Is your aircraft talking to you?

The NTSB today released the first of four videos aimed at general aviation pilots, each centering on a particular source of problems encountered by GA pilots.

In the one released today, the NTSB suggests we get a little better at taking indications from the plane more seriously.

King of the GA hill? The experimental aviator

Great article by Ron Rapp worth passing along. The key section:

If the trend continues, the Van’s line alone will be producing more flying aircraft each year than all the other GA manufacturers combined. Think about that: general aviation, saved by an army of Davids.

The kits are getting faster and easier to build, there’s a large resale market, and the range of modifications and upgrades is too long to list. You can get a 200 mph fully aerobatic cross-country cruiser for $35,000. Already built, no less. Agile handling, sporty looking, yet extremely conventional in construction and material. So conventional, in fact, that it’s really a misnomer to refer to them as “experimental” at all.

The RV series may be what most people think of when they hear “home-built”, but there are designs out there from dozens of designers ranging from powered parachutes to composite turboprops and jets.

The overall message is clear. Want to fly? Build your magic carpet! No matter what size. Even an RC.

Go fly!

Advanced engine leaning techniques

On July 3, 2013, Mike Busch of Savvy Aviator fame, held an EAA webinar on engine leaning techniques, following up several other leaning sessions which are still available on the EAA website.

These are my notes from his talk, the most significant portion of which (to me) was his assertion that Lycoming now recommends mag timing at 20 degrees top dead center, rather than the 25 degrees recommended on -- in my case -- the data plate on the engine and the owners guide. My engine was purchased in 2008. We might be hearing more on this. Perhaps not.

The biggest impact on the way I've been leaning my engine, however, is I am now implored to stop using exhaust gas temperature to determine the peak. I've been making a big mistake. See the notes at the link for more.

The Lark of Duluth flies again

The Lark of Duluth is going to fly again. It was the first commercial airliner. The Federal Aviation Administration has given an airworthiness certificate to the floating biplane, culminating the work of a group of people who've been building it, the Duluth News Tribune reports. It will fly again on July 12th, its 100th anniversary.

Medical update

If you're scoring at home -- or even if you're alone -- it has now been 5 weeks since my medical exam and still no word back from Oklahoma City requesting information that's keeping my renewal at bay.

At this time I'd like to thank the nation's politicians for the sequester and wish each of them a painful death.

Disclaimer for the NSA: You, too.

Roadblock

Following up on my last post about the delay in getting a new medical, I'm afraid I have bad news.

My ENT guy sent all of his clinical notes to the AME, who had requested a letter clarifying why I was prescribed a diuretic to treat the hearing loss in my Meniere's Disease. That's a bad thing. Never give the FAA more than they're asking for.

Unfortunately, that should reveal a trip to the emergency room in March that I forgot to write down on the renewal application. The application asks if you've had any hospital admissions and an ER visit isn't an admission. But I didn't add it to the list of clinic visits, which included the trip to the ENT to investigate the hearing loss. The problem on the evening of the visit to the ER was primarily dehydration from nausea.

This will kick the whole thing to Oklahoma City for review, which means they'll be getting back to me again as they did four years ago for an entire medical history. But, because they require everything that's supplied by an evaluation within the last 90 days, it means I get to repeat everything and that'll probably need to include an MRI, which went for a nifty $1,500 the last time.

I'm tired of roadblocks. I'm tired. The freedom to fly doesn't feel unrestricted and free when you have to run this gauntlet again and again and again.

There's a pretty good chance this time the FAA will simply deny the request, and that will be the end of that.

These are the day I'm willing to concede that I wasn't meant to fly.

Grounded again

Well, I'm sitting and waiting on the FAA again.

For the third time in the eight times I've asked for an FAA medical certificate renewal, I'm sitting and waiting for some faceless person to decide whether it's safe for me to fly.

The problem is the Meniere's Disease, which I acquired, apparently sometime around 2008, when I was over at Oshkosh for a seminar on avionics. I woke up in the motel and the room was spinning. And it stayed spinning for 24 hours.

I didn't know it at the time, but it was Meniere's, which is a buildup of fluid in the inner ear, which sends different signals to your brain about balance than the ones your eyes -- and other body parts -- are sending. The brain's response to the conflicting signals is usually, "whoa, I'm outta here; you're all on your own."

It also comes with a loss of hearing and the feeling of a lot of pressure in the ears.

That put me on the beach for about nine months, but the FAA finally allowed me to fly again, as long as I wasn't experiencing vertigo. This isn't a hard thing. Pilots have no vested interest in flying when they're not feeling well, and Meniere's sends plenty of advance signals.

In February this year, however, some symptoms returned. My "good ear" suddenly went bad and my "bad ear" got worse. For the most part, vertigo wasn't an issue, just the hearing.

A couple of trips to the audiologist resulted in me being prescribed a diuretic, which was intended to help keep excess fluid in check. It is not, however, a banned substance by the FAA, so I didn't think much of it when I put on the medical certificate renewal form that I had been prescribed the stuff for two months.

But, as it turned out, it was a red flag.

I had gone back to re-read the letter the FAA sent me years ago when sending me a new certificate despite having Meniere's. It said that I was prohibited from flying "when symptoms change." I read that to mean that I was allowed to fly again when symptoms disappeared. Fair enough.

The problem is I didn't read -- or at least understand -- the rest of the photograph. It also stated that I was prohibited from flying "when medication changes."

In fact, I hadn't been on any medication until I was prescribed the diuretic. So, technically, my medication changed. Ergo, I was now prohibited from flying, a fact I called attention to in my discussion with the AME.

And that was that.

I had passed the hearing check (my hearing is much better of late), and the rest of the physical. I do have a constant ringing in the ear which sounds like a 24-hour light sabre battle, but "we all have some ringing," the AME assured me, "and I see no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to fly."

But that didn't mean he was about to give me a medical certificate. He's asked for a letter from the audiologist to explain the prescription of the diuretic. And then, presuming I'm able to actually get such a letter (his office didn't return calls and I have an appointment for follow-up next week), it apparently will all go back to Oklahoma City which can either issue a certificate or decide to ask for more information, a process that could take months what with the usual bureaucracy and the added problems from the phony sequester cutbacks.

Until the end of the month, I have a valid medical certificate and I don't have a problem not taking the diuretic (I was only supposed to be on them for two months anyway) and, thus, eliminating the "change" in medication. But after May 31 (my birthday), I'm done flying.

That would wipe out a planned trip my youngest son and I had wanted to make to Cleveland in June, a trip to Massachusetts to see my mother and family, and, probably, Oshkosh -- where I'd hoped to be able to do another radio show for EAA Radio.

Sure, I could fly with a certificated pilot, but this is a two-seat airplane and, frankly, I don't want to go to Oshkosh, or Massachusetts, or Cleveland with any other people but the ones I intended to go to Oshkosh, or Massachusetts, or Cleveland with.

Someday, maybe, the FAA might approve the AOPA and EAA request to allow pilots to self-certify and self-evaluate. But I'm not holding my breath this is going to happen in my flying lifetime.

I'm just hoping my flying lifetime extends beyond 17 days from now.

Videos that make you want to fly somewhere

One of these days I'm going to install a Go Pro camera in the RV-7A, although I don't know if I have the editing skills that some RVers have. Some videos just stand out and make you want to hop in the plane and fly somewhere.

Like this one.

The annual condition inspection

I took this week off from work and I'm doing the first annual condition inspection. It's been a lot of little things, none of which have added up to any great discoveries, which is good.

One of the things I've decided to do is a better job of organizing all of the various data -- like torque values -- that are needed in the course of starting at one end of the plane and working their way to the other. I'd save a lot of time with one master sheet instead of separate documents stored... somewhere.

It's amazing to me, for example, how difficult it is to find a simple torque value for spark plugs, let alone tips for installing and removing them.

Fortunately, I found this presentation this morning.

How to install aircraft sparkplugs from razdjp

For the love of aviation

You know, if you read the various online forums -- especially those concerning homebuilding -- there are a lot of people trying to divide aviators, by claiming that some other aspect of aviation isn't real aviation, or even grassroots aviation; that homebuilders are their own type of people.

That's nonsense. Utter nonsense.

Some videos make this point clear. Love of aviation is the only category that should matter.

Forget the ()&@*$ flaps!

Ugh. This is the sort of thing you hate to see.



It happened in North Carolina, the Salisbury Post reports, when a pilot was practicing touch and go's. The RV-9 flipped over. Fortunately, no fire.

“He was telling people there was something going wrong with flight controls. He had issues with his flaps. He said either they stuck or he had some problems with them,” the city's emergency services director said.

Maybe. We'll see.

But stuck flaps don't cause planes to crash or flip. And if you look at the above position, the flaps are evenly deployed, so they didn't separate, something that would have caused a crash.

In my transition training with Tom Berge, we had to do a go-around because of one of my botched approaches. Since I was use to flying either a Cessna 172 and a Warrior II, I was as concerned about bringing my flaps up as I was providing power and quickly adjusting trim to get back in the air. When I was first learning to fly, my CFI had said to me on a go-around, "you're not going to get out of this without raising your flaps."

But this is an RV and that's not at all the case.

As I concerned myself more with the flaps -- Tom had a switch on the stick to raise/lower flaps, which confused me badly -- we were drifting closer and closer to the trees on the side of the runway when he made perfectly clear, "don't worry about the flaps."

We landed, and went back to the runway and this time he had me take off with full flaps. We did. It was a non-event. His goal was to show me that it doesn't matter what position the flaps are in on takeoff; an RV is perfectly capable of climbing well into the traffic pattern no matter how they're set. Granted, that's not to say full flaps is at all idea for a go-around, but it is to say that your flap positioning is not something you should worry about or cause you to be distracted from flying the airplane.

I don't know what happened here. Whatever it is, it wasn't likely the flaps were the point of failure.

The regret of the 'no go' decision

Sometimes, I think I'm too risk-averse to be a pilot.

For the past six weeks, I've been planning a trip to Arizona with my youngest (25) son. We're both big Cleveland Indians fans and wanted to spend a couple of days watching the Tribe. My friend, Darwin Barrie, offered to put the RV-7A up at his airpark and give us his truck for the week to use.

And so began weeks of planning for the trip, which -- for me -- consists of six weeks of worrying, playing "what if?". I pored over the charts and established the best route. I consulted with Darwin on the best approach into Phoenix' airspace. I'd go to sleep at night thinking of the approach and memorizing every mile of the route, the fuel stops, and the time.

Last fall, I met a gentleman who was kayaking from the Northwest Angle of Minnesota to Key West. Daniel Alvarez started in June and hoped to reach Key West on New Year's Eve. He actually reached it last week. But when I talked to him at the time, I was planning a trip to Massachusetts. "I'm a little nervous about it," I admitted to him.

"If you're not a little nervous," he said, "you're not going far enough."

As I prepared for this trip, I heard his words. Constantly. The nervousness was fine, I told myself, because I'm going far enough. It's good.

About two weeks ago, the weather discussions at the National Weather Service regional sites (they reallyare very interesting and informative reads) began to encompass the departure weather -- today -- and more "worrying" as the "what ifs" grew to encompass every section of the route, weatherwise. What are my limits? What are my alternates? How prepared am I to make the no-go decision?

Of course, it's impossible to know for sure that far out what the weather will be, which necessitates more "what ifs."

Although a blizzard came through Minnesota yesterday, I was fairly confident we'd be able to get out of here this morning. (I'd already scrapped a Monday departure last week on the basis of the the weather data I'd been gathering for a week and analyzing every four or five hours). The gusty winds were to die down to about 20 knots this morning, I checked the airport yesterday and they'd done a good and quick job removing the blowing snow, and the sky was supposed to be scattered clouds at 2500 feet. It would be cold, but I was fairly sure we'd survive the three-hour trip in high headwinds to Lexington, Nebraska, our first fuel stop, and be able to get out of there before the winds were forecast to pick up there. The rest of the trip looked weather-good. I started dreaming about being one of those people who posts trip pictures on Van's Air Force.

I'd earlier been concerned about getting Patrick home in time for a shift he had scheduled on Sunday, and a test at school (he's in the nursing program) for Monday. So I bought a $550 refundable one-way ticket on Southwest from Phoenix to Minneapolis for Saturday for him, and figured if need be, I could stay in Phoenix for a few extra days and fly back alone. But at least he'd be back in time.

Otherwise, we'd plan to fly back on Friday, maybe Saturday if the weather was good from there to here.

He was excited for the trip, especially with temperatures here 20-30 degrees below normal for this time of year. All of Minnesota is experiencing seasonal disorder, as is custom, and a couple days of watching baseball was the perfect antidote. It would have been a fabulous flight down and a great experience between father and son to remember forever.
This is why I built an airplane.

I spent yesterday on final preparations for the plane, plugging in the engine heater, organizing what's staying and what's going, and trying to figure out how close to gross weight we'd be. As it turns out, I learned just how quickly two 170-pound pilots and baggage can exceed the 1800-pound limit on an RV-7A with a full load of fuel. It'd be close.

Late last evening, flight plans filed, plane ready, peanut-butter sandwiches and water packed, I made one last weather check before a go-no go decision, only to discover the weather discussions from the National Weather Service sites from the Texas panhandle (Dalhart, TX was a fuel stop) all the way to Minneapolis began mentioning precipitation and clouds for Thursday into the weekend, where they had mentioned none previously.

But it's impossible to know at this early stage what sorts of clouds and what kind of precipitation. Steady rain? Showers? Low clouds? High clouds? Clouds I can snake around or clouds that keep me on the ground? Clouds that might entice me to fly scud? There was no way to know for sure. Then I read that the two main computer models -- one from the U.S. and one from Europe -- disagreed on what might happen. The European model was suggesting the system would stall over the Dakotas through Monday. The U.S. model was suggesting it might not.

Now I had to make a decision: Which one to believe? In previous analysis of weather discussions, I felt the European computer models were more accurate, so I chose to believe them.

Then I thought about trying to fly home, and running into ice, or low clouds and not being able to find a way through. I started to think about Get Home-itis, when the urge to get home forces pilots to make bad decisions. I thought about forcing Patrick to get in a plane on Friday to try to make it home before things (maybe) got bad -- and then getting stranded in Kansas, with him missing his work shift and his test -- rather than waiting a day and putting him safely on an airliner, and I thought about me sitting in Phoenix waiting for springtime weather to be good from Phoenix to Minneapolis, paying for a motel, not getting back to work on time at a place that isn't as excited about what I do as it once seemed to be.

And then I called the trip off.

I called Patrick and told him. "It's OK," he said, although I knew it wasn't. He's already scheduled the days off. He'd already given his car away to his girlfriend to use because hers is on a bad tire. He'd already packed. He was looking forward to the experience, and somewhere along the trip, I was going to teach him the ins and outs of flying.

His goal on the trip was to play catch with his father on the hill beyond the right field at the Indians' park in Goodyear (even though they'd be on the road for the two games we'd watch, but the Reds play at the same park). "Don't forget to pack your glove and ball," he said a few days ago.

The day this morning dawned bright and sunny, though cold and windy. But it's a beautiful day to fly. "All that worry, and for what?" I said to myself as I set one foot out of the bed, and then another. My back was aching from yesterday's snow shoveling. I read the paper then sat in the rocking chair by the front window, bathing in the sun, and found myself thinking, "I'd be landing in Lexington right now."

And that's my punishment for the next few days. I'll watch the Indians game tomorrow and think "I'd be there right now," and even worse, I know my son will be doing that too. I will spend them wondering if I made a bad call.

Although I'm hoping a blizzard comes flying through the Plains on Friday on into Monday, it wouldn't surprise me if the weather turns out to be flyable, which will be an even greater punishment -- the knowledge that we could've done the trip and we missed out on a great experience. Together.

We're taught early in our flight training to use good judgment, and that many pilots have regretted trying to fly when they shouldn't.

But they don't tell you about the other kind of regret. The regret that maybe I was too cautious.

The regret that I missed one more game of catch with my son.

What it feels like to fly

(h/t: Flying Magazine)

Planning the great escape

We are in the middle of snow-boarding season up here in flyover country. It's waterboarding, basically, with snow. Every day, we get about an inch of snow -- which doesn't melt -- and suddenly you look out the window and realize there's two feet of snow on the ground and we've not had a single big storm. It's like death by a thousand paper cuts and it only serves to make winter longer than it really is. It makes you confess to crimes you didn't commit, if only to make it stop.

The ice and snow around the hangar is preventing N614EF from getting outside. I'm still working on getting the wheelpants gussied up now that the intersection fairings have been strengthened and improved. The engine preheating system has been installed, although now I wonder if it was worth it if I can't get the plane out to fly, and what I believe was a bad #1 EGT probe from Grand Rapids Technology has now been replaced ($36), but I can't start the engine to see if it's fixed the problem.

I still need to get up in the air to take video of the Tru Trak wing leveler to send to TT to figure out why it won't track the flight plan in the Garmin 296, but apparently that will have to wait.

So what does an RV pilot do during these times? Plans an escape.

My son, Patrick, and I -- both big Cleveland Indians fans, are planning a trip to the Phoenix area to watch the Tribe play some spring baseball.

I've never flown a plane outside Minnesota. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I've ever flown a plane for more than 2 or 3 hours, so this is a big deal for us.

My pal, Darwin Barrie, has offered to put the plane up at his airpark in Chandler, so this week I gathered all the charts and books to begin planning the trip. It appears the first refueling stop will be in Lexington, Nebraska (on the Kansas border), the second will be in Dalhart, TX, and then we'll try to put some air underneath us to get up over the mountains, probably stopping for a load of fuel in Saint John's Industrial, about an hour outside of Phoenix.

Assuming good VFR weather, none of that bothers me too much -- except for the question of whether we'll have enough oxygen in the bottle . But Phoenix airspace? Man, it looks difficult.

First, you've got mountains to the East to get over, and then you've got to drop altitude -- a lot of altitude -- to get under the Class B. It's obviously doable, but should be a challenge, and I'm not sure all the examining of charts really prepares you as much as one should be prepared.

Here, for example, is the Phoenix VFR flyway map.



It doesn't look simple, but it looks manageable.

Here's what it looks like in real life:



It'd be a lot easier, Phoenix, if you'd paint a big blue stripe across yourself.

I'll be on the phone with Darwin this week looking for advice.

Maybe I don't really have an airplane

In the January 2013 issue of EAA's Sport Aviation magazine, Budd Davisson wrote a really nice piece about my struggle to build the RV-7A.



But in the process, a picture of the wrong airplane slipped through (I failed to catch it when Budd sent me a list of pictures they were considering for the article) and, instead, a picture of Gary Speketer's very nice RV-10 ran instead.

In this week's February issue, the problem was rectified by publishing yet another picture of Gary's airplane.



It's a good issue, though, as usual. Find it here. Just select February 2013.