Thursday, January 15, 2009

Flying weather?

It's -21 in my corner of flyover country today and I haven't heard a peep from my flying friends in the American southwest. I hope they're alright. As a humorist-friend (James Lileks) in this neck of the woods observed today, "it's -21, but it's a dry heat."

A question for aviators? Is this flying weather? I'm still a renter and the FBO won't release a plane in this weather, even if the engine did start. But for you owners, would you fly in this? It's a gorgeous sunny day and we presume the dense air would make any plane fly like a rocket.

As an RV builder, I wonder about the plexiglass canopy.

Oh, and I only put one heater box on the RV-7A project.

1 comment:

  1. The cabin heat would be a show-stopper for me. I've found that my single cuff doesn't provide enough heat for anything below about 15F, and that's at full throttle. Pull the throttle back for approach/landing and it gets very cold, very fast. I pretty much draw the line at 15F.

    The other thing is a limitation of my preheater: all I have is the little heat blanket that attaches to the bottom of the oil sump. More sophisticated heaters also heat the cylinders directly. Without that, I again just say no when it gets down to the teens.

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