Preamble: in 2019 I bought an RV-6 project. It needed rewiring, plus a few other bits sorting. I made a thread about it here: https://vansairforce.net/community/showthread.php?t=174719
I finished the rebuild in June 2020. I had flown my previous acft, an RV-4 to Osh in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and really wanted to do the same in this 6. But Coronavirus changed everything, including plans for Airventure 2020.
Seconds after learning that the EAA had committed to going ahead with an Airventure 2021, I decided I would attempt to fly the route in a day. I had attempted this in the RV-4 three times with no success, but with the RV-6 about 20 knots quicker, and able to carry an extra 16 gallons of fuel in its oversized tanks, I figured it was doable, if not particularly enjoyable.
I left Palm Springs CA at about 7.30am local on Sunday 25th. Aside from duelling with two situationally vacant nordo Carbon Cubs pilots in the pattern at my first fuel stop, E14 Ohkay Owingeh airport (only to then find the fuel pump inop) and then being chased out of KAXX Angel Fire by a fast-moving stormfront, the flight was more or less direct, uneventful and absolutely exhausting. I made just one subsequent stop at 0K7 Humboldt Municipal, Indiana before arriving at KOSH 36R after 9h20m of flight time, 20 minutes before the airport closed for the night. Definitely ‘Type 2 Fun’ as extreme athletes refer to it - not much joy whilst you’re doing it, but retrospectively satisfying. I am pleased that I now never have to try this again.
Unfortunately only a few people from my small crowd of flying friends could make it to the show. I met up with Aaron Robinson, who had flown his Cardinal in from Torrance California and kept me fed, and off the food stand cheeseburgers, for most of the time there, Bob Bittner, who owns a Cozy, and Steve Randall, a Chipmunk-flying-Alaska-Airlines-capt who happens to live a few miles down the road from me. Steve had flown his Chipmunk, at 90 knots, all the way from SoCal, only to have a magneto gut itself with only a hundred miles left to run.
Likely as a result of the previous year's cancellation, the show had already set record attendance numbers before it officially opened, and I managed to bag one of the last few spots in Homebuilt Camping, next to some friendly Harmon-rocket-flying-ex-F14 pilots (and a U2 pilot) from Utah. The vibe was different to previous years, having no foreign visitors, but was still solidly Type 1 Fun.
On Wednesday it was announced that a fairly serious storm was going to come through the general area that night. I had already done one uncomfortably windy night in the tent, so, along with lots of others, I packed up the plane and left, heading south to KDPA Dupage County, IL, to stay with a friend. Besides wanting to see my friend, I had an ulterior motive for the trip to Chicago.
Having grown-up playing early versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator (and probably having that game to blame for sowing the seed of this ridiculously complicated and expensive obsession) I have always wanted to see (what's left of) Meigs Field - the airport on the shoreline of Lake Michigan and MSFS's base airport - from the air. So, following a good night’s sleep in a proper bed, on a moderately clear Thursday morning in late July, I ducked under the O'Hare bravo and headed up the lakefront, passing by the city, with Meigs (now a park) and the Sears Tower out on the left. If someone had told me, as a ten-year-old piloting a polygonal Skylane RG with a creaking plastic yoke and keyboard-key flaps and throttle, that one day I would be doing it in my own actual real aeroplane (let alone one that I had rewired on my patio), it would have seemed completely unattainable. But here I was - Flight Sim in real life. It was a moment, and being still quite exhausted from unrested camping at Airventure, I teared up a bit.
How the Meigs dream died - thanks Daley...
I continued north, and did a big lap of the Chicago area, picking up fuel south of Wisconsin before returning to KDPA for a second night.
The next morning I left Dupage at sunrise, heading around the south of Lake Michigan and picking up an hour as I dodged under a thin broken layer and landed at KDET Detroit City for a breakfast work meeting. My colleague told me to meet him on Woodward and 9-mile, which I misheard as 8-mile (seemed odd, but whatever - Detroit is exciting like that) and when I arrived at the intersection, the Uber driver refused to drop me there, instead taking me to a mall parking lot, where I then waited for another another Uber to the breakfast place in the friendlier neighbourhood of Ferndale.
Whilst heading back to the airport, I watched two guys riding down the road on the roof of a city-owned backhoe. I work in the car industry and go to Detroit a bit, and I love it - it's kind of feral and the people are mostly excellent.
From Detroit I was torn between heading back to Palm Springs to see my wife and boy (who had just got back from a five-week visit to see family in the UK) or keep going east. My wife talked me into going east, since she knew there was another thing out there that I really wanted to tick off the list. She has no interest in flying but she likes that I enjoy it and encourages me to do so at every opportunity, which is something. I tapped my route into Foreflight and pressed on.
I finished the rebuild in June 2020. I had flown my previous acft, an RV-4 to Osh in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and really wanted to do the same in this 6. But Coronavirus changed everything, including plans for Airventure 2020.
Seconds after learning that the EAA had committed to going ahead with an Airventure 2021, I decided I would attempt to fly the route in a day. I had attempted this in the RV-4 three times with no success, but with the RV-6 about 20 knots quicker, and able to carry an extra 16 gallons of fuel in its oversized tanks, I figured it was doable, if not particularly enjoyable.
I left Palm Springs CA at about 7.30am local on Sunday 25th. Aside from duelling with two situationally vacant nordo Carbon Cubs pilots in the pattern at my first fuel stop, E14 Ohkay Owingeh airport (only to then find the fuel pump inop) and then being chased out of KAXX Angel Fire by a fast-moving stormfront, the flight was more or less direct, uneventful and absolutely exhausting. I made just one subsequent stop at 0K7 Humboldt Municipal, Indiana before arriving at KOSH 36R after 9h20m of flight time, 20 minutes before the airport closed for the night. Definitely ‘Type 2 Fun’ as extreme athletes refer to it - not much joy whilst you’re doing it, but retrospectively satisfying. I am pleased that I now never have to try this again.
Unfortunately only a few people from my small crowd of flying friends could make it to the show. I met up with Aaron Robinson, who had flown his Cardinal in from Torrance California and kept me fed, and off the food stand cheeseburgers, for most of the time there, Bob Bittner, who owns a Cozy, and Steve Randall, a Chipmunk-flying-Alaska-Airlines-capt who happens to live a few miles down the road from me. Steve had flown his Chipmunk, at 90 knots, all the way from SoCal, only to have a magneto gut itself with only a hundred miles left to run.
Likely as a result of the previous year's cancellation, the show had already set record attendance numbers before it officially opened, and I managed to bag one of the last few spots in Homebuilt Camping, next to some friendly Harmon-rocket-flying-ex-F14 pilots (and a U2 pilot) from Utah. The vibe was different to previous years, having no foreign visitors, but was still solidly Type 1 Fun.
On Wednesday it was announced that a fairly serious storm was going to come through the general area that night. I had already done one uncomfortably windy night in the tent, so, along with lots of others, I packed up the plane and left, heading south to KDPA Dupage County, IL, to stay with a friend. Besides wanting to see my friend, I had an ulterior motive for the trip to Chicago.
Having grown-up playing early versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator (and probably having that game to blame for sowing the seed of this ridiculously complicated and expensive obsession) I have always wanted to see (what's left of) Meigs Field - the airport on the shoreline of Lake Michigan and MSFS's base airport - from the air. So, following a good night’s sleep in a proper bed, on a moderately clear Thursday morning in late July, I ducked under the O'Hare bravo and headed up the lakefront, passing by the city, with Meigs (now a park) and the Sears Tower out on the left. If someone had told me, as a ten-year-old piloting a polygonal Skylane RG with a creaking plastic yoke and keyboard-key flaps and throttle, that one day I would be doing it in my own actual real aeroplane (let alone one that I had rewired on my patio), it would have seemed completely unattainable. But here I was - Flight Sim in real life. It was a moment, and being still quite exhausted from unrested camping at Airventure, I teared up a bit.
How the Meigs dream died - thanks Daley...
I continued north, and did a big lap of the Chicago area, picking up fuel south of Wisconsin before returning to KDPA for a second night.
The next morning I left Dupage at sunrise, heading around the south of Lake Michigan and picking up an hour as I dodged under a thin broken layer and landed at KDET Detroit City for a breakfast work meeting. My colleague told me to meet him on Woodward and 9-mile, which I misheard as 8-mile (seemed odd, but whatever - Detroit is exciting like that) and when I arrived at the intersection, the Uber driver refused to drop me there, instead taking me to a mall parking lot, where I then waited for another another Uber to the breakfast place in the friendlier neighbourhood of Ferndale.
Whilst heading back to the airport, I watched two guys riding down the road on the roof of a city-owned backhoe. I work in the car industry and go to Detroit a bit, and I love it - it's kind of feral and the people are mostly excellent.
From Detroit I was torn between heading back to Palm Springs to see my wife and boy (who had just got back from a five-week visit to see family in the UK) or keep going east. My wife talked me into going east, since she knew there was another thing out there that I really wanted to tick off the list. She has no interest in flying but she likes that I enjoy it and encourages me to do so at every opportunity, which is something. I tapped my route into Foreflight and pressed on.
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