Silent Night Holy Night

Saturday the 3rd of January. My son wants to travel tomorrow back to school in Carolina. He sleeps all day and stays up all night. He just got back from an all nighter that had him at Times Square on New Years Eve. But the weather tomorrow looks pretty bad. Low ceilings in the forecast. Now, my Cher OH kee is instrument legal. And I suppose I am too. But I'd rather drive the eight hours than try to slog down flying in crappy weather. So we wake up His Majesty and ask him if he'd rather fly down tonight in pretty weather, or drive through rain and mist for eight hours tomorrow. Next thing I know he's up and showering and will be ready in "fifteen minutes". Meanwhile, I am not dressed, the plane ain't ready, the hangar doors are closed, I need to do a pre flight, the plane is very low on gas. But I get an adrenalin rush because it's a real pretty afternoon and I'm goin' flying. So I throw on the clothes I wore to the restaurant last night which are strewn on the chair. I grab an overnight satchel which is sort of always loaded with underwear and socks and a spare shirt and a flashlight and shave kit and other junk. The plane already has in it a small chart pouch and a small flight kit. I keep the dogs in the house and I go out to the plane. It's 4PM. Cambridge closes for fuel at five. I get the doors open. I get the airplane rolled out. I sump it. I call my wife in the house on her cell. "Honey tell His Majesty to take the Toyota to Cambridge and I'll meet him there. I'll get the car on the way home tonight". Then I take five minutes to spray silicone on the right seat tracks to fix a sticking seat. It works great. As I warm up the engine, I am able to reboot the apollo GPS which had quit working again. Sometimes it just won't compute. I "tricked" it into finding itself. Now I have two GPS's again. I take off in the beautiful cool clear air. With just me and no fuel I'm a fricking Super Cub off in 500 ft. I make Cambridge in time for fuel. My son is there at about the same time. We head out while we still have a bit of daylight left. We get almost down over Richmond before it is completely dark. A beautiful ride. His buddy is there to pick him up for a ride to campus. The airport is quiet. I call wife/mother at home. I climb back in the plane and taxi out. A T-tail King Air lands. I taxi out and pop my second diet coke. I havn't enough fuel to go all the way home, but I know exactly where I'm going. I take off and start climbing on my 60 degree heading. I settle into a nice 400 ft./min climb towards 7500 ft. I watch Durham go by. Then Danville. I program FCI into the GPS's. FCI is just south of the Richmond Class C. They have expensive 100LL but they are open till 10PM. I get there at about 9:30. Off again with full tanks and a quiet flight to Cambridge. I get to see some incredible shooting stars as the Geminids are active. I see smoke trails and hang time and bright lights from these meteorites. My final decent into CGE has me with full flaps trying to keep the engine warm. I tie down the Cher OH kee. I walk a half mile to the terminal where son has parked the Toyota. It's pretty cold and quiet. 25 degrees. I drive home. So as not to wake up six dogs and wife I use the runway instead of the driveway. I drive the Toyota right into the hangar. As I shut off the car, the oldies station known as "The Beach" is playing a song about a guy who says you may be right, I may be crazy, but it might be a lunitic you're lookin' for. After the car is off I still hear the song. It's because of the radio in the "man cave" in the back of the hangar. It has played 24-7 since the solstice party. I get out a beer right there and just look at the M-10 Cadet and my wife's 350Z and reflect. In an epiphany I realize...... that neither of them are paid for.

give me a moment

I was going to title this post "Reflections on 2008". But I didn't. 2008 was one of the best years of my life. I was going to chronicle some of the events. Maybe some other time. I'm very happy in my retirement. I've been pretty much doing what I want. Time is such a gift. I will not go so far as to say life is a gift. Life is hard for most people and very hard for a lot of people. Even if one's life is going great, it can so quickly vanish. Or become unbearable. Ask John Travolta. Jim Croce. All of us will die. I don't want to tempt or dare fate. But I just want to say I am happy. I know I'm lucky. How long can it last? Until I am diagnosed with a terminal disease. Or get killed by accident. Right now I'm happy. When I try to fantasize about things, the way they could be, I always get bogged down in the details and the fantasies develop problems just the way life does. My life is a pretty nice fantasy. Everyone thinks of winning the lottery. It's a classic fantasy. If you really follow the fantasy through, you find you are still facing challenges. The philosophers take it a step further and have you just ask yourself "what if you had an experience 'chamber' and for a period of time life could happen exactly the way you wanted it. What would you do"? The hardest thing about getting what you want in life, is, in fact, figuring out what you want in life. As I've been retired and gotten older, I've gotten much better at the skill of of living in the "present". Enjoy it now. Of course I still look forward to lots of things in the future. My plan for 2009: 1. fly my two airplanes. 2. do a kitchen remake that takes out a wall. 3. Start on a tack-room/girl cave for my wife. 4. have a better than ever vegetable garden. 5. Record some music videos starring me. 6. Do some work on the TR-6 project. 7. Have a "coffee house" hangar party. 8. Take the M10 to a bunch of fly-ins through the season. 9. The house and buildings always need painting. I'm not really good at anything. I can fly a plane, but I've never been good at it. Play guitar, same thing. Handyman stuff, I'm pretty bad. Mechanical, bad. There is one thing I may be good at. Goofing off. Using up idle time. Being retired.

Lloyd Grows up a Bit

When I was a high school kid I was in the Civil Air Patrol. That's a whole blog post and more. This post isn't about CAP really. CAP was like the Boy Scouts but more military. Our Commander told us one night at a meeting that the Air Force was giving our squadron an airplane. But we weren't to get too excited because the airplane was in pieces. Very small pieces. We rejoiced anyway because our squadron had never had an airplane. It was a USAF L-16A. I had never heard of this because I was 17 years old and had only flown a Piper Colt, a Cherokee, and a few rides in other things like Alon A-2's. But all us Cadets in the squadron were soon to learn all about it. Our Commander's plan was to rebuild the airplane in his basement. With the help of whoever he could get whether they were in CAP or not. First we had to get the airplane. It was at the state headquarters known as Wing Headquarters. This is where the Air Force had dumped it. The pieces, engine, wings, control surfaces, wing struts, wheel struts, wheels, seats, instrument panel, prop, windscreen, etc. were all in boxes, crates, pallets etc. Much of the pieces were wired together as to not be lost or separated. Some of the parts were brand new. It seemed the Air Force had supplied us with a complete aircraft. There was a mountain of government paperwork in a box too. With aircraft logbooks. It was simply "one hell of a project". It was free. The squadron had an Air Force surplus pickup truck. We borrowed a trailer. Went to Wing and in one big trip on one big Saturday we moved the "basket case" into our Commanders house. It wouldn't fit very well into the basement. Parts were in the dining room, the garage, the tool shed etc. At the next weekly meeting, each and every "Cadet" and "Senior Member" went home with a rusty piece of that airplane and a few sheets of the right grit sandpaper. And that was the beginning of a one year project. We had no one to fly this airplane. We had to fly it lots of hours or "Wing" would take it away from us and give it to another more deserving squadron. This was the government: use it or lose it. I had a Private license as did a few "Senior Members" but none of us were checked out in a "Champ" which was the civilian name of this plane. Our Commander found a retired Air Force pilot and convinced him to "volunteer" to train us. "R. Rice" became our mentor. He found out after he had volunteered that he was our "test pilot" also because after the airplane came out of the garage and had the wings put on at Freeway airport someone had to take it up on it's first flight. He also found out that 3 of his five "check-out" students were not grown up, over 21, "Senior Members", but 17 year old kids like me. One day it was my turn for my first lesson with R. Rice. He asked me some questions. "Do you have a manual for the L-16?" My answer: "No Sir". "Have you read and studied the manual for the L-16"? "No Sir". "Do you realize that you were 4 minutes late for this lesson"? "Yes Sir". " You're not in uniform so we can't fly today". "Sir, I have a flight suit in the car". "Go put it on, I'll stand right here and wait for you. We're using up your lesson time". "Yes Sir". I ran to the car and put on the flight suit and ran back. "Those sneakers are not regulation, you can't fly like that". "Yes Sir, er No Sir". He had me follow him to his car where he handed me a pair of Air Force ankle boots which were 3 sizes too big for me. As I laced them up as tight as I could, he read me the riot act and told me the only reason he was going to fly with me at all today or ever was because it was nice weather and he himself wanted to fly. He had heard I was undisciplined and spoiled. He had heard I had done little on the aircraft's rebuild project. He had heard I had achieved a rank of Cadet Captain and had passed the field grade exam, yet had not been promoted further due to my poor attendance and lack of enthusiasm. He said I shouldn't show up for flying or to another meeting without a proper haircut. He warned me I had better show him I was "eager" to fly this airplane or I was out of the program. I wanted to slug off those boots and run to my car and never see R. Rice again. But I got this funny feeling that R. Rice actually liked me. And wanted to make a good Cadet out of me. So I walked down to the plane with him and we pre-flighted it, and climbed in and flew our lesson. I wanted to do my best. I wouldn't grow up for my father. But I would for R. Rice. At the next Wednesday meeting my uniform was cleaned and pressed. I was a half hour early and helped set up some chairs and tables. My shoes were spit-shined. Belt buckle, hat brim, epaulets. I had L-16 fever and I was not to be denyed. At the end of that meeting there was an awards ceremony. At the end of the awards ceremony, I was asked to come forward and I was promoted to Cadet Major. R. Rice pinned the insignia on my collar.

I'll be home for Christmas

As the holidays approach I'm reminded of twenty years ago. I was working in Detroit. It was time to head home to the DC suburbs for Christmas. My girlfriend was in Dayton. Having worked half the night, I caught the early flight. A quick hop in a Convair 580 from Detroit Metro to Cox Dayton. I slept like a log the whole 40 minutes. The 580 had big comfortable seats. At Dayton I found my car covered with snow in the long term parking lot. It was a huge 4 door 1972 Impala which I bought from my girlfriend's neighbor for $225. So I got it running and headed south toward Morraine where my little faded PA-28 was tied down. Girl friend was at work and watching the clock until she could get off for the super long weekend. We were both watching the weather as it snowed all day. On the way to South Dayton I stopped at a mall and a liquor store and bought gifts. I got some gloves and a really nice brush for cleaning snow off the wings. My last stop before Morraine was at the gas station. I filled my five 5 gallon plastic gas cans with regular. They only took up about 20% of the space in that Chevy's trunk. But with the holes and the rust, the fumes were pretty bad and that's why I got gas last, and near the airport. The exhaust leaks and shakey body made for a scary drive to the airport. The car was literally a bomb. At Morraine it was eerie. It was misty and cloudy and snowing lightly and damp. I unloaded the gas cans. I poured the 25 gallons in the tanks. We were still not quite full. That's OK. I'll make another fuel run later. I looked the airplane over. It was all in one piece. I brushed the snow all off in the hopes that the airframe might dry itself off a bit. Also I just wanted to get that big chore over with. I looked everything over as I went. I was the lone soul on the drome. I took a break and went to the FBO. They were actually open. There was one guy there. I bought two quarts of oil. I had coffee and a candy bar. The FBO guy was kind of giving me a look like he was curious if I was actually going to go flying. He had seen me pour auto gas in the plane, and clean off snow. And my plane wasn't the sassiest on the field. It needed a paint job. It needed an engine overhaul. It needed a new interior. It needed avionics. I went to their little flight planning alcove. I called flight service. I had been watching the weather and flying in it for the last 3 days and I just wanted to verify that nothing much had changed. And get some winds and freezing levels. The whole east coast was severe clear under a high that was slowly moving out to sea. If I flew 80 miles east, I'd be out of all of it with nothing but winter visibility of fifty miles and tailwinds. But the sooner I left, the better. It would be getting dark and the weather would be headed toward the coast. I headed out in the Chevy back to the gas station. This time just ten gallons. The "White Castle" had some sort of coffee deal where you could buy a thermos and they would fill it for you, so I got that and a bag of hamburgers. When I got back to the plane, Girl Friend was there. We put a car cover on her little Z sports car. I poured in the ten gallons. Put in a quart of oil. I had a roll of that metel foil 200 MPH tape that you peel the paper off of. I taped up the cooling fins where a winterization plate would go. I did a little extra as I knew I'd be high and cold. We had about an hour and a half of daylight left. Pity I could not file IFR, I just didn't have the radios. I pulled the prop through about a hundred times. We loaded up our stuff and our dinner and our coffee and our Christmas presents and Girlfriend's little pets. I did a little cold start ritual - primer- fuel pump- and prayer and she fired right up. We taxied out in the gray mist and snow and you couldn't see the taxiway. It was slow warming up. I couldn't get the windshield to defrost. I got the loran on and wanted to get it up as soon as possible. Got safely to the runway which was not plowed. Somebody had run a truck down the runway earlier and we could see those tracks. And the FBO guy had turned the edge lights on. I could see almost nothing out of the windscreen. I warmed her up some more and sampled both tanks. Mag check was great. Alternator was putting out. I knew the windshield was not going to clear off on the ground. I also had some snow and frost on the airframe. But it was cold and we were well below gross and once we got going it would all sublimate. I made an announcement on unicom and sat in position and hold. I did another mag check and ran up to full throttle and away we went. What do you do with flaps. You want to get off that runway with the snow dragging your wheels. But you don't want your flaps getting wet snow blown in the prop wash on them which will then freeze and mess you up. I tried to stay in the truck path and kept the flaps clean until I had sixty MPH. I pulled on two notches and leveled off just above the runway in ground effect. I bled down to one notch as soon as I could, still just above the runway. Then climbed her out in that one mile visibility. I left the one notch out and throttled back slightly to save the engine and let the oil warm up. I was immediately on my heading of 110 degrees which was a wag of a no wind heading. My VOR was weak to non-existent and of course the LORAN was not up yet. At 1000 feet I bled up the flaps and flattened down to a 200 fpm climb. Slowly up and fastly downrange we climbed. I guess we were in the clouds. But snow really restricts visibility too. I guess we were illegally VFR. I was praying to the Lycoming gods for that little 0-320 4 banger to just keep on hummin' and if it must quit let it not be in this IMC crap which we will not be in for long. As we climbed we could see breaks in the clouds and let ups in the snow. The windshield finally cleared off. I had the cabin heat and air vents adjusted. Girl Friend was comfortable. This was getting better. The airframe still had snow debris on it, but we weren't picking up any ice. I just kept her slowly cruise climbing. It was pretty smooth except for some in and out of clouds bumps. The LORAN was picking up the chain and I asked Girlfriend to please fly while I got the LORAN talking to us. I wanted the groundspeed almost as bad as I wanted our position. Columbus sailed under our left wing and I confirmed it with the weak VOR signal. The weather was thinning and I could see glows of lights below. No ice now and we were between layers at 5500 ft. and I could kind of relax. Girlfriend kept flying and doing a nice job. I got out the coffee and the burgers and we ate up some of the 400 nautical miles we had to go. The LORAN was working well and had us at 125 knots and coming up on the Ohio river. I thought we would be out of the weather by now, but we weren't. I didn't care as long as we were between layers and no ice. I really wanted to climb into the tailwind, but I was afraid of ice if we got back into clouds. Snow was on and off and when there was no forward visibility I had to fly because it was a lot of work for Girlfriend to fly solid gauges. She could do it though. She was a pretty good pilot for having had only a few lessons. So I took the controls and I knew we had to be in the clear soon. So I started climbing. I wanted 9500 feet. We went through some clouds. We picked up some ice. All at once we flew out of a wall of clouds and snow. We were surrounded by stars. We had a horizon. I could see towns below. I could see the Ohio meandering down from a glow of Pittsburgh to a town below our right wing which must be Parkersburg and on down to Huntington and Charleston. I looked at the altimeter. 9500 feet. I looked at the Loran. 155 knots! I told Girlfriend we would be there in an hour and twenty and it was all downhill. I had just worked my butt off for two hours and now it was just a joy ride over my old stompin' ground. I wanted to show Girlfriend something so I turned all the lights off. Out at 12 oclock high was a gigantic Orion lying on his side. The star Betelgeuse was shimmering red and bright. I told Girlfriend to look at Orion's sword. The middle star is a nebula. While she star gazed I glanced over the left wing and followed Ursa Major to the Pole Star. It was behind the wing a bit and I figured our nose must be roughly 105 degrees east of north. I put my pen light on the whiskey compass. It read about 107 degrees. I set the DG accordingly and snapped off the penlight. Then I showed Girlfriend the glow of a distant Huntington, her Alma Mater. I turned the panel lights back on. Girlfriend shut her eyes for a while and I had the rest of the coffee. The viz was so good I couldn't tell what town was what. Is that Martinsburg or Front Royal. Frederick or Hagerstown. The Terminal Control Area was being renamed "Class B". Shelves of airspace over Washington, Baltimore, Dulles, Andrews. I wanted a perfect energy managed decent into Laurel. Laurel was a little 2000 ft. strip in the middle of the big Baltimore Corridor. I could see dozens of airport beacons all underneath this airspace shelf. And as we got lower, Christmas lights too. And searchlights. I just let down into Laurel with my transponder off and didn't worry about the airspace. I could see the few airliners and they were far from me. I called Laural on the unicom expecting no one around. I got Laurel all right. They were having a Christmas Party and we were right on time. Champagne was waiting for us. My brother was waiting to take us to my condo. I got an altimeter from them as the baro was high and light winds allowed us a straight in. Flew a straight in 30 mile final over a sea of lights. I cheated. I got down early so I could keep the power up and not super-cool the engine. Party goers were out on the ramp to watch us land. We stayed about an hour but Girlfriend and I wanted to get to my place for a private celebration. My brother was really kind about just dropping us off. Girlfriend and I had lots of secret plans. There's a Christmas song about "we'll face unafraid, the plans that we made, walking in a winter wonderland". We were comfortably unpacked at the condo and Girlfriend was just about asleep. I had the weather on and the guy was talking about a big front coming our way that had left the lakes and was at the Ohio valley. In an hour it would be Christmas Eve day. Girlfriend said "Lloyd do you think we're going to have a white Christmas? " "Well, I happen to know a little about this particular system. And I guarantee a White Christmas."

I'm Baaaack

Dear Readers I apologize for not posting for so long. I wanted to end the fly-in season with a big note at GED, but I got sick. I hope this winter to do some gen av flying. I will also relate some old tales of the Airmail. So stay tuned and send me remarks.

wrestling with politics

Well here it is the end of October and I haven't posted in seven weeks. No excuse. Actually I wanted to say a lot. But it wasn't about aviation. With the elections coming up, politics has been on my mind. But politics is like religion. It's what you feel and what you wish and what you want. So of course people can't agree. It's too subjective. I wanted to find a candidate who was for gun bearing rights who was not a whacko Christian. This is impossible of course, because you can not run for president in this country without being a Christian. But I found a politician I can get behind. He's not running for anything right now, but I'm going to buy his recent book. His name is Jesse Ventura.

GPS Talk

Today is October 29th. A Thursday. It's blustery outside. Both of my airplanes sit safely tucked in the hanger. They both got their annuals done. They have no squawks on them. Anyone who owns an airplane knows there is no such thing as "no squawks". Every time I get everything fixed, something else breaks. This time it was the GPS unit in the Cher OH kee. It just stopped being able to compute. It was acquiring the space vehicles, but couldn't go from there. This is an old, but nice, panel mounted, Apollo 800 with data card. It doesn't have a moving map. Everyone says you simply must have a moving map. I really like the old Apollo, and I don't give a damn that it doesn't have a map. I have a portable Garman 196 which has a moving map, and I never use the map feature. The 196 by the way is a great unit. Most people have the 296 or the 396 or something better. But the 196 is cheap. I paid $700 new. It's monochrome. But it's great because it's portable and I can use it in the Cadet as my primary nav and in the Cher OH kee as a second GPS which makes navigation great. Unfortunately, the old Apollo isn't worth repairing. How could it be when I can buy a brand new 196 portable for $700?. If I were to take the Apollo to an avionics shop, they could charge me 2 or 3 hundred just to tell me it aint worth fixing. So, mechanic Dan advised me to get a used unit and slide it in. So I told my wife, who is the E-Bay expert. She started bidding on them, and we kept getting outbid. But the other day we got the bid on one. It arrived today. Will it slide in and work? I hope so. First nice day we'll find out. I've got to dig through my allen wrench collection and find that really tiny tool that is the key to swapping units. Now, as long as nothin' else breaks...