Resurrection

After nearly two years of ignoring this blog it's time to wake the dead. And what's more appropriate than a ghost story?

I was in the hangar last night changing the oil on two of our airplanes. I'd gotten the oil out of the 172 and was in the process of draining the Sundowner when I heard the radio station change to a paranormal show. I was too busy to change it, but wish I had.

I don't believe in ghosts. The last time I was really frightened was at a "Friday the 13th" extravaganza in college. But at 11:00 p.m. in a pole-barn hangar, at a quiet airport, with the plane I'd just flown making the usual postflight noises, the hangar rattling gently in the breeze and all sorts of creatures making their noises outside, and a radio show talking about bodies without faces and ghost "sightings," the creeps hit, -badly.

Out the door, straight to the van, a quick pop on the door handle to get the interior lights on and a look in the back seats to search for lurkers, the short drive home feeling an eternity waiting for the ghoulish hand to drop on my shoulder - yep, I had it bad.

Note to self: No "paranormal" shows at the hangar. Ever.

In the company of greatness

Linda Dowdy has been my instructor and friend since our arrival in Minnesota, and I was honored to be in the audience at a conference in Saint Paul when the FAA awarded her the 2008 Minnesota Flight Instructor of the Year award. Way to go Linda - you've earned it!

Take a look at http://www.simfliteminnesota.com/ to see some of the reasons why she earned this very prestigious award.

She now gets considered for the national spot. More to come.

I've got a new girl now...

... and she's a lot like you... (Honeymoon Suite, 1980s)

From the very first oil change in 55R we've done oil analysis, first through AOA Labs and then through Blackstone Labs, whose reports are more personalized and give opinions on what is happening and why. Beginning last year we noticed aluminum particulates increasing, followed shortly by increasing iron. The oil filter, always cut open and checked at each change, never showed metal. But as the levels reached cautionary ranges we began the move to replacing the engine. We'd been through this before, putting a remanufactured one into "Dimples" in 2007, but what to do this time?

Greg Wright had the answer: A PPONK. Essentially a modified O-470 engine with O-520 cylinders and a few other changes, the PPONK (the developer's last name spelled backwards) develops around 270 horsepower (40 more than the stock O-470), gives longer recommended time between overhauls (2000 hours versus 1500), and has a reputation for smoothness and reliability. The small premium in price for the increased performance was worth it to us, so in early March we dropped 55R off in Greg's capable hands for babysitting till the engine shop, Aero Engines of Winchester, was done with his. A month later, ours went in.

(long pause)

Mid-May came, and the engine appeared ready to go. The timing for pickup was perfect as I was in Maryland visiting Mom and Dad at the same time, so Greg picked me up at Dulles on my arrival in a Sun Country aluminum tube and hauled me to Winchester. The performance was eyewatering - more on that later. But on the second flight the new propeller sprayed red dye all over the windshield, indicating a faulty seal, so we gave the plane back to Tom for keeping while the propeller got reworked.

(short pause)

The end of June found all of us in Maryland for summer vacation. 55R was ready, with a reworked, freshly painted prop hanging on the nose and a new electronic engine analyzer (EI UBG-16 for those of you shopping for one) in the panel to help monitor what I was doing to the engine. Greg, Dad and I flew to Ohio to see Larry Stanford; lunch with Phil Sprang occupied us while Larry, left unfairly at his shop, measured up the panel for new metal, and we beat feet home ahead of an advancing storm. A few days later, the Minnesota Sheltons boarded 55R Airlines for the trip home.

Wow. It's still 55R but she's a new girl now, with a different heart inside the cowl. Some comparisons before and after the PPONK treatment:

Takeoff - shortened by 200-300 feet
Climb - increased by 300 feet per minute
Cruise - increased by 15 knots true airspeed for 2 gallons per hour more
Maximum range - similar, about a 5% decrease
Smoothness - vastly improved
Approach - DIFFERENT. It's easy to get near redline on airspeed, and control forces are higher

A great example of the change was our return flight, 850 nautical miles from Tipton Airport to Anoka with an average 20 knot headwind, very typical of a westbound cruise. With the O-470 our groundspeed of 110 knots would result in a 7:45 flight time; with the PPONK, groundspeeds were in the 125 knot range, shaving almost an hour off (6:48 flight time). We climbed higher more easily, getting out of the summer bumps faster. And the smoothness was noticeable after landing at Anoka, when we all bounced out of the airplane like we had flown from Duluth and not halfway across the country.

Pretty cool.

I'll have more details as I gain experience with the engine. Stay tuned.

CNBC at 3,500 feet

55R hadn't flown in a month and a half. Sometime in the next few weeks I'll take her to Virginia for her engine overhaul and upgrade (270 hp uprated Continental O-470 - oh YEAH), and having not flown her in so long hasn't been healthy - I've been airborne, she hasn't. So, when my flight lesson canceled tonight - snow in front of the airplane owner's hangar - I grabbed 55R and up we went. She purred as usual, all the systems aboard worked flawlessly, and the performance in the 5 degree air was unbelievable. The moon was up, as was Orion's gorgeous stars. There are benefits to living in the near-Arctic.

I had another motive, though. Some time ago, on a call to refresh my XM Radio subscription for our truck, the salesman pawned a "free" portable XM radio on me. It's been in the van for a while, tuned to Radio Disney, but I stole it and put it in 55R. The radio mounts on Wanda's side of the windscreen next to the door, the antenna sits on the glareshield (away from the compass - there's a magnet in the antenna), and a Radio Shack cable connects the radio to the plane's intercom system through a jack designed for such things.

Tonight, after getting the engine running and the electronics going, I powered up the XM and was blown away. Flying will never be the same.

Imagine: Jim Cramer on CNBC, yelling "BUY BUY BUY" while flightseeing at 3,500 feet over Minnesota snow. Or Hannah Montana on Radio Disney singing to screaming preteens while threading the Colorado mountains. Or CSNY jamming "Woodstock" while winging east to New England this summer. Or Kenny Loggins belting out "Danger Zone" - oh, never mind, 55R's not an F-14. But you get the idea. I'm late to this game, as several friends have had music of some kind in their planes for years. I've never been an early adopter. But here we are, finally.

Oh, yeah. We have a good year coming up.

Pluto's New Face

In the spring of 2005 Rick and I flew N22473, a Piper Warrior, from Norman, Oklahoma to Annapolis, Maryland, with Jenny and Scott in the similar N2136Y. Nicknamed "Pluto" and "Shrek" to keep the cartoon character names going, they've done nice work as teaching platforms for Navy midshipmen and others. But both had ancient radios and paint was flaking off, exposing bare metal to corrosion. Pluto in particular had recurrent radio problems and just wasn't trusted enough to be flown much by instructors and pilots. So last month Jenny arranged for both planes to be re-radioed and repainted in Hagerstown. The differences are pretty shocking:

Pluto before, in Kansas City

Pluto after, in Annapolis

Pluto's Original Panel

The new panel

The paint scheme is a collaboration of ideas from Jenny, Frank and me, a touch of the AOPA sweepstakes Cherokee Six, parts of the new schemes put on Archers at the factory, designs from airplanes we saw on ramps that we liked, and a hint of drawings Madison made for me. It's a bright scheme and looks great in Navy colors. The panel's still basic - no fancy-pants Garmin color GPS there - but perfectly suited to the plane's primary mission, basic flight instruction in the Baltimore-Washington airspace. It saved a ton of money too: We got the paint and radio upgrade for not much more than the cost of adding a Garmin 430. The digital radios and new audio panel make a huge difference in functionality.

36Y arrives next week with the same redo; they'll be near clones. "Dimples," the first plane we ever owned, remains red, white and blue till next year when she gets the same or similar scheme; Madison added a few details that I like. Who says a fleet has to be completely identical???

Two New States

Going to medical conferences brings some benefits to flying: We get to visit great places, and some of the costs get covered. This summer was a prime example as we headed to Vail for a nice weekend conference and kickoff to a great vacation.


State Number One: South Dakota. This probably shouldn't count, as it was just a fuel stop, but heck, we did land in a new state for us, even if it was only a few miles from the Minnesota and Nebraska borders, definitely not new states for us. Two hours and change after departing Anoka, 55R's wheels kissed the ground at Yankton. Half an hour later we were airborne again, heading southwest.


Ogalalla, Nebraska had been billed as a great lunch spot with a courtesy car available for the ride into town, cheap gas, and easy access. Access and gas, correct; courtesy car, WRONG - nothing but an honor-system snack bar and sodas in the fridge. We exchanged niceties with a mildly egomaniacal Cirrus driver at the fuel pump - we slowed him down - then launched back into an increasingly turbulent sky directly towards Denver.


State Number Two: Colorado. Eastern Colorado was incredibly turbulent that day with boomers all around us, a very high cloudbase we couldn't top, and thermals a glider pilot would die for. For the first time ever, all four occupants of 55R's seats were at least nauseated, one violently so. Landing at Jeffco Airport northwest of downtown Denver was a treat for many reasons, ending the turbulence and passing a B-25 at the hold-short line being the main two. When we shut down at Stevens Aviation the rental car was waiting, helping hands were everywhere with our bags, and we were on our way to Vail.


A quick note on flight times in small aircraft as an apologetic: We were enroute from Anoka to Jeffco a total of 7 hours, one being on the ground at the fuel stops. Anoka's airport is 15 minutes from the house; add in another half hour for getting the plane out of the hangar, loading the bags, starting the engine and getting to the runway, plus the 15 minutes (seriously) we were on the ground at Jeffco, and it's an 8-hour trip. For an airline trip from Minneapolis to Denver it would be: 1 hour drive from the house, 2 hours in MSP, 2 hours enroute (per Expedia), and conservatively an hour to get bags and schlep our way to the rental car - 6 hours. For a two-hour premium we did it ourselves in an airplane that goes about one-fourth the speed of an airliner. Not to mention the hour's drive through the middle of Denver to get to the mountains in addition to what we drove from Jeffco. Pretty darn convenient, I'd say, and you can't beat the views. In our dream plane, a 210-knot pressurized Baron or Cessna 340, it'd knock two hours off the time, making it a dead heat. So there.


So, Vail - after three days of morning conferences and afternoon exploring (see the pictures from the trip on the Photos link to get more on that) we were back in the air from Jeffco, flying down the front range between late afternoon thunderstorms to Colorado Springs. Funny things happen to airplanes at high altitude airports (which Denver and Colorado Springs certainly qualify as) due to the decreased air density compared to sea level. First, the engine doesn't develop as much power, making takeoff distances (and landing) significantly longer. Second, the thinner air means the airplane must be moving faster through it to feel the same aerodynamic pressures on the wings; this adds to those runway lengths and makes takeoffs and landings seem strange. Third, the plane doesn't climb nearly as well - 55R sees, fully loaded, 1000 feet/minute climb rates fully loaded on most days at sea level, but barely got 500 feet/minute at Jeffco. Add in a hot day (which it was) and wow, is this really 55R we're flying? or is something wrong with her engine today? Nope, it's her, and the engine's fine, she's just having to work harder.


We were in the Springs for about 4 days, enjoying much of what that area has to offer the tourist and resident (again, see the pictures - this post will be long enough as it is). Thursday had us wheels up again out of COS for Durango.


Although elevations were high along the Front Range we were still, essentially, flatland fliers. That all changed winging west to Durango: Those mountains are huge. Out of COS we headed south to La Veta Pass, then due west through the pass past the Spanish Peaks, over Alamosa, and across a really rugged area into Durango. Rob and Maria Kolter, former owners of 55R, were waiting for us at the airport, we shared a nice afternoon with them, then it was off to visit the area.

The next morning I met Rob early back at the airport to take a flight in his 206 around the area. We overflew the kivas at Chimney Rock between Durango and Alamosa, then up a mountain valley till time got short (I had a train to catch, the Silverton run). The 206 was a hoot to fly - big, stable, and lots of power for those mountain climbouts. Nice.

Heading home, we retraced our steps to Alamosa, then headed northeast over the Great Sand Dunes (WOW) through Mosca Pass into Pueblo for fuel. Flower Aviation, the FBO we used, was swamped with bizjets, so we picked our own way to the terminal for lunch, then bounced through the heating-up atmosphere back through Nebraska, eventually ending up on top of, then in a cloud deck in far-southwestern Minnesota. ATC was very accommodating in giving us a "pop-up" IFR clearance. It was smooth as silk in the clouds and with the sun low in the sky to the west the clouds had a weird orange color. But the best view happened just as we entered the clouds from above: As we skimmed along the tops, popping in and out of the higher cloud peaks, I looked back and saw beautiful little curly-Q's around the hole we punched through the cloud, just like you see on those beautiful posters of jets doing the same thing. Those curls are the result of wingtip vortices, the air moving around the wingtip from the high pressure below to the low pressure above, and while Cessnas make decidedly smaller curls than the big jets, it was very cool to see. Oh, for a camera ready at such times - and an autopilot to let me stay off the controls long enough to take a good shot.

ATP Checkride

Pilot certificates fall into four basic levels: Student, the learning permit; Private, the basic license to fly that most pilots have; Commercial, required to fly for pay; and Airline Transport Pilot, needed to captain an airliner around the skies. The ATP has been my goal ever since I started flying, not because of any career goals (although it did cross my mind at times) but simply to have a target, get my proficiency as high as possible, and do something challenging.

Well, this April that goal came to pass - I'm an ATP! Not only that, but my particular certificate, endorsed for "single engine land" airplanes, is relatively rare, as most have multiengine privileges.

Before moving from Maryland I began studying for the written exam. Maybe I'm getting old and mentally feeble, but I thought that written was the most challenging of all FAA writtens I've taken, and it took a while to study for. (OK, maybe the job change, move, new house, etc. had something to do with it as distractions.) I took the test in the fall of 2005, did well, and when it thawed out I began working on it with Linda Dowdy in 55R between trips. As you might expect from a Master CFI, Linda's merciless in her simulator and in the plane, but that's good - I didn't want just the ticket but the skill and proficiency behind it, and each session got me that much better at instrument procedures, approaches, and airwork.

After a few months she declared me ready, and the scheduling game began. Our chosen examiner, Mike Andersen, had a tight schedule, as did I, and getting them to mesh was tough. We also went through a litany of problems with the plane, including an alternator failure on my pre-checkride flight with Linda, compass failure, directional gyro failure, and radio issues. For a plane that's been almost perfect in her reliability this sequence of events was troubling and most inconvenient to getting a checkride done.... Then winter set in, those subzero temperatures aren't good on airplanes or people, and we targeted the spring. In March everything came together, Linda signed me off for the ride, and we scheduled it. April 15th was the day.

Mike met me at Anoka, in Linda's sim room. The oral exam took about an hour and dug deep into the systems of the plane, along with regulatory issues about operating it. I had over 400 hours in that specific airplane by the time of the ride, had studied the systems thoroughly, and had, through troubleshooting problems over the prior 3 years, seen firsthand most of the equipment on board; that really helped, and there wasn't much Mike could find deficient, except for one area: electrical. I'm a physician, not an engineer, and as much as people try to say they're similar, physiology and electricity are totally different animals. Flow dynamics of blood aren't the same as electrical flow. I struggled a bit with the details, Mike said, "Electricity is funny, isn't it?" and we moved on.

In the plane, the ride was actually fun. Mr. Andersen has been called "Iron Mike" by many, but he was affable with me. But I thought I'd botched it from the first maneuver, a steep turn under the hood, when I mistook what heading he wanted me to roll out on and ended up 90 degrees off.... "We try to stay within ten degrees of heading, don't we?" he asked, I agreed, and we continued.

Linda had described it as an "instrument checkride on steroids," and that's exactly what it was: Basic maneuvers, including stalls, by instrument reference only; emergencies, including engine failure (where do you go when you're in the cloud, the clouds go to the ground, and you lose an engine without hope of gliding to a runway? - well, you go there, whatever "there" you pick); and four approaches, three at Airlake Airport south of the Twin Cities and one back at Anoka County Airport. Oh, and missed approach procedures, holds, circling approaches, the lot.

When we landed at Anoka, Mike gave me the best compliment I have ever gotten on a checkride, instructional flight, any flight whatsoever. That meant a lot to me. And doing the ride in 55R meant everything.

Next step: Multiengine ATP. Linda and I are already working on that. Stay tuned.