I'm booked

It's funny. Over the winter, being retired, it seemed weeks would go by without much happening. Going grocery shopping was a big event. I'm not complaining. I like doing nothing. Now the fly-in season is here. And work on the farm and house. And mowing the airstrip and yard. Fly-ins. I hear the term "fly-out" more and more now. A group from an airport will fly several planes out together for a breakfast or something. My summer schedule is filling up fast. Every single weekend thru August has an event I'm going to attend. I'm already double- booked for June 27. And on July 25th I'm having a fly-in here at my place. I 'll need to do some cleaning up for that event. I have a kitchen project to do which involves taking down a wall. My buddy's teenage son is going to visit from Europe for some flying lessons. I have to renew my airman medical and my CFI. I think I'm going to put a halt to any more plans for this summer. I want to have some "dog days". When I can just chill in an air conditioned room and read a novel. Actually I've already put on the brakes. Friday night I went to live theater with wife. 3AM Saturday morning took son to BWI airport for his flight. It turned out I'm too old for all- nighters. So I blew off taking the M10 to W29 for Wings and Wheels. Today I blew off the SFQ Virginia Regional Fly-in. I bet it was great. So I was hanging out and mowing today. The proffesor flew in with a friend. So wife and I rolled out the M10 and we took 2 planes to GED for a late lunch. It was a "Fly-out".

seems it never rains in southern california

I feel like talking about guitar and You Tube and music and the Muse. So let me just mention aviation. The weather has been excellent for an entire week since Horn Point. Sunny, not hot. I just left the Cher OH Kee out, ready. I did two missions with it. Clark and his girlfriend flew the Pa 12 back to Bay Bridge. I flew the Cher OH Kee to Bay Bridge and picked them up. Brought them back here to their car. Then wife and I got in her sports car (the Corolla was in Carolina). We went to Annapolis on a date. Saw Billy Kemp at "The Ram's Head". I got a great autograph for the man-cave. We hardly ever get to go to the "big city" anymore. I'm not complaining. Then on Thursday wife and I flew to Georgetown, DE. Dinner at the airport restaurant, which was excellent. Plane did great, weather great. And two dates with wife in three days. Oh and yesterday we went to a wedding. Was that a date? Next flying event will be taking the m10 to CGE for fuel, perhaps a meal there too. Then the m10 to Bay Bridge for Wings and Wheels on Saturday 30th. Now the music thoughts. Sometime about a year ago while puttering in the hangar I heard an oldie on the radio. It was "morning girl". I suddenly was back in the late sixties early seventies. I suddenly had a favorite song. I hadn't had a favorite song in a long time. And this wasn't the "kind" of song I usually like. So I got on the web and learned a lot about a group called "Neon Philharmonic". And a dude named Tupper Saussy. I got on the web again and ordered 2 vinyl records. I asked my brother to arrange the song for guitar. He wasn't familiar with the song. I sent him the 45 rpm record. He sent me the lyrics with cords and other notes and suggestions. And I fiddled with it a bit, but I couldn't do it. But for a couple months I would listen to the origional version on YouTube. Every night. Over and over. My wife and I never talked about it much. One day I said "Honey, what song do I listen to every night?" She said "Morning Girl". "And who wrote Morning Girl?" I asked. She said, "Tupper Saussy." "And do you like the song"? I ask. "It's OK" she says. Eventually I got a chance to put the song up on YouTube with me singing and my brother playing guitar. It's pretty rough. But I think I got it out of my system. My son is home from college. But only for one week. Then he's off to L.A. for an internship in the business of Hollywood. Tonight before writing to you I was back on the web researching another song. It describes my son's situation. "Got on board a westbound seven forty seven. Didn't think before deciding what to do. All that talk, opportunity. TV breaks and movies. Rang true. Sure rang true. It never rains in California. Girl, don't they warn ya. It pours, man it pours." I've got a new favorite song.

some days are diamonds

I've always embraced the concept of "turn key" flying. Walk out to a plane and go like you do with your car every day. No matter what you think you see, or hear about, nobody in general aviation has this. Even if you were stinkin rich and had a slave do your pre flight for you and roll out the plane and warm it up etc. You still gotta do your own pre flight. You gotta do yor own flight planning etc. Load your plane with what you want in it. Actually, I like doing the planning and the prep and anticipating. I vow this year to wash and wax the M-10 the night before every fly-in. Because I like to. But I am also lazy. My fantasy is to be able to walk out to the plane and go. Now let me talk about sailplanes. There is not even a turn key fantasy about this. Sailplanes need support to fly. You gotta have friends, or people you are paying, to tow you up. To put together the sailplane. To get it out to the runway. To help you get ready to launch and check your controls and canopy. To hook up the tow rope. To run the wing. Most glider clubs require each member to put in a certain number of hours each month doing these support jobs. This support work is fun and you learn a lot, and it's part of being a glider pilot. I'm all for it. I need it. But I am also lazy. And I hate clubs that require you to do something. When I wanted to learn to fly a glider some years back I checked out some clubs. I wanted to talk about "lessons". They talked about my "joining" and my obligations and all their rules. I found out clubs are for folks who own gliders and are in a "clique". So I went to a commercial school and learned enough to solo a Grob 103. The school welcomed me into soaring even though I didn't know anybody or anything. Now I'm fortunate to be able to rent a glider from a guy up in Smyrna. No club, no obligations, no scheduling, no meetings. Just flyin'. When I retired, my friend Geoff asked me what a "perfect day" for me might be like. This is a question of knowing what you like. And be careful what you wish for. If you had an extra million bucks, what would you do. There are different levels at which you can answer these questions. Health and wellness are at the top level. I've already had my share of perfect days. Many of them had to do with flying. Times spent with my wife who is my best friend are at the top of the list. Now back to "turn key". About a year ago on a Sunday I looked at the sky. By the way, once you fly sailplanes, you'll never look at the sky without thinking about soaring. A big cold front had come through. The sky was blue in a big Atlantic high. There were these scattered bubbly cues that were hard white. What wind there was, came from the west. There's a lot of smart glider guys who can tell you about "thermal index", "polar curves", "speed rings" etc. I don't know this stuff. But I know a damn good day for lift when I see one. I called the guy in Smyrna. On his cell. He was in the towplane and couldn't talk. That answered my question. So I rolled out and ramped up the M-10 I wandered around the house and hangar and located sunglasses, reading glasses, water bottle, checkbook, sun block, ball cap, tilly hat, kerchief, handheld radio. This was not turn key. I fly the 50 nm up to Smyrna. I can feel the jolts and bumps from the thermals. I start shouting to myself "oh yea". I circle Smyna. I see the tow plane and the 2 seat glider there on the ground. I hope the gliders are not already spoken for. I land and taxi over to the small group of about 5 guys. "Hey Lloyd, you're late. The lift is past peak. You wanna fly the 222?" I say sure but where is the 1-26. They point and there it is on base leg and I can have it if I want it. Very next tow. So get ready. I practically got out of the m-10 and climbed right into the single seat glider. No preflight. I'm strapping in and they're hooking up the rope and securing my canopy. I'm trying to do a mental checklist: shoulder harness, spoilers, trim, release tug and test, air vent closed, controls. They say Dan's gonna put me in the thermals west of the field around 2500'. Check the pattern. They get my thumbs up. They lift the wing. I wiggle that rudder and we're away. I don't think I'd been on the ground at Smyrna 5 minutes. True to the day's promise I got off tow at 2000, no sense towing any higher. I played around and got higher and cooler and what a flight and what a day. After I came back they turned the 1-26 around for the next lucky guy. I signed a blank check and handed it to Dan. I asked if they needed help for putting stuff away later. They said it was covered. I said thanks and jumped in the M-10. I know I had a lovely flight home with the canopy open. I know I flew right over Ridgely where they were flying the ultra light kite gliders. I know I landed at my place in time to enjoy the rest of the daylight and the sunset. But what I truly remember was a sailplane flight. A flight where I didn't get the glider out, or put it away. Or walk a wing. Or mess with ropes. Or gas up a tow plane. Or even drive a car to the airport. I may be a beginner in sailplanes. But I had a "turn key" flight. GA Informal.

Horn Point Revisited 2009

It's late Sunday night. The house is quiet. The two dogs who hang with me are sleeping nearby as I type. It is time for the Horn Point debrief. The weather is always a challenge on Horn Point weekend. This year was no different. A few events compete with Horn Point on the third Saturday in May: Andrews AFB Open House, the Preakness at Pimlico, Hot Rod Weekend in O.C., Md., the Yaks at ESN, the Blues Festival at Annapolis, and lots of other events. The weather Saturday morning here on the shore was not promising. I did a damn thorough pre-flight on the M10 Cadet. We got all buttoned in to go.... but the battery was dead. My friend Eric was with me and he held on the brakes and I propped her and she fired and ran on the first pull. So we head on over to Horn Point. The ceiling was about 1100 feet. So the turnout was pretty small. But we had a nice fly-in. My friend BD was there with his beautiful Stearman. My friend Clark came in with a PA-12. They both had thier girlfriends with, which was nice. My friend Paul flew my Cher OH Kee in and he did a nice job with a fly by. I saw lots of old friends. The sky cleared for mid day. The grand prize went to an ancient Waco that was so nicely restored it would bring tears to your eyes. Another prize winner was a lovely Fleet biplane that made you think you were in a time warp or a Richard Bach novel. There was a rare Great Lakes, and it's J-3 partner, an incredible classic early Bonanza, and a Cessna T-50 which we look forward to every year and who stops the show when he takes off with the twin radials. Two impeccable L-16's. The comradeship was great. This club is a core of great guys who have lost many members simply to old age. They are surviving as a club by passing the torch along, but it's tough because of general aviation's decline. I could write a dozen posts to tell about Horn Point Airfield, and the club that shows up there once a year for their fly-in. The thing that touched me the most was after the awards presentations. There were only twenty or thirty of us left there. The grand prize winner was asked to fly his plane for us. He simply walked out to the Waco and took it out and up. An historic airplane on an historic airfield. He flew it around over our heads and we watched like townies watch a barnstormer. We shot the breeze and they had broken out the beer. The guy lands and taxis the Waco right up to our small group and shuts down. He gets out and walks over to us and we're speechless. Then we all just start clapping. GA Informal.

One Double A

About a week ago I flew the Cher OH kee down to Carolina to pick up my son and his girlfriend. And to bring them back to our farm. The weather was marginal VFR so I filed both ways. As soon as I got going, I discovered my Garmen portable GPS was out of power. Batteries dead. But it was plugged into the airplane's cigar lighter. I pulled out the plug and it was broken. I didn't have any spare batteries. At the FBO in Carolina, they had no batteries. Except the guy had a single double A just lying on the desk which he gave me. After we got up and going home I was trying to find the 30 knot tailwind that wasn't there. My son asked me for the single double A and the dead GPS. He pulled out the 4 double A's and started doing wierd things like rubbing them on his jeans and in his hands. then he put in the one "new used" one with the dead ones. He kind of spun the batteries around in their sockets before he put the little cover plate back on. The GPS worked perfectly all the way home for two hours.

Old CFI's like me need to relearn basics

I was preparing for a little talk to some little kids about airplanes. I was to wear my old airline pilot uniform. I got a haircut. These are grade school kids. I had a handout for them made by my friend Clark who is a CFI and a very talented artist. The handout was a paper airplane ready to fold. I was thinking of adding some basic aerodynamics to the talk. I scanned the web to see what I could find that might tell "plainly" how an airplane flies. It was then that I discovered that the old "how an airplane flies" is not taught anymore. It hasn't been "fact" for a decade or so. All my life I have been trained over and over about the low pressure on top of the wing "pulling" the airplane up. Remember the molecules of air that part at the leading edge and meet together at the trailing edge? And they must travel at the same speed, and the one on top has further to travel and creates the low pressure. This never made sense to me. But I believed it because I wanted desperately to fly and I didn't understand physics anyway. Now this theory of flight has been shown to be utter nonsense. I'm so relieved. From now on when I talk to a student pilot or a kid who wants to know about planes, I can just tell them in common sense terms how the airplane flies. Things like "the plane 'planes' along in the air like a boat 'planes' on the water. That's why it's called a 'plane." gen. av. informal