TALESPINNERS - November, 2001

To OSH Or Bust
by Terry Taylor
Cardinal RG

This was my second year to attend Oshkosh. Last year I drove, and in April this year I finally found a nice Cardinal RG, so I decided I would fly it up there. I’ve listened to the stories getting in and out of there, so, needless to say, I was wondering if I could or should make the trip, especially by myself. Amazingly enough, many people think that because one flies the big commercial airplanes, one can fly the GA airplanes as a piece of cake. Not so. It’s a different world and I’m still learning, and always will be.

I departed I69 on Sunday morning with flight visibility right at 3 miles. My navigator is a Garmin 250XL panel mount VFR GPS unit, and I was headed straight for the southern end of Lake Michigan. I picked up flight following and climbed to 10,500. I’ve never been that high before in the Cardinal, but it was nice and smooth and TAS was right at 140 Kts. That would be a good altitude to keep me above the ORD Class B, and yet close enough to the shoreline to glide if I had an engine problem.

Feeling hunky dory and enjoying the autopilot coupled to the GPS and the altitude hold, I started looking for my OSH NOTAM book to program RIPON and FISK and review the arrival procedures and frequencies one more time. I looked and looked and dug into my suitcase and flight kit, and just couldn’t find it. RATS! I wasn’t about to go in there without the book so I started looking for a place to land that might have the NOTAM. Listening to ASOS, AWOS, and ATIS, I soon realized that the vis was terrible down below. I heard everything from a quarter of a mile to 2 miles. Jeez! I picked Warsaw, IN, since the vis was reported at 2 miles and made my descent fussing all the way about not being able to find that NOTAM. The vis at Warsaw was greater as I saw the airport with 4 miles still showing on the GPS and landed OK. Fortunately, there was an elderly couple in the flight planning room with a Maule and the lady had the NOTAM book. Also, there was a copy machine right behind her, so I lucked out. Twenty minutes later, I was climbing back up to 10,500 with more flight following.

I knew RIPON would be busy so I was clearing like crazy. I saw one other airplane off to my left, so thinking that I had the right-a-way I kept going watching to see if he agreed with my assessment. He maneuvered and fell in behind me. I was thinking RWY 27 the whole time, then as I passed over FISK I was given a right turn to due East to follow the road for a left base to 36L. GADS! It was OK, I suppose, and I switched to tower. I’m used to last minute runway changes anyway. They cleared me to land, but to watch for a Stearman on a right base to 36R. We were nose to nose on base and we both made a formation rollout to 36L and 36R. I made sure I wasn’t going to overshoot, and I made darn sure he didn’t as well. I cleared the runway as soon as I could, and then taxied, seemingly, forever up to the north side near Basler.

The return was a little more exciting. I planned to return to I69 the following Saturday, but the weather was better for a Friday or a Sunday flight home. I wasn’t pushed that much, so I went with the original plan and left early Saturday morning planning to get as far as I could that day. After takeoff, I had no gear up light. Well, I didn’t want to get run over by any of the other aircraft leaving, so I left it alone until I was well away from the field. The Cardinal was flying just fine, and I didn’t see any gear hanging through the under wing mounted mirror. Later, I realized that the cat’s eye on the light had been twisted by one of my friends checking out the airplane. Shame on me for not preflighting that light.

I cruised at 2500 feet because of the clouds overhead, and later climbed to 3000 to get over the Aurora Class D. I checked Flight Watch a couple of times and the weather was stinko in Cincy. Somewhere over Indiana, I called the Center and tried to pick up an IFR clearance. He sent me over to IND Approach, which sent me back to Center. Then Center sent me back to approach, which sent me back yet again to Center. Center was going to send me back yet a third time when I put a stop to that yo-yo business which amounted to a conflict as to who owned the airspace I was in. I gave him the necessary IFR information, and he then said standby. I was patient for about 10 minutes with the scud starting to build underneath me and I was going in and out of light rain. I then started changing my navigation to a sequence of airports along my way knowing that I could still land VFR. Richmond was still OK and then I aimed for Butler County. I asked Indy again for the clearance and that was when I got the ‘either land and file an IFR flight plan, or call FSS’. If I could have reached through the mic cord and grabbed him by the neck…! He should have told me that a lot sooner.

I finally called Cincy Approach as my VMC was running out. They picked me up, finally, and gave me a vector to I69. I was getting into solid rain now, and IMC. He asked if I wanted the NDB to 22, and I said that I wanted the VOR-B. The ADF doesn’t work in my airplane. I flew the VOR for the first time ever and worked my way down to minimums with my option for a missed approach over to Lunken for the ILS. I barely saw the field at minimums and then circled around for Rwy 4. In the circle, I even remembered to cancel my flight plan. As most of us are in these situations, I was glad to be down on the ground. I taxied to the hangar and put the bird to bed and made the hot dog scene at Sporty’s just in time.

Was this fun? Yes. Did I gain valuable experience? Yes. Was I overloaded? No, not at all. Did I have options for backup plans? Absolutely, and I was ready in case anything happened. Different people have varying levels of comfort – some very conservative, and yet others on the cavalier side. I tend to be in the middle somewhere depending on the situation and circumstances. I had a great time at OSH this year, and I’m already looking forward to next year.
 

Electrical System Problem
by Gary Collins

I was returning from a family reunion in Michigan on my way to the last two days of the Annual Cessna 170 Association meeting which was held in Shelbyville, IN this year. The weather was not bad but not good either. A stalled front lay across the southern Michigan border with visabilities reported in the 1-3 mile range with scud making a variable ceiling of 500 to 1500 feet. These conditions were not uniform and in some places there were no clouds or scud, just the thick haze. The bad area was only about 50 miles wide. Conditions were good VFR at departure in central Michigan and Shelbyville was the same but their forecast was for possible afternoon thunderstorms. I climbed to 8,500 which put me on top of the haze from where I could still see down and headed SSW. There was lots of radio chatter on FSS and Unicom regarding the weather in southern Michigan.

After I was past Lansing, I called FSS to check on weather along my route to Shelbyville. It took a while to get my turn with the briefer as he was busy. I held my heading noting that I was past the front and downward visibility was better. The briefer said weather was better on to the south but a line of thunderstorms was forming in western Indiana moving SW. I was showing 60 minutes to Shelbyville and he estimated the storms would get there in about 90 minutes. Things were getting interesting.

Since I had been talking on the radio for several minutes I took a good scan of the panel. The voltmeter was pegged high-above 16 volts. I pulled the circuit breaker I had installed in the alternator field circuit for just such a problem and the voltage dropped to 12.7 volts. There is not much to do in a 170 to get rid of electrical demand. I turned off the strobe light and my second radio. So there I was with an electrical problem and racing a line of thunderstorms into the airport in Shelbyville.

It was time to change plans. I set the GPS for home and turned to a new SSE heading and climbed to 9,500. The voltage slowly dropped to 11 volts and I reset the circuit breaker. The voltage went to 14.3 and the amps went way up for a while and slowly returned to zero. When the amps reached zero the voltmeter would start going up and be pegged in less than 10 seconds and I would pull the circuit breaker again. I repeated this cycle several times in the next hour. The weather was not making me feel any better either. A low layer of clouds was gradually forming and by Grand Lake I could no longer see the ground. I tried Lunken ATIS and was surprised to be able to get it that far away. They were giving 2500 scattered and 10 miles so I stayed at my altitude. But the clouds below got thicker and began to rise. Small build-ups that went above 9,500 began to pop up. They were not numerous and it was easy to fly around them. Lunken kept reporting scattered clouds but I was not able to see the ground. I was showing 14 miles out from Hutchinson International when I finally saw a hole which led me down near Kings Island and sure enough there was 10 miles visibility as I flew on to my landing strip. So I considered the components of the electrical system. What failed? The Concorde RG 25XC battery was only 14 months old and my last one had lasted 6 years. The alternator conversion had been made before I bought the plane in 1987 and was not in the logbook so I do not really know how old it is. I assume the voltage regulator was installed at the same time. It seemed like a voltage regulator problem to me and I happened to have a spare one. I installed it and it performed exactly like the first. So I ordered a new electronic voltage regulator. The instructions that came with it said to check the resistance of the alternator field and if it was zero, not to install the regulator. Get the alternator fixed first. Well, my old cheap meter measured the resistance of the alternator field coil as zero so I removed the alternator which is not an easy job.

I also ordered an overhauled alternator from Aerotech of Louisville. Tammy's dad is an old Buick mechanic and he wanted to see the old alternator. He did some fast testing with a continuity light, pulled it apart and looked at the brushes and slip rings-and said, "I don't think there is anything wrong with it." He had never seen a gear driven alternator but everything else looked familiar to him. He asked about the battery and I told him it was nearly new. I borrowed a digital meter and rechecked the resistance of the field coil. This meter showed 10.5 ohms indicating that the alternator
was probably OK.

By now the new alternator had arrived and I decided to install it on general principles as I did not know the history of the one in the plane. I also pulled out the battery and took it to Aero Battery in Newtown where I bought it and they tested it. Sure enough it had a bad cell. So now I have a new alternator, a new voltage regulator and a new battery. Aero Battery prorated the battery so I did not have to pay full price for it.

At the next annual I plan to replace all the wiring in this system as the insulation on the wires in the engine compartment is getting cracked in places. Howard does not like the looks of the wires so I covered them with heat shrink tubing for the present. The same wires on the cockpit side of the firewall look fine. While moving the gear to the new alternator I installed new rubber bushings in the coupling so the unit is completely up to date.

The new alternator arrived with a new gasket that looked different from the old one but I used it anyway and that was another mistake-but that is another story. Suffice to say I am getting good at removing and installing an alternator on a C-145 engine. Getting educated can be expensive and time consuming at times. On a brief test flight, the electrical system seemed to work fine and there was less noise in my radio than I have had in years. I hope it is fixed for many years.
 

Fly-Out to Middlesboro, KY
by Scott Hersha

Saturday, October 27th was the day of our chapter fly out to Middlesboro, Kentucky to visit the Lost Squadron P-38 museum. The day started out a little cold and overcast, but with a forecast for good VFR weather all day. Middlesboro is in southeastern Kentucky right on the Kentucky/Tennessee border. Present for the fly out were: Gary Collins, Lee Jewell, Don Reasoner, Eric Rood, and Terry Taylor with their airplanes and Norm Beaudette, Bob Porter, Mark Webb, and myself as passengers from our chapter. Eric also brought along a guest from Columbus who's name escapes me. In fact there may be important details about this awesome museum/project that escape me as I wasn't taking notes and was mostly interested in just looking at the airplane.

The flight down was a little longer than anything we've done before as a chapter. It was approximately 150 NM. Flight time ranged from just over an hour for Don and Bob in Don's RV-6 to about 2 hours for Lee and I in Lee's Citabria. The flight down and back was really cool in the Citabria (no rear seat heat) with the wonderful visibility you have in a Citabria, looking at all the fall colors in the foothills of southeastern Kentucky. Middlesboro is a picture postcard town situated in a valley surrounded by hills or 'mountains' that rise about 2,000 feet all the way around this pretty little town.

The museum is a hangar located on the field that houses the P-38 and a small area for selling artifacts and memorabilia to raise money and a seating area to watch a video explaining the recovery/restoration of the aircraft. From what I can remember there was a squadron of P-38's and a couple of bombers making an ocean crossing in 1942. They were forced down in Greenland (due to weather I think) and had to abandon their airplanes. Fast-forward to present day. A wealthy Kentuckian, who's name I also don't remember having arrived a little late, decides to fund a recovery effort to bring back one of the P-38's. By now they were buried under 267 feet of the frozen stuff, which seems to be about as buried as you can get. However, desire and ingenuity are powerful forces, especially if you have a lot of money the throw at it too ($600,000.00 plus, just to bring it up). And bring it up they did a piece at a time. The entire airplane in pieces was brought to Middlesboro where a group of skilled craftsmen basically rebuilt the entire airplane, engines and all. The airframe parts were in much worse shape than they thought they'd be so much of the airplane had to be fabricated from raw stock. It is a work of art and it will fly next summer. The museum is open 7 days a week and is free (donations accepted and encouraged).

For the flight home Norm and I switched seats to gain experience in different types of planes. Well, actually, Norm was just being his usual kind self and allowing me to get home a little sooner to spend time with my son who was home from college for the weekend. I rode with Terry in his beautifully painted Cardinal RG. What a comfortable, smooth ride. The visibility out of a Cardinal is also very good and Terry just flipped on his autopilot with GPS tracking and altitude hold and we sat back, talked, and watch the colorful landscape. This was one of my favorite fly outs and I think we might want to consider returning in the spring when they are getting ready to fly their magnificent P-38.
 

FOR SALE - HOMEBUILDER TABLES

Don Horne - A previous member has the following for sale:

If you're interested, please call Paul Bowden for details @ 777-3969.

Official 2002 Ballot – Cincinnati EAA Chapter 174 Elections

Select one candidate for each office, or write in an alternate choice.

Vice President
□ Tim Fry
□ Mike Griffith
□ Other: _____________________________

Secretary
□ Norm Beaudette
□ Tom Jenkins
□ Other: _____________________________

Treasurer
□ Dave Robertson
□ Art West
□ Other: _____________________________
 

Absentee ballots: If you don’t think you’ll be attending the November election meeting, please fill in and send the above ballot in a sealed envelope to Norm Beaudette (see roster for address). Please write your name on the outside of the envelope but not on the ballot itself. Only ballots received before the meeting will be counted. Sealed ballots will be opened and tabulated only during the election process.
(Ballots will also be distributed at the meeting.)