pinkish-brown on the inside still showing its origin stamped on the fabric. Her instrument panel is a far cry from modern six-pack instrument layout (she predates that design by decades). It's black-painted metal with the mandatory labels glued down and peeling, curling at the edge. Even her yokes are stripped-down, bare-bones.
She is still beautiful to me, for the possibilities, the dreams, the motion inherent in every line, the freedom of the skies. I like the way her clean curves arc down the length of her body, the simplicity of purpose and design, the arch of her airfoil and the golden gleam of her new spars, shimmer of colors in the cadmium wash of her new hardware. Was it Heinlein who once advised to love a woman, and you will come to find she is beautiful?
Still, I am looking at steampunk - an aesthetic which likes to make gears and dials and bare bones beautiful. With a a lot of thought and care, I would like to decorate her bare bones, without adding heavy weight that would retract from her performance. (As if, being female, I wasn't having a hard enough time deciding what to paint her!)
So I'm gathering ideas, in much the same way we shop for our next outfit and hairstyle by people-watching. And I'm looking at her instrument panel, and looking at this page. Clearly, I'll need the designs and labels selected and laid out, panel cut not only to the plane but to the instrument's holes, and it'll be a much larger-scale piece of metal... but I don't plan to touch her fuselage for three years, and I may have it worked out by then.
What do you think?
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Metal , Wood, and Cloth
Drag wires are stripped, all the paint brushed out of the threads, nuts loosened and checked, repainted, and on the right wing.
Aileron control rod replacement is in from England. (The internet is so cool - you can get parts anywhere, as long as they exist and your owner group is strong!)
Yesterday, learned how to use a shear, a brake, and rollers for cutting, bending, and curving sheet metal. Learning how to use and mastering are completely seperate states. I have a lot of work ahead if I'm forming new aileron cove. I wish I could re-use the old cove, but whoever took it off the plane was, ah, less than careful.
The new leading edge will be interesting. In 1941, they used 0.012 inch aluminum - yes, twelve-thousandths of an inch thick. This is roughly as thick as a pop can's side walls. See, back before World War II, Aluminum refining had not yet been perfected, and it was not that common a material - so it was expensive! Therefore, very thin sheets were common - you wanted to use the absolute least amount of this rare, expensive material necessary to get the job done. These days, aluminum is extremely common and cheap - but you can't find anything thinner than 0.016 - that's, what, 25% thicker? Heavier, which is bad, but far sturdier, which is good.
If you're wondering how the leading edge avoided being dented when it was pop-can wall thick, the answer is that when covered, the cloth and dope went over the metal, providing a second layer of reinforcement for strengthening, stiffening, and protection against corrosion and collision with bugs. As for accidental knocks when clearing snow off with a broom, or dents from being leaned on or bumped when fueled? Well, those were just a part of life. Be careful or you get 'em.
The aluminum was also SO, or as jewelry-makers call it, full-soft. It can be bent and shaped by hand, and stays bent. This is also called, on the T Hardness scale, T0. (T0-T6) T1 & T2 are darned rare and hard to find, but T3 & T6 are common - or "half-hard and full-hard" to jewelers. So, I'm planning on replacing the first 4 feet of the leading edge with 0.016 T3 Aluminum, or much harder, dent-resistant, thicker aluminum than was originally on it. This way, should someone lean an elbow on the wing while putting gas in (like yours truly, who has dislocated her right shoulder before, and it'll never be as strong again for hefting jugs of gas), it won't be thrashed and dented for the next 8 years until recovered.
The rest of the leading edge I'll likely get in S0 and form by hand on the leading edge. It's easier, and more correct to original form.
The old aileron cove looked like swiss cheese - because in 1941, airplanes were covered with linen or cotton, and a highly flammable dope (glue.) How flammable? Google Hindenburg. The dope didn't stick to metal, so they laid a second piece of linen on the back of the aileron cove's convex curve, inside the wing, and glued it down. Then, when the doped cloth was laid on the outside of the wing, over the aileron cove, it stuck to the doped cloth on the inside through the holes.
These days, we have options like Poly-Stits and Ceconite. Not flammable, or not nearly so, and it sticks to metal. Interestingly, this means that unless I duplicate the linen-on-the-back trick, all the swiss-cheese holes will now detract from the ability of the fabric to stick to the metal while the metal is held in shape. Hmmm.
On grinding - my right rear spar was 1/4 inch too long. Clearly, the person who cut them was better at woodworking than me, but not as perfectionist. So I got a miter saw, discovered that the amound to be cut was half the blade width, got two files, and carefully took off the offending 1/4 inch by hand. It is now varnished, and when the varnish is dry, I'll put the butt attach fittings on.
...It's so close I can taste it, though the completed wing is still months away. Tonight, priming the wingtip bow that defines the rounded edge of the wing, and seeing if I can figure out how to put it on.
Aileron control rod replacement is in from England. (The internet is so cool - you can get parts anywhere, as long as they exist and your owner group is strong!)
Yesterday, learned how to use a shear, a brake, and rollers for cutting, bending, and curving sheet metal. Learning how to use and mastering are completely seperate states. I have a lot of work ahead if I'm forming new aileron cove. I wish I could re-use the old cove, but whoever took it off the plane was, ah, less than careful.
The new leading edge will be interesting. In 1941, they used 0.012 inch aluminum - yes, twelve-thousandths of an inch thick. This is roughly as thick as a pop can's side walls. See, back before World War II, Aluminum refining had not yet been perfected, and it was not that common a material - so it was expensive! Therefore, very thin sheets were common - you wanted to use the absolute least amount of this rare, expensive material necessary to get the job done. These days, aluminum is extremely common and cheap - but you can't find anything thinner than 0.016 - that's, what, 25% thicker? Heavier, which is bad, but far sturdier, which is good.
If you're wondering how the leading edge avoided being dented when it was pop-can wall thick, the answer is that when covered, the cloth and dope went over the metal, providing a second layer of reinforcement for strengthening, stiffening, and protection against corrosion and collision with bugs. As for accidental knocks when clearing snow off with a broom, or dents from being leaned on or bumped when fueled? Well, those were just a part of life. Be careful or you get 'em.
The aluminum was also SO, or as jewelry-makers call it, full-soft. It can be bent and shaped by hand, and stays bent. This is also called, on the T Hardness scale, T0. (T0-T6) T1 & T2 are darned rare and hard to find, but T3 & T6 are common - or "half-hard and full-hard" to jewelers. So, I'm planning on replacing the first 4 feet of the leading edge with 0.016 T3 Aluminum, or much harder, dent-resistant, thicker aluminum than was originally on it. This way, should someone lean an elbow on the wing while putting gas in (like yours truly, who has dislocated her right shoulder before, and it'll never be as strong again for hefting jugs of gas), it won't be thrashed and dented for the next 8 years until recovered.
The rest of the leading edge I'll likely get in S0 and form by hand on the leading edge. It's easier, and more correct to original form.
The old aileron cove looked like swiss cheese - because in 1941, airplanes were covered with linen or cotton, and a highly flammable dope (glue.) How flammable? Google Hindenburg. The dope didn't stick to metal, so they laid a second piece of linen on the back of the aileron cove's convex curve, inside the wing, and glued it down. Then, when the doped cloth was laid on the outside of the wing, over the aileron cove, it stuck to the doped cloth on the inside through the holes.
These days, we have options like Poly-Stits and Ceconite. Not flammable, or not nearly so, and it sticks to metal. Interestingly, this means that unless I duplicate the linen-on-the-back trick, all the swiss-cheese holes will now detract from the ability of the fabric to stick to the metal while the metal is held in shape. Hmmm.
On grinding - my right rear spar was 1/4 inch too long. Clearly, the person who cut them was better at woodworking than me, but not as perfectionist. So I got a miter saw, discovered that the amound to be cut was half the blade width, got two files, and carefully took off the offending 1/4 inch by hand. It is now varnished, and when the varnish is dry, I'll put the butt attach fittings on.
...It's so close I can taste it, though the completed wing is still months away. Tonight, priming the wingtip bow that defines the rounded edge of the wing, and seeing if I can figure out how to put it on.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Fixxer Upper
One of the time-honored ways to get as much house as you want - as opposed to the house you can afford - is to get a fixxer upper. Of course, the corollary is that it takes twice as much and five times as long to fix up as you think - and you learn a lot of skills along the way. Heck, how many guys and gals got cars that they learned to keep rattling along just ahead of breakdowns for their first car?
Vickie, my plane, is sitting on the tiedown without wings, looking folorn. I received her wings in twelve different tote boxes and several long bundles, carted over to the hangar in the back of the prior owner's truck. Friends are awesome: we set up the shop, put things away, hung the pictures on the wall of the teardown for reference, and started fixing and repairing parts. We laid out the old spars for the right wing, and put the repaired ribs on them so we could see the wing growing as we repaired each piece.
Some of the repairs were pretty trial and error - others we asked for advice on the internet and had handy how-to's ready to apply. Two steps forward, one step back, but progressing every week! Best of all, compared to a fixxer-upper house; I don't have to live with the work in progress affecting the heat in the winter or ability to take a hot shower!
Vickie, my plane, is sitting on the tiedown without wings, looking folorn. I received her wings in twelve different tote boxes and several long bundles, carted over to the hangar in the back of the prior owner's truck. Friends are awesome: we set up the shop, put things away, hung the pictures on the wall of the teardown for reference, and started fixing and repairing parts. We laid out the old spars for the right wing, and put the repaired ribs on them so we could see the wing growing as we repaired each piece.
Some of the repairs were pretty trial and error - others we asked for advice on the internet and had handy how-to's ready to apply. Two steps forward, one step back, but progressing every week! Best of all, compared to a fixxer-upper house; I don't have to live with the work in progress affecting the heat in the winter or ability to take a hot shower!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
brief interlude
The day had started out grey and gloomy, but by lunch the clouds had broken overhead, and the banks of cloud hiding the mountains had been pushed back by winds and rising weather to mere strips of fog, clinging to the valleys and leeward side of ridges. JB had emailed me, sounding full of delight - let's go flying! I called him back, this stranger off the internet made friend by our shared ownership of Taylorcraft, and we made plans for after work.
By the time I got off at six, the weather was coming back down, drizzling rain by the mountain making a warning haze. It wasn't raining yet at Lake Hood, but the wind was full of the scents of rain and snow on the mountains. I knew when the clouds lifted, the snow line would be a little lower, winter creeping toward the sea. I parked by the plane, a yellow F-19 on floats, rising high above its neighbors by height of trailer and floats. she is a beautiful yellow and black bird, looking very much in the fuselage like my own - but her wings are on, spreading wide over thirty feet. JB greeted me enthusiastically, and I didn't have to work to smile back.
Due to the accident, I was barely able to walk after trying to work a full shift, so I stood by as he trailered the plane to water and put her in. Taylorcraft are light planes, and graceful - and standing there in hip waders, he was guiding her around, moving her with little effort. They're also blessed with doors on both sides, unlike Supercubs and related ilk, made more gracefully for getting into. With one crushed knee and one unhappy knee, it was still a challenge, but I have enough upper body strength and ingenuity to grab and haul myself in. It gave me a new respect, though, for those folks at Able Flight who manage their whole training and flying by hauling themselves out of their wheelchairs and into their planes. As JB put the truck and trailer away, I sat quietly, looking around, touching and comparing his bird to mine.
We taxied to the end of the lake, completing all the runup on the go (there are no brakes when you're on floats), and when tower cleared us, turning and taking off. Grey sky above, grey water below, nipping wet day... can do nothing to diminish the joy of slipping gravity and soaring up as the world seems to fall away. A flock of Canadian geese rose off the lake, disturbed by our bigger bird roaring toward them. I tensed as they wheeled up into the sky in a cloud, but they broke right, diving again back to food and rest as they readied for a long migration south. Given two people, lots of fuel, and the massive drag of floats, we did not climb quickly - nor did we need to, for the sea below held far less fear than it would for a wheel plane. If the engine quit, we'd be... just fine.
My legs wouldn't work well enough to use the rudders, but once on the other side of the Knik Arm of the sea, north of the power lines running from Beluga to feed Anchorage, he turned the yoke over to me to carefully try holding her steady, climbing and turning, feeling out what kind of personality his lady had. She's not snappy-quick and agile like a Grumman Yankee, but neither is she slow, lumbering, and requiring lead-handed controls with lots of lead-in and lead-out like a Cessna 172. She flies more like the Piper PA-12, Super Cruiser, roomier sister to the Supercub. She'll climb plenty fine - mine with just me and light fuel will make like a homesick angel, but she'll also trim for a steady cruise and treat me gently if I respect her. We talked of her handing characteristics, her habits, the fact that his heater was a lot nicer than I'd been led to believe, the insulation he'd put up on the inside, the custom fishing-rod holder he'd put in.
Alas, it was not a day for straying far from the airport - the curtains of rain were reaching out from the bad weather against the mountains, and more than half the city was now under acceptable visibility with only the glow of streetlights and headlights showing dimly through. We turned and came back across the ocean, not pouring power on but certainly not dawdling, and headed in. Somewhere behind us a Cessna 180 was reporting a hair's-breadth after us, and we added a little more power so the faster plane would not have to swing quite so wide with spacing maneuvers. Over the ballpark, setting up for a long landing, listening to a tower frequency busy with people trying to come in before the rains hid the lake.
Touching down long led to a fairly short taxi back to the public ramp, and I very carefully, stiffly slid out onto a float and staggered back to shore, wishing I could move well enough to help as he again gracefully moved the plane back onto the trailer, winched her down, and pulled her out. Back we went to his parking spot, tying down the plane, and I thanked him sincerely. It was wonderful - not only to see what another plane was like, and what mine will do when she's restored, but also simply to fly. We parted ways, and no matter the pain, the smile still quirked and tugged at my lips as I drove home into the rain.
By the time I got off at six, the weather was coming back down, drizzling rain by the mountain making a warning haze. It wasn't raining yet at Lake Hood, but the wind was full of the scents of rain and snow on the mountains. I knew when the clouds lifted, the snow line would be a little lower, winter creeping toward the sea. I parked by the plane, a yellow F-19 on floats, rising high above its neighbors by height of trailer and floats. she is a beautiful yellow and black bird, looking very much in the fuselage like my own - but her wings are on, spreading wide over thirty feet. JB greeted me enthusiastically, and I didn't have to work to smile back.
Due to the accident, I was barely able to walk after trying to work a full shift, so I stood by as he trailered the plane to water and put her in. Taylorcraft are light planes, and graceful - and standing there in hip waders, he was guiding her around, moving her with little effort. They're also blessed with doors on both sides, unlike Supercubs and related ilk, made more gracefully for getting into. With one crushed knee and one unhappy knee, it was still a challenge, but I have enough upper body strength and ingenuity to grab and haul myself in. It gave me a new respect, though, for those folks at Able Flight who manage their whole training and flying by hauling themselves out of their wheelchairs and into their planes. As JB put the truck and trailer away, I sat quietly, looking around, touching and comparing his bird to mine.
We taxied to the end of the lake, completing all the runup on the go (there are no brakes when you're on floats), and when tower cleared us, turning and taking off. Grey sky above, grey water below, nipping wet day... can do nothing to diminish the joy of slipping gravity and soaring up as the world seems to fall away. A flock of Canadian geese rose off the lake, disturbed by our bigger bird roaring toward them. I tensed as they wheeled up into the sky in a cloud, but they broke right, diving again back to food and rest as they readied for a long migration south. Given two people, lots of fuel, and the massive drag of floats, we did not climb quickly - nor did we need to, for the sea below held far less fear than it would for a wheel plane. If the engine quit, we'd be... just fine.
My legs wouldn't work well enough to use the rudders, but once on the other side of the Knik Arm of the sea, north of the power lines running from Beluga to feed Anchorage, he turned the yoke over to me to carefully try holding her steady, climbing and turning, feeling out what kind of personality his lady had. She's not snappy-quick and agile like a Grumman Yankee, but neither is she slow, lumbering, and requiring lead-handed controls with lots of lead-in and lead-out like a Cessna 172. She flies more like the Piper PA-12, Super Cruiser, roomier sister to the Supercub. She'll climb plenty fine - mine with just me and light fuel will make like a homesick angel, but she'll also trim for a steady cruise and treat me gently if I respect her. We talked of her handing characteristics, her habits, the fact that his heater was a lot nicer than I'd been led to believe, the insulation he'd put up on the inside, the custom fishing-rod holder he'd put in.
Alas, it was not a day for straying far from the airport - the curtains of rain were reaching out from the bad weather against the mountains, and more than half the city was now under acceptable visibility with only the glow of streetlights and headlights showing dimly through. We turned and came back across the ocean, not pouring power on but certainly not dawdling, and headed in. Somewhere behind us a Cessna 180 was reporting a hair's-breadth after us, and we added a little more power so the faster plane would not have to swing quite so wide with spacing maneuvers. Over the ballpark, setting up for a long landing, listening to a tower frequency busy with people trying to come in before the rains hid the lake.
Touching down long led to a fairly short taxi back to the public ramp, and I very carefully, stiffly slid out onto a float and staggered back to shore, wishing I could move well enough to help as he again gracefully moved the plane back onto the trailer, winched her down, and pulled her out. Back we went to his parking spot, tying down the plane, and I thanked him sincerely. It was wonderful - not only to see what another plane was like, and what mine will do when she's restored, but also simply to fly. We parted ways, and no matter the pain, the smile still quirked and tugged at my lips as I drove home into the rain.
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