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What did you do w your RV this weekend (10/15-16/2022)

Peak colors here in STL looks like it will be in next week or two. Of coarse I took the round about way to get to the picture location (blue dot)
 

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condition inspection

New brake pads, tire rotation and wheel bearing maintenance. FWF to go. Apologies for the sideways pictures. They look correct on my Macbook.
 

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My nieces are visiting from Washington State. Took them and their mom up for their first flight ever.
 

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After all the instrument hand flying practice over the last few weeks, it was time to do one approach on autopilot. Saw a few things I'd not seen before, wasn't made a few mistakes, practice...

Afterwards, I got to look at a Boeing Business Jet on the ramp, and they let me on board. The cockpit was pretty standard, but the cabin was configured for 19 passengers and the max payload is 6,000 lb. This lets them fit into a different section of Part 91, or something.

Quite the way to travel! Then again, at this stage of life, I'm kind of a stick in the mud, doing things in my home town, and don't have those kinds of destinations in mind.
 
Took my Mom up for her first flight in my RV. She loved it!
 

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Went to the Thomasville Ga fly-in. Wonderful event. Great people. Had lunch with Sam Staton and his wife, who are in the final stages of an RV-6 build. Sam was kind enough to pass along an old school set of plexi strobe fairings which he has decided not to use, but have been unobtanium since Van's stopped selling them a decade or two ago.

Also, won the "Empty Pockets" award, which goes to the owner of the newest airplane at the event. Pretty fitting. ;-)
 
Coffee and a donut at Lehnardt Airpark. One of the few grass strips on which I've landed my '8A (it has a paved runway too).

Who shows up but Van Himself and his brother, Jerry!

(Actually, thats not an unknown occurrence at Lenhardt.)
 

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Flew over Wyoming's Wind River Canyon and thoroughly enjoyed the fall colors:
 

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Went up to Billings to knock out 10 night takeoffs and landings for the commercial requirements. Also, had my first laser attack that I got to report to ATC. haha

Flying night cross countries up here is not like when I lived in Florida, that's for sure!
 

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Returned to Auburn flying my rebuilt RV6A that we disassembled 14 years ago and hauled home in a truck.

I got to give my Uncle a ride. He’s has been my biggest cheerleader to finish my plane. He started working at Boeing at age 16 sweeping floors and retired at 55 as a manufacturing manager. 85 now and he’s a very special guy!

After Auburn we flew through the smoke to Anacortes, then back to Oregon to Lebanon. What a plane!
 
New brake pads, tire rotation and wheel bearing maintenance. FWF to go. Apologies for the sideways pictures. They look correct on my Macbook.

One trick to fix this rotation problem is to open the image in Preview, then rotate it around and then save when it looks right, even though it looked right when you opened it. I can explain why this happens, but it doesn't matter - this fixes it so that when you upload to VAF it will look right.
 
Coffee and donuts at 2 dogs (2K9), and viewed the progress my buddies are making repairing a RV6 that ground looped. Then did 3 GPS approaches under the hood including LPV with a missed/go-around at 200 AGL with my instructor and made a really bad landing (flared too high):eek:. Then greased it on back at RVS :D.
Finally getting the hang of the 375, Aera 760 and TruTrack Gemini combo.
Typical flying day, some good, some great, and some lessons learned, all with great company :D
Figs
 
On Saturday: Flew to the town of Scone (YSCO) in New South Wales, which has a swanky new warbirds museum and a cafe with airside access. So now the airport sells Scones at Scone! (img 1)

Flying hemispherical levels was annoying: FEW to SCT CU at 6250 when I wanted to fly at 6500. Descended, thinking about how great it'd be to be IFR and just ignore the clouds.

Sunday: IFR lesson :)

Hand flew the Bankstown-8 SID into Sydney's controlled airspace at 6000. Hand-flew the RNP approach on runway 35 at Bathurst (YBTH). Executed the missed approach, then over to the capture region for BTHNA for the RNP for runway 17 on autopilot to minimums, touch and go. Untowered airport instrument departure, then up to 7000 for the RNP-W to Camden (YSCN). (img 2)

After three approaches my brain was starting to get a bit fried. I was very happy with my performance on the first two, but was a bit behind the airplane on the third and made a bunch of errors (way above profile on the approach, then I messed up the missed). That's what training's for, and I'm having a blast putting myself into situations where I feel stupid.

The IFR flight was SCT 5500-8000, with good bits of the region west of Sydney in hard IMC. After spending more than 20 years staying in VMC, bulls-eyeing the side of a big cumulus and spending two or three minutes relaxed and happy in zero vis feels like I'm doing something naughty.

Another 4.6 in the logbook. Not bad for a weekend.

- mark
 

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I did the last practice flight and knocked out 3 towered landings for my check ride. It has been scheduled several times and the weather has not been favorable yet. Friday is the day - I hope!
 

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New Pup

My son and I made an early departure from Waukesha and flew to Kentucky to pick up a new puppy addition to our family. Whiskey is an 8 week old Vizsla and is a natural flier! We used a tight fitting tube of material over his ears for protection that is cheaper and more secure and effective that the mutt muffs.

The flight there and back was about 5 hours logged in the RV7. Incredible airplanes!



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STOL DRAGS

High Sierra Fly In - Dead Cow, NV - STOL Drags
The wx was perfect! No wind which is unusual.
Steve Henry vs Trent Palmer on the starting line.
 

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My RV weekend

Bent the conical bend in sideskins and clecoed back on.
Drilled longerons tail to tip.
Clamped firewall and clecoed floor.
Maybe looking like an airplane?
 

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I took my son flying in our recently-purchased RV-6. Been waiting 7 years for this day.

The original plan was Catalina Island, but multiple overlapping POTUS TFRs and the island weather (vertical visibility 100 feet all day) dictated a change in plans, so we went up to Big Bear where the skies were clear.

Speaking of perfect, I made probably one of the best 3 point landings of my 10,000 hour flying career. Told my son not to expect that again! I even remembered to close the VFR flight plan required by the TFR.

We were greeted by a very friendly lady in the terminal and shopped for a souvenir (a plane! what else?), then took a courtesy car into town for a sandwich and obligatory pineapple/kiwi/vanilla/mango shake.

The return flight was extremely hazy since we were flying into the setting sun, but he enjoyed seeing the speed as we made essentially a long constant descent from the 8500' altitude required to clear the lake and surrounding mountains down to the 500' elevation of our home airport.

I sent the photos and video to his teacher, and apparently they're doing a show-and-tell in his classroom today (they have an 80" TV on the wall). Perhaps in 20 years there will be another 20 builders from SoCal. We'll see.

Best. Day. Ever.

https://www.icloud.com/photos/#0085rxiPjscAZLCTIprEptDzQ

--Ron
 
Dead cow visit this weekend.
 

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I did the last practice flight and knocked out 3 towered landings for my check ride. It has been scheduled several times and the weather has not been favorable yet. Friday is the day - I hope!

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.
 
High Sierra Fly-in

Picked up a buddy in Chattanooga and flew to just north of Reno to attend the fly-in. What an event. It was a scene out of Mad Max. Onewheel gangs, random dirt bikes getting after it at 2am, propane tank explosions, planes getting bent.... it was serious. As with any aviation event you go for the planes and you end up enjoying the people. Yukon Neil left his RV-8 at home and flew his Murphy in. He brought EVERYTHING you could imagine inside it. We ate like kings and enjoyed the comradery. The dust was a force to be reckoned with though. I used painters tape to seal the RV-10 but my lungs still got to breath it in. It was the consistency of airborne baby powder. The RV-15 flew in with Axel and Greg brought the RV-14 from the Mother Ship.

328 hours to go to the ATP 1,500. 177 hours flown in the prior 10 weeks.

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Early departure from the field on Saturday before the cross continent flight home.

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Thanks to Neil and his Yukon I was able to preheat my Phillips 100AD oil to operating temp. Water froze outside the tent. It got real cold at night for this Florida boy.

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Here is something an RV can't do well. Double as a table for cooking and eating. The Yukon is a beast.

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RV-15 looking proud.

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A screen shot of a video I took of the fire "event". This was a Ford F-350 pulling a gooseneck camper that had hot air balloon equipment inside. NO one was injured.

This video:
https://youtu.be/dz0uU3l5W5E

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It burned for a good while before the fire department showed up. I've never seen a fire so hot. Some type of metal caught fire and sent embers into the air like a sparkler. It was a glowing white light.

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Was told by the event coordinator that this Cub was flown by a "professional pilot" and got caught in the wake of another Cub before it went down in the lake bed a few miles from the flight line. No one was killed although the medivac helicopter took a young lady away.

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One of the more interesting vehicles.
 
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Short hop over to Port Townsend WA (0S9) for breakfast at the Spruce Goose Cafe - rustic diner right on the ramp. :)

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Thomasville, GA Flyin

Attended Thomasville fly-in. Always nice to fly a little further and camp for the night.
 

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So are you still flying the new bird? I figure your team will be doing fatigue testing now to see what needs to be reinforced and verify loads are as predicted.

I know Vans does a lot of testing but I suspect it will not do all the complicated full airframe fatigue testing like the big B & A companies because I suspect the flight cycles don't come even close to the big birds. Does the FAA require it for GA airplane?
 
First long cross country…

So I finally got my ppl on September 28th with a total of 112 hours spread over 3 aircraft and 10 months time. I bought this beautiful RV9A in May and have been looking forward to “mission accomplished”. I live in Virginia, my parents in Louisiana. My oldest niece got married in Little Rock Arkansas last weekend so it was 6 month plan to fly my own plane down for the wedding.

My wife’s first ride was two weeks ago, just local flights over the lake here….

We left Monday morning for the flight to my parents in Coushatta La. 0R7. We stopped for fuel in Shelbyville TN KSYI, then on to Pine Bluff AR to pick up some stuff from my brother (KPBF) then down to 0R7. This final short hop was the worst leg of the entire week as we were under an overcast layer at 6000ft leaving PBF and once cleared of the ceiling we were in a clear air wave type layer of 500’ up -500’ down for the rest of the trip. After 6 hours in the air I was ready to be done.

We spent 3 days visiting with my parents then departed 0R7 for PBF on Thursday. PBF is a great little airfield and the staff there tucked 731LS in a hangar for the weekend. Weather was moving across the central US and brought thunderstorms in Saturday night.

We departed Monday morning for an uneventful flight home to 7W4. We had a nice tailwind but a low broken layer over the blue ridge had us dodging clouds across eastern TN and southwest VA. Flight time from Pine Bluff to Lake Anna Va was 4.5 hours. Sure beats the typical 14 hour car ride! 180mph ground speed with headwind on flight west, 220mph flight home. My kind of travel. :D
 
Photos from weekend.

Forgot to link these to the post above :cool:
 

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Hopped down from the ASHdrome to Crow Island Airpark (8MA4) in Stow MA for the last CIA pancake breakfast of the year. Great airport, great vibe...ready to go back next year!

ds
 

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Lake Ridge Airpark in NC

Left DC and an hour later was at 8NC8 for fall fly-in. Great group of people. Nice airport. Perfect flying weather. Got the last cinnamon roll for breakfast. Ain't life grand!
 
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