Archive for the ‘Wanderings’ Category

 

Monday, July 28

We got up early to find nice cool temperatures and a steady wind, and Danny dropped of us back at Schaumburg airport. 

Even so, we didn’t have the plane filled up with fuel completely.  We took off with no problem and headed north, keeping Lake Michigan off to the distance to our right.

As we got closer to Oshkosh, we checked once more on the iPad and saw a whole lot of plane transponders converging.  We had to turn our transponder off before we got too close.  We kept our eyes open for traffic.  I called out whenever I saw any.  We had a plane off to our left, then one off to our right.  At one point, one overtook us by flying right over us, freaking us out.  Berck slowed down to follow the plane on our right.  He also started flying a zig zagging pattern so that we would be able to see any planes heading straight at us as well as allowing other planes to see us.    At one point I called out, “You got the traffic at 10 o’clock?”   Berck, who had been looking out the other direction, took one look, yanked the plane to the side, and said, “I do now!” The other plane was extremely close and had been flying right at us.  “You very well may have saved our lives just now,” Berck added.

There are so many planes flying into Oshkosh that you can’t talk to the traffic controllers on the radio.  Instead, you follow whatever airplane is in front of you at the same speed and the same altitude, fly over the town of Rippen, then up the railroad tracks to Fisk.  In Fisk, they spot you from the ground, call out what type of airplane you appear to be, tell you to rock your wings to acknowledge you heard them, and then give you directions to continue to Oshkosh.  The controller called out a Cherokee right over Fisk, then called it out again.  We weren’t right over the town, but he was apparently talking about us, so on the second call, Berck rocked our wings, and the controller gave us directions to continue.

This next part I’m going to tell from my perspective, because I’ll probably get the correct terminology and details wrong.  We kept heading north, and the runway appeared to the east.  I stopped calling out traffic because there were aircraft everywhere.  Helicopters were close to the ground.  Planes flying in formation were circling to the south.  And there was a line of planes in front of us queuing up to land on runway 270 from the east.  The radio was just a continuous stream from a very harried sounding female controller giving instructions to the planes coming in.  The runway was full of planes in various stages of landing, and there were even more planes lining up all the time to land.  We turned east past the runway headed over the lake.  The controller told us to follow another plane, which came in to land to the west.  Suddenly, we were making a hard, fast turn to right, and I couldn’t see anything out the windows but sky in my left window and lake in my right.  We descended rapidly and then were lined up to land.  The controller gave the plane in front of us instructions to land but didn’t give us any.  We landed anyway, and the controller told us to pull off into the grass as soon as we could.  Berck didn’t bother slowing down, and we bumped off the runway onto the right.  Uncle Stacy got out our piece of paper that said “FBO” on it and held it in the windshield.  The volunteers on the ground emphatically signaled to us to do something, we weren’t sure what.  But we eventually were allowed to taxi over to the FBO.    Here’s a rather longish video.

I finally was able to take off my motion sickness patch from behind my ear, which was really starting to itch.

Once we got settled at the FBO, we took their shuttle van over to the event area and got our wrist bands.  Then we met Randy and Tracey right inside the gate, and we took a tram across the event area and walked all the way to where they had parked their car so we could leave our stuff. We got some food at the concession tent in the parking lot outside the event area and then headed back in.  This sort of thing was happening constantly overhead:

There are lots of things to do at Oshkosh.  There is the Sky Market, which is basically a flea market.   Here’s bins and bins of rivets and other parts.

Here’s Randy trying to find just the right oops rivet.

There are the four big hangers full off booths.  There are the individual tents set up by giant vendors like Garmen and Cirrus.  There are pavilions set up with a constant series of workshops and presentations on welding to fiberglass construction, although the one really wanted to go to, composite building for RVs, was cancelled because the instructor got pneumonia.  And of course, there are the thousands of airplanes parked everywhere you can walk around and look at.

Berck talked to some avionics people, while Randy talked to some engine people.

An air show starts every day at 2:30 and gets more impressive each day. 

One of the most fun parts of the show was the short take off and landing competition of bush planes from Alaska.  It’s astonishing how little runway they can use.

Tracey and Uncle Stacy decided to head back earlier than the rest of us, so they drove the car back  to the house Uncle Stacy had rented. The week of the Oshkosh fly-in, there are no hotel rooms or camping spaces available within an hour of the city.  They all get reserved 365 days beforehand.  But a lot of residents rent out their house for the week and go take a vacation.

When the air show was finished, Randy, Berck, and I wandered around looking at the RVs that had been flown in, trying to find some RV-10s, the plane we’re building.  Then we figured out which bus to take back to the house.  There were only a few people on the bus, and we asked the bus driver where we should get off.  He told us he was going all the way to the college (where all the dorm rooms get rented out to people attending EAA) but that he would stop at 6th Street for us, which was only about three blocks away from the house.  The twilight air was cool and it was a nice walk.

The house had two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.  Randy and Tracey set up their air mattress in the unfinished basement.  Our hosts had left bottled water in the fridge and a mini-fridge full of Miller Lite in the garage for us.

 

Sunday, July 27 continued

We came up to the Schaumburg airport from the east. The runway is in the middle of an urban area surrounded by tall trees and buildings.  At the east end of the runway is a water tower you have to make sure you miss as you come in to land!

Berck put the plane on the ground, and we got ourselves and our stuff out of the plane while listening to the dustup blaring from the hanger.  Berck expressed misgivings about how short the runway was in terms of taking off in the morning.

We all went to the bathroom and went outside to wait for cousin Danny, who drove up in a minivan right after we came outside.  Danny is one of Great Aunt Marilyn’s three sons. Marilyn is Gramma Diane’s sister (Uncle Stacy’s mother).  He drove us back to his house, and we dropped off our stuff, put a load in the wash, since Berck and I were out of clean  clothes, and had a glass of ice tea.

Danny drove us and his daughter Amy (Berck’s second cousin) over to Great Aunt Marylin’s house, a block away, where his brother Larry was picking her up.  This was the first time Berck had met his Great Aunt, although she had sent him birthday cards for years when he was a kid.

Cousin Larry

We all went to Lou’s for deep dish pizza and had some great pizza, an amazing salad, and some Goose Island beer, an entire pint of which I embarrassedly knocked over toward Cousin Larry.  “Welcome to the family!” exclaimed Aunt Marilyn.

Amy and Great Aunt Marilyn

We sat around with Cousin Danny back at his house for a while after supper before heading to bed fairly early.  The temperature had been dropping, so we slept with the window open in Danny’s other daughter’s room (who was busy with her wedding preparations).

Sunday, July 27, 2014

It rained all night.  The weather when we woke up was overcast and very soggy.  Uncle Stacy said he’d take the car back to the FBO and see what he could find out.  Berck and I went back to sleep and slept until housekeeping knocked on our door at 10 a.m.  Uncle Stacy called from the FBO and said that they’d said he could take the car back out again, provided we could bring it straight back if they needed it.  He returned to the hotel and picked us up, and we went to Cackleberry’s for a decent breakfast/lunch.

We decided to return to the FBO, since that was as comfortable place to hang out as any.  Berck and Uncle Stacy ensconced themselves in front of the weather computer at the FBO and just stared at the screen.  Finally, in the afternoon, it looked like we’d be able to thread our way through a line of thunderstorms to clear weather on the other side.  Then we’d be able to make it to Peoria and maybe even Rockford.  Flight Aware shows our track.

Berck shepherded the plane between two thunderstorms and along among the clouds, and then the weather cleared and we were able to to fly straight to Schaumburg.  Flying into Chicago airspace is tricky in a general aviation plane because you have to keep nice and low so the jets landing at O’Hare don’t crash into you.  Unfortunately, there are also towers on the approach to Schaumburg  that are higher than the altitude you’re flying .  There was a tense period when we knew were flying right at three huge towers but couldn’t find them on the sectional map.  At last we spotted the first one and navigated to the west of it.  Now the problem was finding the runway.  Because we were so low, we couldn’t see much of anything, much less a runway.  To make matters worse, the runway was perpendicular to us and was behind buildings and tall trees.  Berck spotted some hangers and decided the runway must be next to them, so we flew in that direction.  Berck yelled, “There’s a freaking water tower at the end of the runway!”

To be continued…

 

 

Saturday, July 26, 2014.  Sydney took us to brunch at Monell’s, which is an old house converted into  a restaurant with huge tables.  They seat everyone family style and then just start bringing out  big platters/baskets of food: biscuits, gravy, cinnamon rolls, grits, home fries, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, country ham, pancakes, and fantastic fried chicken, with pitchers of coffee and sweet and unsweet tea, of course.  It’s all you can eat.  I had some of everything except the pancakes (I don’t eat other people’s pancakes).  Then we back to Sydney’s, and she showed us the holes she’s digging in her backyard “to look for treasure.”  She’s already found a buried glass ashtray and two cassette tapes.

We took off from Nashville and then climbed as much as we could to get to cooler temperatures. Scattered clouds were below us. As we approached Terre Haute, we descended below the clouds. The sky was now completely overcast, so we stayed between the clouds and pretty close to the ground. It was hazy, and you couldn’t see the horizon. Berck had me start helping him and Uncle Stacy keeping an eye out for traffic. But we got the airport without any trouble and landed.

 

We decided to stick around at the airport FBO and see if it cleared up at all. Instead, upon the checking the weather, it looked like the weather was just going to get worse and worse over night. Finally, Uncle Stacy called his cousin in Schaumburg to tell him we weren’t going to be getting in there after all that afternoon. Aunt Marisol got us reservations at a Clarion Inn. The FBO said we could borrow the company car as long as we brought it back by 8 a.m. So we piled into the Honda Pilot and headed over to the motel. We all took showers because we’d been hot and sweating all day then headed to Moggy’s Pub for their extensive beer list and the burgers…both were good. We asked our server if there was anything to do in the Haute since were inadvertently stranded here. He shrugged, “Not really. This is a college town. We’ve got three schools here. Drink?”

We continued to check the weather on Uncle Stacy’s iPad. Then we headed back to the hotel to retire. Berck and I went straight to sleep (after Berck checked the weather one more time) only waking up when his alarm went off in the morning. The air-conditioning wasn’t working in Uncle Stacy’s room, so he switched rooms, but his new room’s AC didn’t work much better. Fortunately, we realized we were back in Eastern Time.

Friday, July 25, 2014

I put on a motion sickness patch, that Uncle Stacy had prescribed, behind my ear before getting in bed.  Sleepiness is a side effect, but I kept waking up a lot.  I did sleep a lot in the plane later in day, but that may have been because we didn’t sleep very long that night.  Aunt Marisol made us quite the breakfast, and then we loaded up everything and drove to Leesburg Airport.  We swapped the car for the Piper Cherokee in the hangar, fueled up, and then were on our way.  We were a little concerned about the little Cherokee being able to take off with the three of us, our bags, and a full fuel load on a super hot day, but it rotated like a champ.

Uncle Stacy and Berck take turns with one person flying and the other working the radio and navigating.  I sit in the back, and if I’m behind Berck’s seat, I can put my legs down in front of me … kinda.  If I’m behind Uncle Stacy, I have to curl them up in the seat next to me.  The Cherokee supposedly has 4 seats, but you can probably only fit four very small, skinny people and no luggage and still be under gross weight.

The original plan had been to do a fuel stop in Montgomery, but the weather there was bad.  So we decided to stop at LaGrange instead.  We had to fly dodging clouds and finding holes to descend down to the airport.  Atlanta Center had been complaining that our transponder wasn’t showing our correct altitude, so we asked at the FBO if the shop there could take a look at it, because we weren’t going to be able to fly into the relatively busy Nashville airport without it.  The mechanics told us they didn’t have the correct equipment to test the transponder, and we couldn’t fly to Atlanta to get it fixed because we couldn’t fly into Atlanta airspace without it.  “But,” one of the mechanics said, “There’s a guy in Columbus, which is only 30 miles away, who should be able to.”  He called up the guy and told him we were coming.  “Go to Stark Aviation.”

So we got back in the plane and flew a few minutes in the wrong direction and landed at Columbus. An advantage of being in Columbus was that we could stay with friends of mine (that’s where I grew up) if the fix was going to take too long. The guy at Stark dropped everything and got right to work on our plane.  We went into the air conditioned lobby to wait.  Suddenly, Berck said, “I think this is the guy on the RV forums who’s always giving people really helpful advice… I bet it’s him!” He went back out to the hangar.  Sure enough. This guy is possibly the best avionics mechanic in the country, and we had just stumbled into his shop!  Berck watched him do his thing.  Apparently, the transponder’s pins had bent, so he just bent them all back into the correct orientation, and it worked great!  He showed Berck everything, which is nice, because Berck is going to be mounting avionics into the plane we’re building before long.  And he only charged us $95.

As nice as it would have been to see some friends in Columbus, if we’d gotten stuck there, The plan was to have dinner with Sydney in Nashville.

By now it was mid afternoon, though, and the thunderstorms were building.  We took off from Columbus just before it started raining, and then with the help of Columbus tower who called us to tell us we were heading straight into a cell, dodged thunderstorms in a roundabout route to Nashville.  We also got a warning call from Center saying we were on a path to bust some restricted airspace containing “live firing and fighter jets.”

We flew really high to try to get cooler, all the way to 10,000 feet.  It was nice and cool up there.  I read my book and fell asleep again.  It was also a really smooth flight, no turbulence, and I had my ginger ale and ginger snaps and didn’t feel any nausea whatsoever.

When we left Columbus, the weather over Nashville was bad, but by the time we got there it was fine.  The FBO gave us a ride off the ramp in a golf cart and told us they’d fill our tanks in the morning so we’d get the weekend fuel rate, a whole dollar a gallon off the regular price.  We called Sydney to come pick us up.  We dropped our stuff off at her house and then her boyfriend Shawn drove us, even though we could have walked, to Two Ten Jack (I requested it because of the mosquitos, and it was dusk).  Somehow, even though there was a line, we got seated immediately.  We shared all the sushi, yakatori, dumplings, etc.,  Everything was very good.  Then Berck wanted to stop by Bolton’s Hot Chicken, but unfortunately, the person in front of him had just placed an enormous order.  The hot chicken was still as delicious and spicy as ever.  Uncle Stacy had a strip, which he regretted the next day.  Then he went to bed while Sydney tried to teach us how to play Dominion (a beardless board game), while we drank beer and tried to get our lips to stop burning.

Here are pictures of Sydney’s pets:

Killer:

Dixie

And even Jorge

…who is rubbing against my legs with his head pressed against the ground.