How I helped give a guy an airplane

The mission was clear: Quickly get to know a Litchfield resident I'd never met before, figure out a way to get into the passenger seat of his airplane on one particular Sunday when he might not be interested in flying and coordinate an air rendezvous with a refurbished 1963 Debonair airplane at which time Steve Lagergren, 43, would be told he had won the airplane.

The request came from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), the largest association of general aviation pilots, of which Lagergren and I are both members.

Every year the AOPA rescues a down-on-its-luck airplane and extensively overhauls it over the course of a year and then awards it to one of its members. But we didn't want a run-of-the-mill surprise; we wanted to do something different. We wanted him to find out while he was flying his small airplane.

I didn't really have an idea how to pull off an air-to-air surprise, but then I found that Lagergren built his own airplane -- an RV-7, the same model I built.

Then I enlisted these people in the ruse -- a small group of pilots of planes each built themselves.



Out of the blue, I called Lagergren and told him our group throws a dart at a map of Minnesota each week, visits the airport and treats the people we find there to lunch. Lagergren, an engineer at Hutchinson Technology, warmed to the idea quickly and even suggested a short hop over to Winsted, home of an active parachuting squadron.

"Yahtzee!" I thought. While we're at Winsted, the giveaway elves could swoop into his home airport in Litchfield.

But how to get into his passenger seat, from where I could shoot video and capture the moment of his surprise?

I told him that I'm not comfortable with landing an airplane on a grass strip (which I'm not) and since Winsted is a grass runway, I could fly with him instead.

The co-conspirators launched out of Fleming Field in South St. Paul on Sunday morning at 10, about an hour after the AOPA crowd landed from an early morning flight from Fredrick, Maryland to Anoka, where they would wait for me to tell them we'd left the airport in Litchfield to fly over to Winsted and watch parachutists jump out of perfectly fine airplanes. Then they'd swoop in and transform the small airport into a real air show.

When our crew of six small planes landed at Litchfield, it was clear Lagergren was still puzzled by our appearance. "How did you get my name?" he said. An expert liar, I told him we merely checked the FAA aviation database to see if there are homebuilt-airplanes on the airports we visit.

Then he noted that there was no parachute jumping at Winsted today because of the weather, but mentioned he had homebuilding friend in Hutchinson. With the battle plan already not surviving its first contact with the enemy, we piled in the planes -- I in the passenger seat of Lagergren's plane -- and headed to Hutchinson.

Once we were off the ground, we sent a signal to Anoka to let everyone know to move in to Litchfield, and and AOPA president Mark Baker, a Minnesota native, called Lagergren's wife, so that the whole family could be at the airport for the moment of our return.

Here's what was going on behind the scenes while we were trying to pull this off:




In Hutchinson, I took Lagergren's friend aside and told him what we were up to, and enlisted yet another co-conspirator, which worked out well because he had an airplane project in Winsted, and I'd previously arranged with the pilot of the airplane to be given away to rendezvous between Winsted and Litchfield. He would circle the field in Winsted and meet up with us when we departed. That plan would only work if we actually were in Winsted.

We again jumped in our planes and headed to Winsted. This might work, yet.

We visited a beautiful restoration of an old Waco...



Then departed Winsted. I could see the giveaway-airplane circling well off in the distance. But we had a problem. Lagergren's plane was outracing the Debonair. And, besides, it's very hard to spot -- let alone fly alongside -- another airplane.

Here's the entire video from the moment at which Horne asks Lagergren to slow down, with Lagergren believing that the person who was calling him was one of our South St. Paul co-conspirators. It gave me the opportunity to quickly come up with even more lies.



The AOPA website picks up the story from there.

"I'm Mark Baker from AOPA and I'm here to present you with your new airplane," he said on the multicom frequency, 122.9 MHz.

"Yeah, that's a good one," Lagergren replied, dismissing the statement as a joke.

"It's also true."

There was a long pause before Lagergren keyed the microphone again.

"Unbelievable—I love that airplane!" he said as reality sunk in. I've got to calm down a little bit to land. Oh my gosh."

"It was a total surprise," said Lagergren, 43. "There were a few things going on that seemed unusual in retrospect, but I never suspected this."

The Lagergren family—wife Dawn and daughters Nora, 12, and Holly, 10—was listening to the exchange on the radio base station at the Litchfield airport, and the girls giggled as they heard their dad figure out the secret they had learned that morning. (Baker had called Dawn Lagergren at 9:35 a.m. to tell her the good news and invite her and her daughters to be at the airport when the airplane was awarded. They also brought about a dozen friends to see the handover.)

"It was a total surprise," said Lagergren, 43. "There were a few things going on that seemed unusual in retrospect, but I never suspected this."

Frankly, I was worried in the planning that we had two problems: (a) Steve is an engineer and (b) Steve is a Minnesotan. The chances of a big reaction were slim. But he didn't disappoint us and once on the ground, Lagergren was reunited with his family, got the keys to a new airplane and enjoyed an airshow put together by AOPA.


A more produced video will be made available on the AOPA website later this week.

I can't stop looking at it

There's no reason for this post at all other than to relay that the "I can't believe I built that" feeling never goes away with an RV airplane.

Three days of Oshkosh

A year or so ago at this time, there wasn't much chance I'd ever fly to Oshkosh as pilot-in-command. My well-documented medical woes seemed to preclude much flying at all.

But I got my medical back in mid-June and after some refresher training, I was ready to go.

These two guys -- sons Sean and Patrick -- were there when the first parts of the plane arrived in 2001. Their signatures (I made everyone sign a part they worked on ) are all over the innards of N614EF.b



So last Thursday, my youngest son, Patrick, and I set out in the RV-7A from South St. Paul.



It was a hazy flight, thanks to the fires in the Pacific Northwest, and there were plenty of clouds. We went on top. But about 20 miles from Black River Falls, it looked like things were thickening.



Patrick wants to learn to fly and I want to be a good role model. I could've pressed forward. Instead, I suggested we divert to Winona (MN) and assess things. I passed along the old saying, "better to be on the ground wanting to be in the air than in the air wanting to be on the ground."

Winona is an old-time airport that has seen its best days. We bought some fuel at a ridiculous price since the plane was aft loaded with camping gear and this would prevent me from having to buy fuel at Oshkosh, which -- as it turns out -- was a good 40 cents a gallon cheaper than Winona.



"Sorry I'm not more hospitable," the owner of the FBO said as we walked in while his helper took 20 minutes to process the credit card purchase, "but I'm beat." Selling $60 worth of fuel can take a lot out of you in Winona.



I called flight service and found that, indeed, things were thick in central Wisconsin (this is bog country) but a single PIREP gave me hope when it reported that the clouds "were breaking up nicely" over Wautoma, not too far from the Fisk approach. So we launched.

The arrival was OK, not great. We slipped in behind a Cherokee that couldn't do the 90 knots required and when we got close enough to get caught in his prop wash, we decided to bag the approach. Turning back toward Green Lake, though, we spied a long line of planes coming from all directions. My expletives probably didn't make Patrick any more comfortable.


We eventually found a place to slip in and ran the approach again. We were assigned 36R and it seemed we got the one controller working his first Oshkosh. He was well behind things and struggling to catch up. He didn't make it.

A plane decided to pass us on base and proceeded to turn final just ahead of us -- thanks, pal. Great airmanship! -- and while I expected a controller to notice, he didn't. He was concerned about an amphib above us heading to 36L while I was turning base for 36R, the taxiway that becomes a runway during AirVenture.

"RV on final for 36R," I announced, because it was clear the controller wasn't going to give me clearance to land because he'd stopped paying any attention to us, if he'd ever started.

A few minutes later, we were tied down in homebuilt camping.





We did the usual Oshkosh things.

We checked in with Jerry.



And stopped by to see Bernie Ockuly and the Metro Warbirds crew.



And watched the airshows, of course.



I, of course, checked out the various polished aircraft on the field. They were beautiful.





I liked mine better.



We had a great time one evening sitting with the EAA Radio folks. And on our last evening I did a quick interview about getting my medical back. "I could tell this story by now," my exasperated son said. He'd heard me tell the story dozens of times to people who stopped by the plane. But they asked.



But Patrick had to work Friday night, so on Friday morning we left the tent and tie-downs behind, and headed home. See you later, Oshkosh.



We were about 25 miles out of Oshkosh when I pulled my cellphone out to see if I could detect weather on the Garmin Pilot app (I couldn't). "Oh, (**&@@*&^, " Patrick said. "I left my cellphone charging outside the showers."

Nothing we could do but set a course for Green Lake and fly the Fisk approach again to get it. Patrick flew it and flew it expertly and it worked out well because we got on-the-ball controllers all the way down. We again got 36R assigned for us, which required the jets landing on 36L underneath us to throw on some smoke so we could see them. No big deal.

I taxied back to HBC and kept the engine running while Patrick went to get his phone. He hopped back in and we departed again for home without incident.

"Nice paint job," the controller said as he cleared us to depart on 36.

But we'd used so much fuel that by the time I landed in South St. Paul, well, let's just say it didn't take much to keep the nosewheel off the ground while rolling out.

We filled up the gas tanks and pushed it back into the hangar...



... because the next morning, my oldest son, Sean, and I set out for Oshkosh.



We had a great Fisk arrival -- our third -- and an hour and 47 minutes after we started the engine in South St. Paul, we stopped it in Oshkosh.



Sean primarily wanted to see the night airshow, but we had some time to walk around.

To visit Jerry, for example.



And Sean found the perfect spot to get some shut-eye from the early morning start.



Sean always liked it when they blow stuff up, so the night airshow was perfect.



Sunrise in Oshkosh on Sunday. Time to go.



We were ready for engine start at 9 a.m. "Got your cellphone?" I asked Sean. He did. We were in the air after about 15 minutes.

And approaching South St. Paul by 10:30 or so.



There were lots of people I didn't see. Lots of things I didn't do. But I accomplished the one thing I wanted to do: Take two boys who were there from the start, to the place to where we always wanted to fly.

Mission accomplished.

Removing the rust

I got a special issuance from the FAA last week (it only took five days after my exam down at the Mayo Clinic) and I'm back in the air.

I've never been the most confident pilot in the world; I owe that, I think, to the fact I blew my checkride many years ago and it often feels like I've spent all the years since proving that was a fluke. Maybe it was; maybe it wasn't. It is what it is.

In my more than year off from flying pilot-in-command (PIC), I didn't fly that much. Brad Benson and I flew to Oshkosh. We took a trip to Eau Claire for a breakfast or two. And, of course, we had a flight up to Hibbing one night which ended with a really poor landing.

During the period of inactivity, my flight review expired, so I needed to get that taken care of. Even in my low self-esteem (pilot wise), I thought that this wouldn't be a problem. I mean, gee, how tough can it be to fly a plane? It's like riding a bike.

This is the same philosophy I used to approach ever spring with when I played golf regularly. Never having broken 100, I would assume that every spring, my golf game would have repaired itself over the winter. It never did, of course. So I gave up playing golf.

Joe Coraggio, my flying pal who has been treating N614EF to the occasional stroll during my inactivity, is a CFI, so he graciously volunteered to get me back flying again. Joe, just hired on by US Air (or Airways, I always forget which), is an unbelievably great pilot. He's one of those guys who merely straps the wings to himself; he's that smooth.

He lives in Inver Grove Heights, MN., but is based out of Phoenix, so the fact he even takes the time shows you also what a great guy he is.

Saturday dawned with a forecast of low ceilings, improving by 10 a.m., but with the prospect of gusty winds, pretty much 90 degrees to the runway. So I wasn't optimistic that flying was going to happen. But it turned out to be a great morning and while the winds were outside my "comfort zone," Joe made clear that he could handle the crosswinds if I couldn't, so we launched.

We did some stalls that weren't bad. Some steep turns that weren't awful, and then he pulled power for an emergency landing.

An emergency landing in central Minnesota is nothing to worry about, really. There are plenty of flat fields and dirt roads.

See? Just pick one!



I picked my landing spot which I selected because I didn't trust the green fields with all the rain we've had, and there was a nice wheat patch next to a country road, which didn't have any utility poles along side it, as it turned out, and would've been a better choice. I came up short, when we put the power back in.

You see, there was this 20 knot headwind I'd neglected to consider.

In the real deal, we probably would've been OK. There was a soybean field that was survivable. But still.

We headed over to Red Wing, whose 27/9 runway was slightly better oriented to the wind (blowing about 220 with gusts to 17 knots) than South Saint Paul's 16/34.

Of the seven landings, six were just stupid. Too fast, too unsmooth in the pattern and -- worst of all -- flaring far too high. Why? The biggest problem is I appear to have forgotten to look far enough down the runway.

Flying is a humbling experience. Landing after landing, I knew what I needed to do. I just wasn't doing it, and while the winds and particular geographic features that roil it were a factor, they were nowhere near as big a factor as the guy in the left seat.

We went back out again on Sunday, a typical summer day in the Twin Cities, with significant turbulence and crosswinds, and ridiculously hot weather.

The landings were better; but not much better. Poor technique in the pattern, poor crosswind management, and -- get this -- flaring far too early.

None of this should be terribly surprising to me. It's not as if I didn't know that when you don't fly, your skills erode. And I'm lucky to have Joe around to push me toward higher standards and better technique. Eventually, I'll get it right.

But it's a blow to the ego and, frankly, it's pretty embarrassing. You just don't like to suck when there's a real pilot in the right seat.

Besides, if I enjoyed frustration and embarrassment, I'd dig out the golf clubs.

The paint job redux

One more air shot, with pilot Joe Coraggio at the controls. Photo by RV-8 driver Darryl Zook.

I built that gorgeous airplane!

All during the time I was building, people kept telling me, "don't worry, paint covers a multitude of sins."

I could've lived a more sinful 11 years, apparently, because Midwest Aircraft Refinishers has completed the paint project, they told me today. And it's beautiful!







I still have to figure out how to get up to Hibbing to pick it up. Because I still don't have a medical, it'll take two people to fly it home, which means we need two planes to go get it. Who's up for a flight to Hibbing?

If you need more information about the guys at Midwest, don't hesitate to contact me.

Go around, you fool!

This video is getting plenty of attention, today.



It happened in Germany and most of the news outfits are noting that he almost landed on a sunbather.

Not mentioned is he also nearly slammed into posts at the end of the runway.  Somehow, his wheels were nicely spaced and he was still high enough that it didn't clip his wings.

Now, at some point, the guy had to know he was short of the runway. I mean, how hard is this to figure out at a reasonably altitude?

None of the articles on it mentioned whether the pilot got behind the power curve, only that he "didn't see" the guy on the beach.

The painting of N614EF

It's been almost two months, since we dropped off the RV-7A in Hibbing. Not being able to fly (at least as PIC), and still needing to put a few bucks together to pay for as much of it as possible without adding to the outstanding loan on it, I told the great guys at Midwest Aircraft Refinishing to take all the time they needed to get it done.

But, I admit to being a little antsy about seeing the final product, of course, and George Virnig was good enough to send along some pictures.

Here's how it looked a couple of days ago:

There was a time when I considered painting the plane myself. I bought a larger air compressor than I really needed for construction. I bought the EAA book from Ron Alexander on how to paint your own plane. But I slowly came to realize that I couldn't possibly do anything dumber. I don't have the patience for the prep work that's required, I don't have the equipment or facilities, and I sure as heck don't have the expertise.

Not like the guys in Hibbing do.

Need proof?  Here's what George sent me today...

For reference, let's go back to the original design.

Things seem to be coming together nicely. I have an FAA physical next Thursday and pretty soon I'll have a determination whether I can get a special issuance to fly again.

A lot of people have asked me, "is the plane still for sale?"  Ask me next Thursday.

Paint update

The good folks at Midwest Aircraft Refinishing are about ready to start shooting paint on N614EF.

I heard from George Virnig today with some questions that came up as they were laying out the paint lines for the transition from the paint to the polished aluminum.

The fiberglass fairing on the vertical stabilizer/horizontal stabilizer presents some challenges. George said the original design didn't follow the line on the fairing and he felt it would look better if it did.

Sold.  I don't really have a huge emotional investment in the design. Like so many other things on the project, I rely on the expertise of others. George and his crew know more about paint and design than I do, and I'm willing to let their expertise guide the outcome.

That's what makes me a natural born leader, you see. :*)

Here's some pictures.

By the way, next month, the Twin Cities RV Builders Group is going to have a get-together and display all the RVs that have been painted at Midwest. Hopefully, I'll be one of them, but I'm still not sure I want to park next to this beauty that stopped over to Eau Claire on Saturday for breakfast. It belongs to Bernie Weiss. My guess is I've got 403-B's with less value than what this cost.