Thursday, September 20, 2012

Washington to Wyoming

It all looked so simple during planning. Plug the airports into the GPS, climb to 11,500 for the best winds and enjoy the view. Oh... no.... Can't be that easy! Just for fun, Mother Nature decided to throw in a bunch of smoke from forest fires!

Had to double back once north of Boise, the smoke got so think I couldn't see the ground anymore. Never did see Boise, and I was within 10 miles of downtown! Wasn't until Wyoming that visibility got above 5 miles.

The front of my airplane has a thin layer of ash on it from the fires. All that crap is floating up there for us to suck in our engines and lungs. Pretty amazing.

Spending the night in Rawlins, Wyoming. This is as far as I could get safely before sunset. I was ready anyway to get out of the cockpit, 5 hours is a lot when most of my flights are only 15 minutes!

Tomorrow I'll stop in Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma before arriving in Texas. Unless the smoke is thick in the morning, there's no reason not to finish the journey tomorrow.

More then!


Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Practice is Over!

The fifth day of practice has come to an end here is smoky Ephrata. Over 200 forest fires in Eastern Washington has severely reduced visibility. Made for some interesting training when you can't see the horizon!

Many, many thanks to the exceptional Lew Shattuck for spending his time driving all the way over here  to provide me my own personal aerobatic camp!  He is a critiquer extraordinaire, clearly explaining and fixing problems with my flying.  I am extremely fortunate for his assistance.

While at Nationals, I'll be sharing the Wolf Pitts with an Aussie named Ben. He came here to Ephrata to get familiar with N240WP, and did quite well for the most part. He'll be some competition down in Texas.  It's cool to watch someone else fly the Wolf Pitts, otherwise I never get to hear how wonderful the airplane sounds!  Ben is a good pilot and he's taking care of the airplane, can't ask for much more.



Tomorrow morning I start my trek to Texas. I'm hoping to make it to at least Rock Springs, Wyoming.  Maybe Laramie, or maybe even Cheyenne, but probably not.  The key is to just go one leg at a time and see where I end up.

Should be some fantastic scenery....

Friday, September 14, 2012

Renton to Ephrata

Well, the first leg of my journey is complete. Chose to leave a day early as the weather is supposed to turn ugly overnight and that would have kept me in Seattle until the afternoon or even Sunday.

The first cross country flight after major maintenance is always a little unnerving. But except for a few (imagined) noises, everything was fine.

Passed four impressive forest fires, but silly me had my camera and cell phone where I couldn't get to them. The picture below is of the sun around 6pm in a cloudless sky. The iPhone camera doesn't do it justice, the color was a deep pink.

Now to get ready for five days for practice to get back in the groove...

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Cutting Corners

One of my key mentors in airplane ownership is a guy named Dave Womeldorff. He was the driving force behind the creation of my Eagle partnership back in the late 1970's and has taught me a lot about maintaining airplanes.

He has a couple mantras that are painfully true. "Anything you do, you'll do three times before it's right." and "There's a right way and a wrong way."

After my initial test flight there was a bit of oil leaking. We identified the culprit, the oil pressure line fitting, but to fix it required removing the engine... again... Something I wasn't too hip on.

The general consensus was that it would be fine for my trek to Texas and I could wait until I got back to fix it proper. One suggestion I got, and followed, was to put some fuel tank sealant around the fitting. That slowed down the leak quite a bit.

"There's a right way and a wrong way."

That phrase kept me up at night. Dammit. So yesterday I pulled the engine to fix the fitting. Removed the sealant gooped on there and put some correct thread sealant on the fitting.

Still leaked. Dammit.

Got a new fitting and again, pulled the engine to replace the fitting entirely. Turns out I did damage it while putting it in and that's where the new leak was from.

9 hours after I got to the airport the engine was started for a second time... NO LEAKS!

"Anything you do, you'll do three times before it's right."

1. Sealant
2. Damaged fitting
3. New fitting

Funny how he's so right on all this...

Tomorrow the adventure begins!

Monday, September 10, 2012

Flying Truck

Helped a friend out today by transporting his broken canopy to a shop for repair. The traffic between Renton and Arlington is abysmal weekdays, it could easily be a 4 hour project to get there and back.

In an airplane, 25 minutes each way.

These are the times I'm glad I keep my share in the Cessna partnership.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Well now..... did I ever drop the ball on this one, eh?  Not a single post since May, and yet I've done so much this Summer of 2012!  Let's see...


And through all that continued to work on the Wolf Pitts and run my business.  >>whew!<<  No wonder I'm so tired!  But now the Wolf Pitts is back in the air with all new hoses, some new baffling and a number of overhauled components.  And I'm about to embark the be biggest adventure of the summer!

This weekend I'm doing some advanced spin training with Rich Stowell.  One of my Eagle partners convinced him to come to Seattle and do some one-on-one work with a group of us.

On the 15th I'll be heading to Ephrata for 5 days of aerobatic training, then off to Grayson County Airport in Denison, Texas for the US Nationals.  I will make it a point to update the blog during the trek there the contest, and then to Tuscon where I plan to leave the Wolf Pitts until a contest in November.

Let the fun begin!