Thanks Again, Greg Poe

No huge essay here. I just got done sending some pictures to Costco. One, taken by Jason Schroeder, struck me as particularly good. I just thought I’d post it. Thanks again for the ride, Greg!

Okay, back to editing and writing!

Selfridge ANGB Airshow and Open House 2009 - Day 1

This is a regular blog post. Show notes and links to show audio appear in the other posts.

I considered just posting this picture and leaving it at that. Seriously. The major and the kid sitting there in the cockpit of an F-16 and talking about whatever. This Viper was there on the ramp and they were sending little kids up the ladder (yeah, the ladder and not the air stairs) for a moment or two in the cockpit with the driver. Pretty darned cool.

Day 1 of the Selfridge Airshow and Open House is done and it went over pretty well. Overcast skies most of the day and some of the performers had to flatten out their shows, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. If traffic was any indication, attendance is up at least 30-30% this year, similar to attendance figures for other airshows all over the country.

Having gotten most of my coverage done in the days leading up to the show, I left the house around 10:30. I hit the traffic backup at M-59 and I-94 and it was two and a half hours before I got to the ramp. Holy crap! Biggest objection is that the sergeant at the single-file choke point at the entrance to parking on the ramp was letting every other car or so stop and ask questions. I think that particular practice cost about 10,000 people an hour each of their lives. A butterfly flaps its wings on the ramp and traffic crawls five miles back down the line.

Not complaining. Just an observation. If you’re going tomorrow, get there early. If you’re not at M-59 and I-94 by 12:30, you’re not going to be to the flight line in time to see the Thunderbirds. I’m more delighted than most about the attendance. But, if I go back tomorrow, I’m hitting the media window at oh-dark-thirty and then taking a nap on the ramp under an F-16 until a more civilized hour.

The Thunderbirds demo was great at usual. I think they flattened the show, but I can’t be sure. The converging maneuvers, especially by the diamond, are really breathtaking. And they’re flying in tighter formation. This is the latest in the season that I’ve seen them and they’re tight and close and spectacular.

Kind of weird hearing Maj Mulhare on the PA. I still think of his voice as issuing only from inside my helmet with a refrigerator sitting on my chest, watching the horizon appear from the top of the canopy of an F-16D. Not from PA speakers out on the ramp with all of these other people around. He’s the voice of my childhood dream fulfilled. Mine! Yeah, I know that sounds a little like something you’d see scrawled in Cheez Whiz (or worse) on the wall of the trashed hotel room after they finally apprehend the crazed stalker. It’s not that way, really. Just a little weird to hear that voice out on the ramp. Probably because I spent so much time editing that episode and, for all practical purposes, flying that flight. Thanks again, Maj Mulhare! That was a really special 1.0 ASEL, sir! It’s okay that you flew Colbert. His audience might be slightly larger than mine.

More pyro this year than I’ve seen in past seasons. Here’s a shot of the ramp with the flight line in the background.

This is a really deep show from the parking lot. It’s something like a mile (at least) from parking the car on the ramp to the show line. The parking lot is about a quarter of a mile behind me as I shoot this picture and you can see that the show line is most of a mile away. The first year I volunteered at the show (2005), I was driving a golf cart picking up mobility-impaired people at the gate and driving them to the crowd line. I was relieved in the afternoon and went on to do something else. I don’t remember seeing convoys of golf carts driving them back at the end of the show. I half expected to see their skeletons still out there in folding chairs on the crowd line when I went back to volunteer again in 2007. But all apparently ended well.

Here’s N976CP (CAPFLIGHT 2027), the Michigan Wing C-182T Nav III that I flew from Pontiac (KPTK) to Newberry (KERY), Traverse City (KTVC), and back to Pontiac this week. 6.3 hours of time toward the commercial, as well as three instrument approaches and a hold, making me instrument-current for a little longer.

That’s Capt Shawn Wyant, the commander of the Oakland Composite Squadron of Civil Air Patrol (my home squadron) in front of the aircraft at the CAP display. Capt Wyant was also the long-suffering flight release officer (FRO) for both the flight this week and a half dozen or so training flights that led to my successful Form 5 in the aircraft last month. In addition to that aircraft, we had the Gippsland, the glider, the ES trailer, and lots of other hardware on the field. A spectacular showing by CAP! Really prod to be a part of that organization.

A semi-inspiring shot of the Michigan Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook in which I flew yesterday. Shot this from the McDonald’s just before the traffic goat dip this morning. Dave Higdon is right about trying to blur the prop whenever possible. He tries to shoot around 1/100th at the fastest to be sure that he gets a nice translucent prop disc in pictures. I shot this on auto into a bright sly and the camera probably set itself to about 1/100th. And I froze the rotors.

The CH-47, beautiful in its own way, is ugly to many even when the rotors are properly blurred. It’s ugly even to those who love it when you freeze the rotors like this. I need to learn my still camera a little better to say the least.

I have a pile of work to get done and will probably miss the show tomorrow. Some of that work includes finishing Goat Groove, the music to accompany the T-6A episode. I have great new studio monitors (Polk Audios) that are clean and deliver that canoe-paddle-to-the-face effect that I love so much when doing audio. Scott Cannizzaro would disown me if he know how loud I usually like it, but my ears don’t have to be the finely-tuned instruments that his are.

Get out to the show tomorrow. And get out there early! Gates open at 8:00 a.m. and there’s plenty to see and do on the field between then and flight time. Admission and parking are free!

CH-47 Ride with the Michigan Army National Guard

This is the a regular blog post. Please see the other posts if you’re looking for show notes or links to show audio.

Earlier today, I jogged across the pavement and up the tail ramp of an Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Strapping in, I got a 30 minute air tour of the Lake St. Clair and Detroit River shoreline and an idea of what it’s like to ride in this icon of rotary-wing flight.

First placed in service in the 1960s, the Chinook is a twin-turboshaft, twin-rotor helicopter that’s about 99 feet long and 19 feet high with a rotor disc area of 2,800 sq. ft. It’s powered by two Lycoming T55-GA-712 turboshaft engines that put out 3,750 hp each. It has a max takeoff weight of 50,000 pounds, about twice the aircraft’s empty weight. It’ll do 170 knots true, which is actually faster than most single-rotor ships.

It’s huge. And noisy. They issued earplugs before I headed out and, unlike so many other media rides I’ve done, I needed them in the Chinook. It’s stinkin’ loud. And it rocks and vibrates enough to loosen your fillings. I didn’t even think about mounting a camera to the airframe on this one. There’s just no way. Not complaining, mind you. This is what I’m all about. It’s just that the aircraft could fragment your contact lenses by sheer sound pressure.

I strapped in on the left side in the rearmost seat near the cavernous ramp of a back door. The door stayed open the whole flight, which gave me a great opportunity to see sights, as long as they were behind us. Which is good by me.

The liftoff was so smooth that it caught me unprepared. The aircraft simply rose. Or perhaps Earth simply descended from below it.

Either way, we headed south at maybe 100 KIAS and 1,000 AGL. The flight engineers roamed around the aircraft, occasionally checking on systems and making sure that the riders had everything they needed. We did a wide turn over downtown Detroit and then proceeded back up the river on the US side back to Selfridge.

The flight engineer in the back spent a fair amount of time on the ramp in back, which gave me an opportunity to get him in the picture for perspective. He was tethered to the aircraft, but still closer to the edge than I’d be comfortable going, tethered or not. I guess you get used to it.

Upon returning, we hover-taxied back to the hangar. It’s pretty impressive the precision with which the aircraft can be positioned and moved down low. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but all that whirling hardware up on top just makes me think of it as chaotic in some way. In reality, it’s a very smooth machine in the ways in which it counts.

Afterward, I talked to the pilot, Maj Todd Fitzpatrick. He’s been an Army pilot for 16 years and flies the mighty Chinook regularly. He says it’s unsurpassed for moving big loads from point A to point B, whether in the roomy interior cargo area or suspended from the Chinook’s exterior load system. The more difficult phases of the job involve night operations. Today’s fighting forces have to own the territory in all weather, day or night. And that means ops with night vision goggles and other appropriate hardware and procedures.

The Chinook ride was a part of Selfridge’s air show and open house happening this weekend at the base. Gates open at 8:00 Saturday and Sunday. Admission and parking are free, so there’s no excuse not to attend. I'll see you out on the ramp!

Kicking Gas in Greg Poe's Ethanol-Powered MX-2

This is a regular blog post. Please check our the other posts if you’re looking for show notes or links to show audio.

The airshow season continues in spectacular form! I rolled out of bed (off of couch) this morning at 0930Z, ran through the shower, and headed out to Ray Community Airport (57D) in Macomb County. A very nearly perfect morning, cold and clear. And a beautiful airport to boot.

An airport made even more beautiful shortly after 1200Z by the red-and-checkerboard flashes of the A36 Bonanza and the ethanol-powered MX-2 of the Fagan-sponsored Greg Poe Airshows team.

I was on site this morning in connection of the Selfridge Airshow and Open House, which kicks off this Saturday and runs through Sunday. The base puts on a great airshow every other year and this is a show year. In addition to converting a lot of 100LL, and JP-8 (and ethanol this year!), the Selfridge show is an opportunity for the base to let the broad community around it inside the gates and show the folks what the armed forces stationed there do.

Greg Poe is performing at the show and he and his team were kind enough to fly media rides. It was a primo opportunity. Greg’s team brings both the MX-2 show aircraft and an A36 Bonanza. The doors come off the Bonanza shortly after arrival and the photographers and videographers climb in, harness up, and shoot their respective riders getting a snootfull of precision aerobatics.

The MX-2 is amazing. Shortly after I started tweeting about it, a couple of followers tweeted back about the aircraft, and rightly so.

It’s an all-carbon airframe built to withstand +16G/-16G. A Lycoming IO-540 modified by Lycon Performance Engines hangs in the front, putting out 385 hp to pull the 1,350-pound airframe. It’ll roll 420 degrees/sec and has a Vne of 275 mph.

And Greg is no wallflower either. He learned to fly in taildraggers in the Idaho back country at a young age and then became an instructor, primarily in tailwheel aircraft and specializing in aerobatics. He started performing in airshows in 1992 and was performing full time after that, hitting 15 to 25 airshows and events each year. And, talk about dream jobs, he was the production test pilot for Aviat Aircraft in Wyoming, test flying each Pitts and Husky as it came off the line.

He has time in the MiG-15, the B-17, and the F-15, F-16, and F-18 fighters. He’s also one of the very few civilians ever to ride with the USAF Thunderbirds during a full demo. He rode with Thunderbird 4 in an F-16D in the slot position.

He’s sponsored by Fagen, Inc., a green energy designer and builder in Granite Falls, Minnesota specializing in ethanol and wind power. The MX-2’s engine is modified to burn ethanol and it’s the only aerobatic aircraft on the airshow circuit that burns ethanol in its performances.

We showed at 8:00 and stepped around 1:00. Selfridge had a great turnout of media for the flights and I went up on the fifth ride. Really nice to see a good media turnout for this event so Selfridge gets good press. It’s also spectacular that Greg did the rides on a Wednesday, allowing lots of time for the deadline-driven media to get material in print or on the air well prior to the show to maximize the buzz.

I was lucky enough to have two CAP squadron mates along to shoot stills and video. In their non-CAP capacities, of course, but it’s still all about being a part of the aviation tribe. Jason Schroeder shot the stills and Mike Murphy shot video for my ride and also took stills from the front seat of the Bonanza for the Free Press rider. This post features Jason’s images and the video episode will feature Mike’s video.

We took off in trail (Ray is 2,500 x 60, so a formation launch wasn’t really an option) and formed up to the north of the airport. A really good set of air-to-air passes, including knife-edge, inverted, rolls, and a high-speed pass directly below the Bonanza. Then the loop and some vertical rolls to a reversal.

The vertical rolls were spectacular. It’s the most hang time I’ve ever experienced in an aircraft. I know that the airplane probably didn’t truly helicopter in the vertical with my 210 pounds in the front seat, even with minimum fuel. But it sure felt like it. I didn’t have the presence of mind to look over at the horizon (not that I could have guessed from the horizon when we started to peak), but the sight of the prop up there in front of my nose was awe-inspiring. This massive barn-door-bladed Hartzell prop up there just clawing at the air, refusing to accept a receding VSI for an answer.

Every ride (or other flight for that matter) has a moment for me when the noise and the stress and the workload just recedes and I get a moment to just think about one thing. That was my quiet little moment up there. Looking up at the blue sky through the violence of that monster bird shredder and experiencing in the air that phase of flight that I love so much from the ground.

The pulls were a lot of fun. The pull at the beginning and end of the loop and the pull to vertical for the vertical rolls in particular. We peaked at +6.5G/-1.6G. (Yeah, they mount a G meter in the front cockpit so you can see it!) I had my AGSM down pat and am proud to say that I had no problem with that dose of Vitamin G. I have pitiful upper-body strength, but monster thigh and calf muscles that are apparently pretty good at resisting the blood that wants to escape from my melon at high G loads.

This was my second time on a formation shoot. No flies at all on Billy Werth and his Pitts S-2C, but the visibility was much better in the MX-2. I love acro, but it’s even more fun to do it near, and around, a photo ship. It’s mush more three-dimensional visually and you have a better sense of your speed and maneuverability. Nothing wrong with the sky and ground swapping positions rapidly in the window, but a barrel roll over another airplane is just more of a barrel roll. Does that make sense?

Approaching the photo ship from behind, from above, from abeam. Doing it with a 60+ -knot closure rate and watching the photo ship go from gunwale to gunwale in the canopy in seconds. That’s just amazing.

And listening to Greg and DO/photo-ship-pilot Dax Wanless coordinate the flight on the radio was cool, too. Counting down to the maneuvers. Exchanging lead responsibilities as effortlessly as I might exchange the controls of a C-172 with Jason. Real professionalism and real safety culture, that.

After the shoot, the Bonanza headed back and Greg and I broke off for a bit of free acro. I got a demonstration of the roll rate of the aircraft, which was amazing. Pull up a little and then just crank the stick over and watch it get darker and lighter in rapid succession. No, you don’t have the presence of mind to think of the horizon turning. It’s dark-light-dark-light-dark-light and then it’s 2.6 seconds later. And your head is trying to figure out where your torso went. (And Greg is sitting back there smiling with a coordinated head and torso, even though this is sortie no. 5 for him for the day and he just had lunch.)

I was pretty happy about the way I handled the inverted flight. I had more the sense of handing from my chest than from the tops of my shoulders and the inverted phase (which sometimes does my stomach in) was to problem at all.

The rolls, on the other hand, were really disorienting. That’s good, mind you! This is one of the reasons that I explore the envelope.

I had been up in the Super-D four days before flying acro with Barry for the first time since the T-6A ride in May and I lasted a pitiful 20 minutes. Acro tolerance is a genuine use-it-or-lose-it proposition. I did great with the other maneuvers, but the high-roll-rate stuff set off an insurrection in my vestibular system.

So Greg called Dax and told him we were coming back in. I took a little bit of ribbing from Mike and Jason about coming back in so quickly after we broke off for the free acro, but that’s okay. Time is the Kryptonite. For acro tolerance, for flight proficiency, and for lots of other stuff. A worthy reminder and worth the figurative elbow in the ribs.

Get out to the Selfridge show this weekend! The Selfridge Air Show & Open House will be Saturday-Sunday, Aug. 22-23. The gates will open both days at 8 a.m., with the flying starting both days around 10 a.m. Among the highlights of the show will be a aerial demonstration by the US Air Force Thunderbirds. I’m planning to be there volunteering and I hope to see you there!

The 127th Wing at Selfridge is home to two flying missions of the Michigan Air National Guard, serving Air Combat Command and Air Mobility Command. The 127th Wing is also the home unit of the 107th Weather Flight, Air Force Special Operations Command. In all, Selfridge is home to more than 20 tenant units from all branches of the military, the Coast Guard and Border Patrol.

More about Greg Poe Airshows: http://www.gregpoe.com/
More about Fagen, Inc.: http://www.fageninc.com/
More about the Selfridge Airshow and Open House: http://www.selfridgeairshow.org/
More about Selfridge ANGB: http://www.127wg.ang.af.mil/

First Glider Flight

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

It was a pretty eventful open house at the Oakland County International Airport (KPTK) today. After the motor glider flight, I got up twice in a Schweizer SGS 2-32 glider.

The GSG 2-32 is a two- or three-place glider with all-metal semi-monocoque construction and cantilevered wings that span 57 feet. The wing aspect ratio is 18.05 and it boasts a max gross weight of 1,349 pounds and a max glide ratio of 33:1 at 52 mph.

This particular aircraft, N99859, was manufactured in 1966 and it’s among 65 registered in North America out of the 87 that were made. The model flew at the Air Force Academy as the TG-5. Civil Air Patrol now owns this glider and the Michigan Wing uses it to train both cadets and senior members.

We launched from the big runway at KPTK (27L) with all kinds of traffic on the parallel and in the airspace above us. CAPFLIGHT 2029 towed us up to around 3,500 feet and we then circled the airport for about ten minutes before landing back on 27L and running her off at taxiway R.

Here are some frame grabs from the video that I shot on the two rides. Watch for the video episode in the feed sometime soon.



Pushing the glider out onto 27L. Kind of weird to be standing out there on the approach end of the runway when I’m used to seeing it only from a cockpit.



Two of the Oakland Composite Squadron’s finest cadets helping to position the glider for the tow. I’m strapped in and taking stills until Mark gets in.


Loading in the rest of our two-man crew. Mark Grant up front. Mark was on the aero-tow from Owosso earlier in the week and flew both these glider sorties as well as the motor glider sortie an hour or so before.


Heading up on the tow. Now that’s formation! Enforced formation at that. A 200-foot tow rope connects the aircraft.

A great view of the open house ramp as we come in over the airport.

Westbound over newly-extended and painted 27L with the ramp on the left.

An idea of the wing shape from the back seat. The lens bends it a little, but you can clearly see the aspect ratio of the wing.

It’s really peaceful up there at 50-55 mph with the wind pretty quiet and the bubble canopy and commanding view. You’re really up there in the air and, during these steady moments just floating around at the minimum sink speed, it would be easy to feel like you were ruler of all you surveyed.

Mark briefs the approach as we head in from the north.

The turn from base to final.

This is one of my favorite shots. In this aircraft, you feel as though you could reach out and touch the runway. Visibility is excellent and Mark is the obvious master of the aircraft – landing it precisely, hitting the called taxiway, and bringing it in to the ramp to stop exactly where the cadets are waiting to take it back to the static display.

Look for the video episode soon. Additionally, you can bet that I’m going to be heading back for more glider training soon.

First Motor Glider Flight

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

I’ve always thought that motor gliders are cool. Really long wings. Crazy glide ratios. And engines.

Yeah, the purists probably have their issues with the motors, but not me. It a motor in the froint is the price for not having to have a tow plane, tow pilot, and at least one wing runner in order to go soaring, I’m good with it.

Crazy-skilled glider and powered pilot Mark Grant flew the demo. He has access to the two Schweizer SGM 2-37 motor gliders owned by the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum and we went up as lead in a formation of two.

The Schweizer SGM 2-37 is a two-place, side-by-side, fixed gear, low wing, motorized glider. These two represent a sixth of the total production run between 1982 and 1988. None of them saw service with the Air Force Academy, which flew them under the designation TG-7A until 2003.

It’s about 28 feet long, 57 feet wingtip to wingtip, and eight feet tall at the tail. The Lycoming O-235-L2C engine puts out 112 hp, plenty to get us up to 3,500 feet above the airport.

We launched as a flight of two and flew a loose right echelon for the first thousand feet or so. Maybe 200-300 feet of clearance between aircraft.

You solo the SGM 2-37 from the right seat and that’s where Mark was most comfortable, so we flew the right echelon for his visibility and because we were going to make right turns in the climb. Here’s a show of the other aircraft in the formation.


Above about 1,000 feet AGL, Mark accelerated his right turn so that we ended up climbing in a large circle, wingtip to wingtip. You can see the other ship pretty clearly in this shot just before we got to 3,500 MSL.

Here’s a good shot of Mark and the landscape just after we cut the engine and went into the glide phase of the flight. We stayed in a roughly circular rotation over the airport until we descended to pattern level (about 1,800 MSL) and then entered a left downwind for 27L. We lead and the other ship followed about a half mile behind.

Here’s the view as we rolled onto final. A formation of five T-6’s did two or more sorties consisting of low passes with smoke on. We coordinated with the tower and glided in behind them. Kind of cool to see the smoke down the runway from this perspective.

I gather that a lot of gliding is understanding the sight picture, being able to judge your sink rate, and having a good stick-and-rudder feel for the aircraft. Once we shut down the engine, I felt pretty good about the glide. It was stable and the maneuvering was a lot of fun.

But then I had that immediate power-pilot urge to turn directly for the airport and set up for a huge slip to get it down on the big runway. Gliding is hanging it out there and knowing what kind of ground the aircraft will cover given the winds, density altitude, and lots of other factors. I’m sure that that will come with experience. You just have to know the sight pictures and develop a new set of decision points to assure that you can make it to the airport and land gracefully when you get there.

Motor gliders have some of the best of both worlds to offer. In any case, it was a great transition to flying something with no engine at all.

Which, by the way, was the very adventure that I had (twice!) within the next few hours.

Stay tuned to the feed for video and audio from the flight!

Back Up with Barry - Acro Stills from Saturday

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

It occurred to me last week that I hadn’t been upside down since May and that that was a problem. So I got up with Barry Sutton for a little acro Saturday morning.

We flew a few combos and then headed back to the airport for some pattern work. My acro tolerance is back to crap (about 20 minutes), but that’s okay. You can’t knock it off for almost 90 days and still expect to have any real tolerance. But I have a ride with Greg Poe in the MX-2 this Wednesday and I at least wanted to get an idea of what, if any, tolerance I had left. I probably won’t be challenging Greg to wring me out.

On the other hand, I landed that airplane like I had built it. Holy crap! Two near-perfect three-point landings. And I think I finally got the hang of wheel landings. I’ll need to demonstrate the wheel landings again a few times, but I had a “A-Hah!” moment with respect to power use and I think I now have all of the tools I need to nail them consistently. It’s now just a matter of dialing in the right power and attitude from a box of possibilities of which I think I now know the boundaries. I love that part of training! Love, love, love it!

Anyway, I wanted to post some frame grabs from the flight, so here they are!

Wingtip buried, here we go in a wingover.


The initial pull in the loop that proceeds into a roll and a split-S. I like the sun in the Scheydens here!


Knife edge in the first quarter of a four-point roll.

Video Episode - JATO Ride in Fat Albert

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These are the show notes to a video episode. You can watch right here or download the video from http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedVideoFatAlbert.m4v.

I was fortunate enough to get one of the last Jet-Assisted Take-Off (“JATO”) rides in the Blue Angels’ Marine-flown C-130, Fat Albert. The JATO bottles are getting more and more scarce and it’s unlikely that there will be many more rides like this.

Really interesting ride, mostly because of the lack of outside references. I’m used to unusual attitudes, but it’s a little off to experience them when your only outside reference is an 18” window on the far side of the aircraft.

I mounted the camera just above and behind my head. You can see my WTHR ballcap in the lower right-hand corner of the frame. Query the wisdom of clamping the camera to the airframe of a JATO-boosted C-130. The jitter and vibration is really pronounced in several places. But it stabilized whenever the aircraft got to less than about 0.5G. And those were the best sequences anyway.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The media hospitality at the Indianapolis Airshow was spectacular. I remain indebted to Roger Bishop for the up-close opportunities as the show.

Frame Grabs from the Remos GX Demo

This is a regular blog post. Show notes and links to show audio appear in the other entries.

I’m still unpacking and sorting the audio and video that I captures at AirVenture Oshkosh last week. An amazing amount of content in a week!

In addition to the Cessna Citation Mustang flight, I got my first flight in a light sport aircraft (“LSA”), namely the Remos GX. As with other experiences at Oshkosh, I’m going to be awhile in putting together the episodes so that I can devote reasonable attention to them. But I wanted to get some frame grabs up to when your appetite.


Here’s the departure from KOSH. Here’s the one drawback to using the 0.3 semi-fisheye lens. You can’t really pick out the six or so other aircraft visible through the windshield. We took off in the hairball that is the usual departure scheme for KOSH during AirVenture. It should be more obvious in the video episode, where movement will show you the other aircraft.


Steep turns over some farmland about eight miles north of KOSH.


The approach back in to KOSH. Eyeballs outside and bracketing airspeed aggressively.


Just prior to touchdown. We asked for the orange dot and got it. Then left a little tire rubber right on top of it. Great control on the landing.

More to come on this one. My particular demo pilot didn’t seem too interested in letting me fly the aircraft. I flew a little enroute and then did some steep turns. After that, I said, “okay, let’s slow her up.”

At which point the demo pilot said “my airplane” and proceeded to deftly demonstrate slow flight and a gorgeous stall all the way into a falling leaf. Being that the demo pilot’s briefing stated that the flight controls his with no quibbling whenever he asked for them or took them, I took it to mean that demo riders wouldn’t be allowed to stall the airplane. A little disappointing, so I told him that I was done and that we could head back.

After talking to some of the other demo riders, I found out that others got to fly the stalls and other maneuvers, so it apparently wasn’t policy. And it could simply have been a miscommunication with the demo pilot. In any case, I’m going to invite a couple of the other demo riders onto the audio episode so that you guys get a full first-hand account of what it’s like to fly the aircraft through a little more of the envelope than I did.

Stay subscribed! Cool stuff coming!

Meet FOD

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So Cole Force got himself a callsign this week at Oshkosh. It’s “FOD.” The acronym for foreign object debris or foreign object damage. The kind of small stuff that you don’t want to get sucked into your turbofan. Cole is the smallest of the aviation new media crew. And he tends to create a fair amount of FOD, whether in the form of gum wrappers, bits of balsa wood, etc.

Anyway, congratulations, FOD, on your new callsign!

Frame Grabs from the Cessna Citation Mustang Flight

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

Still out in the campground at Oshkosh, but wanted to get a post up with some frame grabs from the Cessna Citation mustang flight. Certainly more to some on this, but I couldn’t help but post a few of the more interesting frame grabs.

This one is on takeoff just after rotation. Geat coming up and climbing out.

Hand-flying the aircraft to altitude.


In one of the steep turns. David Allen kept the camera level using the horizon and/or the PFD to give a sense of the bank angle.



About to land. 110 KIAS and the airspeed tape is just stinking frozen. Painted on!

Cole in the back seat upon hearing the gear horn for the first time.

More to come! This was a spectacular ride and the audio, video, and notes are tucked away and ready for editing.

Remos GX Demo at Oshkosh

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

I went up for a demo flight in the Remos GX, a light sport aircraft (“LSA”) from Remos Aircraft. We launched from KOSH during a VFR arrival and departure window so, in addition to it being my first LSA flight, it was during a really busy time in the busiest airspace in the world.

Got to fly some of the en route and some steep turns. It was very responsive and climbed well (better than the 172s in the parallel runway and we launched past them handily).

I should have some better-developed thoughts about the flight soon. I’d like to get over to Hillsdale and fly a Flight Design aircraft before putting out the full episode because I need some perspective in the LSA category. And it’s been a week of extremes with the Cessna Citation Mustang at one end and the Remos GX on the other end.

Cole waited patiently during the ride and I put him in the aircraft afterward for a picture or two. It’d be cool to take him up in one of these. Bet we’d have no problem with climb rate with only 260 pounds of Forces in the aircraft!

Got to get the boy to bed. Seaplane base tomorrow if I can get up early enough.

Podapalooza Goes Off Without a Hitch

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

Podapalooza 2009! It went over well and everyone had a pretty good time. It’s getting big in terms of the number of podcasters and shows represented, but it’s not unwieldy yet.

Here, Bill Williams, Kent Shook, and Rob Mark set mic levels and prep for the show. I took along my usual assemblage of cables and adapters and we patched together a good sound rig in something line 30 minutes. David Allen, who’s volunteering with EAA Radio this week, coordinated the broadcast with the studio and it sounds like it went off seamlessly.



A view of the stage and the gathering crowd as we set up.


Here’s the audience on the right-hand side just before we went live. A good gathering. Everyone there listens to at least two or three of the shows, which makes for a dedicated and attendant crowd. It’s odd how many times someone walks right past you until he or she hears your voice. At which point he or she whips around and introduces him- or herself as a listener. We truly are the voices in peoples’ heads, I guess.

Keep an eye on the Airspeed feed. Each show will release its version of the show at or after a specified time. I run the entire thing on the Airspeed feed, so be sure to tune in to hear the entire program.

We chowed down at Mario’s afterward and returned to the campground to crash. Seaplane base tomorrow if the weather’s decent!