I was right:

As I was out flying with my friend Steve later in the day, we had a brief formation flight with another T6 that was in the area.

I have a goal for Black Beauty, my 2001 Chrysler 300M, and of this morning, I’m 27,778 miles away. That is if whatever is causing the Check Engine light to be on doesn’t claim her first.

I’m pretty sure I can fit this through there…

Or, maybe not.

Several years ago I watched a very old film called “Yours to Fly.”  It was a marketing film from the late 1940’s showing the benefits and utility of the North American Navion (if anyone has a copy of this, let me know.  I’ve lost mine).  One scene in the film showed very large, heavy machinery being placed inside the Navion for transport out to some remote oil mining operation.  So when an RV blows a tire in some very remote town in Iowa (aren’t they all??), the Navion is the perfect plane for the job.

With some determination, both tires eventually fit in the plane, although not through the luggage door.

As you can see, the back seat had to go, along with a considerable portion of the front seat leg room as well.  I’ve told friends before that I’m more than willing to put up with some personal discomfort if it means a chance to fly or learn something cool.  This was a chance for a night cross country flight.  Taking my shoes off gave me that last inch I needed to fit, but the lesson learned that evening did not happen in the air.

The plane, a Twin Navion, is fresh out of its annual inspection, and is a very, very nice plane.  We hopped into the plane and fired her right up to taxi down to the gas pumps.  As we fueled, it was getting later and later into the night, and I began thinking about the effects the lack of sleep might have on me at work the next day.  But, as a student pilot, I was excited, and I wanted to go.  I could always sleep later.  After fueling and some last minute logistics, it was time to go. 

Oh, but the battery did not want to go to Iowa that night. 

While Jamie went to get jumper cables, I had a chance to re-evaluate what we were about to do.  I realized that it was my eagerness that was fueling the mission.  If I wasn’t there, the flight would have already been delayed until the next day.  When Jamie returned, I confessed my ‘get-there-itis’ and we agreed to call it a night.  Well, after we jump-started the plane and taxied it back to the hangar, that is.

So, well-rested, I started another week at work, and the mission to deliver tires to the stranded RV would go on without me.  Jamie will just have to get the tires out of the plane by himself. 

(Thanks to Jen for the Kool-Aid, the photos, and the jump-start)

The folks at Nflightcam take a high definition camera made by Contour and add the necessary components and cabling necessary to record cockpit audio along with amazing 1080p video.  The result is a simple and very effective cockpit video system.

Here’s a couple videos I made using the system:

As a student pilot, I wish I had been using the Nflightcam from the very beginning of my training.  I wish I could keep on using it for the remainder of my training too.  The videos produced may not become viral sensations, but they are very helpful in reviewing and evaluating your flights.  There are elements of my flying that I do not always fully appreciate until I see it on video.  The landing sequence always seems to go fast for me, and that’s where I need the most work (you watched the videos, right?).  Reviewing these landings give me the opportunity to pick them apart so I can do a better job in the future.

If I could make one improvement to the Nflightcam system, it would be this: make the audio cable detachable and have the ability to use the original onboard microphone.  This camera is a considerable investment, and to be frugal, I would want to maximize the utility of it.  Even with this demo unit, I’ve been so tempted to mount the camera outside the airplane to capture some of those great perspectives I’ve seen done by others.  With the permanently attached cable I don’t think this camera would work well outside the cockpit (though others have done it).  I understand that you can custom order the Nflightcam with a detachable cable.

All in all, if you have a few hundred bucks to spare, I highly recommend it.  Just one hint: Even after you’ve used the nifty lasers to line up your shot, double check and make sure you’re not recording your video upside down.  If you do, you might need this link.

I’m putting this up not only as a teaser, but more importantly as a motivator to get the video editing done and posted.  Soon, I promise.

Thanks for sticking with me.

We did have one set back that wiped out a week’s worth of work, which to us meant we lost a month (It turns out, though, that we were waiting on some back ordered parts, so we really didn’t lose that much time).  The set back came as we were applying the final shrink to the fabric.  Our instruction manual is very clear about the temperature settings we needed to achieve.  Following the book, we put the spurs to it, and then things started to bend.  Bending is bad.  First, some of the ribs started looking like S’s.  Then the ribs on the trailing edge inboard of the ailerons buckled.  We had to cut the fabric to relieve the tension.  After some deliberation we cut all the fabric off of both wings, and started over.

In  retrospect, the setback was a great learning opportunity.  After consulting the manufacture and some seasoned pros, we learned that this is more of an art than a science (in other words, the book isn’t always correct).  The second time around we have been much more efficient, and I think the end result will be greatly improved.

This past weekend as we were working on the wings I started getting excited as the list of things yet to do seems much smaller than the list of things we’ve already done.  Yesterday we started putting on the gussets and inspection ring covers.  Next comes the finishing tapes, and soon we’ll start spraying on the various coatings and paint.

Here’s some of the latest pictures.   You can see the entire collection of photos over on Flickr.

So, what have I been ‘Dewing’?

Unfortunately, not a lot of flying.  Learning to fly at a grass strip in the Midwest leaves you to the mercy of the weather.  When 20 inches of snow falls, you know it’s going to be awhile before the hangar door opens.  Frankly, when there’s that much snow, there’s not a lot of motivation to even leave the house, so in that sense the weather has helped ease my aviation cravings.  My last lesson was on January 8th.  Maggie and I flew up to Burlington, WI to introduce me to that airport and right-handed patterns.  I shot some video with my phone, and one of these days I’ll get around to editing it.  I also got a chance to redeem myself recently with the “So Simple Anyone Can Land It” Aircoupe, but that’s a story of its own.

I took advantage of this downtime to knock out the FAA Airman Knowledge Test.  Passing this ‘written exam’ (multiple choice, really) is just one of the requirements for the private pilot certification.  A passing score is 70%, but since my wife made some comment about not flying with a ‘C’ student, I put some effort into it and passed with a 97% (will you fly with me now, dear?).  Now the clock is running.  I have 23 months in which to pass my Practical Test otherwise I’ll have to take the written again.  I need the weather to start cooperating soon so I can get my flying back on track.

In the mean time, I’m keeping the aviation bug alive and well by helping out on Jamie’s wing project.  We’ve made quit a bit of headway during this past week while he’s been home.  We’re getting close to having all the fabric glued on and soon we’ll be ready to start shrinking it.  Here’s just a few of the pictures I’ve taken along the way  (the rest are here):

I’ve learned a lot about aircraft covering during this project and I tell Jamie often that I’m grateful to be able to live and learn vicariously through his wallet on this project.  I can see myself working on a project plane again in the future.  I can’t see myself building a plane from scratch, but I certainly can see restoring an old Cub.  I’d better start saving now…

Last night around rush hour, the snow started coming down, but thankfully it started late enough that my commute home wasn’t too unbearable.  The prudent thing to do on a Thursday evening would probably be to just stay at home where it’s warm, but there was aviating to do.  Well, sort of.

My friend has a 1946 Aeronca Champ that’s currently working its way through an annual inspection, and this year it’s going to take a little longer than normal to complete.  There is an Airworthiness Directive (“AD”) the FAA has issued that requires an inspection of the wing spar on the Champ.  The spars are the backbone of the wing (there’s two in each wing), and on the Champ, they’re made of wood.  An inspection must be made to ensure the wood is not cracked or damaged.  It’s probably a good thing to make sure a spar is not broken and and even better thing to find out on the ground than in the air.  The problem is that there are only two ways to inspect the spars: First, you could cut a series (read “boatload”) of inspection holes in the fabric on the top and bottom of the wing, or you can pull the wings off and strip the fabric completely off.

Wow, talk about being between a rock and a hard place, both choices really stink.  On one hand, you have the expedient choice that will get the plane flying again, but with a bunch of unsightly inspection covers (not to mention the fact that you can’t truly inspect the spars even with all those holes), and the other much more time consuming and expensive option, recovering the wings.  I’m glad it wasn’t my decision to make.

With the course laid out, we got to work.  I’m going to tell this part with pictures.

As with any project, you don’t know what you’ll find until you pull the covers back and get in there.  Along with the old wasp nests and the random dangling wire, there was evidence of some repairs and at least one hail storm sometime in the past 64 years.  The good news is that the spars (on this wing, anyway) look like they’ll pass inspection.

Now the real work will begin.

So, what have I been up to?  Well, with the shortening days and the switch to Standard Time, my flying is now limited solely to the weekends.  That means I’m much more susceptible to cancelations due to weather, scheduling, or what have you.  I recently ended an almost four week gap in flying.  I’m not sure what I’ll do if these gaps continue, which I suspect they will, but I’m toying with the idea of pausing to work on my written test.  I hate the idea of spending time and money knocking the rust off instead of learning.  On a recent lesson focused on intercepting and tracking VOR’s, I performed very well during the lesson, but my landing was ugly.  So ugly, in fact, that my instructor said our next lesson was going to address my landing issues.  I think she was wondering if I had completely forgotten how to land a plane.  Since it was going to be sort of review time, I requested that we also review some emergency situations.  It had been quite awhile since we’ve done anything of the sort, and I felt I wanted build my comfort level.

This past Saturday was a beautiful day to fly.  Cold, but clear.  The cold temps meant we had the airport to ourselves, which was perfect for what we wanted to do.  Since Dacy is a grass strip, I’ve always used a modified Soft Field takeoff technique, but this day I was going to learn the full Soft Field technique (keep the nose way up, and get off the ground as soon as possible).  And at some point in the pattern, Maggie promised she’d pull the power on me.  I also made my second attempt at recording video during the lesson.  So, instead of reading me ramble on, you can watch the interesting stuff here:

I recorded this on my iPhone using the Flyvie app.  For the audio portion of the video, I used the ‘earbud in the headset’ trick, which worked out better than I expected.  Since this was a lesson and my instructor and I tend to jabber too much, I cut most of our audio out, and replaced it with Michael W. Smith.  Generally speaking, I don’t much care for music tracks on flying videos, but sometimes I care to listen to myself even less, so now I know why so many people use music.  At least I didn’t use “Treetop Flyer”…

I was very pleased with the lesson.  I think it restored my confidence handling emergencies, and I’m pretty sure I’ve regained Maggie’s confidence that I won’t break her plane.  My next lesson is scheduled for this weekend (snow predicted, ugh!), and I’m looking forward to more VOR tracking, en route emergencies, and getting signed off for another airport (Burlington, WI, KBUU).  If the weather goes south, we’ll be talking about cross country planning.

In the mean time, I’ve been working on a notebook.  I’m tired of the beat-up copies of the checklist in the plane, and I wanted a more organized place to keep information that’s been collecting in my flight bag, so I found a small 3 ring binder and I’m assembling information.  The checklist is a work in progress.  I’ve got a good start, but I want to run through it a few times in the plane and continue to tweak it.  I built it using a lot of the usual sources (current checklist, POH), but I’ve also been looking at examples on the internet and pulling stuff from there.   Some of the checklists out there really crack me up.  They have procedures written for what to do if the engine fails during the takeoff roll, or spin recovery.  As if anyone would have the time to find and refer to the checklist in those moments!  “Uh oh, I’ve stalled the plane and the spinning Earth is getting so very close to me!  Step One…”  This information is critical, but it needs to be memorized, not written down.

Last night I watched a video by Jason Schappert from m0a.com on weight & balance calculations.  He had a pretty decent form that made sense to me, so I’ve tweaked that a bit and added it to the notebook.  Here’s my take on it.

If anyone has suggestions for what they find handy to have, I’d love to hear it.  Post a comment below.

I had just finished a solo flight down to Dekalb to practice some landings (yes, they still need work).  I had some extra time, and wasn’t in a hurry to leave the airport yet, so I wandered a bit.  I ran into a guy named Mike pulling out his very perfect 1942 N2S-3 Navy Stearman (The yellow one in the middle of the picture).  We talked a bit, and to my surprise, he offered me a ride.  I could NOT pass this up!

Mike preflighted his plane and his passenger (donning one of those cool aviation helmet you see in the old movies) and then I climbed in.  During his passenger briefing, Mike went over all the controls, because he assumed I’d want to fly it.  Wow!  We took off for an incredible ride.  A positive transfer of control in an open cockpit with no intercom is accomplished with a shake of the stick, a glance in the mirror, and some hand signals.  With that, I was flying.  I didn’t do too much, just some shallow and medium turns, and a couple attempts at Turns About a Point.  I just loved how that plane handled.  Thankfully Mike couldn’t hear me laughing and grinning like a little kid.  It was awesome.

We flew a lot longer than I was expecting, and I was loving every second of it.  Mike’s dad showed up in his Champ, and we did some formation flying around the airport.  It was so cool to have that open air perspective to a close formation flight like that.  I’m pretty sure Mike’s dad saw my goofy grin.

After we landed, I was in for another surprise: Mike offered to enter the flight in my logbook.  So this fortunate student pilot now has 1.1 hours of dual instruction in a Stearman permanently recorded in my log.

As quickly as one item is scratched off my list, it is immediately replaced by a new item: “Fly in a Stearman Again!”

This ‘runway’ is closed.

Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart!

My Uncle Harold loved to fly.  A passion that he shared with his two younger brothers, Herman and Wayne.  Uncle Harold also liked to buy airplanes.  I’m not yet sure how many he owned over the years, but it seemed like if Piper made it, Harold Baker would buy it.  The photo to the right shows just the Cubs all lined up at Lobmaster Field back in the early 60’s.  Herman and Wayne soloed in 4600M, a PA-11 Cub Special (third from the left in the photo) that Uncle Wayne still has today.

One of my favorite pastimes is searching the internet for traces of these old airplanes.  Unless they’ve crashed (or in one case, burned), most of these planes from the 40’s and 50’s are still out there flying.  I recently located one Uncle Harold’s old Tripacers in Decatur, IL, and on a recent tour of some of Illinois’ finest cornfields, I made arrangements to see the plane. 

She doesn’t look the way she did in 1959, but she still has a lot of character, and I felt a neat connection to the past as I sat in that plane and as I saw Harold’s signature in the engine log book.  I never met Uncle Harold or Uncle Herman.  They were both killed in a crash before I was born, about a month after Harold signed off on an engine overhaul in this Tripacer.  They may be gone, but their love for aviation inspires me as I pursue my own pilot certificate.

Oh, and the Tripacer is for sale…

Last night on the golf course my friend’s tee shot hooked left toward the houses.  Owning a house on a beautiful country club golf course is one thing.  Owning a house on a public Park District course is quite another thing.  After all, those courses attract golfers very much like me.  It’s not a matter of if the house will be hit, but rather when and how often.

<SMACK!>

We heard it hit, and hit hard.  As we wandered toward the opposite side of the fairway (my tee shot went almost as wide to the right, just not as long), we saw the homeowner come out and stand in his yard.  He was waiting for us.  Visions of broken glass and a heated exchange of words quickly came to my mind.  We debated what to do.  Should my friend discretely drop another ball over here and pretend it wasn’t us?  If we ignored him long enough, would the homeowner go back into his house?  After a few moments my friend decided to do the right thing.  He went over to take his lumps.

There was no heated exchange, no demand for reparations.  Just a brief conversation, a handshake, and a returned ball.  In 19 years of periodic and isolated hailstorms, my friend was only the second golfer ever to come over and apologize to the homeowner.

It always pays to Dew the Right Thing, even when you don’t want to.  That’s how character is formed.

My preflight showed we were a little low on gas, and the fuel truck at Dacy was empty, so we’d be starting out with a short trip over to Poplar Grove (C77) to top off the tanks.  This would be my first landing at another airport, and my first on asphalt.  The takeoff role at Dacy was a lot longer than I’m used to because of the added weight of my passenger.  In hindsight, with the winds being as light as they were, I should have used the much longer runway 27 instead of 18.  I got it off the ground but I really noticed the lack of performance during the climb out.  It was hot and we were much heavier than normal.

Finding Poplar Grove was a little challenging with the haze we had, but not for Jamie.  He’s spent a lot of time there when he was more actively teaching.  I entered an upwind leg for runway 30.  My turn to base was way too soon, so as a result on final, I was WAY high.  I considered going around, and even asked my instructor if I should, but she said I’d have enough room to land, so I did.  As the plane slowed, I was introduced first to the centerline, which at this point was anywhere BUT under the center of the plane, and then I met Wheel Shimmy.  Ugh, I didn’t like that at all.  I think Maggie is going to have her shimmy dampener looked at.

We filled up with fuel, and headed out again, ready to define my play, er, practice area.  Pilotage in this area is pretty easy for me, since I’ve driven most of these roads and spent far too much time on Google Earth.  Navigating the perimeter was just a nice relaxing flight, and my GPS was working well, so I got a decent groundtrack too.  I’m still looking for a good way to share these tracks in a more interactive way.  For now, I have to stick with the screen capture method.

Our fuel run to Poplar Grove used up any time available for my second supervised solo, but I was okay with that.  Instead of soloing, I got several new experiences instead.  As an added bonus, I found out at the end of the evening that Jamie had been recording my takeoffs and landings.  What a cool perspective that I normally never have.  Maybe I should have a camera in the back seat more often.

Another 1.3 hours logged.

“She wants to see you today.”

I called home immediately to confirm the message.  You see, I wasn’t expecting to see her until the following week.  My mind began to race and my nerves were instantly frazzled.  For some reason, time began to speed up.  Hours flew by as minutes, and before I knew it, she was here.

Our Oldest daughter was born at 5:24 am on a sunny Friday morning, and my life has never been the same since.  Over the years things have entered my life that I never expected: Barbie Dolls, tea sets, “Goodnight, Moon”, diapers, Hanna Montana, and drama.  Especially drama!  As I prepared myself the best I could for fatherhood, the one thing I did not expect was the exponential increase in emotion that comes with being the daddy of a little girl.  There’s a scene in the movie “Analyze This” where the tough-guy mobster is reduced to tears because of the emotions evoked in a long distance commercial.  I can relate.  There are times that I surprise myself at how easily I can be choked up by a song, a picture, or even a hug.  These things never happened to me before I was a father.  I tell friends that every single day for the past 10 years, someone in my house has cried.  Sometimes it was me.

Those who’ve had cataract surgery will often say they had forgotten how vivid colors could be.  These exponential increases of love, joy, happiness, and yes, even frustration, have shown me how vivid life could be.

So, on this, your tenth birthday, I want to tell you My Oldest, how much I love and cherish you, and I want to thank you for changing my life.