My first winter in Oregon came and went. The weather’s been fairly nice leading into spring, or at least my surroundings look just as they did in Washington, so I feel right at home and often forget I jumped states. Many aspects of my life are different and yet things feel the same—and yet better. Comfortable. I still work with the same people and Brian still calls me to chat every time he hops in his Jeep, even when he’s headed home for lunch. “You realize you’ll see me in five?” I’ll ask. “So the stabilator…” he’ll continue, disregarding my subtle nudge to postpone the RV-15 talk until after I’ve eaten.

I don’t leave the house a whole lot—a major aid in my recent increase in comfort. I buckled into my car the other day only to find the battery was dead. “I didn’t want to leave anyway,” I smirked, crawling up the stairs to return to my sweatpants or, in my case, work pants. The same image was drawn three weeks later, a jump-start occurring somewhere in between. Oops!

Brian and I spent the past few months indoors, ripping down wallpaper and making things pretty. I haven’t gotten to fully take advantage of our hangar because there currently aren’t any projects in there for me to work on, so there were a handful of days where I forgot where we live—that there’s a runway out there. One day I found a plastic bag in our crawl space that read Cleveland Brakes under a fine layer of dust. “What are the odds!” I thought, before remembering the previous owners were airplane nuts too. A short while later Brian tossed a Basler Aircraft keychain down from the attic. High. The odds are high.

My People

As you know, there are many general aviation businesses in Oregon and with that a large number of airparks nestled between cities, crawling with homebuilders. It’s a short drive from here to Rob Hickman’s house, where his children and I steal beer he brews in his hangar. He makes it using an all-grain process just like the pros, not with extract, which is the more common method among home brewers because the all-grain method requires more specialized equipment. Speaking of special equipment, Rob couldn’t help himself and added some automation driven off of an AF-5000 prototype EFIS, complete with a 3D-printed bezel. On nice days we hang out in the driveway and Greg Hughes, another member of the Van’s Aircraft crew, wanders over to chat. All are based at a grass strip called Dietz Airpark, which lies just to the east of Aurora’s Class D boundaries.

How many airports in this part of the world? If you drew a circle with a 40-mile radius centered on Portland International, there would be more than 50—yes, five-oh—airports inside it. Some are sleepy farmer’s fields that don’t see much activity. Some, like Hillsboro and McMinnville (home of the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum and the Spruce Goose), are overflowing with training activity when the weather permits. On a sunny weekend day, the patterns are packed.

My airpark is pretty sleepy in comparison. There are fewer active pilots than at Dietz and not many people fly in to sample the crabgrass. When I am serenaded by that familiar engine sound it’s almost always the one and only high-wing RV followed by a low-wing one. Van’s test pilot Axel Alvarez and Brian chase each other to “collect data” while I peer out my east-facing window and enter yet another purchase order. “All work and no play,” I’ll say to the cats who have no idea their owners have hobbies that don’t pertain to them and who can’t appreciate the desire to replace the computer keyboard with a control stick most every day.

Axel flew the RV-15 over on one of his few unaccompanied flights. I stood in my lawn and watched him execute a handful of simulated engine-outs on either end of the runway since winds were calm. This was my first time seeing the -15 in action and I must say, I want one. Brian’s landing gear looked great—perfect for the grass runway our 95-year-old neighbor sometimes lets get a little tall. (We cut him some slack.) From my vantage point, the airplane sure looked slow on approach and stopped quickly. Our runway is 2200 feet long and all I can say is, Axel certainly didn’t need much of it.

The Van’s employees aren’t the only ones having fun around here. Marc Cook and I went up in his GlaStar a couple times so I could knock out my required six instrument approaches for currency. He played safety pilot while I got used to slowing down a slippery airplane with a fixed-pitch propeller—the trickiest part about shooting approaches in his plane. I had to shake some rust off, of course, but overall everything felt great and I was thrilled I still knew how to chase the needle.

This was my first time flying a GlaStar. I have over 50 hours in the larger, more powerful Sportsman and roughly 250 in a C-172. Initially, the GlaStar felt more like the C-172, which I mostly chalk up to horsepower and the little wheel being up front, since all of my Sportsman time is in a taildragger. With a fixed-pitch prop, Marc’s GlaStar is more like the Cessna in that it doesn’t slow down as easily as the Sportsman. I also got my first landing at home, which was exciting! I had to go around on my first attempt because I came in a little low and slow, but avoided making that mistake on my second attempt, the bossman coaching me down. It felt great to be using my new home runway, finally, and not have it seem like an abstract thing—nice grass for someone else to mow.

Out on the Town

Canby is really small, but charming. We’ve got some good restaurants, which make for a nice escape when I’ve had it with pajamas. Brian and I often run into members of the Pudding River Bearhawk Gang. “What are the odds!” we’ll say, sidling up to Ken Scott and Rion Bourgeois for a beer and quick chat—about airplanes, of course. It seems there’s no escaping aviation around here and I’m OK with it. This surprised me at first—even the local news meteorologist is a pilot—but it helps reinforce why I moved to this part of Oregon.

I suppose the odds of bumping into a homebuilder are fairly high since Oregon played a major role in establishing what would become the Experimental/Amateur-Built class of aircraft—and helping to set in motion the vital industry that supports it today. George Bogardus flew his homebuilt airplane, the Little Gee Bee, from Oregon to Washington, D.C., on three separate occasions to convince the Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Civil Aeronautics Board that people could and should be able to build and fly their own airplanes under the guidance of sensible rules and regulations. In 1952 the CAA enacted the legislation and a year later Paul Poberezny founded the Experimental Aircraft Association. It’s true: We have aviation in our veins—and Basler keychains in our attics to prove it.

Photos: Ariana Rayment and Brian Hickman.

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It could be you’ve heard the Brennand name associated with the idyllic floatplane base southeast of Oshkosh, on Lake Winnebago. Beginning in the 1970s, Bill donated the use of his waterfront land for floatplane operations and chaired the base for 20 years. Maybe you are acquainted with the Brennand
Airport, equally idyllic, a short hop north of Oshkosh. Both locales are linked to the Brennand name, though neither define the man. Nor does the fact he dated Betty Skeleton.

To my recollection, I first saw Bill Brennand in the 1990s, at a grassroots aviation gathering that happened spontaneously every Saturday morning, west of Oshkosh, on the farm of Munsil and Shirley Williams. The weekly gathering attracted all manner of aviators and aviation enthusiasts, their spouses and their children. It was everything aviation should be: accessible, friendly, diverse and fueled by coffee and donuts and, occasionally, accordion music. Stories were told. Lies repeated. Air medals re-earned. Munsil’s, as it was known, went on with or without its namesake. It was at Munsil’s that I first approached Bill Brennand. The conversation was likely brief. I didn’t know what to say to him and he was a quiet man. The ice, however, was broken by coffee. Over time our conversations expanded to include the donuts and the weather. On a lucky day, Bill would accidentally share one of his flying stories.

A Pivotal Pairing

In 1943, with a service deferment to work the family farm, 19-year-old Brennand began taking flying lessons at Wittman Flying Services. Steve Wittman—you’ve certainly heard his name—was, at that time, training pilots for the military. Prior to the war, Wittman had established a successful air racing career with two aircraft that sprang from his own mind and hands (Wittman was homebuilding in Oshkosh before EAA founder Paul Poberezny was 3 years old). His first racer, Chief Oshkosh, was raced from 1931 until 1938, when it was heavily damaged near Oakland, California. It was trailered home to Oshkosh and placed in the rafters of Wittman’s hangar while he concentrated on campaigning his other racer, Bonzo, a Thompson Trophy contender that was faster than the military aircraft of the day. Wittman had also designed a two-place aircraft, Buttercup, the predecessor to his Tailwind, which he licensed to Fairchild Aircraft. The onset of WW-II, however, brought both civilian aircraft production and air racing to a full ground stop.

By April 1944, Brennand had earned his pilot certificate and was working part time for Wittman. Brennand said the first thing he worked on with Wittman was a four-place airplane Wittman designed and designated Big-X. Fairchild, like every other aircraft manufacturer pivoting to a post-war economy, envisioned returning military pilots wanting their own aircraft. But, as with Buttercup, Fairchild never put Big-X in production. For Bill, however, building an airplane with Wittman was “amazing in every way.”

All the while the injured Chief perched in the rafters. Wittman reminisced about it. Brennand dreamed about it. They both talked about fixing and flying it. In the summer of 1945, with Wittman uttering, “Yeah, I suppose that’s something for me to get killed in,” Chief Oshkosh was lowered from the rafters. Brennand knew that statement—a statement he never forgot—was meant for him. By the summer of 1946, Chief Oshkosh was reborn as Buster.

In September 1947 Bill Brennand, age 23, lowered his 100-pound frame into Buster’s cramped cockpit to compete in the Goodyear-sponsored Midget class race at the National Air Races in Cleveland. Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier idled nearby. LeVier was experienced at both racing and winning. His airplane, Cosmic Wind, had the full, though unofficial, backing of Lockheed Aircraft and its vast resources. Brennand, a farm-boy-turned-flight instructor, had never raced. Ever. Brennand’s steed was a homebuilt aircraft built during the Depression (when it is said Wittman lived on $1 per day, including what he spent on building his airplanes). It was raced, wrecked and raftered before being resurrected in its new configuration. Bill had only flown Buster 10 hours for recreation before being sent to compete in Cleveland.

September Surprises

A rescue crew arrived as Brennand swung Buster’s canopy open. Buster’s propeller broke during Bill’s final qualifying flight, forcing him to pull up and glide over the grandstand for an emergency landing. “What happened?” the rescue crew asked. “I don’t know,” Bill replied, “I just got here myself.” The next day, with a borrowed propeller, Brennand won the inaugural closed-course Goodyear Trophy race with an average speed of 165.8 mph. Tony LeVier finished fourth, at 159.1 mph.

Some 60 years later, in September 2007, Bill Brennand, age 83, his storied air racing, barnstorming and aviation career behind him, lowered himself into the right seat of Metal Illness. I swung the canopy shut.

When offered control of an airplane many passengers, even pilots, demur. Those who accept often hold the controls neutral, altering neither altitude nor heading and certainly not piloting. Bill was an exception. He flew with skill and confidence. He didn’t move the controls tentatively. He wholly and instinctively piloted the aircraft without overcontrolling it. If Bill was happy to be piloting again, I didn’t see it. His eyes were outside the cockpit, where all good pilots’ eyes should be. Where an air racer’s eyes must be. My eyes were on Bill. Not out of concern, but out of awe. If Bill had performed an aileron roll or pulled up into a stall before spinning earthward I was all in. If I had any concerns they were in my ability to get Bill back on the ground with both him and my pride intact.

“I was not one to ride around the patch very much; the flight had to have a purpose. I guess 65 years of flying was enough.” Those words are recorded on the final page of Brennand’s biography. (Bill Brennand: Air Racing and Other Aerial Adventures by Bill Brennand and Jim Cunningham, ISBN: 0971163766, published by Airship International Press.) He may have spoken those words often, after health issues grounded him. While I helped Bill off my wing he said, quietly, as was his way, “I really don’t miss it. I did it for so many years.”

I was at once taken aback and relieved. I had often thought about what it would be like to have my wings clipped, to age out of ability if not desire. A few weeks later, Bill’s girlfriend gripped my forearm, held my eyes hostage with hers and delivered unexpected news. “Bill has not stopped talking about the airplane ride you gave him!” Turns out, Bill Brennand lied to me—and likely himself.

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My choice for new ignition was to install a pair of E-MAG Electronic Ignition 114 Series P-MAG units. These units, which have been around for more than a decade, are designed to be as simple as possible to install. Each takes the physical space of a magneto—slightly less, actually. There are, of course, a few more wires to run through the firewall, plus you’ll have to route new spark-plug wires, make a connection to a manifold-pressure source and install new automotive plugs and the associated adapters. (See Paul Dye’s story for some tools and techniques around those adapters.) I also used some corrugated plastic tube for cooling the units, which is considered mandatory by E-MAG. I would say the retrofit was involved but not difficult. The documentation is extensive.

As with many aspects of my airplane, I’m installing over existing systems. So I kept the keyed ignition switch­—first removing the jumper whose normal function is to keep the non-impulse-coupled mag from firing while starting—though I also advocate using one because it’s like so many certified airplanes, which makes it easier for other pilots to transition into.

A note about power for the P-MAGs. They need ship’s power only to start and in the event of the internal supply’s failure; in fact, during normal operation they’re not even using main-bus power. This is how I justify not having a truly redundant electrical system. In fact, I have considerable avionics redundancy because many pieces either have their own backup batteries or are powered through a TCW Technologies IBBS.

The P-MAGs’ internal power can be relied upon as low as 850 rpm. Below that, the internal generator can’t keep up and the system falls back on external power. Some builders wire momentary switches to test this function periodically but I used pullable breakers located right next to the ignition switch to do the same thing. (And partly so I wouldn’t have to run power all the way from the other side of the panel.) The procedure for landing with a total aircraft electrical failure is to maintain 850 rpm or greater until the runway is made, a small change from the SOP.

Advance and Performance

P-MAGs have two internal advance curves, chosen by a jumper; I used the less aggressive one. I also attempted to set the baseline timing to coincide with my engine’s spec, which is 20° before top dead center (BTDC). The P-MAGs are designed with an internal 25° BTDC timing, the most common, and are set with TDC as a reference. By setting mine 5° after TDC, the system fires at the correct timing for my engine.

The two main functional advantages of electronic ignition include variable timing and a stronger spark on all plugs during start. Agreed on the strong start. My engine has never been easier to light off, hot or cold, first thing in the morning or right after a quick refueling—that aspect has been a solid win.

The variable timing comes into play at altitude and, especially, when running lean-of-peak mixture settings, which I almost always do in cruise. A lean mixture takes longer to burn, so advancing the timing helps move the peak of the power pulse back to where it does more good.

Once flying, I compared before-and-after engine data and was surprised to see higher EGTs with the P-MAGs. Retarded spark usually raises EGTs—it’s why a mag check sees the EGTs rise on one ignition source—so I was surprised when the P-MAGs seemed to be running late. I double-checked the timing and it was right where I wanted it. But the advance curves follow both engine speed and manifold pressure. With my fixed-pitch prop, I’m way down on the rpm-based advance curve for takeoff and the initial climb compared to an engine with a constant-speed prop that can turn 2700 rpm for takeoff.

After a lot of head scratching, I began incrementally advancing the installed timing to get the real-world spark near where it would be with magnetos. The engine remained happy with nearly all the offset removed. This is another reason to watch your data and try to interpret what it’s telling you. In addition, my experience speaks to the value of really understanding how systems work.

After tweaking the overall timing, I tried a prop adjustment. Because, well, everything is interconnected. By reducing prop pitch by “one number” in the Sensenich ground-adjustable, I was able to get static rpm up above 2200 and climb in the 2350–2400 rpm range, which made the airplane a bit more sprightly off the runway and during the climb to cruise—though I did lose 2–3 knots in cruise at any given engine speed.

More Testing…

I thought I was done. But one nice spring day I decided to take Charlie up to altitude to fill out missing fields in my cruise data. It revealed a couple of things. First, the timing advance really begins to show by about 5000 feet in the climb. At first you think the engine’s too rich because the EGTs are falling, but it’s really just the advance moving the combustion event ahead. I’ll have to recalibrate my sense of absolute EGTs to fuel flow during the climb phase. That’s not a bug, just a matter of learning the system. I do see higher cylinder-head temps later in the climb as the manifold-pressure-based ignition advance starts to take hold, but it’s been manageable so far.

In cruise flight, two characteristics stand out. First is that the engine will run much deeper lean-of-peak EGT prior to roughness. In fact, most of the time, as you lean, the engine just quietly stops making power. No fuss at all. The other change is that the engine is definitely making more power at altitude—not orders of magnitude but enough to show up as greater engine speed on any given prop setting. I’m now thinking I should have moved to electronic ignition sooner—but I also know exactly why I didn’t.

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It is said that one thing leads to another. That being so, I credit my career to the word drafting on my seventh-grade class schedule. I had no idea what drafting was but my schedule summoned me to appear. I embraced it. My teacher, Mr. Gerber, fed me ever more challenging assignments as I tore through the self-paced lessons. When the school year gave way to summer, I set about to draft everything I could find. While my friends rode their bikes, I plied my dad’s T-square and templates on velum.

It was a non-traditional summer for a 13-year-old, though I still made time to catch crayfish with sausage casings. In high school, my drafting prowess secured me a job with an industrial machine-tool manufacturer. My supervisor, in charge of the installation, operation and parts manuals, expanded my skills to include technical illustration and writing. Twenty-five years later, those skills filled a need at a fledgling aircraft company named Sonex Ltd. I had a Sonex going together in my garage so the jump from builder to employee made sense—and may have been instigated by me with a multi-year pressure campaign. Yes indeed, one thing can certainly lead to another. Yet, remarkably, nothing ever leads me to my vacuum.

Skills Are Skills

I was gathering airplane-building skills and knowledge before I knew I’d need them. In addition to drafting, Mr. Gerber introduced me to metalworking, pop riveting, woodworking and the properties of Plexiglas. Of course, they aren’t aircraft building skills. They are simply skills. I was 13 when I cut my first rabbet, for a bookshelf. Ten years later, I’d cut rabbets for the tail of a Pietenpol. A rabbet is a rabbet. There are no aircraft rabbets. Seventh-grade shop laid a solid foundation for my homebuilding adventures. These days, when Sonex canopies are being formed, the smell of hot Plexiglas takes me back to Mr.
Gerber’s classroom, his hoarse voice, his peculiar way of pronouncing glue (gah-lou) and his liberal use of cologne.

If you are new to homebuilding, rest assured you are not starting from zero. (Well, one person may have, but we’ll get to that.) Long before you picked up your first issue of KITPLANES®—lured, perhaps, by the possibility of owning a P-51 (if only in shape)—you were gathering knowledge and skills necessary to carry a project forward. Aircraft building knowledge isn’t sequestered in an aviation tome any more than Malco snips and microballoons are exclusive to aviation supply companies. There is no such thing as an aircraft riveter; there are only riveters. There is no aviation-grade aluminum; there is only a variety of aluminum alloys, each suited to a certain task. There is no such thing as aircraft wiring; there is only wiring.

Before engineers jump in with lengthy rebuttals, let me add that there are best practices in aircraft building. For example, while you can wire an Experimental with automotive wire, best practices dictate the use of Tefzel wire. The principles of a circuit remain unchanged, however, whether that circuit exists in a homebuilt, a Harrier or a hot rod. It also holds true that bleeding the brakes of a Kitfox is no different from bleeding the brakes of a Zenith, which is no different from bleeding the brakes of a motorcycle or car. This becomes obvious when you focus on the goal—removing air from the system—instead of the vehicle in which the system is installed.

For many years Sonex held builder workshops. An important part of the workshops had each participant building a wing leading edge project. The project introduced nearly every skill needed to build an aluminum airframe. As years went by, a growing number of attendees didn’t participate in the hands-on portion, citing their intent to purchase a quickbuild airframe or a used, flying aircraft as their reason. “I don’t need to form a rib because I’m buying a kit.” They missed the point, which wasn’t to make a rib, it was to learn a skill that could be applied throughout their project.

I found the lack of interest in acquiring skills curious and disappointing. I knew their homebuilt aircraft ownership experience was going to be a negative experience. They were fooling themselves to think they’d never need the skills or could always find a qualified and willing mechanic to make necessary repairs. I wondered, then and now, why someone would become involved in a hands-on hobby without wanting to be hands-on. Which brings me to this…

My sent-email folder suggests builders have asked me questions related to the construction, operation or maintenance of a Sonex product more than 70,000 times. That number easily exceeds 100,000 with phone calls. Those questions include how to crimp wire ends, adjust valves, bend aluminum, bleed brakes, torque bolts, drill holes, press steel bushings into rod-end bearings, set pulled and solid rivets, cut inspection holes, cut Plexiglas, cut Lexan, cut lead, cut fiberglass, read blueprints, read micrometers, read angle finders—I could go on. If you review that list you’Il see most of the topics are not design-specific and few are aircraft-building-specific. My all-time favorite/least-favorite question was a person who asked how to tighten a nut, explaining they had never tightened a nut in their life.

This leaves me wondering, where is the line that separates a Sonex from a skill? By that I mean, is it an aircraft company’s responsibility to teach the skills needed to build their product? Is an aircraft company that sells a tube-and-fabric kit responsible for teaching their builders how to weld? I’d say no. Ford doesn’t teach you when to use a turn signal (casual observation would indicate no one teaches that anymore). However, their manuals describe where the switch is located and how it works in their vehicles. Canon instructions explain how to download photos from their cameras but not how to organize the photos on your computer. A paintbrush manufacturer doesn’t tell you how to prepare water-damaged wood for staining. My point? Anyone who chooses to build an airplane should be prepared to acquire the needed skills and knowledge from a multitude of sources. But there’s good news…

Think, but Don’t Overthink

The skills needed to build an airplane are not unique to aviation, nor are they uncommon. Builders stumble, though, when they contemplate applying a common skill to building an airplane. The skill takes on mythical proportions. That stumble can prevent a project from starting or stall its progress. (In the category of “can’t make this stuff up,” as I wrote that last paragraph, I spoke to  a builder who told me his project was delayed a month while he fretted over cutting an inspection hole in a wing skin.) I’ve heard it said by an EAA Homebuilders Hall of Fame inductee, “It’s not like you’re building an airplane.” The gist of that statement—only slightly tongue in cheek—is don’t overthink the task at hand.

I’ve assured worried builders that the pieces and tools have no idea they are part of an airplane project. My oldest grandson was 6 when he gazed upon an AeroVee engine and a photo of its individual parts and said it looked more complex assembled. (Yes, he said “complex.”) He saw parts to be assembled, one at a time, like a Lego kit, where others saw an intimidating airplane engine. We’d all do well to approach our projects with the unfettered mind of a 6-year-old and the skills once passed to unwitting seventh-graders.

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Granted, the impetus for this initiative involves Part 121 operators—the airlines. However, the system of airspace, airports and ATC that the FAA is seeking to thoroughly review directly involves all of us. Ironically, after the events that initially spurred this federal review and the short time frame between the issuance of the memorandum and this writing, the number of eyebrow-raising events has at least doubled, and may likely continue to do so.

A dirty little secret in the airline world is that, as safe as the system is, “irregular” events happen rather frequently due to the sheer volume of operations. Most of the time, unusual events don’t make the evening news. The good news is that the layers of redundancy are so stacked and refined that even major failures get “caught” before metal and tissue are damaged. However, in today’s world, just about everyone has a smartphone and a YouTube account—so more irregularities become public than ever.

Back to the FAA’s safety review. Nolan correctly identified complacency as a key concern. Various definitions for complacency include: self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies; a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; and a feeling of calm satisfaction with your own abilities or situation that prevents you from trying harder.

Applying the definition to aviation, I like elements of all three of these definitions. Over the course of more than three decades of ground school classes, exams and briefings, complacency has always been a prominent topic and apparently soon will be even more so if the FAA gets their (appropriate) way.

The truly insidious danger of complacency is that it is an inherent byproduct of doing well. Collectively we’ve all built a system so amazingly safe that it’s human nature to rest on our laurels and become complacent. However, complacency is just as visceral and physical as any debilitative effect of any ailment or impairment. Complacency can kill just like hypoxia or CO poisoning. Complacency may not be identifiable on a coroner’s slab, but it can be just as lethal as anything that can.

Aviation pioneers couldn’t benefit from the experience or technology we have today. Yes, they died in tragic numbers but they also extricated themselves from a lot of harrowing situations simply because they stayed on their toes—because they had to. Dangerous irregularities were expected. Today, we can punch a couple of buttons, recline the seat and travel with a level of information at our disposal and mechanical reliability around us that even ocean-crossing airliners didn’t enjoy until fairly recently. Still, we should not forget that fate hasn’t given up the hunt.

Experimental Perspective

What does complacency mean to us? Like anyone, we can be both victims and/or perpetrators of the hazardous effects of complacency. However, some aspects of our avocation are unique to those who build and maintain our own aircraft. Complacency can be a huge negative factor in building and maintaining a project. One key to fighting off the ill effects of complacency is to start and maintain good shop habits from beginning to end. Keep a tidy and well-organized shop.

We also need to take the time it takes to get good at the skills of building and maintaining. They’re not hard but they do require instruction and practice. If you’re building a composite aircraft you’re either going to get good at mixing and sanding or you’re going to have a shoddy result. For metal airplanes, you’re going to pound thousands of rivets and it gets easier with practice.

You can bolster your skills through many resources but always consider the source. I will never forget a cringeworthy moment at an EAA meeting where I overheard an “expert” tell a newbie not to worry about misshapen rivets as drilling them out and replacing them can cause more damage than it cures. Of course, the correct answer is to learn how to correctly set rivets and identify those that don’t meet the standard (it’s not hard and there’s a glut of guidance). Learn the skills and take the time to correctly remove and replace poorly set rivets without causing additional harm.

Know what you know and what you don’t know. There are several skills to building and maintaining that, while not difficult, require a learning curve to master. Either put forth the effort or find someone who will. “Good enough,” quite frankly, isn’t and it always takes more time and effort to do a task a second time than to do it right the first time.

Study the plans thoroughly and keep meticulous records. One pro tip passed down to me was to use an inked date stamp to mark the completion date right next to the task description on the plans. Also don’t assume you know things like which holes should be dimpled and which not. The plans on most kits that have been out for a while have been well vetted. Trust them. Months or years later, something that didn’t make sense initially will make total sense as big components are eventually mated.

In Flying

Obviously, flight operations are where we need to stay focused and engaged to avoid complacency. Developing and maintaining solid habits establishes the foundation. It starts with preflight planning, continues through the physical preflight walkaround inspection, carries through each facet of the actual flight and isn’t over until the gyros are spinning down, hopefully at the intended destination. Whole books can and have been written about operationally refining an entire flight from beginning to end. On the specific topic of complacency, I would like to focus on just three specific situational examples. The skills, habits and techniques to battle complacency are universal across all flight regimes.

Takeoff: Prior to taking the runway in an ultralight or an airliner or anything in between, take a few seconds to refresh in your mind the conditions that exist off the departure end of the runway for an emergency landing in case of engine failure in a single—or review the memory items for an engine failure in a multi-engine aircraft. Then, prior to crossing the hold-short line, verify that the final approach and the runway are clear.

En route: Perform the en route checklist periodically during cruise flight. Checking engine parameters, navigation status, weather updates, fuel computations and systems switches like pitot heat, exterior lights and fuel pumps not only refines focus and enhances situational awareness but can also catch small issues before they become big ones.

Approach to landing: Brief in your mind or aloud to a crew member the memory items for a go-around or missed approach and mentally commit to immediately initiating a go-around at the first indication that aborting the landing would be appropriate. I had an instructor who hesitated on a go-around at a high mountain resort and ended up in the trees, killing himself and his passengers.

Sharp pilots are situationally aware and proactive—those caught out by complacency often have their awareness dulled and become, at best, reactive. Sometimes the difference between success and failure is a precious few seconds. We’ve all been guilty of complacency and should commit to improving. Awareness is the crucial step forward.

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It’s not fair to call last year’s Sun ’n Fun a dud. It had, after all, come back from a COVID-related interruption in 2020 and an uncertain economic outlook in the intervening years to be a decently well-attended airshow for the casual consumer. You had your warbirds, you had your loud and violent-looking airshows. You had your ice-cream vendors and tchotchke stands. But it was not a strong show for news and, it seemed, one organized in such a way that unintentionally marginalized those flying in or camping with their homebuilts.

I’m happy to report this year was a great improvement. Under new CEO Gene Conrad, the homebuilt area was moved closer to show central and the camping spots relocated to higher ground. (Ironically, the show was warm and dry this year.) I walked around the homebuilt section twice while on-site and counted, at most, about 60 Experimentals. There’s a good chance more were in attendance but I wasn’t there when they were.

Plus, as seems always to be the case, a nasty storm front parked itself across the northern extreme of the state for the first few days of the event. I’m sure many fly-in pilots on the other side of the front gave it a few days to move before giving up and staying home. Next year, Sun ’n Fun  will be a couple of weeks later, which might not help a lot but definitely won’t hurt the weather situation.

I can relate. Years ago, tasked with getting a Mooney from California to Lakeland for the show, I got to Mobile, Alabama, well after dark following a late departure from the West Coast. I so much wanted a cold beer and a warm bed but one look at the radar convinced me to keep going. A brutal cold front was descending, painting a big yellow-and-red banana on the radar from Houston to Portland, Maine. (This may be a slight exaggeration.) Had I stayed, the cold front would have overtaken me; it would have been a few days before I could get to Florida safely. I had the Mooney refueled, took a swig of FBO coffee and finished the trip. I landed in Lakeland around 3 a.m. knowing no cabs were running, so I crawled in the back and slept until awakened by the sun and a slightly perturbed lineman at the FBO pounding on the baggage door. I don’t recommend that last part.

While we had a repeat of the lingering cold front to our north this year, the weather gods smiled on Lakeland. What’s more, event organizers improved the situation for air-campers substantially by giving them their own shower facilities near the campsites and by positioning the large community space so it had a wonderful view of the afternoon and evening airshows. I’d heard a little grumbling that some facilities weren’t quite ready early in the week but that most of the kinks had been worked out quickly. Overall, I’d say those who flew in or drove in to camp had a better experience this year than last.

One last note on facilities. Event organizers provided a small but comfortable media building that gave us a place to conduct interviews and finagle the uncountable ones and zeros that constitute our show coverage as web stories and videos. I’m grateful for that, since last year’s arrangement was unworkable, which, sadly, also describes data connectivity this year. The local Wi-Fi broke and the cell towers got saturated.  We try to post as much as we can live from the show but it’s a challenge when your 5G hotspot has all the throughput of a 2400-baud modem. (Go ahead, date yourself by knowing what that is.)

I sat in on an interview with Gene Conrad at the end of day one. He described how moving GA parking and camping to the east side and creating what he called “the island,” which combined a number of services for fly-in showgoers, was the result of listening to customers over the last few years and trying to reimagine the campgrounds. Key to those amenities was food service from early in the morning through a late dinner and a well-stocked store—with everything from bug spray to tents and sleeping bags—to make up for what you forgot to (or couldn’t) pack for the stay.

We also talked about the future of the event, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year, and how that relates to expansion at Lakeland-Linder with Amazon’s growth and other factors. There are plans for a new runway, it’s true, but Conrad pointed out that nothing happens quickly in airport development. He knows, having spent more than a decade in airport management. That pace, he says, will give the show more than ample time to rework the grounds and preserve the event. He suggests, and I tend to agree, that those who fret about dismantling parts of the airport that serve the show are forgetting the needs of the airport the other 51 weeks of the year.

New Stuff

I don’t know about you but I went to shows like this as a young pilot for inspiration, to see what’s new, to look at old airplanes and see friends. I’d say Sun ’n Fun scored on all fronts this year. There was enough new-news that Steve Ashby (as well as the crew from sister outlet AVweb.com) and I found ourselves with plenty to chase down and talk about. We covered most of this in our digital coverage, but I’ll touch on a few highlights here.

Bose introduced a new headset, the A30. Two things surprised me about it. First, that the predecessor A20 was still using analog noise-reduction circuitry that, while being quite a ways developed from the first Bose ANR in 1989, still owes a lot to it. Bose took the opportunity to make tweaks to the A30 in addition to fitting it with fully digital ANR, including reduced weight and a quick-change cord to support a left- or right-side microphone. Second, I was surprised that it didn’t embrace some of the new tech in the Lightspeed Delta Zulu, such as the internal CO detector and pilot-adjustable
frequency response. (Actually, the second part of that doesn’t surprise me. Bose was never on the user-adjustable kick for its home audio equipment, so why change stripes here?)

I got a chance to poke around the prototype Comp Air 6.2 that arrived midweek. It’s even bigger than I thought it would be and packs some clever design touches to maximize interior volume. It’s still very early in the flight-test phase but it’s great to see this airplane arrive in the flesh when quite a few nicely CAD-rendered designs are still just pixels.

Also in the flesh was the CubCrafters Carbon Cub UL, making a big splash as the first to fly with the new Rotax 916. Looking to expand into international markets where “ultralight” regs permit the kind of freedom we have here with Experimental/Amateur-Built, CubCrafters put the Carbon Cub SS on a pretty radical diet, with more carbon, titanium in place of steel and the lightweight 916 up front. This airplane is also still very early in its gestation but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look production ready as it sits. Makes me want to roll the old Coleman up to Yakima and camp out beside the factory, waiting for a chance to fly it.

The Rotax 916

I’m duly impressed with the new 916, mainly because the core engine is stout enough to embrace a 19-hp gain (12%) for takeoff on the same displacement and compression ratio. It also has a 2000-hour TBO right out of the gate, beating the familiar 915 by 800 hours. (The company is likely to extend the 915’s TBO as well, we just don’t know when.) With the 916, Rotax basically turned up the boost and made some minor modifications (including to the exhaust system) for the additional power.

It’s true that the maximum-continuous power only grows by 2 hp (the 160-hp figure is for the first 5 minutes) but let’s put that in perspective. Your familiar Lycoming IO-360 makes 180 hp for takeoff, true, but it’s down to the 916’s max-continuous power of 137 hp (76% of the IO-360’s max power) somewhere near 7000 feet density altitude. The Rotax, turbocharged, keeps going as you climb. Maximum altitude is 23,000 feet, with full power available to 15,000 feet. That’s a 101° F day out of Leadville, Colorado, where a Cessna 172 would barely have enough power to taxi. (That, too, may be an exaggeration.) And let’s also not forget that this is an 83-cubic-inch engine.

Part of Rotax’s magic sauce here is full electronic control of injection, ignition and boost pressure. This is now a well-known system handed down from the 912 iS and the 915 iS that has proven itself in the field. I’ve heard grumbling from the oldsters that all the iS-line engines are heavily electricity dependent. But the 916, like its predecessors, uses two injection/ignition ECUs running in parallel, redundant fuel pumps (either of which can supply the engine’s needs at full power) and a split charging system that dedicates one channel to running the ECUs and pumps and one to providing power to the rest of the airplane. Should that first generator fail, the second one can take over and run the engine. Should both fail, a modestly sized battery could keep the engine turning long enough to get on the ground.

What the 916 isn’t is a today-solution, drop-in replacement for legacy engines in existing designs. It’s just too small and too light to fit into an airplane already penned for a four-cylinder, air-cooled engine without significant airframe modifications for packaging and CG issues. You can’t really blame Rotax for not making the 916 heavier. But you can hope there’s a bigger engine capable of, say, 180 to 210 hp under development somewhere in Austria.

Task-Based Phase I Update

Just after Sun ’n Fun, EAA held a seminar on the new task-based Phase I flight testing we reported on last month. It clarified a few items that came up after the initial announcement. For starters, not all of the paperwork had been done on the FAA’s end, so an early set of guidance had not been updated that enabled the new program. However, that problem is expected to be resolved very soon.

EAA is also going to revise its “Flight Test Manual” to better fit into this program, though, reading by the controlling documents, even the existing one would be acceptable for the shorter flight-test program. Supposedly the FTM will be refined for the task-based system and even reordered slightly. During the seminar, Tom Charpentier (EAA’s government relations director) also hinted that the FTM might be updated to better reflect the use of modern EFIS and data-recording technologies.  Progress all around.

The post A Whole New Sun ’n Fun appeared first on KITPLANES.

With the catastrophic elimination of Reno-Stead Airport as a racing venue this coming September, pylon air racing must once again reinvent itself.

This won’t be easy, of course. After 59 years in the same place, the seismic changes coming to air racing are unnerving to its deeply faithful fans and participants. While a shock to those of us used to Reno as the end-all, this change is nothing new as closed-circuit air racing has always evolved, from the nascent chaos of the giant pre-WW-l air meets to the inter-war years golden age and then post-war Cleveland Nationals, followed by the now-ending Reno era.

To understand where air racing is going, it’s best to understand what made the Reno era possible. In a nutshell, WW-ll. The Pax Americana blossoming in the later 1950s and into the ’60s left an immense reserve of surplus aircraft and airports, along with a vibrant middle class and, in the Western U.S., plenty of elbow room. Additionally, the greatest generation came of age with minimal regulation, was risk tolerant and generally well-adjusted to the reality of their mortality, with so many of them having been personally involved in such things as the Great Depression, WW-II and the Korean War. People were largely interested in mechanical tinkering and contesting their handiwork against others, too.

All of that has changed. The glut of big-cubic-inch prop jobs has been consumed and is now found in museums or turned into prissy investment portfolio fodder. The old airports have rotted away or were transformed into industrial parks, plowed under for housing or updated for busy cargo and passenger use. The Western U.S. is far more crowded and under pressure from all quadrants as the ranchers, farmers, land developers, industry, military, preservationists and so on all want in. The middle-class disposable income has been siphoned off, society is insulated and risk averse and mechanics has largely been supplanted by electronics. A V-12 and 120 inches of manifold pressure just aren’t what they used to be. Sigh.

But racing will never die because it’s an outlet for mankind’s inherent need to engineer and test new limits. And as the air racing community contemplates the calendar, Sport class air racing (the Reno Sport class) easily offers the most forward-thinking, best-prepared path to success. And that’s not to mention the fastest, most spectacular, relevant aircraft built today. Thankfully, concerned about Reno’s future, two years ago Sport class leaders quietly began mapping their future.

We’ll pause here long enough to explain that the various classes at Reno—Formula One, Biplane, Sport, T-6, Jet and Unlimited—have been self-governing at the nuts-and-bolts level, lately with the FAA looking over their shoulder. They write their own class technical and conduct rules, then gather under the Reno Air Racing Association banner as RARA supplies the overall event sanctioning and marketing functions and, not least, the venue.

Thus the formation of the 501(c)(3) Sport Air Racing Council by the existing Sport class racers last year. SARC’s immediate goal is gaining FAA accreditation as an air race organization, a task they should complete this calendar year. Sport class air racing will remain an accredited air race class and will train and provide the racers to SARC-organized events. This means SARC (ah, a new acronym) could approach a promoter putting on an airshow and say, “Hey, plug us into your show. We’re FAA approved, just like your aerobatic and military performers.” And just like that, there could be multiple Sport class air races across the U.S. and Canada (SARC is also working with Transport Canada).

Which brings up an important point. The Sport Air Racing Council would love to have multiple races and a racing series culminating with a championship, but they do not want to start an all-new multi-class air racing venue on their own. They absolutely want to fit into already existing airshows, plus fully support whatever big national races RARA can erect post-Reno.

Expect the same aircraft technical specifications from SARC—at heart a 1000-cubic-inch engine displacement limit, plus any power adder. That’s great, as the existing Sport class rules already provide exciting racing and offer generous room for growth.

Change in the Air?

One modification could be a proliferation of subclasses or formats under the overall Sport banner. At Reno each class is run in Gold, Silver and Bronze races based on qualifying speeds, and if there are enough participants, sometimes a Medallion race below Bronze. For Sport this typically means stock 180-hp RV-4 to RV-8 types in Medallion, moderately modified RVs and Harmon Rockets and such in Bronze, mostly retractable composite variants in Silver and the whole lot headlined by the all-out 900-hp turbocharged Glasairs and Lancairs in Gold. With SARC desirous of a farm-team ladder where aspiring pilots could start in less-demanding classes and work their way up, we could see both the typical six- to eight-ship closed-course races and perhaps simpler two-ship side-by-side contests that would be simple drag races through pylons with a wingover to turn around and race back to the start-finish line. We wouldn’t be surprised to also see yet-to-be-defined racing formats and perhaps aircraft specifications to support pilot growth. Even so, right now SARC offers an entry level to serious competition in an easy-to-understand, four-tier format.

A big reason why Sport is ahead of the other Reno classes in starting new racing is their emphasis on pilot qualifications and safety. They see formation flying as the fundamental skill supporting pylon racing and have been incorporating such skills and schooling for some time. Air racing is an inherently dangerous activity (just like flying in general) and Sport’s attention to risk management is a good thing before turning someone loose at 400 mph in front of a crowd. Given today’s risk aversion, it’s necessary to the FAA. Interestingly, SARC reports their slower classes are very insurable, while the fast movers in Gold are more challenging, but doable.

Location, Location, Location

Of course, the largest impediment to air racing is a place to do it. Reno was ideal before housing and industry moved nearby. That is, it offered a near federal wilderness area on one side of a large three-runway airport with 1000 hotel rooms on the other side. SARC has been looking for new venues with existing airshows for about a year now and is currently in negotiations with five of them. Their criteria is a workable amount of safe terrain near a large metropolitan center, and while that is a tough order today, an additional go-to solution may be to race over water. That opens many major cities to consideration.

To define workable terrain, the 400-mph Gold racers are best run on an 8-mile-long oval to keep loads in the turns around 3 G’s, but different course configurations make the G-loading something of a variable. Sport rules have pilots demonstrating up to 4.5 G’s prior to or early in the race week to acclimate to racing loads and the occasional 3+ G turn in a course sounds acceptable. In any case G-induced loss of consciousness (G-LOC) is rightfully on the FAA’s racing radar, so there will be additional focus in this area and there might be additional equipment requirements, such as 100% oxygen in the Gold cockpits, too.

Personally, I enjoy fast airplanes on courses with long straights, even if that means the competition gets hard to see at the other end (typical in many motorsports). Letting the airplanes level out, unload the wings and accelerate, then turn and repeat another meaningful straight better shows both the airplane’s speed and cornering ability. But that’s just me.

Another possibility I’m anticipating is more racing—even three events per year would be a big improvement. More racing means more eyeballs on interesting airplanes, of course, but it also means better race craft for the pilots and faster development of the airplanes. The worry is the associated budget squeeze and burnout factor of frequent racing, but the market will soon give an answer on that.

Another immense potential is the integration of video, both live and for post-race viewing. Cameras in the cockpit, on the wingtips, in the tail and on the pylons mixed with informed commentary and behind-the-scenes pit work could give air racing a much-needed intimacy. Above all, intelligent marketing and personalizing the pilots and crew chiefs is needed to draw and hold a general audience. Video can also mean remote pylon judging, further reducing those at risk on the ground.

In short, air racing, and SARC in particular, have a big job in front of them, but also potential. The Biplane and Formula One classes will be looking for places to race, too, and there’s no reason they couldn’t follow Sport’s lead with FAA accreditation. Given their more intimate, internationally sanctioned 3-km course and recent overseas experience in F1’s case, they should have an easier time fitting in the greater airshow world. And we can always hope for that one big, all-racing meet as we’ve enjoyed at Reno. Want to help? Come to Reno this September for what promises to be the blowout send-off and show appreciation for the sport in person. I’ll see you there.

The post Sport: Air Racing’s New Beginning appeared first on KITPLANES.

I was just approaching the tops when this unbelievably sharp BANG! went off in the cockpit. It sounded like a shotgun blast. My first thought, of course, was that I had blown a jug clean off the engine. I pitched the nose over, anticipating power loss and decaying airspeed.

As I leveled off, the next thing I did was to scan the engine gauges—all good there. No oil on the windshield and the engine seemed to be running smoothly. All of this took about 5 seconds, though it clearly felt like 50.

Life remained good as I broke out on top. As my heart slowed down I started looking around the cockpit. The baggage area behind the seat had all my usual stuff and the windows were intact. But there was that paper bag from Mom. What exactly was in there? As I peeked in, I saw the cause of my “failure.” A mylar Valentine’s Day balloon—no, not so much a balloon as a flat envelope of foil. Vinyl balloons stretch as the altitude goes up but mylar balloons just build up pressure until they go bang!

I had just relearned a valuable lesson: When you think you have a failure, look for confirming cues to see if it is real. The fact that the engine kept running smoothly made it pretty obvious that I hadn’t blown a jug and the instruments seemed to verify this supposition. It works both ways, though. There are times when your instruments might be lying and you can use “other cues” to verify their readings.

Instrument Trust

What do you do when the instruments tell you one thing yet senses tell you something else? Moreover, trusting an individual instrument is not the same as trusting the picture that all your instruments paint for you. What do you do when the instruments are in conflict—with themselves or with your senses?

The answer, of course, is cross-checking. When learning to fly with instruments, we are taught to cross-check the gauges against one other. If the altimeter is unwinding with the airspeed rising yet the attitude indicator shows us straight and level—something is amiss and it is probably that artificial horizon! If the directional gyro shows us in a turn while the turn-and-bank shows us going straight ahead, as does the compass, you might want to get the bearings in that DG checked. Of course, the ultimate cross-check in VFR conditions is to look out the window.

Other Systems Checks

What about the stuff that tells us how our engine is doing? Can we cross-check that as well?

In the Experimental flight test business, with lots of instrumentation points and fancy telemetry systems, the first thing we teach young engineers is to ask themselves how the data might be lying to them. It pays to fully understand the data-gathering equipment before you rely on it to make decisions. You need to understand that when indications show a failure, you need to use some common sense and realize that anything made by a human being can have flaws. No machine—including the machines that monitor the machines (instrumentation)—is perfect. Therefore we train people to always take just a moment when they see something unusual to ask: How is the instrumentation lying to me? Is what I am seeing real?

This is where the old adage comes from: “When you see something wrong, the first thing to do is wind the clock.” Old-fashioned wind-up panel clocks had a knob on them (I know, I am dating myself) and you could calmly reflect for a few seconds while turning that knob. It gave you a moment to not do the wrong thing. It is a rare situation where you can’t afford to take a few seconds to reflect before taking action.

A classic example would be a tachometer failure. Let’s say that you’re flying along, straight and level, the engine running smoothly—and the tach starts dancing about. You see wild rpm variations, some well above redline. What’s the first thing you should do—pull back on the throttle? Well, eventually that might be a good idea. But before taking that step, how about using your ears? Does it sound like the engine is varying speed? It’s pretty easy to tell by sound that nothing is changing. If the tach is showing fluctuations it must be out to lunch, don’t you think? Now the next question, of course, is what do you do about it. Land immediately? You can do that if you like but if the engine is running fine, you have plenty of gas and nothing else has changed, how about continuing on to your destination or at least a good place where you know that you can get the tach replaced?

Let’s take a look at something a little more serious—oil pressure. You can’t hear oil pressure and the only way to tell if you really have it is via some sort of gauge or pressure switch. Most certified aircraft simply have a gauge—a single source of data. Those with advanced avionics might have software that reads the pressure and if it falls below a preset limit will turn on a light to get your attention. But in the Experimental world, you can add anything you want—and a very simple pressure switch is an easy addition. Wire this up to a light in the cockpit, and you now have the ability to independently confirm or deny the information given to you by the pressure gauge.

Yes, I can hear you saying that a man with two watches never knows what time it is! Well, this is true in principle, but if the man knows that it is daytime and one watch says it is noon while the other says it is 3 a.m., he has a way to pick between the two. Likewise, if your engine has been running fine, and the oil pressure light comes on—the pilot can check the gauge to see if it has changed. Unless you have had two independent, dissimilar yet simultaneous failures, it is quite likely that the engine’s oil pressure is doing just fine. A quick check of oil temperature should add additional data to tell you if things are heating up from a lack of oil (and oil pressure) or not. While these indications are sometimes slow to manifest, they almost always follow each other. Loss of oil pressure leads to rising oil temperature. (Yes, no oil in the engine can show low temperature but by the time that happens the grinding noises from ahead of the firewall will be a more prominent clue.)

Many years ago, we had no EGT gauges in light airplane cockpits, then we got single-point gauges. We could lean until the needle peaked and that would give us some idea how we were doing toward optimizing fuel flow. Next came all-cylinder gauges with a probe for each exhaust port and we learned that maybe we didn’t know as much as we thought from that single probe and gauge. Unfortunately, some folks have always flown with the all-cylinder EGT systems and have never had to simply have faith in the engine designers who say that for a normally aspirated engine, there is no such thing as too high of an EGT. The pilot sees a temperature and wants a limit—or they see a high value and get worried. For non-turbo engines there is no real limit. Instead, you should be looking for consistency from cylinder to cylinder and from day to day.

We teach flight test engineers some very basic interpretation skills that cover most types of transducer systems. A sudden drop-off (it is reading high, then reading low) is usually an indication of a transducer or instrumentation failure. Most temperatures or pressures simply can’t change that suddenly. A steady decline, however, is a good indication of a trending measurement that might be real—a leak, for instance. If your fuel gauge goes from 30 gallons to zero instantly, you probably didn’t rupture a tank, you probably broke a wire. If, on the other hand, you see a steady decline over time, you might very well have ruptured a hose.

You can (and should) go through the mental exercise of evaluating every measurement you have available to you. Think about what it is really telling you and how the data is gathered. Think about what you can use as an alternate cue to confirm or deny a bad reading. Determine in advance what you need to react to immediately and when you can take the time to “wind the clock”—at least a little bit. And always ask yourself the question, “How is my data lying to me?” It is far more common, in fact, for instrumentation to fail than some of the robust systems we have in our airplanes.

Learn what’s normal in your airplane by observation in flight and by looking at recorded data later. When you get an indication that’s out of the ordinary, first look at corroborating data and relationships before pulling the throttle back and looking for an emergency landing site. Maintain a healthy dose of skepticism toward the data and an attentive ear to the machinery. And, while you’re at it, beware mylar balloons.

The post Conflicting Cues appeared first on KITPLANES.

That’s not the kind of “scam” I’m talking about. Instead, with the preponderance of builder-to-builder communication taking place electronically and our desire to make our project dollars stretch, there are myriad opportunities for the unethical to fleece us.

I know. I was a fleece-e.

The Signs Were There

As they say, go to school on me. Here’s my story. Sometime before I’d upgraded my GlaStar’s primary com radio to a new Garmin GTR 200, I was using a good but somewhat elderly Apollo SL 40. Great radio in its day and still eminently serviceable, the SL 40, like its SL 30 brethren, can eventually develop display issues. Repair costs can exceed the value of the radio. So when I saw a nice-condition SL 40 appear for sale on one of the larger type-specific message boards, I contacted the seller with interest.

I didn’t know this person but their public profile was that of a professional pilot with a reasonable interest in the specific airplane type, and they had just enough activity to suggest they were really part of the community. That is one of the first things I check. It’s become more common for scammers to start a new account in the ecosystem, post items for sale and try to rip people off. Posters with just a few (or no previous) posts get a pass from me.

In email exchanges, the first red flag, which I ignored, was the seller referring to the com radio as a GPS. I corrected him and he said, essentially, that he had a few other things for sale and confused my request with another one. It seemed plausible at the time.

The next red flag came when it was time to pay. The seller insisted on using Zelle, a service that connects individuals right at the bank-account level for peer-to-peer transfers. I had used Zelle before with an established company and it worked fine, so I didn’t give this much thought. I really should have stopped everything when the email associated with the requested Zelle profile did not match the seller’s. He explained that he didn’t have Zelle himself but it was his daughter’s account. Please feel free to mutter, “Marc, you are a complete idiot.” Say it again if you wish; you won’t say it more times than I have.

Yes, You’re Hosed

In my defense, all this took place while I was on the road and distracted with many other things. You know, then, where this is going. The seller disappeared and I never received an SL 40. School is never cheap but this ended up being an $800 refresher course in how to get screwed—er, educated.

After I realized my money was gone, I exhausted several avenues. I contacted the site administrator for some help. He told me that the actual member’s ID had been updated with a new email and password. I was about to start a search for the guy’s work and call his boss. But it was pretty plain that his password has been guessed or compromised and someone else was posing as him. (Another reminder to never reuse passwords and to always make them non-guessable “strong” passwords even if keeping track of them is a pain. There are apps to help you manage passwords across multiple devices and they’re definitely worth the effort to install.)

It seems like I made every mistake possible. For one, I didn’t request or demand photos of the unit showing the serial number. That’s a big consideration, since there’s ample evidence that scammers will grab photos of other people’s products for sale. Take your time searching Google (with “images” clicked) for the product you want to buy. Be patient and try to find the same images used elsewhere.

Do the same for the serial number. If the seller won’t show you photos of the unit’s serial number, walk away. (For that matter, if the seller resists any reasonable request for documentation, photographic or otherwise, keep looking.)

I also didn’t attempt to talk to the seller on the phone or, better, through videoconferencing. It would not take long to ask where the device came from, why it was being sold and other aviation/social questions before a scammer will run out of plausible answers. For the most part, scammers don’t want to engage in any live correspondence; if the seller acts the same, move on.

Protect the financial transaction by using a credit card or, at the very least, employ any electronic funds transfer designed for merchant use. These typically have some consumer protections built in. Beware that the fee-free PayPal transaction might or might not protect you. Absolutely, positively don’t use a direct-transfer service like Zelle. I say this with every erg of righteous indignation I can muster. Zelle was less than useless for me and shockingly unapologetic about flatly denying my claim of fraud. It showed zero interest in locating the perpetrator and keeping him out of their system. It’s a good reminder that financial institutions may talk about client security, but there’s a better-than-even chance they really don’t care about you. My personal opinion, of course.

So is there a safe way to buy airplane parts and products online? Sure. I have done so both ways, buying and selling, in my very small GlaStar ecosystem. Most of the group knows me and I know many of them. If it’s someone I don’t know, I’ll spend some time to verify the identity and won’t conclude any transaction without a phone call. Then there are escrow services. I know that SteinAir will, for a small fee, act as a clearinghouse for avionics, accepting both product and payment but only releasing them when everything is clear and legit. If a seller outright refuses to use such a service when available, that’s another red flag. Heed it.

Your best defense is curiosity. Had I worked just a bit harder, it would have become clear (before it was too late) that I was being scammed. Let my hard-won lesson be an easy one for you.

The post Beware the Scammer appeared first on KITPLANES.

An audible sigh and an acceptable landing punctuated the end of a stuttering cross-country. It punctuated it on a Wednesday, however, not the previous Sunday as planned. Executing a VFR cross-country that spans days and thousands of miles and is undertaken to attend a specific event—in this case, Sun ’n Fun—can be an adventure. A plan can quickly give way to hope. My plan had me arriving home Sunday. But that’s not what happened.

When weather cooperates, Florida’s Lakeland-Linder Airport is a day’s flight from Oshkosh in Metal Illness. I’ve proven that three times. Flying to and from Sun ’n Fun, however, presents a particular concern for nearly every VFR pilot (and many IFR pilots). It’s a scheduled event and the only way in and out of the middle of the Florida peninsula can be blocked by April’s uneasy weather. One of my friends left Sun ’n Fun early one year to beat bad weather between there and his home in North Carolina. But that’s not what happened. He got stuck for days near Ocala, Florida, 89 miles north of Lakeland. The ever-compassionate Sonex entourage, having driven to Lakeland, memorialized his plight with new lyrics to James Taylor’s “Carolina in My Mind.”

In his mind, he’s going to ’Carolina
Might not be on Monday
Might not be on Tuesday
Might not be on Wednesday
But he’s going to ’Carolina in his mind.
In time, I’d pay the price for singing along.

A few years later it was my turn to leave Sun ’n Fun early to get in front of a weather system. The need to bug out presented an opportunity to fly to North Carolina off the wing of another friend and his Sonex. Our plan, finalized the night before we decided it was time to leave, was to launch as a flight of two and stop for fuel about two hours later. But that’s not what happened. During preflight I forgot to drain a week’s worth of Florida condensation from my fuel tank. While my friend taxied for departure, I frantically exited my cockpit to stop him and to find a jump start for my depleted battery. It was an inglorious beginning for the flight home. Surely things would improve. But that’s not what happened. On climb-out I realized I hadn’t refueled after arrival, which forced an in-flight change to our planned fuel stop. Our destination, Siler City, North Carolina, was now two fuel stops away, not one.

Hangar Flying’s Valuable Lessons

The morning I departed Siler City for Adrian, my day’s destination in southeastern Michigan, I had a clear route over the Appalachian Mountains. I was again flying to beat bad weather. The flight began well but went south, figuratively speaking, quickly. An hour into my planned 2.5-hour flight my comfort and concentration deteriorated from an urgent need to—I’ll be delicate—find a tree. Millions of them teased me from 6000 feet below, from the hills and hollers and ridges and ravines of the Appalachians. Airports, however, were few, out of the way and beyond my biological range. I pinned my survival on the timeworn game of ignoring the urge until it went away. But that’s not what happened. Because that never happens. What follows underscores the importance of staying current on hangar flying.

Between alternating bouts of discomfort and denial I remembered a story a pilot friend shared about a large plastic bag and a T-shirt. By luck, I had both. If I could reach them. I loosened my four-point harness to fish for a new T-shirt secreted away in my luggage. It wasn’t the shirt I wanted. It was the two-quart, sealable bag it was in. If I could reach that, I knew I could reach an old T-shirt packed in a bag of dirty laundry. I’d like to say my search went well, but that’s not what happened. Turbulence bounced me into the canopy and bits of headset rained down on my lap. Still, I found the items I needed to MacGyver a restroom. The plastic bag and the old T-shirt gave their all over the mountains before settling onto the passenger floor to await the next landing, which I executed with great care and a mild headache.

Adrian and Bust

I landed in Adrian ahead of an approaching storm and spent the night with friends, waiting for the front to pass. Come morning, rain and an unyielding wind scoured Michigan’s leafless April landscape while Oshkosh was soothed by sunshine. The wind buffeted Metal Illness broadside, testing the tie-downs and canopy cover. The “I have a better idea” tailwheel pushrod I installed on my airplane bent trying to resist the wind’s loads. I implemented an easy repair, but not until the wind calmed enough for me to pull the airplane to the FBO’s vacant hangar. There’d be no flying that day. Conditions were promised to improve the next day. But that’s not what happened.

Dawn was shrouded in mist, but an encouraging weather forecast and VFR ceiling caused me to launch into the gray fuzz. As I turned on course I looked down at the runway I had just departed. It invited me back. I was on downwind. If I’d had sense, I’d have put Metal Illness back on the ground. But at that moment I was struck by something I swore I’d never fall victim to: get-there-itis. I didn’t want to impose on my friends again. I imagined my coworkers in Oshkosh, under a perfect blue sky, thinking I was on an epic boondoggle. I glanced once more at the runway and told myself the weather, as forecast, would improve. But that’s not what happened.

Wallowing to Warsaw

The gray fuzz thickened around my canopy like a cataract. An indeterminable ceiling pushed me lower. I was outpacing the visibility and outpacing my racing thoughts. I reduced airspeed but my thoughts still lagged behind what my eyes could process. I watched for towers, both outside and on the GPS, while searching for airports and AWOS frequencies. I was flying lower and slower. Steadily lower and slower. I would have never launched into scud, yet I failed to stay out of it. I was nearly out of throttle and almost too low to place my attention anywhere but outside when a spear of sunlight spotlighted a portion of Warsaw, Indiana’s, airport. Relief overrode my anxiety. “If I can keep the airport in sight and keep the wreckage inside the airport fence,” I thought, “I’ll count the landing a success.”

It never felt better to be on the ground drinking burned FBO coffee, reading old issues of Aviation Safety magazine and watching daytime television. I occupied a tattered recliner that had swaddled many a stranded aviator. I had been told I could stay in the FBO for the night, but that’s not what happened. A janitor kicked me out in the evening. Dawn delivered little light and little hope. The morning wouldn’t give up its heavy, gray blanket. I felt myself growing impatient. I still had a touch of get-there-itis. If AWOS had said it was clear, I was ready to believe it against what my eyes told me was true. It took hours of staring at weather forecasts for the ceiling to lift. While waiting, I plotted an alternate course north, up Lake Michigan’s east shore and over Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where better conditions were forecast. The route wasn’t a short flight, but it was a flight. I launched north.

Five Days. Four Errors

All told, it took five days to get home. I could blame the adventurous flight on poor weather, mechanical issues and deadlines. But each shortcoming was set in motion by something I did or did not do. I failed to get fuel and sump the fuel tank before departing Sun ’n Fun. I installed the non-standard tailwheel steering link that bent in the wind. I launched into bad weather and failed to land immediately after recognizing the forecast and the facts didn’t agree. I own all of that. What I can’t explain is the biologically necessitated incident over the Appalachian Mountains. I followed my preflight checklist that morning, the last item being…well, you know.

And that’s what happened.

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