Category Archives: flying

A new Folding Bike

flying, thoughts

I’ve got myself a 20″ folding bike that I have converted into an E-Bike.

Last year I had supported a start-up on Kickstarter to create a universal electric bycicle wheel. When I received the first product this year I had the vision to create a new small folding bike that I can take along on out private airplane. The 50cc motor scooter I have for that works fine, but it stinks of gasoline, which is quite annoying on the plane. So here’s the clean solution: The picktures show the non-geared out of the box version of the bike, without the electrical wheel installed yet.

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Tiger flight Florida to Texas

flying

7/5/15: KAPF-(40J)-F95-(F95)-KIER-T74_KAUS 7.4 hours 20kts wind from west, CBs

After hanging out for three days with the family in Naples FL, where we rented a house, it was time to go back to Austin.
The plan is simple: fly north. Then turn west with the coastline until you run out of Florida and stop for gas. Fly 4 more ours west then stop for gas again when prices drop below $4/gal. Fly two more ours west, then land: You have arrived.
The forecast shows a wide area of expected rain and thunderstorms west of Florida. So an early departure is in order. I get up at 6am and have wheels up at 7:45a local, after refueling and packing the plane. I take off into the smooth warm south Florida air and fly along the western coast line to shoot some aerials of the beach and our rental house. I decide to “cut corners” and fly a little bit over water, just not further than 15NM to be out of glide range should the engine quit. I climb to 10.5k ft to be above Tampa airspace class B. But I play nice and call ATC to state my intentions, which is to cross over the Tampa International airport on a 340 heading in 10.5k. They assign me squawk 0147 and tell me to call if I need anything else. How nice. It’s the ATC radio dance. They know they can’t control me on a VFR flight outside (above) their airspace but everybody tries to play as nice as they can. Sometimes they can’t, if they have too much traffic. That’s where it could go either way: I go on flight following, accepting ATC vectors to ease their work load, or I sign off, go back to my 1200 VFR squawk and become an uncontrollable and unpredictable drone that in all likelihood will be in their way in one way or another. So you settle on middle ground. You check in with ATC and let them know you’re there and hopefully life will be good. And it was. I never had to turn and they passed me on to Jackson Center after leaving their approach area. I choose to stay with flight following, since I am going 50nm over open sea, 17nm off the shore. It’s good to be on a frequency where ATC knows about you, when things go wrong. But they didn’t and 20min later I am safe over land again. My Stratus 2 shows ADS-B traffic catching up from behind. A Mooney is going 180kts, gaining 50kts on me in 10k ft. He’s on a 20degree more northerly heading and passes 4nm behind me 500ft below. It’s nice to be able to spot traffic that the computer saw first. Never was a word spoken for traffic separation. The system works. Beautiful.
By now the XM weather on the G396 shows two large SIGMET areas with thunderstorm activity to the north-west of me. There is only a small path in-between the two areas but even that has already been filled in by precipitation. My plan is to fly west as far as possible, land in front of the mesa-scale system and let the weather run me over. Before I set down I check if I could pick a path through the front, but after only 10 min it is very clear that that wouldn’t be a good plan. So back to F95, set down, refuel and break for lunch.
Turns out this little airport has a very active skydiver group and the jumpers are happily falling out of the sky while I’m tying down the airplane in gusty winds. The air temp has fallen 20F already since I landed and we are staring at a black wall of rain towards the west.
Fortunately the big storm passes about a mile to the north of the field and we never get more than a couple of sprinkles and high winds. When I realize that, I take off again to pick a path through the front. But no luck. I give up after 7.5 NM and return in heavy rain to the field. I tie down again and run towards the hangar when the heavy rain starts. Two hours later the entire system has moved east and there’s only light to moderate precipitation to the west. So I take off again to find a way through the remaining showers. This time it works. For the next 20nm I fly between 1000-2000ft around showers and clouds at all sorts of altitudes. Then a lower cloud deck develops but airports 50nm further east report VMC (visual flight conditions), so I go between cloud decks and fly “VFR on top”. The stratus layer is in 8000ft+ and the bottom deck never rises above 3000ft. Enough space for my little plane. And then the bottom deck suddenly disappears and I am perfectly VMC in light drizzle. So I climb to 6500ft and relax during a second lunch on board.
The next line of storms is another 80NM away. Time for some relaxation and tactical flight path planning. The radar shows solid storms to the north, with scattered CBs to the south. So I think to pick my path through the storms. But 30min is a long time for a storm and as I get closer to the line, I realize that there is way too much energy in the atmosphere south of the storm line. So I make a late decision to divert 60 degrees to the north to go around the big storm line in front of it and sneak back onto a westerly course behind it. There I’m flying in light rain out of the anvil. This area of light rain is about 20nm wide. North of it is another storm. So I pick a landing spot if things don’t pan out and start the flight into the rain. Again multiple cloud decks forming. On top? Below? I decide to go below, because there are 35kts winds from the west starting in 2000ft. I fly about 5NM below 1000ft over a forest under cumulus clouds, when the terrain starts to rise from below.  Nothing extreme, just a gentle slope. Since I don’t want to get squeezed I use the next hole in the clouds to climb on top of the Cu layer. Light rain. It’s quite dark from the storms to both sides. Stratus layer in about 6000ft. Lightning on both sides. Not a pleasant place. But the radar shows a clear path ahead. I fly a 360 circle to verify my escape path to the alternate – it’s still there. So I press on into the gray darkness. The rain increases, just as the radar said it would. Another lightning off to the left. Hmmm. Serious energy over there. Here, the air is smooth as silk. Just rain. I have ground visibility again. Although it feels like the sun is going down – it’s that dark. 20 more miles like that and the tunnel opens up, the rain stops and there’s just a gray mess above me in 10000ft+ . So I climb to 8500ft and set the autopilot and XM radio to relax. The high energy line of storms is now to the south of me. From a safe distance I watch the violent theatre of lightning after lightning hitting the ground. Impressive. But here it feels like a 747 in 39k ft cruising in silk air. I’m glad I made the late call to turn north to go around the system. Turns out I was right: the storms in the south have exploded and completely cut off any VMC flight path all the way down to the coast. I would have been stuck and forced to land, had I gone with my original plan. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes experience helps. This time I think both played a role in getting through. But I’m relieved and fly on. Next stop Nachitoches, Lousiana (KIER). But it’s another 160NM into the wind at 20-30kts. That stinks. Since the air is still smooth and dead I choose to decent to 1000ft above trees. There I regain my 135kts ground speed. Just peeking up to 1500ft, makes the GS drop to 108kts! Back down. I fly this way for the next 50miles, but then the air starts to develop convection again and the ride gets too bumpy. I climb to 3000ft as a compromise right after crossing the Mississippi. Another 80 miles in bumpy air with two more little Thunderstorms ahead. These little stand-alone storms don’t scare me. I fly around the towers and land safely in KIER after a 4.2hour leg. Phew – I feel tired. This was work. But fun.
I top off the tanks, and take the curtesy car into town where I eat “gator bites” and some sort of meat cake. Both delicious. Nachitoches has a nice old town character. A little run down on the outskirts, but neat in the city center. I want to return some day for more sight seeing. The airport has two curtesy cars. Nice stop. Friendly people.
The last leg back to Aus is in hot humid air into a 20kts wind in solid VMC. I decide that I had enough fun for the day, climb to 8500ft push in the autopilot and drone home at 95kts ground speed. Not blazingly fast, but relaxing on top of the few Cu clouds below. When I cross the TX border I start sneezing. Allergies are back. I must be in TX. When I touch down in AUS, after refueling in Taylor the tach shows 3140.0. Today I flew 7.2 hours. It’s been a long day. But it’s such an amazing feeling to travel by personal aircraft. I can’t believe I flew all the way from FL. Pinch me!

How do you know that your society is screwed? – RANT

flying, thoughts, USA

This week-end we went to visit Houston and did the obligatory visit to the Space Center. Oh, how disappointing it was. How do you know you’re screwed as a society?

  • When 25% of the public display area inside the Space Center is a food court filled with junk food you wouldn’t feed to your dog
  • When your gift shop and photo booth get the prime floor space
  • When you present a selective history of the NASA history omitting most of the accidents and sacrifices that led to the accomplishment of manned space flight.
  • When many visitors are foreign speaking visitors from Eastern European and Asian countries
  • When your space shuttle landing simulator is “kaputt” – both, like in “two”
  • When your robots arm display has no balls (the payload) to play with
  • When you show mostly mock-ups instead of the real stuff the tax payer has been paying for

Considering manned space flight was one of the biggest accomplishments of man kind in the previous century, the Space Center is a sorry display of stuff that was prepared and thought to be fun for kids, but fails on almost all levels. How disappointing! Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all that Houston ended up only with the Space Shuttle mock up instead of one of the other three surviving real shuttles. Hey, Texas already has one scattered all over northern Texas anyway. Boy, am I upset about this Space Center! What a missed opportunity to excite future generations for space travel. NASA was and is financed by tax dollars. I would expect them to spend our money more wisely and on less of this – “Oh, science is Fun!” shit. Until then, more junk food to the nation. Knock yourself out. I won’t be back.

 

Spinning – Trudeln

flying

The following post is fiction:

Yesterday I went out to fly on a mission to test a theory that has bugged me for quite some time. Can you and should you spin through clouds if you’re caught on top of a closed cloud deck without any gyros. Spinning is considered a stable maneuver (Flugzustand), that deletes altitude at a fast rate, without stressing the airframe.

So yesterday, after we had rains, we had a closed cloud deck at 3000ft AGL that broke up into 5-7/8 Cu. I climbed through a hole on top of the clouds, carefully noting my position, cloud base and cloud thickness. I spun first in the clear, to make sure the plane and pilot are up to the task. The second spin I initiated from above a closed cloud deck. I entered a stable spin (2 revolutions) before diving into the cloud. As soon as I went into the soup I focused on not moving any of the controls. It was very disorienting, not being able to see anything. Suddenly the plane felt different and the airspeed started increasing on the ASI. I had lost the spin somehow, but was still in the cloud!!! I neutralized the rudder and released the stick, when I came shooting out of the cloud. I had no idea why I had lost the spin, but it sure didn’t feel good inside a cloud. So I climbed back up, this time a little higher and tried again – this time the other direction. Spin was stable, this time four revolutions before going into the cloud. Again the fog was very very disorienting. And after what felt an eternity – the same thing: rising airspeed – I had lost the spin again, this time right before coming out of the cloud on the bottom. I suspect the turbulence inside the cloud has something to do with it, but I’ve decided that spins are not a good maneuver to punch through a cloud layer in a safe fashion. I wouldn’t recommend it as a “safe out”. Instead I’d setup for a stable decent with flaps and reduced power and hope for the best.

Hopefully I’ll never have to find out.

End fiction.

My thoughts on this topic are real though.

 

Week of destruction

flying

We had a bad week at FLF this month: first we lost the Pawnee in a hard landing accident and two days later we lost our trailer hangar to high winds. No damage to the trailers! Thankfully nobody got injured in either event. But an expensive week it was.

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Close Calls #1 – Ballooning

flying

I’ve decided to start a new series I call Close Calls, where I describe scenarios I’ve experienced in my 3000+ hr flying career (all VFR), that had me thinking about what went wrong. None of these situations have resulted in crashes, but all of these could have.

Today’s close call happened at the 2012 World Gliding Championship at Uvalde, Texas, where I was towing with our club’s Piper Pawnee.

There were 100 glider contestants from all around the world and a tow operation like clockwork was the goal. So short landings next to the starter field were in order. We would side step during the roll out in front of the field onto the runway, wait for the two rope hook-up and full throttle off again for the next tow. I was on the second or third tow, when I was coming in slightly slow, eyeing the taxiway across in front of the landing field next to the concrete runway. I tried to milk it in across the taxi way, when I got hit by a gust which slammed me on the ground in front of the taxi way. I immediately sensed a strong upward acceleration, like on a trampoline, resulting in the airplane pointing 30 degrees nose high into the sky at close to zero airspeed. The sloped terrain in front of the taxiway I crossed had catapulted me back into the air, but without airspeed! I was terrified and slammed the throttle all the way forward into the wall, hoping that the 260 horses would wake up in time to save me from a great embarrassment. And the reliable O-540 did what it was built for. It pulled through and the well mannered Pawnee was hanging off the propeller at full power in 30ft, slowly regaining speed and lowering the nose. I executed a go-around and landed uneventfully shortly after. Learning: carrier landings are just that: coming in too short is not an option. Keep up the speeds and be prepared for gusts. Don’t get too eager to show off the shortest landing in front of a crowd.

 

Cross Country flying

flying, thoughts

After musing over VFR X-country technique during yesterday’s flight to Mustang beach I realized that I haven’t blogged about it before. So here it goes:

VFR X-country flying can be very powerfull and the freedoms enjoyed from it are amazing.

You have to stay flexible on time and routes chosen. With onboard XM real-time weather and GPS, there’s really little excuse why not to embark on cross-country adventures – even when the weather is somewhat iffy.

I view VFR cross country as risk management. You always have to have multiple plans in play but firmly commit to one of them at all times. Also, alternatives should be part of the original plan. For example, when you plan long X-Country legs with pre planned lowest Avgas fuel stops, be prepared to find an empty or non-functional pump and have another fuel airport within a safe distance available. With good cell phone coverage everywhere, I’ve found it beneficial to call ahead the next airport from the previous fuel stop to make sure they are open and fuel is available. Having them expect you to arrive also makes for a faster turn-around on the ground usually. It also gives you the opportunity to chat with a local about any special advisories for the airport.

With GPS and an auto-pilot, the PIC has a lot available time on his/her hands to do scenario planning en-route. Tasks I usually do while leveled and leaned out are: double check XM weather for ideal cruising altitude for wind. Does the experienced wind match the forecast? Adjust accordingly. Go fast into a headwind, go as slow as you can tolerate with tail winds (that’s McCready theory applied to powered planes). I also check ATIS and AWOS station ahead enroute. Either by radio when in range, or via G396 with XM weather, where all TAFs and METARs are updated regularly. I also check the movement of any significant weather in the area that might affect the flight path. Will I be trapped in bad weather after landing? Would it make sense to go behind a line of bad weather at the cost of extra time/distance?

Plan your departure/arrival times carefully. When arriving around sunset I prefer to arrive 30min after sunset. That avoids the usual evening VFR rush as well as avoids the visibility problems from a low sun on final. Also the lower temps after landing are a welcome side-effect.

Departures early in the morning will allow for shorter take-off distances from a lower density altitude and a faster climb to cruising altitude. It also allows to fly on top of Cu clouds which are low in the morning. In the afternoon, Cu tops can reach mid 15,000-20,000ft and make flying “VFR on top” unfeasible.

I usually try to fly as much with the auto-pilot as possible. That off-loads me and gives me more mental bandwidth for planning and scanning the sky.

I keep a detailed log of the flight progress. Notes include engine time at refuel, time of fuel tank switches, time at landmarks and assigned/flown altitudes with temperature and wind component.

I try to plan my fuel stops to be quick and efficient. Low price 100LL is the first consideration, a good FBO a second one. Uncontrolled airports preferred, since I can usually get in and out direct without flying a pattern. When flying in high terrain, it pays to land at the highest airport that you can tolerate for density altitude and runway length. That way your time for descent and more importantly to climb back to cruising altitude are shorter. You can save some 15min that way.

On long cross country flights I also stress creature comfort. That means traveling with plenty of water, lots of peeing bags (so my legs are defined by fuel capacity, not bladder capacity) and food and snacks. I usually carry a cooler behind the co-pilot seat with easy access for me. It also helps to keep a wet towel with the ice inside the ice chest. I use that for poor man’s air-condition during descent/taxi and departure on hot days. I’ve found that to work exceptionally well and it’s very refreshing.

Noise dampening is another creature comfort that matters on long trips. I usually wear ear plugs under the noise cancellation head-set. That makes for a very nice and muted engine humm. The lower the noise level the less fatigue you’ll experience during long cross country flights.

For the same reason I do not wear sunglasses that stick their frame under the head-set’s ear muffs. I’ve found them to cause me headaches and also reduce ANR effectivity. Instead I have a pair of glasses that I wear with a rubber band around my head – more like swimming goggles.

Back to actual flying. As I said I value options. There’s no shame in setting the plane down and to regroup when things start to look ugly. But I always make a point to try to go, but if the weather is worse than advertised I have no problem returning and waiting some more on the ground.

And here’s another guiding principle that I’ve found useful for XCountry flying: “Keep it boring”. That means the airplane should never get ahead of the pilot. Keep things nice and calm and if you can’t then slow things down. If you can’t then land. IT’s a powerful concept and it’s easy to execute in any situation other than an emergency. But for that we have training and I won’t cover it here. So keep in mind that “boring is good” if it comes to cross country flying.

Back to risk management. On one recent flight I had to depart from 2 hours away from the destination and reach in time before sunset. So there was a little pressure to complete the flight on time and fly a bee-line straight to the destination. The problem was I didn’t have a functioning GPS onboard and the area was sparsely populated. I also had minimum fuel when I arrived at the departure airport. I chose to take extra time to get extra fuel to have more options in the air (the plane was night VFR legal, but really all you need is a red flash light and a functioning landing light). Then, when I departed with 5min to spare, I had the choice of dead-reckoning direct with few land marks or follow roads for 10NM extra. I chose the latter, put the right wheel on the road and cruised home in a relaxed fashion – knowing there wouldn’t be much of a risk of loosing extra time from loosing my way. I made it home in time – but more importantly with peace of mind along the whole way because I had options. I could have easily landed at a night airport alternate close by if I hadn’t made it in time. Options is key.

Same for possible mechanical malfunctions with the plane. It’s nice to refuel enroute at an airport that has an A/P. Why? Because once I landed in the middle of no-where I had a flat tire. Getting a new tube mounted took a day. It would have been faster with professional help. And worse things can happen. Magneto, vacuum pump, battery, tires all have failed at one point or another during trips. Having options helps. And of course flying VFR doesn’t require a vacuum pump…. 🙂

I like flying high – because if gives me time and options if the engine quits. From 9.5k ft or 10.5k ft it’s not a scary thing. The only downside from flying that high would be a fire emergency. Those are extremely rare and I’m OK with that risk.