WDYDWYRTW? Nov 15-16, 20025

[DeltaRomeo]

What did you do with your RV this weekend?

0840 CST Sunday snapshot….

WX must be nice in Florida <g>.

Hope you’re having a nice RV weekend, and looking forward to folks chiming in with what they did.

v/r,dr

 

[planenutz]

Sunday started off cool, calm and fresh so we decided to "go somewhere". Somewhere ended up being Fox Glacier, a very small and quite remote village on the West Coast of the South Island. The attraction for us is the stunning scenery on the flight there and back and the very short 500 metre walk to the cafe. We climbed to 8500' and sat in the smooth air for the 105 nm journey north. As Fox sits tucked right up against the western edge of the Southern Alps we had to extend our descent out to the coast in order to get down to circuit height before joining overhead, so the flight time was 50 minutes.

My gold standard is a Date Scone and a cup of tea but there were no scones... so a $500 pizza it was. We took a stroll along the main road and explored a couple of shops before heading back to the airfield. To explain the photo of me on the runway - it appears to be a social media "thing" to take a photo of yourself laying down in the middle of a road and posting it online. Like "planking" I guess, and equally as dumb. My daughter - being of that age - decided to get one up on her friends and had a photo taken of herself laying on the threshold of the runway at Foxeariler this year. I thought I'd poke some fun her way and worked on the theory that if Dad does the same thing then clearly it's no longer cool... but I have to say it was rather theapeutic to lay down for a couple of minutes after a big lunch and I very nearly didn't get up.

The flight home via the coast and Haast took an hour but by early afternoon the winds had gotten up and it was quite lumpy through the mountains from Haast to Cromwell. We felt compelled to fly over a friends' farm to add to his misery of being in the deep south on a fine day without his RV-7, which is based in the North Island, before joining overhead and landing back at Cromwell. So in total... 1.8 hours for the day and some beautiful scenery. Not bad. Not bad at all.




The runway at Fox is 700 m long, tucked up against the hill, has a reasonable uphill slope and is strictly one way in... normally with a tailwind on landing.

 

[lucas2696]

I was planning to take the RV to Brodhead (C37) to check out the museum there, but unfortunately had a fuel pressure issue that I felt warranted a return to the airport. While climbing through about 6000' I noticed my fuel pressure had dropped to zero, turned on the boost pump and it returned to the green range, engine never hiccupped once. Once on the ground everything seems to work normally, inspected everything I could with the cowl on and couldn't find any signs of a fuel leak. Upon doing some more reading, this seems like it might be normal, at least to some extent, with high power settings and relatively low RPM. I will probably still replace the engine driven fuel pump just because it's old, but I don't think that would eliminate this condition. I'll definitely be amending my procedures to keep the boost pump on throughout the climb now.

 

[Jjackh10]

Did some prep work for the fast back parts arriving this week and some tank sealing. Tried several pairs of latex but in the end all I can do with gloves on is pee my pants lol. Oh well, my hands just look like they did before I traded my tools for this keyboard.

 

[scrollF4]

Friday morning early I flew from 52F to Ellington Field in Houston TX, home of the bulk of NASA's astronaut flight training. There I flew in an FFI formation clinic for canard aircraft pilots, hosted by the good folks at the Rutan Aircraft Flight Experience...RAFE (pronounced 'raFEE').

0450L launch Friday, got to watch the sun rise:



The view from my hotel's breakfast bar:



Just a few of the participants, including my RV-7A KELLI GIRL (far left), a Thorpe, and assorted Long EZs, a couple of Co-Zs, a Berkut, and others.



Here's the 4-ship I led giving two pilots their successful FFI wingmen checkrides in their Long EZs. Congratulations, Ruszaro "Ryz" Zadow and Curtis Wray!



There are definitely different formation references, but flying with the canards was really interesting and fun.




Thanks, RAFE, for a really fun weekend of formation flight!

 

[Dugaru]

Standard mission to PA from VA. Every GPS in the plane urped on the trip up, as I’ve railed about elsewhere. Nasty winds led me to return to VA via the RPASAGAGV (Remotely Placed Aviation Support and Get-There-Itis Antidote Ground Vehicle). Already planning the rescue mission and GPS diagnosis and resurrection plan.