The Guy in the Red Airplane

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These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen online right here by clicking: http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedRedAirplane.mp3.

As Airspeed steams into its fourth airshow season, I’m in top gear heading out to shows and having some of the coolest experiences available below Class Alpha airspace. And I just had a day-long experience up in the Alpha on a KC-135R Stratotanker, too. More on that soon. I don’t think that anyone could say that I’ve spared much effort in chasing edges of the aviation envelope so far this year.

I can’t remember who said that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. But he was right. And I had an experience with that very thing not long ago. I was going to hold off on this episode until I got more of the Indianapolis Air Show content out, but I heard something on a recent episode of Uncontrolled Airspace that made me want to pull this one forward.

By the way, I mention the Uncontrolled Airspace podcast way too little here on Airspeed. If you don’t yet subscribe to UCAP, you need to go and subscribe right now. Go ahead and hit pause. I’ll wait. Okay, you’re back? Good. And leave them a nice review on iTunes, too.

Anyway, the UCAP guys mentioned a letter to the editor of a local newspaper by someone thanking the unknown pilot of a red airplane who had done aerobatics near the writer’s farm.

[Mary reads from letter]

This is to tell the man in the red plane that he has a fan.

I've been watching you from the ground. Well, from my farm pastures and yard actually. More often than you know. I am in awe of your skill and the performance you give is wonderful and joyous.

Who are you? Are you a man or a woman? A professional stunt pilot or a pleasure flyer of that pretty red plane? Do you perform for others besides me, or is what I'm seeing just an expression of your own preferences? . . .

Not the usual complaint about noise or some perceived safety issue. A thank-you for the grace and beauty of the performance. That made me pull this episode forward.

First, a little background. As I’ve attended enough airshows, I’ve gotten to see many of the performers multiple times, some more than a half dozen times. And I’ve begin to really hone in on what I love.

No flies on the jet teams. I love them dearly. And no flies on anyone else. But I had an epiphany at Oshkosh last year. I was watching Greg Koontz perform in a bright red Super Decathlon. I had been flying the Citabria for a few months by then and had really begun to love American Champion aircraft. And, seeing Greg fly the Super D so well, I made a connection. That’s an airplane that you might well be able to find, and train in, at your own local airport. Yet here’s a guy flying that very airplane with a grace and power equal to anything else at Oshkosh.

You probably heard Greg’s appearance on the show earlier this year and you could be forgiven for thinking that I’ve begun to regard Greg as a bit of a hero. One could have worse heroes, I suppose.

And I got to really appreciate another part of Greg’s unique appeal at the Indianapolis Air Show earlier this month. At the opening of the show, Greg takes on the persona of Clem Cleaver from Alabama, who barges into the airshow to redeem his coupon for a flight lesson. After some back and forth with the announcer, the air boss ostensibly clears Clem and his putative instructor to get into the waiting Cub, take off, and leave the airspace. But, shortly after the engine of the Cub is hand-propped to life, the Cub begins to roll forward and Clem takes off across the grass beside the runway without the instructor.

What follows is ostensibly a comedy act, but is also some of the best low-level aerobatics that I’ve ever seen. Ultimately, “grandpa” shoots the Cub’s engine with a large rifle and Greg ends the sequence by landing the Cub on a moving pickup truck.

The more you see this routine (and I’ve seen it five or six times now), the better it gets. At one point, Greg, playing the terrified Clem Cleaver, pulls the Cub up to a 45-degree ascent, then pulls the throttle back all the way, pushes over the top, and yells at the top of his lungs. You can hear Greg shouting in the cockpit all the way to the announcer’s stand.

Here’s the shout on Saturday at Indy.

[Koontz 1]

And again on Sunday.

[Koontz 2]

Greg ends that phase of the act by landing the Cub on a moving pickup truck. Then, a little later in the show, he gets out the red Super Decathlon and puts it though its paces, fling outside stuff, high-energy maneuvers, low-energy maneuvers, and even tumbling the airplane (not easy in a Super-D).

Anyway, I know that I’ll never be an F-16, F/A-18, or even Extra 300 driver. So, when I see my idealized self out there flying, I usually see myself flying a bright red Super Decathlon. Just like Greg Koontz.


It’s a happy coincidence that Sutton Aviation at the Oakland County International Airport (KPTK), where I’m based happened to add a Super Decathlon to its line in April. And an even happier coincidence that it’s red.

I had planned to fly some pretty heavy acro to prepare for the T-6A Texan II ride that I had in May at Randolph Air Force Base. I’ve never had a great stomach for acro, but I’ve found that I can work up to about 40 minutes of moderate aerobatic flight with exposure. I planned for two flights a week prior to the T-6A flight and, when the Super D became available, I scheduled it along with instructor extraordinaire and FAA Designated Examiner Barry Sutton. Barry’s an excellent instructor and you’ve heard his commentary in the cockpit here on the show.

We went up for the first time on April 16 and I rag-dolled myself out in only 20 minutes. You can see video from that flight in the Airspeed video episode that posted on May 30. By May 6, I had had a few flights in the aircraft and my tolerance was getting better.

I arrived at the airport to find a gray 10,000-foot overcast and hazy visibility. Solid VFR, but not the best weather for acro because you prefer a nice, sharp horizon to use as a reference when you pull through a loop or roll the airplane.

So we launched and headed for the practice area north of the field. Although much of Oakland County is subdivisions and industrial parks, it gives way to wide open fields and other rural landscape just north of the airport. No federal airways nearby and plenty of vertical and horizontal elbow room so there’s no worry about being over a congested area or getting within 1,500 feet of the ground before being fully recovered. In fact, we add a 500-foot buffer over that and start maneuvers a good thousand feet above that.

Barry has a pilot acquaintance, Paul, at the airport who lives out in the middle of the fields of the practice area and he has mentioned on several occasions that he’d try to contact Barry on the practice area frequency if he saw the Super D maneuvering.

I’ll say at the outset that the cockpit audio here is a little distorted. I usually set the audio levels on the ground and then hand Barry the recorder to stash in back in a Velcro-enclosed pocket. Although there’s a “hold” slider on the MP3 recorder, the slider doesn’t stop changes from being made with the H-M-L sensitivity selector. I usually fly with it set on low, but Barry inadvertently switched it to “high” in the course of stuffing it into the pocket. It’s a little overdriven and distorted, but understandable.

We had just finished a loop and some rolls when Paul came on the frequency. Barry, like many others, had mistaken the T-6A Texan II, a 1,100-hp modern trainer, with the AT6, a variant of the original WWII-era T-6 Texan. No matter. I just thought I’d clarify. Anyway, here’s the call-up.

[Audio 01]

We did the Immelman and a couple of other maneuvers, including a hammerhead, when Barry called up Paul again.

[Audio 02]

So we did the roll and then set up for an inverted pass. Paul had his binoculars out and could just about make out our tail number. We added a hammerhead at the end.

[Audio 03]

Paul asked at the last pass how long the aircraft could go inverted. We follow that up a little and then Paul suggests a heading to get us toward the big empty fields near his house.

[Audio 04]

Paul talked us in and then we did a series of maneuvers. We set up a show line over the fields well offset from his house and came down a bit, but still well above the minimum VFR altitude for the area and well above aerobatic minima.


I’m just going to let the audio run here and let you listen in. We have our box with plenty of clearance both vertically and horizontally for the regs. Frankly, we’re a little too high for anyone on the ground to get more than a basic idea of what we’re doing. The pictures that they sent the next day were clearly taken at maximum telephoto and cropped and we’re still pretty small in the frame. But the altitude is a good thing.

Barry’s giving me direction, but I’m flying the series, which makes me pretty proud of myself. I had been flying acro for quite some time, but hadn’t really done a connected series before. And now I had a chance to do it with an audience. I’m going to let this run with the omission of a couple of maneuvers where I made an attempt to record a Scheyden ad and the audio really distorted.

[Audio 06]

Didja hear that? Kids shouting in the background and lady thanking me for my noble and graceful feats in the sky.

Just before that thank-you, I was feeling pretty green around the gills. Not ready to park a tiger, mind you, but not in the mood to thrash myself any more. And then the voices of Paul, his wife, and the neighborhood kids. Voices that seemed excited about aviation. Voices that made the kind of sounds that I make at airshows all summer. Only the guy in the red airplane was . . . me.

I was instantly not sick. Not one bit. I could have gone another 20 minutes right then and there. All because of the voices from a back yard near some sprawling fields out in the countryside.

Barry and I talked about it on the way back to the airport.

[Audio 07]

Yeah, it’s cool. Really cool.

We did a few trips around the pattern, alternating wheel landings and three-point landings and then finally called up and told the tower that we were going full-stop. On final, a radio call came in. “Cessna niner-four-eight-niner-one 10 miles south with Papa to land, full stop.”

A magic tail number for me. That’s the Cessna 152 in which I did my first solo. It was a private pilot candidate coming in to see Barry for a checkride finish-up. Barry and I parked the Super-D, put away the parachutes, and debriefed and then I wandered back out on to the ramp.

There they were. N132PA, the bright red Super Decathlon; and N94891, the little 152 that took me a long way on the journey from pedestrian to pilot. Both sitting there on the same ramp. A silent meditation of where I’ve been and where I’m going. And the echo of the tinny voice of a fellow pilot, his wife, and the neighborhood kids shouting in the background coming through my headset as I rolled and looped in a red airplane over the fields.

I’ll never be Greg Koontz. Or even a lesser airshow performer. And that’s okay. I’m superhero enough for myself right now. Reading, flying, listening, talking, and, most of all, dreaming. Exploring the envelope. Becoming a better pilot and a more capable human.

If I learned something that day, it’s this. Sometimes you spend too much time fantasizing about what it’s like to fly like Greg Koontz. And sometimes it seems like all journey and no destination – or at least no stops along the way.

And then a flight like this comes along. For 20 minutes, you’re the guy in the red airplane. And the kids are shouting and pumping their fists in the air and pointing at . . . you.

So you stand on the ramp with the 152 and the Super-D and just take it all in. And then you go home and cut the audio and write the script and try to tell a few thousand of your closest friends about what it was like. Just like now.

Most of the time, you’re the scared knucklehead in the 152 or the confused guy with the hood on in the 172 or the guy with the aching right leg in the Apache or the flight-suited CAP major trying to drink from the twin 10-inch LCD fire hoses of the G1000. But, on rare occasions, magic, love, and science meet and you’re the guy in the red airplane flying upside down for the shouting kids.

That letter to the editor showed me that there are red airplanes – and people who watch them – all over the country. I’ve sure as hell been the one watching. And it was nice to be the guy in the red airplane, just once.


Go find a red airplane. Or whatever amounts to a red airplane for you. The life that you dream about might well be happening even as you’re focused on the mechanics and procedures of getting it to come about. Life is what happens while you’re making other plans. Don’t miss those fleeting moments when you actually are some glimmer of the hero that you daydream of being.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m Superman and Harry Potter and Fletcher Seagull, all in good measure. I’m a pilot. And sometimes I’m even the guy in the red airplane.
____________________

Link to letter to the editor of the Fauquier Times-Democrat:
http://www.fauquier.com/letter/751/

Sutton Aviation:
6230 North Service Drive
Waterford, Michigan 48327
248-666-9160
http://www.sutton-aviation.com/

Greg Koontz Airshows:
2546 Slasham Road
Ashville, Alabama 35953
205-616-8176
greg@gkairshows.com
http://www.gkairshows.com/

Music:
Jon Schmidt
Winter Serenade (Sussex Carol)
http://www.jonschmidt.com/catalog/index.php
http://www.mevio.com/music/?artist_id=3736

Not a Bad Way to Spend A Wednesday - KC-135R Refueling Mission

This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for show notes or links to show audio, please check out the other posts.

There are many ways to spend a Wednesday. Being in the office handling challenging legal matters for sophisticated clients is one of them. And there are no flies on that particular means of spending a Wednesday. I know. That’s how I spend most Wednesdays.

But then there are those Wednesdays prior to which you get a call and are offered a chance to ride along on a KC-135R Stratotanker with the airmen of the 72nd Air Refueling Squadron/434th Air Refueling Wing of the United States Air Force.

I drove down to Grissom Air Reserve Base Tuesday night and showed up at the appointed rendezvous point with Roger Bishop and Mike Souders of the Indy Transponder. After sitting in on the briefings and watching the passenger briefing videos, we boarded the KC-135R and departed for a refueling mission over the Carolinas.

We had full access to all areas of the aircraft during the flight. Here, I’m laying on the boom operator’s couch in the rear of the aircraft. That’s Roger on the left. The boom operator’s couch is in the center and there are observation couches on either side. The boom operator has a central window (through which the lead picture was taken) and a couple of smaller windows. The boom controls are all under the operator’s chin or within reach of his hands.

Here’s a shot of the flight deck during the refueling operations. LtCol Thom Pemberton in the left seat and 2Lt Jacob Creel in the right seat. That’s Roger in the middle. I rode in that position for the landing back at Grissom.

Naturally, all of this will find itself into the Airspeed feed. Most likely in both audio and video versions. I have the very best of problems, namely an overabundance of content that I need to get edited and into the feed. It’s my favorite problem to have. Watch the feed and the website for more on this flight!

More information about the KC-135R, the 434th ARW, and the 72nd ARS in the following third-party links.

http://www.grissomairmuseum.com/home.html
http://www.milaircomms.com/images/refuel_tracks_large.jpg
http://www.milaircomms.com/refuel_tracks.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-135_Stratotanker

Battle Creek Behind the Scenes - Airshow Director Barb Haluszka

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These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen online right here by clicking: http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedBarb2009.mp3.

It just wouldn’t be airshow season on Airspeed without talking to Barb Haluszka, the executive director of the Battle Creek Field of Flight Airshow and Balloon Festival. This will be my fourth year covering the show and I always like to talk to Barb ahead of time to get a preview of the show and to get a better idea of what goes on behind the scenes to put together a major American airshow.

The show is scheduled for Wednesday, July 1 through Sunday, July 5. Gates open at 5:00 Wednesday through Friday for the carnival, vendors, and amusement park. The flying gets going on Saturday and Sunday with the gates opening at 10:30 each day.

I’ll be there Thursday through Sunday and will try to arrange a meetup/Tweetup on the grounds, probably Saturday. Watch my Twitter feed at http://www.twitter.com/StephenForce for time and place.

More information about the show is at www.bcballoons.com.

Air Boss Brief from the Indy Airshow

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These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen online right here by clicking: http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedIndyBrief.mp3.

I got to sit in on the air boss briefing at the Indy Air Show on Sunday to get a sense of what goes on behind the scenes. Here’s audio from the brief, pretty much uncut and as presented.

Thanks again to the Indianapolis Air Show for the great access!

Frame Grabs from the JATO Ride in the Blue Angels' C-130, Fat Albert

This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for show notes or links to show audio (and there’s lots of that here!), please check the other posts.

The highlight of the day was a jet-assisted takeoff (JATO) ride on the Blue Angels’ C-130, known as Fat Albert.


I shot video of the flight, as well as the briefing before and some of the interior of the aircraft.

The in-flight video is a little blurry. I clamped the camera to the rail just above my seat and pointed it at the guys on the other side of the aircraft. I wish I had thought to clamp it over on the other side to get footage of myself, but I didn’t think about it until everyone was buckled in. Notwithstanding that, the folks on the other side were just fine as subjects.

The rail vibrated pretty badly throughout (and thus did the camera vibrate), so much of the video isn’t usable. But the zero-gee parts came out fine. This frame grab is from the top of the initial JATO climb, at which the pilot pushes the aircraft nose over and floats the occupants.


At the conclusion of the flight, they bring Fat Albert to a pretty abrupt stop and open the rear cargo door simultaneously. Everybody gets tossed forward, but not as hard as you’d expect. And, when you look out the back door, you see just how little runway they used to get her down and stopped. We’re talking a couple of thousand feet here.

The entire experience lasts only 12 minutes. It seems much longer. Among the new sensations on this flight are aerobatics with only limited outside references. There’s an approx. 18” window on the opposite side of the aircraft and you can sometimes see outside references (and sometimes not). When you can see the ground, it’s very close and it’s moving at around 350 knots.

I have audio, video, and stills that I’ll be turning into a full episode soon. Just wanted to get some of this material up so that you could see it right away.

Many thanks to the Indianapolis Air Show and to Fat Albert Airlines for this spectacular ride!

Air-to-Air with Billy Werth of Grayout Aerosports at the Indy Airshow

This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for show notes or links to show audio (and there’s lots of that here!), please check the other posts.

Matt Kryger of The Indianapolis Star was kind enough to send me some pictures from yesterday’s photo flight with Billy Werth of Grayout Aerosports. I’m the guy in front operating a couple of cameras and an MP3 recorder.



Like I said before, this was a great flight so several reasons, the most compelling of which was that this was my first time being in formation. Both the photo ship pilot and Billy did a great job of making sure that everything happened to put the Pitts in the best possible position for the shoot. That involves, among many other things, flying the right attitude, putting the sun in the right position, keeping the photo ship’s shadow off of the beauty airplane, and other considerations.

If Billy was challenged by any of that, he sure didn’t show it. A great couple of pilots on this flight and I really enjoyed getting to see it happen.


This shot graced the front page of the Star today. You can’t recognize either Billy or me in the picture, but Billy was credited in the text, so he received due notoriety for the shoot.

Stay tuned for more from the Indianapolis Air Show. And follow the show on Twitter as @IndyAirShow.

I’m here all day tomorrow covering the show before beating a hasty retreat back to Michigan to see what has piled up on my desk. It’ll be Sunday, so I’ll be in the red Airspeed shirt wandering the ramp with MP3 recorder and camera in hand and deranged fanboy look in my eye!

[Update 8 June 2009] Also, check out video from the flight at the Indy Transponder at http://indytransponder.blogspot.com/2009/06/indianapolis-air-show-coverage-6-jun-09.html

Frame Grabs from Photo Mission with Billy Werth

This is a regular blog post. Looking for show notes or links to show audio? Please check out the other posts.

I got up on a photo mission with Billy Werth of Grayout Aerosports yesterday. I was front seat in Billy’s Pitts S-2C as The Indianapolis Star ’s Matt Kryger shot stills and video from the open door of a Charokee in the formation.

Really cool flight. It’s my first experience in a formation. We got close. I mean really close. But that’s what you can do with two really competent pilots. Billy and the photo platform pilot have clearly done this before and they know what angles and attitudes work best. We started out with some straight and level (despite the fronmt-seat placard in Billy’s aircraft that warns (“Intentional Straight and Level Flight Prohibited”) and then did a little inverted flight.

Billy warned me that the fuel filler cap sometimes leaked a little during sustained inverted flight and, true enough, I got a little 100LL on the inside of the windscreen. Good thing I’ve been doing the acro conditioning! I think that the acro around the photo ship along with a snoot of 100LL would have done the average media guy in.

And, when you’re in the beauty aircraft, your tolerance is kind of a limiting factor of the photo mission. You sure don’t want to hurl or have to end the flight because the photo team and the beauty pilot (and the public relations folks) are all counting on being able to do the entire flight and get all of the photos. I'm happy to say that I did it with no problem.


Matt Kryger, a staff photographer for the Indianapolis Star shot the photos and the video from the photo ship and I grabbed a few shots of him as well.

Great flight! Thanks to Billy Werth and everyone at Grayout Aerosports for the opportunity! Audio and video of this flight to come!

Indy Airshow - Interview with Blue Angel Boss and Talking with Roger Bishop

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These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen online right here by clicking: http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedIndy20090606.mp3.

It’s early morning on Saturday, June 6, 2009 and I’m getting this episode out from Firebase Airspeed Indianapolis, namely the Holiday Inn Indianapolis East.

This is the third day in Indy. I arrived in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

The drive was long. Maybe a little longer because the transmission on my car is slipping in high gear and I watched the tach in cruise at highway speeds to make sure that the RPMs weren't climbing at a constant speed over the road.

Add to that the fact that I'd just put in 4.1 Hobbs on a four-hop training flight - Scenario 3 of the Garmin G1000 transition training - about half of which (including an ILS, an RNAV, an VOR-A, and a LOC B/C) I flew partial panel. Yeah, partial panel in a G1000-equopped aircraft is almost better than full panel in any of the round-gage Cessnas I've flown before, but everything's in a different place and it's workload-intensive, at least at the beginning.

Three hours of sleep and then back at it. But that's okay. Because, a couple of hours later, I was standing on the ramp at the FedEx facility opposite the passenger terminal of the Indianapolis International Airport with Roger Bishop. If you've been listening to Airspeed for long, you know that Roger is the director of the Indianapolis Air Show, held each year at the Mt. Comfort airport about 20 minutes east of Indianapolis proper. And you might have guessed by now that we were waiting for the arrival of the US Navy Blue Angels.


Like any airshow, this weekend is the culmination of months of work by hundreds of people. And this year was unique in recent years for the Indy show because the organizers pulled the date ahead more than two months to make it possible to host the Blue Angels.

As we waited, I gut-checked Roger.

[Roger Bishop audio]

He's unflappable, as usual. There's a lot of confidence in his manner and it's justified.

I first met Roger last year at Podapalooza at Oshkosh. Understated for a guy who heads a pretty substantial airshow. And as knowledgeable about airshow ops as anyone else I've met.

We've kept in touch over the past few months and Roger invited me to come down to the Indy Air Show. Indy is something like five hours from where I live in north of Detroit by the time you count bio breaks, so it's a non-trivial journey. But the dance card for the show is full of military, civilian, and vintage warbird participants and it seemed more than worth the drive.

Roger didn't disappoint and, in fact, surprised. Halfway through the first Red Bull of the morning, my mobile phone rang and it was Roger, offering a ride to the Indianapolis airport to meet the Blue Angels as they arrived.

This show stages the Blues remotely at Indianapolis International (KIND) and the show site is about ten miles to the east at the Mt. Comfort Airport (KMQJ). Although this means that the audience at the airshow proper doesn’t get to see the Blues step, the remote staging allows the Blues a secure place to park the aircraft and conduct operations. And it’s also kind of cool that the Blues can simply have an entire half of the airport when it comes time to launch or recover the F/A-18s. The Indy organizers have arranged for a single ATC frequency for the team between Indianapolis International and Mt Comfort, so that has to be convenient for the team.

First to arrive is Fat Albert, the Blue Angels’ Marine-operated C-130 transport. Shortly thereafter, 1 through 6 arrive at the airport, performing a carrier break over the runway and then recovering the team in short order. The ground team leaps into action and begins checking over the jets, refueling them, filling the smoke oil tanks, and otherwise checking them over after the flight in.

At the appointed moment, I walk out onto the ramp to get some pictures of the aircraft and to talk to Boss, CDR Greg McWherter.

[Boss Interview]

I also get a moment to chase down Maj Nathan Miller, the lead solo, who flies the No. 5 jet. Maj. Miller grew up in Lapeer, Michigan, just north of Pontiac, where I’m based. I found out last year that he and I have a tenuous connection in that Maj. Miller’s first instructor was Barry Sutton, the guy with whom I’ve been flying aerobatics for the last year or so. I pass along Barry’s best regards and the major seems to remember Barry well. Don’t we all remember our first instructors? And, every once in awhile, we get reminded of the common strings that run through aviation.

Roger gave me a ride back to pick up my car and then it was off to the show site. Mt Comfort is ideally situated for an airshow. It’s close to the major highways, but far enough off the beaten track to allow for staging of crowds and a good ingress and egress if traffic gets backed up.

The media coverage and other operations are staged at the field’s FBO, Indy Aero. The hospitality is excellent. No matter how busy it gets, people and paper seem to meet up and move where they’re supposed to be with very little friction.

Roger and I walk a short distance to the airshow office and pick up his golf cart. Then it’s on to a tour of the grounds. The show is laid out in a more or less linear way along Runway 7/35 at Mt. Comfort. The static displays are centrally located and convenient. The vendor areas are laid out along Tent Row with the usual assemblage of food and beverage and souvenirs. I get to see show center and get an idea of where I can roam on the grounds. This is a pretty good show as far as media is concerned. I can roam right up to the taxiway at show center and hang out right there next to Rob Reider’s announcer platform. Or, further down the way, get a quiet place under a big tent with the performers and line crew.

Flightline Radio is here and will be broadcasting the announcements and other content. The equipment went up yesterday and I’ll be walking the grounds with my Flightline Radio receiver Saturday and Sunday.

Roger dropped me off back at Indy Aero and I wandered the grounds for a few more hours before heading back to the hotel to do some writing and editing. I had a bit of an issue with the hotel Internet connection, which delayed the release of this episode, but, if you’re listening now, I’ve resolved those issues.

Indy has been, hands down, the best media experience at an airshow yet. Roger has personally made every effort to make sure that I and the other media will have the opportunity to get up close and personal with the performers and the aircraft and get the word out about this gem of an airshow. I’m very grateful and I’m looking forward to doing additional coverage today and tomorrow.

I should note that I got up yesterday on two media flights. The first was with Pitts S-2C driver and local Indianapolis performer Billy Werth. This was a pretty unique thing for me. Matt Kryger of the Indianapolis Star had arranged for a photo flight and was going to shoot Billy from a Cherokee with the door taken off. The front seat of Billy’s Pitts was available and Billy’s crew offered it to me. Not being stupid, I immediately accepted and got a great flight out of it. It was the first formation flight I’ve ever done and it was cool to be in the beauty airplane, maneuvering around the photo ship. Look for pictures and audio from that flight soon.

I also spent a half hour aboard the Commemorative Air Force’s “Black Sparrow” C-47. I plugged in the recorder at the crew chief’s station in the rear of the aircraft, so I have cockpit audio of the flight, although I haven’t heard it yet.

Get out to the Indy Airshow Saturday and Sunday June 6-7, 2009 at the Mt Comfort Airport just east of Indianapolis. I’ll see you there!

http://www.indyairshow.com/

Another G1000 Training Session in the CAP C-182T Nav III

This is a regular blog post. You can find show mores and links to show audio in the other posts.

I’m back in the Civil Air Patrol Cessna 182T Nav III completing the transition training. I went up with Capt Tim Kramer for 2.8 hours and flew from Oakland County International (KPTK) to Lansing (KLAN) (ILS 28L), then to Saginaw (KMBS) (RNAV 23 from MOGRE), then to Flint (KFNT) (VOR 18) before returning to KPTK (LOC B/C 27L).

We got a good 0.9 in actual IMC with about half of that in genuine inside-the-eggshell conditions and a little rain on the windshield. Maybe 20 minutes was in my favorite conditions, namely poking in and out of the tops just above an overcast layer. A little ragged down below and not as well-defined as I like up top, but really cool nevertheless. And we benefitted from that inasmuch as there wasn’t a lot of convection to beat us up.

The next flight will be the instrument failure and partial-panel stuff. The interesting thing is that, given the backup systems on the airplane, the worst failure of the core avionics still leaves me with as much, if not more, instrumentation than I’d have in a regular round-gage C-172. Yeah, the instruments are in different places (you have to look down at the center of the dash to see the backup attitude indicator, altimeter, and airspeed indicator) and your scan is a little different, but it’s still reasonably intuitive.


At the end of the next flight or during one additional flight, I need to get up and knock out any of the required 25 landings that I haven’t done yet (and I need that – I’ve been having issues with my sight picture for the flare and flaring a little high) and do the stalls, steep turns, engine-outs, and other airwork that I’ve not done yet in the airplane.

At that point, Tim gets out of the airplane and Maj Alex Craig gets in to administer my Form 5 ride, which will, if I pass it, qualify me to fly the C-182T for CAP as a mission transport pilot and to fly the airplane for currency.

This is such a wonderful and capable aircraft! And, as a CAP pilot, I fly it for $36/hour dry and instruction is free. You’re going to get tired of me harping about this but, if you’re a pilot or other aviation enthusiast and you’re not a CAP member, what are you waiting for? I guess I’ll keep on harping until the ranks of CAP roughly equal those of certificated pilots in the US.

The next flight is scheduled for Wednesday and then I’m off to Indianapolis for the Indy Air Show! Can’t wait!