A Trip To The Cradle of Aviation

The missus and I wanted to go somewhere this month, and we settled on the North Carolina coast as a destination. One of the great things about having your own personal airplane is being able to plan a trip on fairly short notice, and then being able to fly right into your destination (as well as not having to take off your shoes and suffer the indignity of being herded like a goat through all that "security." Hey, Mr Homeland Security, I was carrying a big knife strapped right to my belt on this trip!) The weather turned out to be very favorable for our trip. On Tuesday, October 14th, we left on our vacation. I filed IFR out of Dewitt Spain because of en route ceilings of 3,500 ft. My route took us over the Great Smoky Mountains near Knoxville, so I claimed 9,000 ft on the way. Since the trip from Memphis to Dare County airport is right at 700 nautical miles, we stopped at Foothills Regional airport in Morgonton, N.C. This was a good choice, as they actually put down the red carpet for us as we stepped down out of our aircraft. I guess it was worth it to them, seeing as how I made an enormous purchase of 20 gallons of avgas. Anyway, MRN is a nice airport if you happen to be looking for a place to refuel and rest for a bit.

Continuing on, we flew in nice VFR weather. I called up Washington center for flight following, just to make sure I didn't stray into any of the restricted areas around Kitty Hawk. The controller suggested that I fly inbound on victor 189, an airway which avoids the restricted airspace. We had debated whether or not to fly into the First Flight airport, but decided not to since we would have to move the airplane after visiting the Wright Brothers memorial and museum. There is no fuel or security at this airport, although it would be neat to land at the site of the actual first flight of the Wright Flyer. The airstrip is about 100 yards from the now-famous site. We opted instead to land at MQI, Manteo airport. This is a full-service facility about ten miles south of Kitty Hawk. Nice and clean, and the fellow at the FBO there was very helpful suggesting good local restaurants.



We checked in and picked up our car, a Dodge Caliber. I'm confused about the mission of a vehicle such as this. It's smaller than a sedan, top heavy, ugly and slow. Maybe I'm just spoiled by my 330i, but I think this is the most anemic vehicle that I have ever driven. At any rate, it's good enough to plod around the outer bank as our vacation vehicle.

I have never visited this area before. I guess I should not have been surprised to find the beach ultra-developed. A good bit of it is pretty ugly, with strip malls and fast food places everywhere.
But I guess this is what you get where people come to vacation. Lots and lots of people. Fortunately, we arrived at the beginning of the off season, which starts in early October. I can imagine what it's like in the middle of the summer with throngs of people everywhere. The down side of the off season is that some of the things I wanted to do were not available. I wanted to rent a Hobie Cat sail boat, but they had just taken them out of the water and were not renting or running their school any more. The guy there was very nice, but he explained that they just didn't have the crowds to support the business. Guess you can't have everything.

Our hotel was the Hilton Garden Inn. Situated on the northern end of Kitty Hawk, this is a nice, new hotel. We sprung for the ocean view room on the 5th floor, which afforded us a spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Hilton has a fishing pier for its guests. I didn't bring any fishing tackle, but that was easily remedied by a trip to a tackle shop just down the street from the hotel. I spent a few hours each day fishing off the pier. Using shrimp as bait, I reeled in a bunch of bluefish, spots and trout. I released everything I caught, so I didn't have to worry about cleaning fish. I met a lot of nice folks on the pier. I guess that's what happens when you fish on a pier. One fellow was there with his kid, and they watched me bring in a couple of fish using the shrimp. I donated a few shrimp to the kid and chatted with his dad. Turns out his name was Michael Cox. He tells me that he likes to hang out in Kitty Hawk and write. He writes horror novels, and he wrote a book called Souls Eternal, which is a vampire story. I went in and found it on Amazon.com. Neat!

We spent the morning of the second day at the the Wright Brothers museum and memorial. This is a great treat for an aviation nut, especially a homebuilder. The park service has done a great job of preserving the land where the first flight was made. They have reconstructed the hangar and living quarters on the site, and a museum is there with small exhibits and a small bookstore. There are several daily half-hour lectures which detail how Orville and Wilber ended up coming here from Dayton, Ohio to fly gliders and ultimately a powered airplane on December 17, 1903.

I rented a bicycle and took a two hour cruise of the area on Thursday. North of Kitty Hawk is a town called Duck. Nicely developed with several good restaurants. There are a zillion homes built on the beach in this area and northward all the way to the Virginia border. They are all very upscale and in the range of 5,000 - 6,000 sq ft. It would be nice to rent one for the whole family (or two or three families).

There are plenty of restaurants, everything ranging from Hooter's and Outback to more expensive places. We got a tip from the guy at the bike shop (a former restaurant owner) and ended up a place called Colington's. It's in an old Victorian house. Nice atmosphere and great food.

Friday came all too quickly and it was time to go home. The weather was a bit more intimidating on the trip home with IFR conditions all the way to middle Tennessee. There was a frontal area extending across our path associated with a fair amount of level two and three precip showing on the Garmin 396's XM weather display. I filed IFR to Morgonton and we left at about 9:30. We were in the clouds most of the way, and checking the metar at our destination, I saw the little red flag on the Garmin. Weather was visability 1 mile, 100 ft ceiling in rain. I wasn't going to get in there on any of the three published approaches, so we changed our destination to Knoxville, which was considerably better. I was being vectored for the ILS approach, but I broke out of the clouds at about 2,500 ft AGL, and the controller gave me a visual approach to Rwy 5R. The place was pretty busy, and I realized it was the day before a Tennessee home football game. Still the lady at TAC Air (the nice, big FBO there) gave us a crew car so we could go get some lunch before continuing on to Memphis.

We were able to leave VFR, and we were back in the sunshine with a slight tailwind in about 20 miles. We were back on the ground at Dewitt Spain about two hours later, just under 5 hours of flying time total for the day.

We had a great time, and I would love to return to the outer banks of the North Carolina coast for a longer stay. Next time I'll do more fishing. I had forgotten how much I like fishing. When the RV-7 is finished, Mary and I will certainly put this area on the list of places to go.

MORE PICTURES


JC
10/18/08

The Seven Gets An Engine

A big, white box has been sitting the the back corner of my hangar for the past ten months. Yesterday I decided it was time to unpack its expensive contents, a brand-new IO-360-M1B fuel-injected engine from Lycoming. I have never in my life seen anything packed like this. They sealed the engine in thick plastic then poured expanding foam around the whole thing so that I had to chisel away the box and foam to expose the engine. I picked it up with my engine hoist and rolled it over to my work area. Now I can get it ready to put on the engine mount. I have to put on a few fittings, install the prop governor and replace the magnetos with my P-mag electronic ignitions. This is the fun part of building. I got so sick of working on the damn canopy this summer that it's nice to have something different.

Visiting our old friends in Alabama

It took my trusty Garmin 396 with its nifty weather radar to get us down to the Shelby County, AL airport on September 19th. A large area of moisture coming up from the Gulf of Mexico was situated across our path. I filed IFR going directly south out of Memphis. Air traffic control was very accomodating to our deviations around the weather. The graphic from flightaware.com shows the area of weather we had to avoid. The weather was moving to the northeast, so it was easy to come behind it using the Garmin.

We had a nice visit with our friends Carol and Dick Keydoszius. Patty and Larry Duncan showed up the next day. I even managed to get in a little dove hunting and fishing on Saturday morning.

We did it - Memphis to Oshkosh (and back!).

I'm not sure what we were thinking when we decided to do this. I believe it went something like this. James: "Some day we should fly the Aircam to Oshkosh." Me: "Well, let's do it now, before I get any older." If we had spent much more time debating it, we probably wouldn't have done it. Tooling along at seventy-five mph at 500 feet above the ground is great for local sight-seeing and photos. But a 530 nautical mile cross-country is a little tough on the behind, especially when one is accustomed to hundred eighty mph plus speeds in the RV.

James checked me out in the Aircam, a twin-engine, tandem-seat machine with open cockpits and fabric-covered wings. I have a multi engine rating and a tailwheel endorsement, so I'm legal to fly the aircraft. The first thing you notice about flying the Aircam is its astonishing climb rate. At full power (just over 5,000 RPM's), a healthy tug on the stick is required to achieve the desired 70 mph for climb. This gives one the feeling of a very rapid ascent in an open-air elevator. I think I left my stomach on the ground on my first takeoff. Cruise flight and turns are simple, albeit the stick forces are heavy, and slow turns are called for. Leveling out often requires the stick to be moved in the opposite direction, and there is a feeling of the wing flexing somewhat during more rapid turns or gusts. The landing pattern calls for a much steeper descent than I am accustomed to, as the Aircam has lots of drag to cancel out all that thrust of the two 100 hp engines. Power is held into the flair, then reduced as it levels off. Wheel-landings require just a nudge forward on the stick at touch-down. Our particular airplane has a bit of a shimmy in the tailwheel which makes three-point landings on a hard surface a bit uncomfortable.

I love flying this thing. Despite my comments above, it was not hard to convince me to take this trip. The front seat is like an out-of-body experience, with nothing on either side except a view of the world above and below. The wind screen is very effective, making for a non-windy, pleasant ride. We both wore helmets with built-in headsets, but the front guy could actually wear a baseball cap and a standard headset. The back seat experience is not quite as much fun, since the GIB (guy in back) gets battered by wind, especially at higher cruise speeds. The roar of the engines for the GIB is deafening without serious hearing protection. James had the ear seals and speakers replaced for the helmet we used in the aft seat, resulting in a marked improvement. Active noise-cancelling would probably make it even better.

So, after establishing my proficiency, I was added to the insurance policy, and we were ready to go. We could not depart until late in the afternoon on Wednesday because of James' work schedule. After a pre-flight and packing, we lifted off at about 4:30 P.M. Pictures of the flight are posted here.

Flying northward along the Mississippi river, we passed over fields of soybeans, cotton and rice. Flying low over rice fields conjures up images of Huey's skimming the surface of fields in a far-off land from another time. Nobody shooting at us here. The only danger exists in power lines strung across fields and the occasional crop duster maneuvering below us. People would occasionally wave at us, but I was amazed at the number of people who didn't look up when we passed right over their heads.

There was a large area of weather strung out over Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. Our plan was to fly as close to it as possible, spend the night and let the weather pass over us as it moved to the southeast. We hoped to make it about two hundred miles before stopping. As we approached Mt Vernon, Illinois we began to pick up some light rain. By the time we entered the pattern at Mt Vernon, the rain had picked up quite a bit. The voice on the unicom frequency welcomed us and directed us to the large hangar on the ramp so that we could get out of the rain. The gentleman at the FBO allowed us to actually taxi into the hangar, a welcome event given our open cockpit situation. He then gave us a courtesy car and directed us to local food and lodging. Mt Vernon is the place to stop if you're in that area!

Departure the following morning was delayed about a half hour by a balky left engine. Cold starts were a problem during the remainder of the trip, as the Rotax 912 seemed to suffer from some carburetor issue, possibly a sticky float valve. There was a broken ceiling beginning just north of Mt Vernon, and we ended up on top of a cloud deck, cruising VFR at 2,500 feet. This, according to James, was a record altitude for the Aircam. The Garmin 396 with XM weather which I had attached to the rear of the front seat showed Decatur, Illinois reporting clear skies, although every other airport within two hundred miles was showing IFR conditions with two hundred foot ceilings. Sure enough, arriving at Decatur we found clear skies in an area confined to the airport and the surrounding three miles. After refueling and one more stop at Watertown, Wisconsin, it was time for the approach into Oshkosh. We had another gremlin to deal with in the failure of the display on the Aircam's GPS-Com, an Apollo GX-65. This meant that we could not use it to navigate, and we could only change radio frequencies by turning the unit off and then back on, since the display would come on for a few seconds - just long enough to enter a new frequency on the com radio. In addition to our radio woes, our backup GPS, the Garmin 396, suffered a broken power cord, so we could no longer charge the battery via the Aircam's twelve volt outlet. The unit would die after about three hours of continuous use, so we had to keep it turned off most of the time.

The approach into Oshkosh during Airventure week usually involves proceeding to a waypoint called "Ripon," then being directed by controllers on the ground to either enter a holding pattern or proceed inbound to Oshkosh. Having done this several times, I consider this one of the scariest events in aviation - right up there with a non-precision approach at night. Flying a rectangular holding pattern with seventy-five or a hundred other airplanes is just no fun for me. Today, however, we were taking a different route into Oshkosh, as we had been approved ahead of time to land on the ultralight strip, a twelve hundred foot strip of grass just west of the south end of runway 36 with three hundred foot displaced thresholds at either end. James' superior short-field skill would be needed for this landing, so he flew the final leg. I tended to the 396, stretching the battery life to the very end and directing James to the runway. Turning a left base for the northwest-facing grass strip, I was sure we were too high and way too fast. I was a bit frightened at this point, but James put the Aircam right on the numbers and braked hard, leaving plenty of runway to spare.

We made our way from the ultralight strip to the large building where our friend, Al Mojzisik has his display set up to sell his Lift Reserve Indicator, a nifty gadget placed on aircraft instrument panels which indicates angle-of-attack, a critical measurement which reveals how far from stall the aircraft wing is. After five P.M., Al ferried us over to the campsite where he has a rectangular tent-like structure erected which is large enough to shelter about four smaller tents within it. We dined at the campsite that evening on Corky's barbeque which James had shipped from Memphis. The best part of the trip is seeing and talking to the guys that camp around Al's little compound. There is always a fire, some beer and plenty of outlandish conversation.

We did the usual tour of Airventure on Friday, checking out all the airplanes and gadgets that caught our fancy. This year, James was fixated on an airplane called a "Chipmunk," a tandem-seat military trainer from decades ago while I concentrated on biplanes such as the Pitts. My purchases included seat cushions for my RV-7 from Oregon Aero and a directional gyro and artificial horizon for James' Cessna 150.

After a second night in the tent, my old body was yearning for its own bed. So we decided to cut our stay short by a day and depart on Saturday afternoon. A new power cord for the 396 made the trip home completely uneventful, even without a functioning radio in the Aircam. I was able to spot deer along the edges of fields in Illinois and Missouri on the way home. Eight hours and five stops after leaving Oshkosh, we touched down back at Dewitt Spain. The sweltering heat welcomed us home. Checking weather on the 396, it was eighty degrees back in Oshkosh.

We both agree that this was a great experience, but we have no intention of repeating it. The Aircam is a wonderful bird, but I would prefer brief flights at tree level. I'll stick to the RV for cross-country excursions.

Flying below treetop level

Most of the time flying means screaming along in my RV-8A at 200 mph going cross-country at 8,000 feet en route to some important destination (like a tennis match against my arch-rival, Larry in Birmingham). Lately, or should I say, as I get older, I kind of like sauntering along at low altitudes, checking out the flora and fauna from above. What's the big hurry, after all? My friend, James has the perfect vehicle for sauntering in the Aircam, a twin-engine (two robust, water-cooled, four-cycle Rotax 900's) tandem seat aircraft, designed for photographic missions over the jungle, where an engine failure in a single engine plane would be unfortunate. This week James and I are going to test our endurance for sauntering with a trip to the annual overdose-of-anything-aviation extravaganza in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Since it's 530 straight-line miles one-way, and our top speed will not excede 75 mph, we should have plenty of time for our passion for low-altitude cruising.

First Solo For Alex

I remember his first bicycle solo. I remember his struggles with the clutch while teaching him a standard shift in a Jeep Wrangler. On July 26, 2008 I opened the door and stepped out of the Cessna 150 and watched while my son made his first airplane solo. My experience is that most people bounce the 2nd or 3rd landing, but his were "greasers." I don't know who was happier, him or me. I had always hoped that my children would one day express an interest in flying. Maybe that's why I've maintained my flight instructor certificate for all these years. Now if I can just get my daughter soloed (we've had an issue with her medical certificate), all the Carters will have at least student pilot certificates.

A Big Bird Visits

Yesterday, Cessna reps flew a Caravan into Dewitt Spain. I believe it is being sold to a person locally. The crew was very friendly, and they let me sit in the left seat and smell the new interior. Dual Garmin 1000's, all leather - very nice!

The Smith Mini

Lately I've become interested in open cockpit airplanes. Sometimes the neatest things are right under your nose. I saw this Smith Mini parked outside of Lee Andrews' hangar today. It's a cool little biplane with a C-85 engine in it - the same motor that drives my Cessna 140.

I finished up the canopy frame on my RV-7 project. I dug out the canopy from the big finish kit box that has been sitting in a corner of my hangar for six months. Time to start trimming the canopy.

Air Rachel

Today was the day to go back to Tuscaloosa to pick up my daughter, Rachel. My kids are spoiled. They don't think it's any big deal to have Dad run them around in his airplane just so they wont have to do all that driving. Not that I mind it. It's just that they've always known airplanes, and it's nothing new or exciting to them. I don't see me changing anything, so I guess I'll just keep spoiling them.

I have logged 12 hours of cross-country time in the last 3 days with two trips to Tuscaloosa and one to Texas. That's a good bit for me. It's eating in to my building time, although I did get a couple of hours in on the dreaded canopy frame today.

A Trip To Glo

It's two and a half hours from Dewitt Spain to Northwest Regional airport near Fort Worth, Texas. This is where I accompanied Bill Snapp a few weeks ago to drop off his RV-8A for its paint job. This morning, Bill and I ferried him back to pick up the finished product. Nice morning for flying - not a ripple in the air. Grady at Glo Paint did a nice job. We took a few air-to-air photos on the way back.

Checking Out SPOT

I couldn't resist ordering a SPOT (satellite personal tracker) after seeing it on Doug Reeves' website. This little gizmo sits up on the glareshield of Juliet Charlie and tracks our progress by GPS coordinates. It will send a signal which causes an email or text message (or both, if you prefer) to any number of people or mobile phones that you designate when you set up your account ($99 per year plus 49.95 for the optional tracking function). In addition, it has a "911" function which will summon emergency help and a "help" function which will send a predetermined message to another designated list of recipients.

So I flew my daughter, Rachel to Tuscaloosa today and dropped her off at Bama Air to visit with some old friends for a couple of days. When I got back, I checked out my message page to show the track that I had sent via SPOT.

The Garmin 396 also got a workout, helping me navigate around some scattered thunderstorms.

Tomorrow I'm ferrying my friend, Bill Snapp to 52F (near Dallas) to pick up his newly painted RV-8A.

Banging away at the canopy frame

The RV-7 project is going sooooo slowly. I understand that the canopy is probably the toughest part of the whole project, but it's agonizing how you have to massage everything to get the thing to fit. It seems I'm having better luck with it than some though. I was reading on Doug Reeves' forum this morning and came across a post which made me feel real compassion for one of my fellow builders. Here's a quote from his post....

All I've learned is that there is a significant difference in the first weldment and the second one. I've about got it finished and it looks much much better but the rear skin is probably 1/16" high. I'm gonna go back out in the garage after supper and finish riveting the last of the canopy re-inforceing kit. Please pray for me....

I respect these guys so much. No one who has not built an airplane knows how much effort, stamina and dedication this takes. I'm impressed if you have done this. You're my kind of guy.

My neighbors, Steve and Barney finished their rebuild of Barney's RV-3. Here is the one-day camo paint job they did on it this weekend. Looks good for what it is. They're thinking about a shark's head on the front.

I gave an RV ride to Bud Smith, an RV-8 builder from Palm Beach, FL. He's in town with his daughter who is visiting Rhodes college. It's great to talk with builders who are half way through their projects. I hope the ride gave Bud some motivation. He seemed to enjoy it. I don't think he had ever been upside down in an airplane before.

The Spezio Tuholer

My friend and neighbor, Steve Price, brought his Spezio Tuholer to Dewitt Spain after losing his hangar at West Memphis. He let me fly it after about two minutes of ground instruction. This is a sweet little airplane. Too bad he's selling it. I would buy it myself if I had any hangar space left to store it in.