Monday, June 30, 2008

 

An Ercoupe Arrives at Brennand

My student Todd's newly purchased 1946 Ercoupe 415-C arrived at Brennand Airport this evening. Todd had been hoping to buy an airplane ever since starting his sport pilot training, and now that dream is a reality.

A few weeks ago, he spotted an Ercoupe for sale on Barnstormers.com and jumped on the deal quickly enough to get the plane. I guess there were several other eager buyers in line right behind him. These days, when a flyable light-sport-eligible Ercoupe goes on the market, it's gone in a flash. (Our school was interested in two other Ercoupes before we finally got our hands on a third, and that was only after paying a deposit sight-unseen.) So not only is Todd lucky to get ahold of an Ercoupe on the first try, but it appears to be a pretty nice airplane too.

The airplane was located only 80 nautical miles northwest in Merrill, WI. I would have liked to help fly the plane to Brennand, but I have not flown an Ercoupe since 2006 and thought I'd better leave it to a more current Ercoupe flyer. So my Ercoupe-expert pilot friend Tony Van Kampen, who has more than 300 hours in his own Ercoupe, accompanied Todd for the flight today. They landed just as I was getting ready for a flight lesson. I could only gawk at the plane for a couple minutes before getting back to work.

Original plans were to do all this tomorrow. I was going to fly with Tony to get reacquainted with the Ercoupe. But the wind is supposed to be pretty strong tomorrow, so Todd and Tony decided to pick up the plane today instead. Now I will just have to wait until I can get together with Tony for some practice. It won't take much. Once I feel comfortable in the plane again, I can help Todd finish up his sport pilot training in it. He'll be able to make his first solo flight soon.

Ercoupe & Light-Sport links:
Video of the landing (yes I need a better camera):

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Monday, June 23, 2008

 

Another Brennand Airport Solo

Just days after his first solo took place at the wide-open expanses of the Clintonville airport, my student Tony was ready to tackle our 2450' x 20' home field today. The wind was calm when I went up with him for a few takeoffs and landings. As soon as I let him go solo, the lake breeze kicked in from the southeast, so he had to switch runways and deal with a few knots of crosswind. Everything went well. I watched from right next to the runway.

Brennand Airport is surrounded by obstacles and prone to freak wind behavior. It's the narrowest paved runway I know of anywhere, and somewhat short with displaced thresholds on both ends. When you learn to fly here, you learn to land on the centerline, straight, and in the first part of the runway, no exceptions. Those who learn at a big airport might not have as many qualms about landing off-center or carrying too much speed into the flare. Our motto is "If you can land here, you can land anywhere."

Many pilots shy away from our airport and there is even an FBO that doesn't allow its renters to land here. The fact that my students do well at soloing here, on their second- or third-ever solo, no less, speaks volumes about the value of training at a challenging airport. They are better pilots because of it. Soloing someone at a "big" airport? Meh. Here? Now that makes me really proud.

Friday, June 20, 2008

 

The Stars Align for Iola Lunch

Somehow I have not managed to go to Central County Airport in Iola, WI for the weekly Friday lunch yet this year until today. Well finally the weather cooperated, I had a student, we had enough time to do this, and did I mention the weather finally cooperated?

We arrived right at noon, after most people were already standing in line. Good thing I managed a nice landing in front of the audience.

There were about 25 aircraft total. There's always a nice fly-in crowd on a good day like this. The menu was a turkey dinner. Seemed weird to be eating that on a hot summer day but Bill's cooking is always good. My student Terry was in heaven looking at all the planes and meeting other pilots.

I've got several new students who haven't yet experienced the Iola Friday lunch so I'll definitely return ASAP.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

 

Shawano Dinner and a First Solo

Congratulations to my student Tony who took his first solo flight tonight! We flew the 172 to Shawano where we joined eight other people for dinner. The other aircraft were a Cessna 170, Piper Archer, Ercoupe, and R44 helicopter.  Afterwards, Tony and I flew to Clintonville to work on landings. He was doing great so I decided to push him out of the nest. He is the 10th person I have soloed.

Last night's EAA Ultralight Chapter 41 meeting consisted of a fun cookout, and this was when someone suggested this get-together in Shawano. So I've had two fun nights in a row of hanging out with pilot friends from Brennand Airport.

Monday, June 9, 2008

 

A Quick Flight for a Great Picture


I was getting ready for a night flight tonight, fueling the airplane etc. before my student got there. I noticed the sky turning a whole array of pretty colors as the sun set. Not just a normal sunset but a really, really colorful one that seemed like it would last! Roger, a pilot based on the field stopped to talk to me as he drove past. I asked if he would like to hop in and go for a quick ride and see the sunset from the air. He said yes of course and we both quickly got going so we could catch the sunset before it was gone!

We took a couple trips around the pattern for about 10 minutes and I took a few pictures. Here is one amazing shot. This picture made it into a slideshow on AvWeb.com. I sent it in for the Picture of the Week contest but ironically a friend of mine from the Pilots of America message board took first place! I am glad to see the picture still being shared.


Sunday, June 8, 2008

 

Arkansas to Wisconsin


Today was the journey home from Gaston's.  Kent flew out of Gaston's solo with a lightened load.  The rest of the stuff and I rode with our friend Mike via car to the nearby airport in Mountain Home.  Kent and I departed in the early afternoon and headed to Houston, MO to top off with cheap fuel.

Once again there was a north-south line of thunderstorms stretching across several states to the west of our route.  We could tell the line might hit southern Wisconsin before we'd make it there.  At least this time we had a tailwind.  We made decent groundspeed at 9,500 feet, well above the bumps and clouds.  From this vantage point we could see the anvil tops of the thunderstorms.  We stayed informed by watching the radar on the GPS.

We stayed VFR-on-top for most of the flight, sometimes deviating for cumulus buildups.  Eventually we had to air-file an IFR flight plan to get down.  We went in and out of cumulus clouds as we descended in Illinois.  It was very gloomy underneath.  It had obviously rained over the weekend in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, with standing water everywhere.  

Air traffic control warned us that severe thunderstorms had moved into the Madison area.  We could see that on the radar.  Kent decided to divert to Janesville, which is a little over 30 miles southeast of Madison.  As we flew to Janesville I took a picture of a creek that had definitely overflowed its banks.

We left the plane in Janesville because there'd be no way to get to Madison through the constant storms.  The FBO owners were kind enough to take us to a bus station, and we rode a bus to Madison.  Then we took a taxi cab back to the airport where our cars were parked.  My car was sitting in six inches of water!


Friday, June 6, 2008

 

Celebrating my 10th Anniversary of Flight, Gaston's-Style

Time to spare, go by air.  How ironic that this year's journey to Gaston's White River Resort in Arkansas ended with a car ride.

By the way, today - June 6th 2008 - just so happens to be the tenth anniversary of my first flight.

This is my second year attending a fly-in gathering at Gaston's.  Organized mostly on the Pilots of America message board, this event brings together pilots from all over the country.  Last year I flew in with Kent in a Piper Archer.  This year we brought the Cessna 182.  This year we had a cabin booked for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights instead of just Friday-Saturday, so we were looking forward to having that extra time.

Well, we didn't make it out of Madison until something like 10:30 p.m. last night, the 5th and I knew this would be a crazy flight.  There was an intense weather system causing a solid squall line of thunderstorms from Minnesota to Texas (west of our route).  Ahead of that, winds aloft were out of the south and ridiculously strong.  We would be able to stay out of the clouds and make the flight VFR, which was good... but we'd have a strong headwind and would need to keep an eye on those thunderstorms.  If Kent hadn't rented a Garmin GPSMAP 496 with XM Satellite Weather, I don't think either of us would have attempted the trip.  It might have been too difficult to keep track of the thunderstorms.

The Garmin GPS worked wonders.  It had lots of useful weather data.  If they wouldn't be so expensive, I'd own one.

We chugged along at a groundspeed of anything from 85 knots all the way down to 65 knots.  (I'd say headwinds averaged about 50 knots.)  Four and a half hours of this, and we had gotten seemingly nowhere.  On a normal day we'd have made it to our destination in less than four hours.  Instead, we had to divert to Jefferson City, MO.  Four and a half hours were plenty for one night... it was 3:00 a.m. when we landed a gusty wind, and the thunderstorms were within an hour away.  I happily called it quits.  Hmm, I would have to check the logbook but I think this is the longest time I've ever sat in a small plane before stopping.

At least the ride was smooth most of the way, and we did have an entertaining light show off to the west.  We heard an air traffic controller telling a pilot about a control tower being evacuated due to a tornado warning somewhere.  We also heard pilots having to make unusually long diversions to get where they wanted to go.  We even heard a controller tell a pilot frankly, "You don't want to go there."  It was educational.

Luckily for Kent and me, someone from the message board knew we were coming and had offered to put us up for the night, even though he knew we'd be arriving really late.  (Thanks Mark!)  Of course by now we forfeited our first night in the cabin at Gaston's but were glad to have a roof over our heads.

We slept in quite late today and then set out for the last part of our trip.  Mark and his wife, who we stayed with, would be driving the four-hour trip from Jefferson City.  I planned to fly with Kent, but the threat of hot, turbulent air and thunderstorm-dodging didn't appeal to me.  I let Kent go by himself and chose to ride in the car instead.  I made some new friends as we talked about flying the whole time.  It turned out Kent made it alright and his flight was good.

We reunited with friends and enjoyed food from the grill.  The fog rose up over the river like it always does, and it crept over the approach end of the runway.  There was a collective "ooooh" from the crowd when an airplane flared over that fog and we could all see its wingtip vortices.

Will Hawkins of The Pilot's Flight PodLog among other ventures talked to us in the evening about his upcoming documentary film.  He traveled to Gaston's from California in order to make a documentary about our event and the resort.  We'll all be looking forward to seeing the results.



Tuesday, June 3, 2008

 

First Start for the Ercoupe

After almost a year of giving an old Ercoupe a lot of TLC, its mechanic Jim and I started its engine for the first time tonight.  This was a major milestone in the restoration project. I sat in the cockpit while Jim hand-propped the engine to start. It started up immediately and ran nicely. I had a big smile because I had been looking forward to this for a long time.

There is still a lot of work to be done: wings, flight control rigging, windows, and interior.  But the major work firewall-forward is complete.

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Sunday, June 1, 2008

 

My Website Enters the 21st Century

I have now integrated a real, true blog into my web site! Using Blogger.com I am able to quickly and easily make new journal entries. This should encourage me to actually keep up with this site. It is especially helpful that I can now modify my journal entries from any computer. Until now, it has been kind of a pain to reconstruct entire web pages every time I want to add a journal entry. No more of that!

I decided to modify one of the generic Blogger.com templates to fit my web site. I knew almost nothing about CSS and javascript before I started. Several hours of trial and error later, I had completely transformed the generic template to fit with the design of my site.

I also wanted a way to automatically put "headlines" from my blog onto the main page of my site. I searched around the web and actually didn't find many options. But one is called "Feed2JS," which can display bits of RSS feeds on your web site through javascript. I noticed that this is how the AvWeb news feed on my home page operates. (I learn something new every day). However, I chose not to use it because I found a more dynamic display available through Google Code. It is called the "Google AJAX Feed API." A little more trial-and-error coding later, I had this modified to fit my site design too.

Thanks go out to my friends Jennifer and Zachary of the blog A Dairy Perspective who gave me the inspiration to make my own real blog and quit messing with all this old-school HTML.

If you have your own feed readers such as Google Reader or anything else that can subscribe to an RSS or Atom feed, you can now add my blog to your subscription list through the links below. (You can substitute "feed://" for "http://" if needed.)

http://www.airspeedalive.com/atom.xml
http://www.airspeedalive.com/rss.xml

One final note, I see that I can put a custom date and time on posts, and therefore am labeling this one June 1st even though today is June 22. I will put the correct dates on this month's "catch-up" entries so they go in the right order.

Please e-mail me if you encounter problems with this blog not displaying correctly.

Enjoy!



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