Sunday, despite Saturday's icky IFR overcast, was a clear, beautiful day. Weather systems move fast in the Southeastern Lower 48! And despite the cold the teething year-old niece of mine had given her 3-year-old sister being a very big cranky fussy deal for them, it wasn't that bad for an adult. So, after sleeping in to make up for crawling in at 2am, back out to the airport.
By the way, the 3 year old calls 21L "Henry" and insists that the airplane's a he. She is as possesive a minx as any woman could possibly be with a boyfriend - I've now racked up three temper tantrums and a seriously cheesed-off three year old because I'm going to go fly Henry and Not Taking Her. That's even worse in her world than the fact that I'm also taking Daddy time away from her. I'm not going to fly her, though, because I've already been warned by my brother, my father, and D the C130 pilot who also flies Henry that she loooooves making the airplane do power-on stalls. She can't reach the rudder pedals, but she sure can reach the yoke and haul back on the yoke with all her might. I hate power-on stalls (They're very hard for me to do, because of the damage to my shoulder, neck, and back), and have no intentions of getting in a wrestling match for the controls with a 3-year-old at altitude.
So, really, it was after a talk with Daddy about why she can't come, and a world-class pout and glare when the pout didn't work that we went to the airport.
Great VFR day here means 30 miles of visibility. While the air was nearly calm - 3 knots of variable wind at VLD's surface - it was ripping southward up top. Never wasting an opportunity for free speed and saving on the $5/gallon gas, we climbed to 7500 where it was roaring south at 30 knots. (34.5 mph) At 7500 feet, which is far, far higher than I usually fly, I could see more of the ground - and more of the clear blue sky above. The middle third of the world, though, looked like someone had taken a dirty eraser and swiped the horizon to smudgily reveal the whiteboard beneath.
My brother has an odd belief that VFR should be flown by landmarks on charts, not with VOR guidance backup. I don't happen to agree at all, but it was a decent training exercise (though I kept an eye on the GPS and the tuned-in VOR anyway. Why take chances?) Fortunately, Cedar Key airport, CDK, is pretty much 110 miles nearly straight south (178 degrees). As long as I held my heading, life was good.
It's easy to fly by landmarks in Alaska; there are mountains, oceans, rivers, lakes, and glaciers for convenient landmarks. It's hard to pick things out of a lower 48 sectional map, where you can go a hundred miles and only see one or two contour lines. So I got better at how to pick out towns, what a four-lane road looks like from the air, and matching river squiggles on the map to river bends on the ground. I also noticed, no matter how busy Jacksonville center seemed with commercial traffic, that the skies were awfully empty. For the entire trip down and back, I only saw a handful of other planes in the air.
Cedar Key was thankfully easy to find - it's on the biggest island of a bunch jutting out into the gulf of Mexico. Cedar Key airport was not - it's barely 2355 feet of faded light sand-colored asphalt half-hidden by trees on three sides. Of course, the island it's on isn't that big. I knew where it should be, and I set up on downwind well before I actually saw it. When I did see it, it looked very, very small. I also had a problem making my brain go through the normal landing flow - all of downwind, base, and final for runway 23 is over water. I don't like getting that close to the water - at home, hypothermia will kill you quickly if anything goes wrong. So the first pass, with a brain still adjusting, I saw the final straw - a twin on the runway. That's it, I went around. The second time I could see the runway, and with that guiding reference, everything else could be made okay.
We didn't get to spend any time at Cedar Key, because the phone call to the wife of we're here and safe produced a "please be back home in time for dinner." So we looked at the other airplanes parked there, watching out for cactus on the ground that's a disaster for airplane tires and three-year-olds (The niece has been to Cedar Key before). Then it was back - but the helpful tailwind was now and unhelpful headwind, we only climbed to 4500 feet, where it only slowed us by 20 knots.
That is, first we went along the shoreline at 600 feet, and I ogled at seeing palm trees in a native habitat. (They do grow wild! really!) Then we followed a river, and my brother used this as time to show off 21L's snappy roll rate by trying to track the river bends down the center at 110 mph. I'm not a great fan of this - it stretches my comfort boundaries, does not fall under "gentle handling", and the mild G's, akin to a roller coaster, puts acute pressure on the injured neck. My brother flies C130's at 50 feet with night vision goggles - he thinks this is a really fun game in bright daylight and a small plane. I played along, doggedly, a little sloppily, and much more gently.
Then we climbed to 4500 feet, and came home in time for dinner. I've decided that either I'm growing accustomed to hearing Southern English, or that VLD only has one controller who mumbles, because I can understand most everything I'm getting from approach, center, and towers. I'm still not responding quickly because I have to think about it - and this annoys my brother, who wants responses snapped out like lightning strikes. This, too, is a difference between a 200-hour VFR pilot like me, coming back after two years off for physical therapy, and a 2000-hour pilot who does this for a living with the military as much as a difference between our temperaments.
No matter; we made it down and safe, paid for the gas, and made it home in time for dinner.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Goal progress
Out of four weeks for a flight across the country to fulfill all the requirements for my commercial checkride, I have 10 days left.
Tomorrow, weather permitting and nothing ELSE coming up, we'll be heading to 7FL6, Spruce Creek, an airpark just south of Daytona Beach to FINALLY get the AYA checkout for solo flight.
From there, I'm probably going to head for Houston as soon as I can pack my stuff and drop my brother off. If there's weather between me and Houston, I'll see if I can pack cross-countries around Florida in. Hopefully it won't be in the fifties like my last foray down there!
What do I need to do in ten days?
I need 34 hours, 22 of which must be cross-country. (that's ambitious but doable in ten days.)
2 hours of this must be a single night VFR cross-country.
One of the cross-countries must be solo, at least 250 nm from the point of origin, with 3 stops, and be at least 300 nm long. (Thus Houston, unless you want to suggest another destination 300 nm from Valdosta, GA.)
I also need 3 more hours of night on top of the night cross-country, with another 9 landings at fields at night where the tower is still open. (VLD and MCN have towers, but when you take off after dinner from PDK at 11pm, the towers go and close before you get to the fields! So that trip didn't count for landings.)
Tomorrow, weather permitting and nothing ELSE coming up, we'll be heading to 7FL6, Spruce Creek, an airpark just south of Daytona Beach to FINALLY get the AYA checkout for solo flight.
From there, I'm probably going to head for Houston as soon as I can pack my stuff and drop my brother off. If there's weather between me and Houston, I'll see if I can pack cross-countries around Florida in. Hopefully it won't be in the fifties like my last foray down there!
What do I need to do in ten days?
I need 34 hours, 22 of which must be cross-country. (that's ambitious but doable in ten days.)
2 hours of this must be a single night VFR cross-country.
One of the cross-countries must be solo, at least 250 nm from the point of origin, with 3 stops, and be at least 300 nm long. (Thus Houston, unless you want to suggest another destination 300 nm from Valdosta, GA.)
I also need 3 more hours of night on top of the night cross-country, with another 9 landings at fields at night where the tower is still open. (VLD and MCN have towers, but when you take off after dinner from PDK at 11pm, the towers go and close before you get to the fields! So that trip didn't count for landings.)
IFR doesn't mean I Follow Road?
Went flying Saturday, from VLD to PDK (Atlanta-area airport), met with friends from studentpilot.com. Had a great time putting faces to names, and names to net handles. Flight was very IFR; I was in the clouds from 600 feet after takeoff until coming down over Atlanta. GPS died - low battery - on the way there, but was moderately helpful. Cannot figure out an easy way to get intersections ino the flight plan, making it very annoying to use as an IFR backup. There's probably a way, and I just haven't figured it out yet.
Going into the clouds was disconcerting as always - got the leans, and had to fight between my body saying we were in a hard left climbing turn, and my brain knowing that the instruments reporting we were still climbing straight ahead were correct. It's very hard to ignore your inner ear!
Lateral stability on the AA-1B is an interesting thing; as there's no "both" option, it shifts as we burn fuel from left tank or right tank. Climbing off the ground with both tanks full, the airplane leaned to the right because my brother is bigger and heavier than me. As we burned gas off the right tank, at some point, it started leaning to the left.
Broke out in a layer between clouds, and the top layer became thin high cirrus as we went further north. It was beautiful. I could see where air currents were stronger, as the mostly smooth cloud top started to bunch, then ripple in waves of disturbance headed out to the eastern horizon. As dusk came, the western side of the world was lit in beautiful colors - but starting in the northeast, the peculiar gray of haze anddusk combined to leave the sensation of a completely blank section of the sky - a growing nothing that was eating the world.
PDK and dinner was very fun, and good times were had by all. Net friends are an odd mix - in so many ways I know people, but then had no ideas of their ages, faces, or mannerisms. Conversation was easy, though: we were all pilots or patient and wonderful spouses of pilots, so flying and planes was the topic of the night.
Going back was harder - the weather went down instead of up at Valdosta while we were gone, and it required careful thought and a commitment to staying overnight in a hotel before taking off. Atlanta at night is beautiful - and while I was flying, my brother was having plenty of fun sightseeing the congestion as the world's busiest passenger airport slid under our wings on climbout. We had barely gotten up when we started descending again to Macon for more fuel. We'd topped the tanks at PDK, but in order to run the weather around Valdosta, we wanted to start with full tanks at the last clear point on the way home.
Ever driven with your headlights off? It's easier on an airfield as there are lights to define the edges, but it's a lot more challenging when your taxi light burns out. Ahem. Not that I know personally; a friend told me so.
But anyway, we found the FBO, and got marshalled in - a surprise, since they were supposed to be closed at 10pm. The line guys came over after engine shutdown and directed us to the self-serve across the field, with apologies and promises that it was cheaper gas. They were there, it turns out, because a presidential candidate was going to be flying in later - this also explained all the cop cars around. So we started the engine, taxiied over, and fill up from the other side of the field.
Flying home was better - it strongly reminded me of driving. When I first started to drive, after I'd gotten my pilot's license, I hated driving with a passion. Everything always happened so fast, with people coming out of nowhere and screaming by you with less than two feet's clearance. Only when I got out on the highway and had time to relax behind the wheel did I start to feel safe or calm about it. Well, holding heading and altitude while tracking VOR radials in the sky for hours on end will get me accustomed to not being able to see a [self-censored] thing out the windows.
Landing, though, showed one of the biggest differences between IFR training and actual IFR flight - in training, you have a hood or goggles fashioned to be blinders on, and you're not allowed to look outside until the instructor deems you can. In the clouds, flying that fine-tuned localizer beacon one degree wide to track down to the runway, you do look out the window. And when the black world suddenly imparted a dimly glowing streak about halfway up my windshield and a little right, I didn't have to worry about small course changes, trying to fine-tune that needle on the proper dot - I steered for the runway lights that were glowing a welcome home.
We didn't so much break out of the clouds as go from nothing to fuzzy dime lights to bright lights blurred by mist and rain, but at a point (I wasn't looking at the altimeter, I was looking at the VASI, the glide slope lights directing me in at a safe angle), they became sharp and clear, and I was coming in fine, if a little fast, for landing. Down, down into the dark, trusting that the lights ringing the runway defined the edges and made a surface for me to land on. Then we were down, and taxiin to the ramp. It was 1:30am, and we just might get home before the promised "We'll be home by 2am, or we'll spend the night at a hotel and call you in the morning." to his wife.
Who, as it turned out, was up because the teething baby was sick and cranky. So our quietly slipping in the door was met with a big hug and a kiss for him. :-)
Going into the clouds was disconcerting as always - got the leans, and had to fight between my body saying we were in a hard left climbing turn, and my brain knowing that the instruments reporting we were still climbing straight ahead were correct. It's very hard to ignore your inner ear!
Lateral stability on the AA-1B is an interesting thing; as there's no "both" option, it shifts as we burn fuel from left tank or right tank. Climbing off the ground with both tanks full, the airplane leaned to the right because my brother is bigger and heavier than me. As we burned gas off the right tank, at some point, it started leaning to the left.
Broke out in a layer between clouds, and the top layer became thin high cirrus as we went further north. It was beautiful. I could see where air currents were stronger, as the mostly smooth cloud top started to bunch, then ripple in waves of disturbance headed out to the eastern horizon. As dusk came, the western side of the world was lit in beautiful colors - but starting in the northeast, the peculiar gray of haze anddusk combined to leave the sensation of a completely blank section of the sky - a growing nothing that was eating the world.
PDK and dinner was very fun, and good times were had by all. Net friends are an odd mix - in so many ways I know people, but then had no ideas of their ages, faces, or mannerisms. Conversation was easy, though: we were all pilots or patient and wonderful spouses of pilots, so flying and planes was the topic of the night.
Going back was harder - the weather went down instead of up at Valdosta while we were gone, and it required careful thought and a commitment to staying overnight in a hotel before taking off. Atlanta at night is beautiful - and while I was flying, my brother was having plenty of fun sightseeing the congestion as the world's busiest passenger airport slid under our wings on climbout. We had barely gotten up when we started descending again to Macon for more fuel. We'd topped the tanks at PDK, but in order to run the weather around Valdosta, we wanted to start with full tanks at the last clear point on the way home.
Ever driven with your headlights off? It's easier on an airfield as there are lights to define the edges, but it's a lot more challenging when your taxi light burns out. Ahem. Not that I know personally; a friend told me so.
But anyway, we found the FBO, and got marshalled in - a surprise, since they were supposed to be closed at 10pm. The line guys came over after engine shutdown and directed us to the self-serve across the field, with apologies and promises that it was cheaper gas. They were there, it turns out, because a presidential candidate was going to be flying in later - this also explained all the cop cars around. So we started the engine, taxiied over, and fill up from the other side of the field.
Flying home was better - it strongly reminded me of driving. When I first started to drive, after I'd gotten my pilot's license, I hated driving with a passion. Everything always happened so fast, with people coming out of nowhere and screaming by you with less than two feet's clearance. Only when I got out on the highway and had time to relax behind the wheel did I start to feel safe or calm about it. Well, holding heading and altitude while tracking VOR radials in the sky for hours on end will get me accustomed to not being able to see a [self-censored] thing out the windows.
Landing, though, showed one of the biggest differences between IFR training and actual IFR flight - in training, you have a hood or goggles fashioned to be blinders on, and you're not allowed to look outside until the instructor deems you can. In the clouds, flying that fine-tuned localizer beacon one degree wide to track down to the runway, you do look out the window. And when the black world suddenly imparted a dimly glowing streak about halfway up my windshield and a little right, I didn't have to worry about small course changes, trying to fine-tune that needle on the proper dot - I steered for the runway lights that were glowing a welcome home.
We didn't so much break out of the clouds as go from nothing to fuzzy dime lights to bright lights blurred by mist and rain, but at a point (I wasn't looking at the altimeter, I was looking at the VASI, the glide slope lights directing me in at a safe angle), they became sharp and clear, and I was coming in fine, if a little fast, for landing. Down, down into the dark, trusting that the lights ringing the runway defined the edges and made a surface for me to land on. Then we were down, and taxiin to the ramp. It was 1:30am, and we just might get home before the promised "We'll be home by 2am, or we'll spend the night at a hotel and call you in the morning." to his wife.
Who, as it turned out, was up because the teething baby was sick and cranky. So our quietly slipping in the door was met with a big hug and a kiss for him. :-)
Saturday, January 26, 2008
I hab a code
Little kids are germ reservoirs, and daycares are reserves of greater concentrations of biological warfare than any evil overlord has managed to gather. (Unles he included a daycare in the minion health plan.)
Excuse me, I'm going to go get six more layers and another cup of tea.
Excuse me, I'm going to go get six more layers and another cup of tea.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
comments fixed
With additional poking and prodding at the structure of this site, anonymous comments are now turned on. I didn't figure out they were off by default - see? I'm Not A Geek! Really!
Monday, January 21, 2008
Snapping back at the sky
So, today started off with a great note - or at least my cell phone's very strange ring. Crawling out of bed, I blearily opened the phone while blinking in the bright sunlight filtering into the room. Meet at the airport at noon? Sure!
Showered and dressed, breakfast thrown in the belly, I finished cleaning out the truck from the road trip and checked weather while my sister-in-law took it down to a gas station with a bike with flat tire in the back. Then off to the airport, to take advantage of their free wireless and table space to plan the trip (without someone trying to help with crayon). No matter what horror stories and grumbles have emerged from the privatization of the weather flight service stations, both contacts with them down here so far have turned up quickly a helpful, knowledgeable briefer who's willing to spell out local weather and local geography with me.
While I was flight planning, D beat me out to the airplane, and called me from the hangar. Nearly shedding paperwork, I met him there, and he plugged the airports into a program on his own laptop to see if he could cut flight time. He'd topped off the cells in the battery, and was charging it more from the jeep. (Aircraft batteries are a silent victim of the FAA's insistence on refusing to let you change anything from the original stock plane without a significant fraction of a million dollars, years of testing, and mountains of paperwork. Despite cars and motorcycles having moved on to sealed-cell batteries decades ago and now moving on to gel cel batteries that are far better, more reliable, lighter, safer, and cheaper, my vintage 70's Grumman AA-1B has to use a battery designed back then, prone to boiling over, spilling out if I pull maneuvers, and corroding whatever the acid can touch. This is a clear example of how "experimental" aviation is better, faster, cheaper, more reliable, and the source of almost all innovation in the industry.)
I called the American Yankee Association to ask her about finding her once we land at the private airport - we had agreed before I left for Sebring that I'd be down Monday, weather permitting. She hemmed and told me not to bother, and she had a 5pm meeting, and she didn't know if we could do it in a day... finally arrived at no, she wouldn't do it today. Maybe tomorrow, but next week otherwise, maybe. I decided, then, that it was time to laugh instead of screaming in frustration. A week gone on the ground, and she thinks I can just wait around and waste another week out of four? I'm not a retiree, I'm on a very limited leave of absence with a mission to perform. D and I scrapped flying down immediately in favor of pattern work, to get some flying in. But we also stewed over it - the woman was the nearest in five states that's AYA-blessed. Still, there are other CFI's out there who've flown Grummans, even if they're not officially blessed. I won't get the insurance premium reduction or the structured training, but f*ck it. I came down here to fly, and I'm going to fly whether or not it's convenient for them.
That decision made, anger dealt with, we checked that the battery was charged, reassembled the battery box, and D showed me how to put the cowling back on - then took it off and had me learn by doing just how to get it done. It's a pain! The airplane started fine, though now his push-to-talk didn't work so I had to make the radio calls. Winds were gusty and strong, and an overcast layer was coming in at 2500, but it was a great day to get some crosswind practice in. We taxied to runway 4 (winds from 060 degrees magnetic, 12knots gusting to 18knots), and D had the first stab at it.
The plane may have a slightly anemic engine, but don't let that fool you to her roll and pitch response - she's snappy! D pitched her up too much, and she responded by leaping off the runway with too little airspeed - nose back down and we rocked along with ground effect and gusts, building airspeed to climb out. The first landing was rough, and D ruefully said on the way out. "Flying Herc Patterns....that's what'll get you, going from big planes to small ones. The sight picture's different." Second time round, he flew a low approach, and instead of landing flew the runway about a wing's length above it. The third one was a lot smoother - but I was having problems with being the comm. ATC may use the same phrases in standard english the world over, but I could not understand his southern accent.
So we departed, climbed and crossed midfield, and headed out east of the airport. Normally I couldn't go there, as it's be filled with fighters, Hercs, AWACS and A-10's, but they were closed for Martin Luther King day. (Which is why D was free to fly with me.) So with a couple thousand feet of altitude, D took controls to show me the performance of the airplane. He pushed throttle in and whipped the yoke to the left. The world flopped on its side, and we were spinning in a circle tight as a dog trying to catch his tail at 90 degrees of bank - the windscreen was split down the middle with ground and sky. Then he turned it over to right, and the airplane snapped over to roll near the edge of inverted, with G-forces slamming me into my seat. It startled a "Shit!" out of me - both at the amazing responsiveness, agility and ability, and at the way the sudden movement made my a shock of pain snap up my neck along all the old injuries. I have no doubts that the airplane will do anything you ask her to, except climb quickly. I also have no doubts that her limits are much further out than mine - but I know why fighter pilots like her, too. And it's not just the fact that you can slide the canopy back in flight. Which D proceeded to demonstrate. It's cool. And, on a day after a cold front came through, that's cold. When I took the controls to play with her, none of my banks exceeded 30 degrees.
We headed northwest to Cook County airport, better known, it seems, as Adel for the town next to it. There, straining to make out the crackling CTAF calls in Southern to see if any of them were for us, Dave flew a low approach on runway 5, and then turned it over to me. No VASI, no PAPI, no gauge for glide slope high or low but my own eyeballs and our judgment, I shot touch and gos and low approaches to learn the feel of her landing. She's a really clean airplane, and unforgiving of extra speed on the approach, or of coming in too high, or of too fast a descent rate. On the other hand, she's extremely precise - if you nail the speed, she'll nail the numbers.
All fun must come to an end - and when the sight guage for the left tank bobbled down to a quarter of a tank, we called it a day and followed the highway back to Valdosta. Coming up on Valdosta, I confused the military approach controller, who either was having a hard time understanding my accent, or was having a hard time understanding that we were checking in. He turned us over to Valdosta tower, who I couldn't quite understand - but I did catch that we were cleared to left downwind, runway 4. That's unusual, because it's not the main runway - but it was a quiet enough day he must have remembered we were using it for touch n' go's. (Or a quiet enough airport, which is scarier but probably closer to the truth.)
We spent a while going over reviewing our pattern work, the plane's characteristics, and diverging onto the idea of building a radial engine from aftermarket Harley parts. Then off to find my way home, which was much harder than it should have been due to random repaving. The hard part of my day was done, though, so it was fun to try to figure out what the road might be coming from the other way - like many streets in this town, the street I wanted changes names at least five times as it twists across town. Not being local, it took me a while to figure out where it came out under another name. My brother, appraised of the decision to ditch seeking official stamp of approval in favor of actual training, put up surprisingly little resistance - and shot an email to me with two options to contact tomorrow.
Showered and dressed, breakfast thrown in the belly, I finished cleaning out the truck from the road trip and checked weather while my sister-in-law took it down to a gas station with a bike with flat tire in the back. Then off to the airport, to take advantage of their free wireless and table space to plan the trip (without someone trying to help with crayon). No matter what horror stories and grumbles have emerged from the privatization of the weather flight service stations, both contacts with them down here so far have turned up quickly a helpful, knowledgeable briefer who's willing to spell out local weather and local geography with me.
While I was flight planning, D beat me out to the airplane, and called me from the hangar. Nearly shedding paperwork, I met him there, and he plugged the airports into a program on his own laptop to see if he could cut flight time. He'd topped off the cells in the battery, and was charging it more from the jeep. (Aircraft batteries are a silent victim of the FAA's insistence on refusing to let you change anything from the original stock plane without a significant fraction of a million dollars, years of testing, and mountains of paperwork. Despite cars and motorcycles having moved on to sealed-cell batteries decades ago and now moving on to gel cel batteries that are far better, more reliable, lighter, safer, and cheaper, my vintage 70's Grumman AA-1B has to use a battery designed back then, prone to boiling over, spilling out if I pull maneuvers, and corroding whatever the acid can touch. This is a clear example of how "experimental" aviation is better, faster, cheaper, more reliable, and the source of almost all innovation in the industry.)
I called the American Yankee Association to ask her about finding her once we land at the private airport - we had agreed before I left for Sebring that I'd be down Monday, weather permitting. She hemmed and told me not to bother, and she had a 5pm meeting, and she didn't know if we could do it in a day... finally arrived at no, she wouldn't do it today. Maybe tomorrow, but next week otherwise, maybe. I decided, then, that it was time to laugh instead of screaming in frustration. A week gone on the ground, and she thinks I can just wait around and waste another week out of four? I'm not a retiree, I'm on a very limited leave of absence with a mission to perform. D and I scrapped flying down immediately in favor of pattern work, to get some flying in. But we also stewed over it - the woman was the nearest in five states that's AYA-blessed. Still, there are other CFI's out there who've flown Grummans, even if they're not officially blessed. I won't get the insurance premium reduction or the structured training, but f*ck it. I came down here to fly, and I'm going to fly whether or not it's convenient for them.
That decision made, anger dealt with, we checked that the battery was charged, reassembled the battery box, and D showed me how to put the cowling back on - then took it off and had me learn by doing just how to get it done. It's a pain! The airplane started fine, though now his push-to-talk didn't work so I had to make the radio calls. Winds were gusty and strong, and an overcast layer was coming in at 2500, but it was a great day to get some crosswind practice in. We taxied to runway 4 (winds from 060 degrees magnetic, 12knots gusting to 18knots), and D had the first stab at it.
The plane may have a slightly anemic engine, but don't let that fool you to her roll and pitch response - she's snappy! D pitched her up too much, and she responded by leaping off the runway with too little airspeed - nose back down and we rocked along with ground effect and gusts, building airspeed to climb out. The first landing was rough, and D ruefully said on the way out. "Flying Herc Patterns....that's what'll get you, going from big planes to small ones. The sight picture's different." Second time round, he flew a low approach, and instead of landing flew the runway about a wing's length above it. The third one was a lot smoother - but I was having problems with being the comm. ATC may use the same phrases in standard english the world over, but I could not understand his southern accent.
So we departed, climbed and crossed midfield, and headed out east of the airport. Normally I couldn't go there, as it's be filled with fighters, Hercs, AWACS and A-10's, but they were closed for Martin Luther King day. (Which is why D was free to fly with me.) So with a couple thousand feet of altitude, D took controls to show me the performance of the airplane. He pushed throttle in and whipped the yoke to the left. The world flopped on its side, and we were spinning in a circle tight as a dog trying to catch his tail at 90 degrees of bank - the windscreen was split down the middle with ground and sky. Then he turned it over to right, and the airplane snapped over to roll near the edge of inverted, with G-forces slamming me into my seat. It startled a "Shit!" out of me - both at the amazing responsiveness, agility and ability, and at the way the sudden movement made my a shock of pain snap up my neck along all the old injuries. I have no doubts that the airplane will do anything you ask her to, except climb quickly. I also have no doubts that her limits are much further out than mine - but I know why fighter pilots like her, too. And it's not just the fact that you can slide the canopy back in flight. Which D proceeded to demonstrate. It's cool. And, on a day after a cold front came through, that's cold. When I took the controls to play with her, none of my banks exceeded 30 degrees.
We headed northwest to Cook County airport, better known, it seems, as Adel for the town next to it. There, straining to make out the crackling CTAF calls in Southern to see if any of them were for us, Dave flew a low approach on runway 5, and then turned it over to me. No VASI, no PAPI, no gauge for glide slope high or low but my own eyeballs and our judgment, I shot touch and gos and low approaches to learn the feel of her landing. She's a really clean airplane, and unforgiving of extra speed on the approach, or of coming in too high, or of too fast a descent rate. On the other hand, she's extremely precise - if you nail the speed, she'll nail the numbers.
All fun must come to an end - and when the sight guage for the left tank bobbled down to a quarter of a tank, we called it a day and followed the highway back to Valdosta. Coming up on Valdosta, I confused the military approach controller, who either was having a hard time understanding my accent, or was having a hard time understanding that we were checking in. He turned us over to Valdosta tower, who I couldn't quite understand - but I did catch that we were cleared to left downwind, runway 4. That's unusual, because it's not the main runway - but it was a quiet enough day he must have remembered we were using it for touch n' go's. (Or a quiet enough airport, which is scarier but probably closer to the truth.)
We spent a while going over reviewing our pattern work, the plane's characteristics, and diverging onto the idea of building a radial engine from aftermarket Harley parts. Then off to find my way home, which was much harder than it should have been due to random repaving. The hard part of my day was done, though, so it was fun to try to figure out what the road might be coming from the other way - like many streets in this town, the street I wanted changes names at least five times as it twists across town. Not being local, it took me a while to figure out where it came out under another name. My brother, appraised of the decision to ditch seeking official stamp of approval in favor of actual training, put up surprisingly little resistance - and shot an email to me with two options to contact tomorrow.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Comedy of Errors
With a dead plane and a live truck, I headed south to Sebring, Florida for the Light Sport Expo. Well, that was the plan. It got a bit delayed by insomnia, sleeping late, and the the one-year-old niece fell and bumped her head. What I would just shrug off as another patch of skin missing is a very big deal on a child smaller than my torso, especially on her face, so off to urgent care she went. (Lord, I know genetics, environment, and your sense of humor are against me, but may she please grow up to be as good a pilot as my brother and I - without being as clumsy as we are on the ground?)
So finally off to the airport to disconnect the charger, verify I can buy the same type of battery, brand new, from the FBO, and then off to Sebring.
Just to point out, though I've flown pretty far and wide, this is only the third time I've driven somewhere more than two hours away, and it was a four hour each way drive. No, I don't like driving. If I was flying, I would have gotten there when the expo was open on Saturday. As was, I arrived an hour after it had closed for the night, and only barely caught the FBO manager as he was leaving for the night. Completely ignoring the female security guard's statement that storms were coming and I should get a hotel room, I presented him with my plight: "The plane's broken in Georgia, so I borrowed a truck and drove the rest of the way. Is there anywhere I can camp under-wing, without having the wing to camp underneath?"
He checked the motorway next door (did you know there's a 12-hour-long car race in Sebring? Apparently I should have.) However, in the rapidly darkening night (sunsets and twilight are a lot shorter down south, though the amount of sunlight is longer), he couldn't find it - so he put me out at the corner of the airfield, in the grass off the very end of the concrete ramp. Before going home, he told the EAA chapter's vice president that I was there, and security as well. So I had company who came over, curious, as I set up my tent and rain fly. Security showed in the form of a great guy, really friendly, who made sure I knew the storm line coming in was supposed to be bad, and am I sure that I don't want to sleep in the lobby, warm and dry?
The promised thunderstorm came, and was awesome. Sleeping on the airfield, in survival gear you know means you'll be comfy if you need it? Priceless.
The very nice security guard came back after the storm, checking on all three of us campers to make sure nobody's tent got soaked or flattened in the storm. (It was gusting probably around 35 to 40 in there at one point). Mine didn't, but another guy wasn't so lucky. After reassuring him, I was drifting off to sleep when I heard a strange loud clunk as his car drove away.
The next morning I took down my tent, and headed out to the airport cafe. Or, that was the intention. The 3-foot-deep hole where the water undercut the sandy soil at the edge of the concrete pad was neither marked nor visible, as the vegetation in it had grown to match the surface around it. I went straight in at about 3 miles an hour, bent the rim, and popped the tire off the bead. So I headed to the airport cafe, where the guy who drives the fuel truck and another volunteer on a golf cart drove back down to my truck, and started contemplating how to fix it. Then the security guy came back - before I knew it, there was a collective crew of helpful men pulling my truck out, directing me to slowly drive it halfway onto the concrete pad around the invisible hole (now visible where I'd crushed vegetation, and from the indention where the security's vehicle had caught one edge of it the night before).
I would have died from embarrassment had everybody not been so calm and helpful - the security guy freely admitted it had almost gotten him the night before, and while this all went on, somebody fetched another orange cone to mark the ege of the pad by it as unsafe. It probably helped that the day was starting out chilly, for Florida, windy and gusty enough to nix any but the bravest and heaviest of planes from flying, so they weren't pressed for crowd control.
We left the truck at an impasse - a bent rim, and the spare tire locked under the truck - and I went to get breakfast at the airport cafe. Questioning the FBO manager about an ATM, he disappeared into the back, and then handed a key to me. "Just head down the road to the Sheraton. This is to the green Explorer." The Sheraton's ATM was broken, so I went down the road a little further, and topped off the gas tank while hitting a gas station's ATM.
Back to the Expo, I looked at and discussed four airplanes, found the pilotmall.com booth and told Shawn the Zulu video was hilarious, and was enjoying a great conversation when a golf car pulled up outside with a tanned man who had blond hair in a ponytail longer than anything I've ever managed, and a handlebar mustache. Excusing myself, I went to see V about a grinder to get the lock off the spare tire. Ultralight aviation in the Carribean and Florida produces - or attracts - some fine examples of interesting characters to rival anything in the Alaskan bush, and V was no exception. Roughly five minutes later I was in a bus, drinking coffee flavored with bushmills and baileys (very, very tasty), and listening to an intense debate about different paints and dopes for wings, anti-corrosion techiniques and products for ultralights based in saltwater, the viability of an electric motor for an ultralight, and tangents on motorcycles, yachts, and how best to hustle tourists, selling rides.
After the other two parties to the debate were on their way, V pulled an assortment of tools out, jacked up the truck, pulled the tire off, and pounded the rim back into shape. Then he refilled the tire, checked it, put it back on my truck, and had me drive over by the bus to check that it was good - before sailing off again with me on the golf cart all around the expo, checking on people, plane, the guy who's made the aforementioned electric-motor ultralight... When he motored off to go throw his clothes in the laundromat in town, I felt like I'd been through more of a whirlwind than the thunderstorm the night before.
I barely had time to see a few more planes as people were packing up and tearing down before the Expo was well and truly over - though I made sure to find each of the wonderful gentlemen who'd been such a help and say thanks again before driving carefully back to Valdosta.
After dark fell, on I-75, it was starting to get really boring and tiring, so I started punching scan on the radio. 100.5, Resurrection Radio, alternated rapidly from Voltaire to industrial, EBM to Sisters of Mercy, glancing past Trance and rebounding off Darkwave and Nerdcore to land back in Industrial. I found that bouncing happily along to the beat really loosens up muscles that get stiff and sore from the fixed position of driving, and now I really, really, really wish there was a good place to go dancing at home, or at least a similar radio station - almost all of the good (and bad, and indifferent) industrial and EBM was new to me. I miss dancing.
So finally off to the airport to disconnect the charger, verify I can buy the same type of battery, brand new, from the FBO, and then off to Sebring.
Just to point out, though I've flown pretty far and wide, this is only the third time I've driven somewhere more than two hours away, and it was a four hour each way drive. No, I don't like driving. If I was flying, I would have gotten there when the expo was open on Saturday. As was, I arrived an hour after it had closed for the night, and only barely caught the FBO manager as he was leaving for the night. Completely ignoring the female security guard's statement that storms were coming and I should get a hotel room, I presented him with my plight: "The plane's broken in Georgia, so I borrowed a truck and drove the rest of the way. Is there anywhere I can camp under-wing, without having the wing to camp underneath?"
He checked the motorway next door (did you know there's a 12-hour-long car race in Sebring? Apparently I should have.) However, in the rapidly darkening night (sunsets and twilight are a lot shorter down south, though the amount of sunlight is longer), he couldn't find it - so he put me out at the corner of the airfield, in the grass off the very end of the concrete ramp. Before going home, he told the EAA chapter's vice president that I was there, and security as well. So I had company who came over, curious, as I set up my tent and rain fly. Security showed in the form of a great guy, really friendly, who made sure I knew the storm line coming in was supposed to be bad, and am I sure that I don't want to sleep in the lobby, warm and dry?
The promised thunderstorm came, and was awesome. Sleeping on the airfield, in survival gear you know means you'll be comfy if you need it? Priceless.
The very nice security guard came back after the storm, checking on all three of us campers to make sure nobody's tent got soaked or flattened in the storm. (It was gusting probably around 35 to 40 in there at one point). Mine didn't, but another guy wasn't so lucky. After reassuring him, I was drifting off to sleep when I heard a strange loud clunk as his car drove away.
The next morning I took down my tent, and headed out to the airport cafe. Or, that was the intention. The 3-foot-deep hole where the water undercut the sandy soil at the edge of the concrete pad was neither marked nor visible, as the vegetation in it had grown to match the surface around it. I went straight in at about 3 miles an hour, bent the rim, and popped the tire off the bead. So I headed to the airport cafe, where the guy who drives the fuel truck and another volunteer on a golf cart drove back down to my truck, and started contemplating how to fix it. Then the security guy came back - before I knew it, there was a collective crew of helpful men pulling my truck out, directing me to slowly drive it halfway onto the concrete pad around the invisible hole (now visible where I'd crushed vegetation, and from the indention where the security's vehicle had caught one edge of it the night before).
I would have died from embarrassment had everybody not been so calm and helpful - the security guy freely admitted it had almost gotten him the night before, and while this all went on, somebody fetched another orange cone to mark the ege of the pad by it as unsafe. It probably helped that the day was starting out chilly, for Florida, windy and gusty enough to nix any but the bravest and heaviest of planes from flying, so they weren't pressed for crowd control.
We left the truck at an impasse - a bent rim, and the spare tire locked under the truck - and I went to get breakfast at the airport cafe. Questioning the FBO manager about an ATM, he disappeared into the back, and then handed a key to me. "Just head down the road to the Sheraton. This is to the green Explorer." The Sheraton's ATM was broken, so I went down the road a little further, and topped off the gas tank while hitting a gas station's ATM.
Back to the Expo, I looked at and discussed four airplanes, found the pilotmall.com booth and told Shawn the Zulu video was hilarious, and was enjoying a great conversation when a golf car pulled up outside with a tanned man who had blond hair in a ponytail longer than anything I've ever managed, and a handlebar mustache. Excusing myself, I went to see V about a grinder to get the lock off the spare tire. Ultralight aviation in the Carribean and Florida produces - or attracts - some fine examples of interesting characters to rival anything in the Alaskan bush, and V was no exception. Roughly five minutes later I was in a bus, drinking coffee flavored with bushmills and baileys (very, very tasty), and listening to an intense debate about different paints and dopes for wings, anti-corrosion techiniques and products for ultralights based in saltwater, the viability of an electric motor for an ultralight, and tangents on motorcycles, yachts, and how best to hustle tourists, selling rides.
After the other two parties to the debate were on their way, V pulled an assortment of tools out, jacked up the truck, pulled the tire off, and pounded the rim back into shape. Then he refilled the tire, checked it, put it back on my truck, and had me drive over by the bus to check that it was good - before sailing off again with me on the golf cart all around the expo, checking on people, plane, the guy who's made the aforementioned electric-motor ultralight... When he motored off to go throw his clothes in the laundromat in town, I felt like I'd been through more of a whirlwind than the thunderstorm the night before.
I barely had time to see a few more planes as people were packing up and tearing down before the Expo was well and truly over - though I made sure to find each of the wonderful gentlemen who'd been such a help and say thanks again before driving carefully back to Valdosta.
After dark fell, on I-75, it was starting to get really boring and tiring, so I started punching scan on the radio. 100.5, Resurrection Radio, alternated rapidly from Voltaire to industrial, EBM to Sisters of Mercy, glancing past Trance and rebounding off Darkwave and Nerdcore to land back in Industrial. I found that bouncing happily along to the beat really loosens up muscles that get stiff and sore from the fixed position of driving, and now I really, really, really wish there was a good place to go dancing at home, or at least a similar radio station - almost all of the good (and bad, and indifferent) industrial and EBM was new to me. I miss dancing.
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