Slick does it again

I'm not sure I'm ever going to get around to writing up my Oshkosh trip report; on the whole, my experience wasn't much different than others, other than I flew into the dogfight orderly flow at Ripon for the first time.

So maybe we'll just do what we've done in previous years, and let Slick Hutto put the exclamation point on Oshkosh. Because he's done it again.



Update: And now, the "10 minutes of AirVenture" series begins:

The ballooner

One of the neat moments I had at Oshkosh this year was meeting Noah Forden of Rhode Island. As it so happened, he was camping just a short way from us in the homebuilt-camping section.

Noah is a ballooner and also owns an RV-7. But a big balloon doesn't fit in an RV, so he built a smaller balloon.



So you get cool views like this (pictures courtesy of Noah):

And this:

All from this:

RV Aerobatics at Oshkosh

But not by me, of course.

Home from Oshkosh

I think every pilot has a common theme: To one day fly into Oshkosh.

Thanks to my pal, Brad Benson, that happened for me on Thursday when we flew in. I will be putting together a long post on the days we spent there soon but one of the benefits of doing this -- especially with someone in the right seat who's done it before -- it it provides a great confidence boost.

We left this morning. Sunday is pretty abandoned at Oshkosh so you'll just have to imagine about 50 times as many planes floating around as what you see here, but this is a good tour of the taxi from homebuilt camping down to Runway 18.



Tomorrow I have another doctor's appointment and some new gizmo has arrived from Medtronic. I'm feeling great and I'm ready to get to work giving the FAA what they need to get my renewal.

I just flew into the busiest airport in the world; I can fly anywhere.

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.