Getting unstuck

Famed RV-6A builder/pilot Alex Peterson (you may have seen his aerobatic video here) is like Batman. I -- and I guess this makes me "the commissioner" -- put out the Bat Signal a week ago on Van's Air Force. I needed a motivation flight. Alex saw the signal and stopped by South St. Paul today.

I've been stuck on the project lately and when I went to putter around today, I just ended up sorting nuts and bolts and screws and such; not something that's going to get a plane built. But that's the way building an RV can be; sometimes you need a nudge.

So Alex dropped in and took me for a spin. Here's the takeoff out of South St. Paul. Note the glider in the grass we pass on the way out.



Alex let me fly a little bit and I was consciously trying not to exert any backpressure on the turns, but I increased altitude so I must have. It was weird to look over at the airspeed indicator and see 160. I'm used to plodding along at 90 in a Warrior.

We flew up the St. Croix River, looked for Doug Weiler's house in Hudson (Doug heads the Twin Cities RV builders' group) and then headed back -- a half hour of good flying in which -- for the record -- neither Alex nor I opened our laptops during the flight.

After he dropped me off, he advised, "just start on anything and plow forward," and he and his friend, Benny (who was visiting from Israel) headed north back to Anoka.

And I plowed into some firewall forward stuff.

Mission accomplished.