In Flight USA Article Categories
In Flight USA Articles
Even a Blind Squirrel…
Homebuilder’s Workshop columnist Ed Wischmeyer finds a nut and is happy to squirrel away supplies.
200 Knot Club In The RV-9A
Columnist Ed Wischmeyer plans to take an almost private pilot for a ride in the RV-9A
Day Two of Sun ‘n Fun
Ed Wischmeyer takes us through the second day of fun in the sun.
VFR, Video and Movies
Ed Wischmeyer studies loss of control accidents and based on what he learns develops E-3 which caught the attention of AOPA Air Safety Institute Senior Vice Present Richard McSpadden.
Breakfast Fly-In, Sort Of
Wischmeyer discusses electrical system errors, Covid-19 vaccines, and the South Carolina Breakfast Club
HMMMM
There's a lot of homebuilts for sale with prices that are, I think, way out of line. One of the popular rich boy toys these days is the AirCam on amphibious float.
FIRCED AGAIN, 2020 STYLE
Columnist Ed Wischmeyer accomplishes a lot during the Thanksgiving holiday.
To Be With An Old Friend
Ed Wischmeyer
We speak the same languages, he and I – airplanes, gliders, cars, music. We communicate well, relishing conversations with each other of a type that we rarely enjoy with others in our normal circle of friends. Generally, he is more knowledgeable than I on most of these topics, as he has done many of the things that I only read about, avidly, in my youth. For example, the widow of a well-known glider pilot I used to read about, a friend of his, is here today.
I have flown 600 nm on the sad occasion to attend is his late wife’s memorial service, to share these kinds of conversations and to fly with him.
He turns 87 this year, eight days before I turn 69. His wife left us six months ago, actually, but they wanted the memorial service to be in the spring. The uncooperative upper Midwest spring this year is late, and the day is cool, but at least the winds and rain have stopped. His house is on 74 acres of what is left of his ancestors’ farm, with trees in the back planted by his great-grandfather.
Beside the lilac tree in full bloom is a tent on the driveway with chairs for 112. The tent is full and 20 more stand at the back, outside, plus the ten men who sing a capella at various times during the service. This is not just a celebration of her life, it is a celebration of the life that these people have all shared. Centered on her, it is a celebration of community. I know only him, yet somehow this occasion makes us all friends.
Homebuilders Workshop: Leading Irma Around
By Ed Wischmeyer
Friday: Spent yesterday, the day before, and this morning getting the house and the hangar ready for Irma. In the hangar, everything that shouldn’t get wet or that could blow away went into plastic tubs and into the back of the car. In the garage, I moved some low-lying tools up off the floor, but it would be too much work to get everything high enough for a bad flood. In the house, the major concern was roof leaks, so I put plastic drop cloths over things that should not get wet… most of them, anyway. And if the neighbor’s pine tree fell on my house, or if the water level got up to the hardwood floors, well, too bad.
A friend who is on the insurance for the RV-9A will fly it somewhere safe, I’ll fly the RV-8 to my sister’s house in Knoxville. Irma is forecast to come up the East coast, so I’ll be well out of the way. A friend helps me hang storm shutters on the windows. They’re numbered, the windows are not, but it makes little difference, they all seem to fit. I go out to the hangar for a final clean up but I have all my baggage with me for the trip. Hey, weather is good, and if I wait until tomorrow morning and the weather is uncooperative, I’ll have no good options. I fly to Knoxville.
Homebuilders Workshop: The Real Problem with Aviation Safety Rests with Entire Industry
Homebuilders Workshop: The Real Problem with Aviation Safety Rests with Entire Industry
Homebuilders Workshop: Quickbuilds – the Long but mostly the Short of It
By Ed Wischmeyer
In the beginning of homebuilding were plans. Then came complete plans that included details like the canopy and the cowling. Then along came the first kits, which had all the materials you needed for the plane, a major advancement, even if it was all raw stock. Perhaps it was the Christen Eagle that first had pieces more or less ready to assemble, but the FAA started to get concerned that the builder wasn’t doing enough work.
Then the arguments proliferated, real and specious. One argument that prevailed was that a builder didn’t need to drive all 50,000 rivets for “education and recreation,” the FAA’s accepted motivations for homebuilding. A few hundred would be enough. And a builder shouldn’t have to build all 36 wooden wing ribs… you get the idea.
Homebuilders Workshop: Brave New World
By Ed Wischmeyer
Oh, brave new world… with all the glass cockpits available for homebuilts, these days you can spend hours working on your airplane with only a laptop and high speed Internet, no screwdriver or wrench required. And with the cost of database updates, you can have the $100 hamburger without even having to drive to the airport. Keeping the database cards in a pill bottle makes them harder to lose, at least until that pill bottle plays hide and seek under the car seat.
Yes, I’ve been doing a lot of software update thrashing, hampered by instructions filled with mostly accurate statements and software that can often run correctly. That is, it can run correctly. And yes, I screwed up a bit too by not reading the screens carefully enough. My error, but as often happens with pilot error, I had help with inconsistent screen layouts.
One potential problem is that if you use an SD card that’s too big, it can cause problems, so I went and bought a pair of eight GB cards. At least I’m not working with early glass that can’t recognize an SD card bigger than two GB.
Homebuilder's Workshop: Serious Cross-Country
By Ed Wischmeyer
One of my definitions of “rich” is not having to take the airlines. So, trying to be rich, I reserved a cottage in Arizona for the month of May to help determine if I wanted to retire there. I then loaded the RV-9A to the gills and set off on a planned three-day trip from Savannah. Six days later, I arrived, thanks to embedded severe thunderstorms, low IFR, and high winds. Not to be deterred, I decided to fly myself home rather than trade the RV-9A in on something faster, like a unicycle. I set off on the three-day trip and got home, you guessed it, six days later.
The RV-9A was adequate for this trip, but barely big enough. I had a cardboard box in the right seat that held the oxygen bottle (O2 significantly increases my tolerance for turbulence), snacks, and everything heavy that I wanted to keep out of the baggage compartment to keep the c.g. under control. Part of the problem was that with a bar across the fuselage, shoulder height, right behind the seat backs, it’s extremely clumsy to access the baggage compartment in flight, so the right seat got converted to in-flight-accessible storage space.
Homebuilder's Workship: A Three-Day Trip
By Ed Wischmeyer
Do you like the number three? Do you believe that it is possible to fly from coastal Georgia to central Arizona in three days? Do you remember what happened to the S.S. Minnow when it went
Homebuilder's Workshop: A Three-Day Trip
By Ed Wischmeyer
Do you like the number three? Do you believe that it is possible to fly from coastal Georgia to central Arizona in three days? Do you remember what happened to the S.S. Minnow when it went on a three-hour trip? (Hint: think Gilligan’s Island).
So I actually had a plan for this trip, me who’d rather do takeoffs and landings and approaches at home base rather than endure the interminable boredom of 30 min utes of straight and level to get to the next airport… and that plan was to fly from Savannah, Ga., to Prescott, Ariz., where I used to live and where, God leading, I might end up retiring full time or part of the year, with the winter months spent with my good friends and spinal surgeon in Savannah.
Homebuilder's Workshop: The $100+ Hamburger
By Ed Wischmeyer
It turns out that in this electronic age, it’s really easy to do things differently from the old days of steam gauges. With the cost of avionics data updates these days, you can spend $100 for your hamburger without leaving the ground, and you can work on your plane for hours without any tools.
One project that I’ve been working on (a bunch) is getting the checklist for the RV-9A just as I’d like it. I’ve got buddies who also fly my RV-9A, and they were not satisfied with the “idiot-syncrasies” of my personal checklist. And that’s reasonable, as my checklist has memory crutches dating back 30 years to when I used to fly and instruct in planes that included three different kinds of turbochargers, all with different characteristics, some planes with retractable gear, some not. I needed memory crutches that would work with a wide variety of airplanes, and I still use them. Unencumbered with such history, they wanted an RV-9A checklist. Solution? Two checklists, one for me, one for them… Meets both needs.
Homebuilder's Workshop: Fuel
By Ed Wischmeyer
I have very little going on in the homebuilder’s workshop, as I’m recovering (on schedule) from yet another spinal surgery, but my guys have been busy on the fuel system of the RV-9A. And I hope to restart flying within the next month, accompanied of course by a babysitter CFI on the first flight.
The most recent project was the fuel gauges, as the Garmin G3X glass cockpit lets you calibrate those puppies. Although calibration had been done when I bought the airplane, they didn’t seem to be reading right. And besides, I had removed the analog fuel gauges to make room for the second G3X touchscreen, possibly confusing the electrons. Anyway, the fuel gauges are now calibrated, as much as possible, that is.
AirVenture Oshkosh, Part 2
By Ed Wischmeyer
In my experience, ailerons are the most significant factor in how much a pilot enjoys the aircraft handling qualities. The SeaRey amphibian has new Frise ailerons that are much lighter than the already sensuous ailerons of the LSX, and I’m looking forward to visiting the factory and trying them out. I do want to let the southeastern summer abate, so I can avoid the oppressive heat and humidity, though. The SeaRey discussion on the shores of Lake Winnebago with designer and old friend Kerry Richter was much more enjoyable because of the cooler Wisconsin summer.
Meanwhile, out in Arizona, my airport neighbor who built a full-scale replica Spitfire added servo tabs to his ailerons to reduce aileron forces. It was surprising to read that the original Spitfires had heavy ailerons and light elevators, the reverse of recommended practice, but pilots raved about the handling qualities of Spitfires. That seems to reinforce the observation that the great majority of pilots adapt to their airplane’s handling qualities instead of being objective about them. Pilots will often express many enjoyable qualities of their airplanes in ways that really describe their experiences with the aircraft rather than the aircraft itself. In any event, he won an award for his Spitfire, well deserved in my opinion.
Oshkosh 2015
By Ed Wischmeyer
The enormous Airbus A350 between flying displays. (Ed Wischmeyer)This year, I drove from Georgia. I made eight stops in Atlanta, all on the freeway. I drove 13 hours and 550 miles the first day, 12 and 660 the next. Uff, da! But I’m here. I’ll go home a different route.
A few press releases came out on the way north. Garmin’s avionics now talks to ForeFlight, and Jeppesen Mobile Flight Deck, and that’s good news on several fronts. One is that ForeFlight is rather well done, an IMHO, and now Garmin avionics owners can get the best of both worlds. The other good news is that this is the first crack in Garmin’s closed system approach.
BeLite has a new ultralight, this one looking like a low wing version of their Cub series but with the fuselage chopped off at the base of the windshield and the top of the seat back. Electric power is planned.
On the way in Sunday morning, my first stop was to get press credentials. The obligatory magic trick is to show the good folks how to cut your IQ in half – and then you put the press pass around your neck.