Jan. 1,
2008
Today I finished up my 150 hr oil change, cleaned up the engine and found that
my oil filler tube was a little loose. It was most likely where I was getting
some of the oil that I cleaned off the engine. Next thing was to get the nose
gear leg off and crated up to send in for the modification to shorten it. That
was a change that Van's announced a few month back. It should be back in about 3
wks. Here is a picture of the ground clearance before the mod. It's about 3 1/2
in to the lowest point and the fork is about 4 5/8 in.
Jan. 10,
2008
I decided it was time to turn my tires around, while I am waiting for my nose
gear to come back. They have worn pretty evenly but the outside has worn a
little more than the inside. 150 hrs so far, I think I should get another 50-100
out of them. I tried to get a picture showing the difference but you could not
really tell the difference in the pics. I did get some pictures of the brake
pads. I'll get at least another 150 hrs out of them. Hard to tell in these
little pics, click on them to enlarge. It was hard to hold the the scale and
take the pics also. The left pic is my current pad and the one on the right is a
new pad. My pad measures about 5/32 and the new one measures about 6/32. The new
one is a Rapco brand and has a ware indicator. The bottom of the ware indicator
measures about 3/32.
Jan.
18,
2008
I got my nose gear back and got it installed. It's about 4 3/8 in to the lowest point and the fork is about
5 1/2 in.
Earlier
this week they torn down our terminal building. We are going to get a new one
that is expected to be done about the end of summer. The office is now located
in the NE corner of the big hanger. I didn't get any picture of the old terminal
building before they tore it down but I did get a few after.
Jan.
21,
2008
I had today off and it was suppose to be a great day to fly, so I contacted a
buddy (Andre), in Clarksville, TN and asked him if he wanted to fly to Sikeston,
MO with me to eat lunch at Lambert's Cafe. He was all for it. I made the 15 min.
flight to Clarksville in no time, picked him up and off we went. We flew over at
8,500 ft and it was smooth as glass. Visibility was about 100 miles. We radioed
in about 8.5 miles out and Sikeston unicom came back and ask if they could do
anything for us today. I told them that we would be going to Lambert's and would
need a ride. They asked if we would be needing fuel and I told them not today.
As we approached I told Andre that I would let him fly the pattern, I worked the
power and flaps, while he flew us in, I took the controls just a little before
the flare. As we pulled up in front of the terminal, there was a line boy
waiting for us and directed us in. He put the chooks in and told us the van was
waiting for us out front. Off we went and was taken to the exit doors of
Lambert's for front of the line service. We were treated like royalty. The restaurant
is divided into two dining areas, one side had just filled up and the other side
was starting to fill up. If you own an airplane and are within a 2 hrs flight
from Sikeston, MO and have not flown there to eat, you are not using your
airplane for what it is designed for. You will have a hard time finding
someplace that will treat you any better than this! The amount of food and the
low cost is unbelievable, just watch out for the flying rolls. We both took
enough food home for our wife's dinner. When we got back to Clarksville I let
Andre stay on the controls while I adjust the throttle and flaps again, he got
about 6' above the runway and asked if I want it and I just keep telling him
what he needed to do and he landed it, needless to say he was giggling like a
little school girl :-) Here are a few pictures, I was having too much fun to
take any more. The first one is Ft. Campbell Army Airfield, where I work. Click
on them to enlarge!
As
a good buddy of mine always says, "And a good time was had by all!"
Feb.
2,
2008
Time for my first condition inspection. I took the plane up for about 30 min.
(rolls, stalls, slow flight) to warm it up. I came back took the cowl off and
got ready for my buddy to come over and show me how to do the compression
checks. We also adjusted the timing, and check the condition of the plugs. They
all looked great so we didn't change any of them. The picture is of the auto
plugs from the top, the bottom aviation plugs were nice and clean also. I looked
everything over real good. The front seal looks like it is seeping, but my
A&P buddy said that it was not enough to worry about - pretty normal. I
removed the air filter and cleaned it, I'll re-oil it tomorrow and put the cowl
back on. I plan on doing a running inspection, I just have to get it complete by
the end of the month.
Feb.
9,
2008
Today I meet with a group of guys from the Madisonville, KY Flight League and we
all flew to Nellie's Hanger at the Dyersburg, TN airport for lunch. Eric
Chumbley
flew with me, Eric is who I go to for my Flight Physical. In the picture below
he is showing everyone the video that he took of us doing a roll. Further down
the page you'll see pictures of the phone booth that country singer Patsy Cline
made her last call from before being killed in a plane crash in 1963. Click the
pictures to me them larger.
March 31,
2008
The walls are going up for our new terminal building.
April
8-12,
2008
This will most likely be the highlight of my 2008 flying season. Sun-n-Fun
Lakeland, FL
My buddy Richard and I were planning on going down to Sun-n-Fun on Wed. and
returning on Sat.. Well the weather was telling us Tues. morning that if we
were going that we would have to leave by 1pm or we wouldn't be going at all. We
took off work after 4 hrs. and got everything packed and was wheels up at 1pm
central time, our plan was to fly 3 hrs. and land at Moultrie, GA (MGR) to refuel, we
chose this airport because of the low fuel price found through AirNav.com and
because it was the same airport that I had been to when I flew to S-n-F with a
buddy a few years ago and I knew that it was really nice. The plan worked out
great! We flew at 3500' below a ceiling of 4000-4500' until we got near the
Tenn. & Alabama border and the cloud layer became broken, we then climbed to 7500 and
flew all the way to Moultrie. We refueled and was back in the air in 30 mins.. It
was 5:30pm eastern time and Lakeland was about 1.5 hrs away we climbed to 3500'
and as we got closer the Lakeland we had to come down to about 2000'. we landed
at Lakeland at 7:10pm eastern time. We got our plane parked in the Homebuilt
Camping area and our tents setup by 8:00pm. The next task was to find food. We
were told about a good restaurant in the building at the east end of the
field just a short walk from where we were. Sure enough it was great I
don't think many people knew about it. We did run into a few buddies from
Elkton, KY there.
Runway 9, Lakeland, FL (LAL)
My Plane and our tents in the Homebuilt camping area
HVC-MGR-LAL 700 miles 4.7 hrs
LAL-X35-CDK-CTJ-RMG-HVC 800 miles 5.2 hrs
Here is a map of our flight
paths. The green line is our flight down on 4/8/08. It was about 700
miles. The yellow line is our flight back on 4/11/08. The Red line is the
remainder of the trip on 4/12/08. the total return trip was about 800
miles. Our plan was to fly home on 4/12/08 Sat. morning but the weather
told us something different. There was a cold front running diagonal from
southern Mississippi and up past eastern KY, across our path and it was coming
toward us. It was going to be coming though Florida about Sat. night or
Sun. Morning. Our new plan was to leave Fri. morning, fly along the coast
up to Dunnellon, FL (X35) to fuel up. Next was the highlight of our trip,
Cedar Key, FL (CDK). Cedar Key is a little island in the Gulf of Mexico
which has a about 5-6 great seafood restaurants. We had a great lunch at
Anne's (The locals favorite) and
was off to get as far north as possible before running into the cold front
which was a line of storms. We stopped at Carrollton, GA (CTJ) to check
the weather and found that we could make it another 30-40 miles further
north, Rome, GA (RMG), just a short 15 min. flight but it would just put
us that much further past the back side of the storms once they pasted
overnight.
Rome, GA (RMG) was the right choice
for a lot of reasons. Cheaper fuel than Carrollton, GA, as long as you use self
serve, which I prefer anyway. Very nice terminal bldg., very nice and helpful
people working there. I told the girl that we would need to spend a night in
Rome because of the storms that were coming and she asked if we would need a
rental car, I asked how much would it be and she told me $29, that sounded good.
I asked her if there was anyway that I could get my plane into a hanger because
the storm that was coming had hail and tornado warnings she said she would check
with the manager and let me know. I then went to fill up the plane. She walked
out to my plane to tell us that the car was ready and that they could let me put
my plane into a hanger. That kind of service shocked me, that would not happen
at my home airport. We put the plane in for the night and we took off for Kings
Inn just down the road a few miles ($50). We got up about 6:30am and had
breakfast then we were off to the airport. The clouds were opening up and we had
unlimited ceilings all the way till we got home were another cloud layer had
just rolled into town. As one of my good friends says "A good time was had
by all" :-)
April 22,
2008
Today I went to a Safety Seminar sponsored by the FAASTeam and present by Mark
Grady from AOPA. It was at the Lodge at KY Dam. My buddy Gene flew his C152 and
I flew my RV. I flew a few circles around Gene and did a few rolls along the way
:-) I thought there would be about 10-20 people show up, but was I wrong! There
was at least 70 people there and about 6-8 planes on the ramp. It was a very
good presentation. Mark Grady was very enjoyable to listen to. He has over 6,000
hrs in a C152 and a few hrs in the Goodyear Blimp. He use to be a traffic
reporter. We flew back about 9:30pm, really neat night flight.
April
26,
2008
I installed a OAT probe for my Dynon in one of my inspection plate under my
tail. This will let my Dynon show TrueAirSpeed and it will also give my wind
speed and direction while flying a route on my GPS.
May
4,
2008
The terminal bldg. is coming right along, roof and electrical is getting done.
I've
been asked what kind of movie camera I am using to make my videos. Well it's not
a movie camera, it's a digital still camera with a video mode. It is a Panasonic
Lumix DMC-TZ3. It saves the movie file as a .mov type file I save it to my
computer and then use ImToo
MOV Converter (the free version), to convert it to a .mpeg type file then I
upload it to YouTube.
There has been a lot of discussion
about replacing the internal battery in a Garmin 196-496 GPS and Kelly Patterson
decided to see what it would take to do it yourself. He was in the process of
moving and could not get the info on the web. I agreed to get the info out for
him so here it is: How
to change the internal battery of the Garmin 196-496
May
17,
2008
Today a buddy and I decided to fly down to Aircraft Spruce's Super Sale, not so
much for the sale but just to fly for some fun. Moontown, AL has their fly in
breakfast on the third Sat. of the month so the plan was to stop there for
breakfast. I checked the weather before leaving and saw that there was fog right
were Moontown was located, but I thought it would be gone by the time we got
there. It was about a 1 hr flight. Sure enough clear all the way until we got 2 miles from Moontown and it
was fogged in solid. We decided to land at Madison Co. Executive just 8 miles
northwest and sit for a while to see if it might clear up soon. After we landed
about 4 or 5 more RV's showed up to wait also. We land at about 8am and while we
waited one of the other guys had a handheld which we used to listen to Moontown
traffic. about 8:45 it sounded like sounded like we would not be able to get in
so we decided to head on to Falcon Field were Aircraft Spruce was. We took off
and our course took us right over Moontown, to our surprise the fog that was
there 15 minutes ago was now gone. We radioed back to the guys at still at
Madison Co. and told them to come on. We circled back around and landed for a
quick breakfast. Moontown is not your average little airport. There is always so
much activity going on. You see a lot of different type of aircraft there.
After
the quick bite and a walk down the flight line, we were off to Spruce. Should be
about another hour flight.
We
checked out Spruce, bought a few things, and ate a couple hot dogs. I won a few
little items in the raffle. I don't understand why Spruce does not give away a
stack full of their T-shirts during the raffle, I don't think they even gave one
away. Fuel at Falcon field was $5.60 but AirNav.com showed a little private
strip a few miles north, Stockmar (20GA) had fuel for $4.89. I try to buy fuel
at the lowest price places that I can find. We pulled up to the pumps and were
greeted by two very friendly people. I'm not good at remembering names but it
was the sister and a friend of the owner. They talked with us for a while and
was very happy for us stopping by. I would rather fly out of my way to someplace
like that rather buy overpriced fuel at a larger airport that could care less if
you stopped there. If your in the Atlanta area and need fuel stop at Stockmar
they use 122.90 for traffic, the freq. is not on the sectional. The Hobbs went
over 200 hrs on this trip so it's time for an oil change.
May
31,
2008
Today my buddy Richard and I flew over to the KY Dam Airport (M34) 1st Annual
Fly In Breakfast. We were the first plane to arrive, one or two showed up the
day before. we did a low flyby for all the people that were there getting
everything setup. As we taxied in I could not believe what I saw, it was a
Beechcraft Starship! Early arrivers got a free t-shirt. We also received a
ticket for door prize drawings. The first drawing was at 8:30 and low and behold
I won! I won dinner for two at the KY Dam Lodge. By this time there was already
a pretty good turn out. People were showing up from all over the place. I can
not believe that we don't see more people from our area at these close Fly Ins.
Well I'm telling you guys, you missed out on a good one here. There was a mix of
all type of aircraft there. It's not everyday you can see a variety like that.
These are a few of what I saw: Beechcraft Starship
(only five flying in the
world), Waco Biplane (only 4 yrs old),
Cessna 400, RV10, 3-Thorps, a few Cubs,
Jabaru, CTsw, Challenger, Kolb, and a few others that I don't remember the name
of. I took too many pictures to put on my page so I created a web album. You can
click on the link below to go see all the pictures. You can watch them in a
slide show, print them, or even order print from there.
After
the breakfast it was time to go to John C. Tune (JWN) in Nashville for lunch. So
off we went, our course would take us right over Ft. Campbell's restricted
area, so I climbed to go over it GPS said the top was 6,000 so I climbed to
7,500 and contacted Campbell. They still vectored me around it, but I did fly
directly over the airfield. I work on Blackhawk helicopters in the second hanger
from the top on the left side of the picture.
There
was a really good turn out at 5th Saturday Fly In at JWN for lunch. I saw a few of my RV buddies and
met a few more fly guys :-)
June 8-12,
2008
Well today I saw that one of my main tires was showing one spot that looked like
it was time to be changed. I have just over 200 hrs, 257 landing and 14 months
on my original tires. That's not bad from compared to what I have heard from
others. I also tried using some stuff on my brake calipers to try to get them to
stop squealing, it did not work for me :-( While I was at it I decided to
lay some fiberglass up over the inside ends of the ramps on the inside of the
upper cowl. This is suppose to insure that you do not loose engine cooling air
that might be getting by the front engine baffles. I think that it may have
helped a little.
June 14, 2008
Today my buddy Richard and I flew about 15 minutes over to Russellville for
their fly-in lunch. Good times meeting up with fly buddy's to swap some stories
and meet a few new buddies.
June
21, 08
Owensboro, KY had their 3rd Saturday breakfast today and the airport was also
having an open house. Richard and I walked around and looked over some of the
planes and things.
My
wife Marsha and I were not watching the grandkids today so Marsha said that she
would be willing to fly to Sikeston, MO to eat dinner at Lambert's Cafe. She has
not flown very far with me yet. She does not like to fly if it is going to be
bumpy. It was suppose to be smooth, so she decided to give it a try. I told her
when we was about 10 mins away and she did not believe that we were nearly there
already. 5 yrs - 7 months of building, 117 straight line miles each way, 165 mph
true airspeed, 50 mins each way, 10 gals of fuel burned , Getting the wife to
fly with me priceless!
