Ladies' weekend out

One of the utterly endearing features of the internet is that it allows any person with a common interest to find other people who share that interest, no matter how rare it may be in their geographical area. Whether your fascination is steampunk or snowboarding, guns used in WWII on one particular front or the thread count of a civil war regiment's uniforms, there are people out there who share your passion.

So, of all the specialized forums on the internet, there is the site Ladies Love Taildraggers. They collect women who love conventional gear aircraft, encourage student pilots, and occasionally hold fly-ins. One was not that far from me, so Calmer Half booked a hotel, and off we went.

We were hardly alone - over fifty planes registered, and well over another fifty dropped in to see what was going on over the course of the weekend. And I was truly tripped out. I'm used to being "the girl", as were most of the women there. When there's well over thirty "the girl"s in the hangar at any given moment, we are torn between talking to each other in body language and styles that are understandable by men, and outbreaks of utter femininity.

It truly was a ladies' weekend out, where the women involved did indeed act like ladies, with plenty of grace and charm (and surprisingly little nail polish.) Even the poker run failed to be catty or competitive; we were all very agreeable that the fastest planes should depart first, so there'd be no danger of overtaking in the air... and at the second stop, they should hold a few tables at the restaurant near the airport for the slower planes.
(The supercub gaggle actually fly pretty fast - but they can't help themselves; every mowed-in grass strip, every fun bend of a passing river, every water tower and old barn with something painted on the side, person working their field or fishing on the banks calls for a detour. As for the open-cockpit biplane - well, if you wanted to go in a straight line quickly with the greasy side down all the time, you wouldn't have a Starduster.)

I'd like to give a shout-out to the companies who donated door prizes: David Clark donated a trademark avacado-green and tank-tough headset, Davis Aviation donated a bunch of Swag, Dakota Cub threw in t-shirts, Icom offered up some flight bags, Aircraft Spruce gave away goodies and gift certificates, and somebody, I wish I remembered who, had cases of oil and other useful products. Even the hosting airport manager, who rocked, gave away free gas.

(I really, really wish I could remember the petroleum distributor. Because I already own and love a set of David Clarks, as tough as my titanium wedding band, use an Icom radio, and order from Aircraft Spruce. If I could remember their darned name, they'd have a customer for supporting the flying. Phooey. Eventually I'll run across them again, go "It's You!" and happily buy a case of oil while they bemusedly figure that their marketing eventually worked on the extremely long tail.)

As we walked up and down the rows of aircraft (some camping, some staying in hotels in town), we saw a pilot had her Taylorcraft for sale. It perched there a lightly and proudly as a hawk on a fencepost, a beautifully restored 65-hp Post-WWII model, in red and cream and leather seats... absolutely, heartbreaking gorgeous, and for less than a new Kia. My husband looked at me, and I at him, and even though it doesn't make financial sense right now, we both knew the checkbook was burning like plasma in our pockets, whispering "A his and hers plane family..." in our ears.

We managed to walk away with checkbook and sanity intact. Mostly. Ignore the reading of EAA's Sport Aviation and increased debate on building an RV vs. a Hatz Bantam (or buying another Taylorcraft) around here. That's just the sort of lasting mental scarring to be expected when I drag my husband off with a ladies' weekend out.

Hangar Rash

My hangar is 40 feet wide. It's big, until you try to fit a roughly 36-foot wingspan plane in it. When I called my IA to confess, he wisely suggested I get some red duct tape, and mark the outer limit for each of the mains when rolling her in - and then, much as when landing her, make sure she's always going straight and centered when I roll her into the hangar.

I stopped as soon as I felt the contact - but 800-odd pounds of airplane, while very light for an aircraft, still has a momentum all her own. Nothing left to do but carefully straighten her out, put her away, and checked to make sure nothing was structurally wrong (there's a lot of torque that can be applied to a huge wing like that). Then, breaking out the book used through all the wing covering, I carefully read the section on patching.



First step is to clean off the old dope, right? Well, no. First step was to find, unpack, check, or order all the supplies. By the way, Aircraft Spruce will remember your order info, years after the fact. Also good to know - Aircraft Spruce has a demonstration kit, set up to show you how incredibly easy it is to ribstitch and dope fabric airplanes, and why you too should think this is awesome and decide to cover your airplane. While they send a heavy fabric instead of a light one, this means that all the dopes (and MEK) show up in one nice box in pint-size sample cans, more than enough for all the patches I could never want to do... for far less money than buying them individually otherwise. I did splurge and sprung for a quart of the color coat, so at some point all my patches will match my wings.

Okay, after it all arrives, calibrate the hobby iron, open the hangar doors to get a good breeze circulating, pray to G-d that not many mosquitos get stuck in your dope this time around (don't ask), glove and mask up, marke off the area with masking tape, and start scrubbing the entire patch area clean with MEK. Change gloves more often than you think you need to - gloves are cheap, MEK is nasty. When you're tired or finished, take off gloves and mask, pitch in camp chair under a wing, and stroll to the FBO for a can of soda, enjoying the fresh air, sunshine, and airplanes.

Come back, realize you need more surface area cleaned off, set new masking tape, and repeat. When the fabric is cleaned, cut away a few crumpled ragged edges and threads, and then cut a patch to overlap. Put it on, realize you're working on a curved surface, take off and readjust with judicious cutting. Think for a bit, cut a second patch to fit much better. Cement on. Take calibrated iron and iron spots not cemented down, which is strangely more than you'd think on a wingtip bow patch (as in, there was some).



Go get another soda. Come back, carefully pour base dope into a jar that's easier to dip brush into, and look a little dumbfounded. Remember that you did your entire wings with untinted dope, but that's right, Poly-Stits is usually a pink base. Laugh, mutter to the plane that she's not to go showing her pink parts to the world, apply dope carefully. Put everything away. Get another soda while it cures (yes, cures, not dries), try not to inflict humor on passing pilots.

Crack open the silver coat. Silver is a dope coat full of powdered aluminum - it's a heavy coat, as in weighs what you'd think when there's metal powder in that enamel, but should be applied in multiple very light coats. In fact, it really should be sprayed on, but this is not a show plane, and I don't have a HVLP sprayer or the air compressor to run it just yet. I do have a brush, and an airplane meant to be loved for her flying, not her looks. So, after stirring the silver, I pour a little into a can to use when brushing it on, and start applying light coats. As one coat cures, I walk around the airplane, looking for anywhere else that might need a little more silver to protect the fabric from the UV. Several rounds later, she looks good enough to functionally fly, if not as pretty as she used to be.



She'll do. Hopefully, her pilot has now gotten that stupidity out of her system, and never again shall the hangar door post and the airplane meet.

Wish for a crust of bread...

While the fabric is repaired beautifully, today dawned without a test flight on the plane. (Definition of overtime: trading time for money that you don't have time to spend.) The thunderstorms last night left low ceilings this morning, which didn't lift enough to meet my personal minimums until noon, so it was already hours past the time I wanted to leave before I got a chance to go. That was when I found my battery was dead, my radio's battery wasn't holding a charge, and the pilot was uncomfortable with hopping in the plane and going cross - country without some serious time making sure the plane was okay. Any one of these things could be easily overcome, but all together I just wasn't feeling good about it.

So we drove down in the car. There are two Taylorcrafts at this fly-in, both gorgeous, and more planes all over the ramp and grass, with a hangar full of people having a great time. It's rather strange; I'm used to being one of two or three lady pilots in the room. A hangar where the ratio is more like 60:40 women to men, and almost all pilots, is a little overwhelming... not bad, but overwhelming.

I packed my headsest, hoping I could bum a ride for Calmer Half or myself - not expecting, just hoping. Well, not only did I get offered a ride, I've been offered left seat by another Tcrate owner who's out for the count tomorrow. The plane is just post annual, barely four hours on the brand new engine, beautiful interior, what I felt of her handling today was dreamily smooth. (Roller bearing pulleys just went on my "must get when redoing the fuselage" list!) His wife wants to go on the poker run, but wants someone to fly with her...

Tomorrow I shall get into the plane and repeat a prayer as old as humanity, and as utterly sincere as the first time it was uttered by a man with a sharp stone on the end of a stick staring at a woolly mammoth: "Please, God, don't let me #$@* this up." For I have surely wished for a crust of bread and been given a banquet!

At the end of the day...

It's been a long, hot muggy day at work, the kind where I'm absolutely unashamed to hang my head over the trash can and slap handfuls of water from my waterbottle into my hair to try to cool down, while tucking the ends of a gel-filled neckerchief into my shirt to avoid dripping on the paperwork and keyboard. My subordinates, who are great people, kept coming by to check on their transplanted Alaskan, and even my boss was giving me a few long, measuring looks and urging me to leave off getting all the cats herded and go sit in the air conditioning on break.

I came home wanting a shower far more desperately than food (a very strange turn of affairs; I'm almost as food-motivated as a black lab.) Calmer Half stuck me into a shower that was a good fifteen degrees cooler than I can normally stand, then prepared a light dinner of tuna salad and veggies. He said gently to me that the two overwhelming things he felt after a day in desert combat were a dirtiness down to his soul, and a weariness down to the marrow of his bones - and while I was not in combat, I was trying to do a lot of intellectually and physically demanding work in a heat all out of my element - he figures I've come stumbling home with a shadow of the same feeling.

I know it is only the faintest of shadows, if that - and I have the deepest respect and appreciation for those who have withstood the boredom, the terror, the drudgery, the dust and mud, and the distance it places between them and those who will never know what the price of freedom really is. To those who have served, those who are serving, may you rest easy. To those who did not live to see what their service bought - may they rest in peace, and with my gratitude.

Getting older, maybe smarter

I was putting a small fabric patch on the plane this weekend, and touching up the silver on some other patches. When I went through Home & Aircraft Depot to pick up a few things (masking tape, brushes, nitrile gloves, etc), I stopped at the aisle with the good masks. I frowned at the price tag - over thirty bucks - and shook my head. "I'll find my mask, and come back for the right set of filters."

Halfway down the aisle, I stopped, called myself a fool, and went back to get a new mask. I know all too well that I'll get everything else set up, and want to forge right on ahead instead of wasting precious weekend hours looking for the darned mask. I've already had enough exposure to MEK to never want another molecule of it in my lungs or absorbed through my skin; there's no sense in wasting more time looking for the mask and coming back for the filters, or endangering my health by thinking I'll just do this little bit, and the ventilation ought to be good enough... (never is.)

Upon laying out all the tools and supplies for the job, I realized I have no idea where my calibrated iron is. It's probably still in Alaska. I'll miss that iron - it was a good one, held heat well, and was easy to use. I don't know how many airplanes it's helped repair or recover, but it's a few. (Yes, it's an iron just like many used on clothes. However, once you start using an iron around epoxies and aircraft dopes, it is no longer fit to be used on clothes. The instructions for covering an aircraft mention in no less than fifteen places "Do NOT use your wife's iron!". So a good iron that holds heat well, is calibrated, and is availabe for aircraft... gets passed around.)

Since I'm only doing small patches instead of whole huge wings, I only need a hobby iron. So I look in Home & Aircraft Depot - no luck. The hobby store is closed for memorial day weekend. The next hobby store doesn't have one. Hobby Lobby and Jo-Anne's fabrics don't have the kind I need - they have hobby irons, but they're tiny, with little shiny steel flat wedges barely a tenth the size and almost none of the mass of what I need, for $39.. with no ability to calibrate, so it's just as likely to make things worse as to work. My other option in the store is to break down and spend $89 for a new full-scale clothes iron.

After having put an hour and a fair bit of driving into this, I realize the answer is at my fingertips - or, literally, in my pocket. The little computer that masquerades as a cell phone listens to my frustrated search term, and pulls up an amazon.com listing of exactly what I want, for seventeen bucks, with two-day shipping available. I buy an aircraft tool on my phone, shaking my head at this future I'm living in, and buy a soda on the way out the door to go back to the airport and buckle down to work.

There's a fly-in next weekend, in Savannah, TN - Ladies Love Taildraggers is hosting it. I probably won't get the paint on over the silver by then, which is kind of like going to the car show in a three-color (rust, paint, & primer) car when you know other people are going to show up in washed & waxed beauties. On the other hand, I'll get her up, get reacquainted with her after our mutual grounding, get the oil hot & change it, and show up in an airplane that flies better than her pilot, like she has for over seventy years. And if she doesn't look so wonderful next to the other planes there, well, her pilot is smart enough to realize that looks aren't everything, and even A-10's have people who think they're beautiful.

I'm getting a little smarter as I get older - someday I aim to be both smart and wise.

Spouses and Airplanes

We got the bill for the annual. (The aircraft's annual, to be precise.) Ouch. I knew it was going to be bad, and it was a little (but not much) worse than expected. Still, seeing the number was like a fist to the gut - ah, the joys of airplane ownership.

Fiscal matters are at the heart of many a couple's fights, and money is usually the obvious breaking point between many a wife's mock-jealous sufferance of her husband's "other woman - that airplane." and her determination that it needs to stop competing for money, time, and affection. (And threat to her spouse's life?)

So when Calmer Half and I discussed how to settle the bill, and what we could reasonably afford in terms, he reached forward and gently grabbed my shoulders. "With the amount of money that plane is costing us..." He took a breath, and I thought, well, here comes the typical your darned plane fight, "...I want you to fly that thing every chance you get!"

*blink* *blink*

Did I mention I adore this man?

Oops, work and an AR-15 shirt

Oleg has shirts from 1791Apparel.com around his house, as he's been taking photos of them. I needed a shirt at one point, and he offered one of them to me. (Sorry to disappoint the minds in the gutter, but no, not like that. I don't remember, but it wasn't as exciting as the life you think I have.)

Earlier this week, this shirt came up on the top of the stack of clean t-shirts, and in my pre-caffienated state, I put it on without a second thought, shrugged into my safety vest, and continued on with my morning routine. Everything was just fine, until right after the morning meeting, when one of my subordinates came up to me. (Not unusual; I encourage comments and questions to my face, to avoid having to try to answer the rumor chain or clean up the "I tried to figure it out myself" mess later.)

He grinned at me. "Is that an AR-15?"

I blinked, grinned, and shrugged. "Well..." Meaning, huh? What AR-15?

Another subordinate, nearby, chimed in. "What's an AR-15?"

The first one gestured at my chest and said, "It's the rifle the military uses. Those are the sights for an AR-15, aren't they?"

Oh, yeah. That. I grinned wider, and nodded. "Yeah. It's kind of a joke."

"That's pretty awesome! Where did you get that?"

Now, I'd be more inclined to say the military has the M-16 than the AR-15, personally, but this subordinate has never struck me as being one of the many prior-military and reservists among the ranks of my company. (We have lots. I fully endorse this practice, because vets are self-motivated, bright, problem solving, and understand the critical difference between the time to point out there's a better way to do something, and the time to drop everything and do this right now.) Still, he may have been the first to ask me openly, but he wasn't the only one to glance at my chest and grin.

Yeah, that's me. Providing logistics, leadership, and a gun nut in-joke because I didn't check the t-shirt stack for differentiation between work and not-work shirts. I probably should resist the temptation to get a few more, and see if my crew can recognize the rest of the designs. What could possible go wrong with wearing a Gasden snake curled around a AR-15 during meetings?

(As an aside, it's a good shirt, stands up to work and wear really well. Wish it was a little lower-quality in this muggy heat, actually, as a cheaper t-shirt might be a little less... insulating. But it wicks sweat well, and holds up to grime. And FCC, about your disclaimer rules? I got it free, I like it, I plan to buy a replacement. Resign and go do something useful in the real world instead of being a useless parasite on my taxes.)