Posted Wed Jul 6 19:07:25 MDT 2022
I woke up this morning in Pampas, TX, somehow. It's kind of bizarre to me that I was already in Texas. When I did my planning for this trip, one of the first things I did was go to skyvector,com and make a little fakey flight plan that started at X49, South Lakeland Airport, and ended at LAX, in Los Angeles, just to get an idea. I told the flight plan form what I guessed the cruising speed would be, 87 knots, or 100 MPH. I wanted to be able to tell my brother, who lives in LA, approximately how many days I thought it would take for me to get to him.
This naive analysis yielded a result of around 18 or 20 hours. Obviously, that's non-stop at 100 MPH, and the plane can only fly about 3 hours at a stretch (based on what I was guessing at the time), so the most efficient possible routing, with no weather delays, would add at least an extra 6 hours on to that, for descending, climbing, taxiing around, pumping fuel, etc.
I figured, based on my experience with Norbert the Champ, that I would be able to stand roughly 2 hour legs. With Norbert, 2 is fine, and 3 is a stretch, but I figured the open cockpit would make things more tiring. I also figured 3 2-hour legs per day was in the realm of plausibility. Of course, this would all be subject to revision once I actually had some experience in the plane, but this was based on the information I had available to me.
So, based on all that, I figured it would take about 4 days. Then I extended that by a couple days, for weather delays, putting me at about 6 days from Florida to LA.
Somehow, that seemed impossibly long, like a goal I'd never achieve. So I tended to think of my travel days one stop at a time, and frequently not even having an idea of where a day would end. Laying it out logically, I guess it makes sense that I'd be in Texas on the 5th day, and New Mexico on the 6th. Yet somehow, it still feels like I've made tremendous progress very quickly. A lot of that is probably that I added the intermediate stop of Little Rock relatively late in the game, and that threw all my internal sense of how long things should take out of whack.
In any case, I started today near the eastern border of the Texas Panhandle, visiting JimC from the Biplane Forum. He very kindly gave me a ride to and from the AmericInn where I stayed last night. Jim has given me Charger advice a number of times, which I've always appreciated, so it was pretty cool to put a face to the name.
Last night was a bit of a cram: I didn't even arrive at the airport until 8 pm, and I flew 6.3 hours in three legs yesterday. You will recall that I thought 2 hours would be about the most I could stand at a time? Yes, that. 1.5 would be better. But I keep planning these legs that look like they should be under 2 hours, but something (usually the wind) always conspires to make it take longer.
Since I arrived so late, most of the restaurants were closed. So I ended up at the Taco Bell across the street from the hotel, which was.. well, Taco Bell. I did have some lovely ice cream at a local shop, though. Peanut Butter Cup. Yum.
But this also meant that all the writing I would normally want to do (a properly developed entry like this one typically takes me 2-3 hours) had to be crammed into a few minutes, around route planning, weather research, eating, getting myself cleaned up, etc. Much less having a chance to just... sit. Just resting is proving to be a difficult thing to do. Today's been a bit better.
Before I get to today, however, I should explain what happened in Little Rock. Go read that entry if you haven't already, to get the setup: one of the wires that hold the wings onto the plane was damaged. I freaked the fuck out, not to put too fine a point on it.
So, I had contacted Don about a separate issue, of one of the landing wires vibrating madly. He called me around 6 that morning, to discuss the solution we were thinking about, of changing its orientation slight, so it would hit the air at a different angle. What he got was an earful of me grimly intoning that the trip was RUINED and I'd have to take the wings off and ship it back via truck, etc. He said he'd be by in 45 minutes.
When he got there, I showed him the problem: one of the clamping screws on the javelin had dug a hole in the left forward landing wire. He considered it for a moment as I pondered how doomed I was, then looked up, and said, "You're not pulling any loops or anything, yeah? Fly it home." I was absolutely blown away. But, he's the expert. So, we moved on to the solutions phase of things.
His suggestion was to get rid of the screws and clamps that had caused the problem in the first place, and replace them with zip ties. That, as he explained, is what they do on the Pitts Model 12, which he makes and sells. The Model 12 is a hot-rod, with a big Russian radial engine, and is a very high-performance plane. On my favorite comparative spectrum of cars, where the Champ is a Honda Civic, and the Charger is a Miata, the Model 12 is a Mustang. It's big and burly and goes grr. If this technique was good enough for the Model 12, it was certainly up to snuff for the Charger.
So, he took me to his shop, which was, by extreme good luck, literally across the field, at the same airport where my plane was parked. I couldn't have possibly asked for a better place to find this problem.
His shop is huge, with a bunch of planes sitting around in various states of repair. His Model 12 works were only a small part of the space. He showed me all the stuff, and it was completely overwhelming, but I got some good ideas when he showed me how he formed leading edges for his wings, like making the mold out of foam using rib nose templates around stiff foam, and then using a hot wire to cut the foam.
After he'd showed me everything, he dug out and handed me a package of the nicest zip-ties I've ever seen (Thomas and Betts Ty-Raps, ask for them by name, but be prepared to pay), a Scotch Brite pad, and a razor blade for trimming the zip-tie tails. We drove back to the hangar my plane was in, and he showed me the right technique to use the zip-ties to attach the javelins to the wires.
Then it was a few hours of me sorting out my technique, then applying it to 14 different wire/javelin intersections. The end result has been very solid (those are really nice zip-ties, I need to get a supply for myself), and solved the problem that started all this out: the wire that was vibrating is now rock solid.
But now to tell the stories of today!
Today started, as I said so long ago, in Pampa, TX at PPA. Jim picked me up at 8 (having determined that I needed sleep more than I needed to leave insanely early -- plus the FBO didn't open until 8 anyway), and we made a stop at the local grocery store so I could stock up. I discovered this morning that my unrefrigerated food bag was missing, and spent several hours doubting my sanity, since I've been hyper-vigilant about checking around to make sure I didn't forget anything, anywhere I've stayed.
After buying a quart of oil from the FBO, and getting fuel (by special favor -- they're not selling fuel to the public, since the prices have gone up so precipitously; aviation fuel prices are tracking the craziness of auto fuel prices, but they don't go down as quickly), I did some weather checking, then got myself off the ground around 11.
My plan today was to get myself to Socorro, NM, where I was hoping to meet up with Timbob from the forum. It looked like a long set of legs, but doable. I'd stop at TCC, which is in Tucumcari, NM, and then make a longer second leg to reach Socorro.
The flight to Tucumcari wasn't terrible, but I found myself feeling pretty laggy, so I decided that when I got there, I'd fuel up, park, and take a nap in the pilot's lounge, if there was one. After filling the tanks in the heat and wind (so much heat and wind, and all of it more or less in my face), I went into the lounge, and sort of sluggishly prepared a lunch of pitas with cheese and tomatoes (a very tasty combo, particularly with the pepper jack I got most recently). I leaned back and had a sitting-up nap for about 20 minutes, which was enough to feel a bit better.
I packed up my things (careful to have all my bags with me -- I remembered what had happened: I'd put the food bag into the fridge in Hinton, and noticed it there when I was loading up the cooler, but failed to grab it, and it being in the fridge meant I didn't see it on my scan), and got myself back to the plane. A woman walked over from the plane that had landed after me, and she asked if she could take pictures of my plane. We chatted for a few minutes, and she texted me one of her shots.
Then I looked up: a series of clouds very clearly dumping rain were headed right for us. I hurriedly put myself together and got myself in the air after losing track of where the appropriate runway was, and having to taxi for much longer than I wanted to. But, I made it into the air before the storms arrived, and I was headed for the quadrant of sky where they weren't, so it worked out well.
However, this started one of the craziest bits of flying I've done in a while. Not bad crazy, just kind of out there.
First off, the air was extremely bumpy. Lots of up and down drafts. Nothing dangerous, but I found myself going up at a thousand feet per minute a few times. Finally it clicked: I was flying through thermals (which I'd already realized), but I could circle back and use them. So I did. The first time, the controller noted that I was circling, and asked if I needed help, but after I told him I was riding thermals, he didn't ask me again.
When I caught those thermals, I was going up by as much as 1500 feet per minute (this plane is incapable of flying upwards that quickly under its own power; the most I've seen so far is about 1000 fpm). It was kind of giddy. I was worried about my temperatures, after climbing in the hot air, so I figured that catching a free lift would be good for keeping my engine happy, and would mean I didn't need to spend the gas on the climb, either.
Riding thermals, we went from about 7500 feet to a maximum of 12,300 feet. After 10,500, I wasn't even trying any more. If we passed through a thermal, we went up. If we hit a sinker, we went down. As long as we didn't go lower than 10.5, I didn't worry about it. It was easier than trying to fight to keep a particular altitude, when the air was clearly going to throw us around no matter what.
Of course, that's the downside. The air was throwing us around. I started feeling a bit beat up after half an hour, and that was a 2.1 hour flight. I was constantly fighting to keep on approximately the right track, even though I wasn't worried too much about altitude.
Then, every time I glanced down at the tablet to see my status, I'd see wildly different ETA numbers. 2 hours. An hour forty-five. Over two hours. It kept changing, because of course I was hitting all kinds of winds pushing me every which way, even at 12,000 feet. I began to despair of ever reaching Socorro, at this rate.
I didn't give up, though. Not until I saw the line of storms crossing my path. Storms that seemed to be camped exactly where I wanted to go. I could go around them, but I'd be adding Yet More Time to a trip that was already too long.
We diverted north from the direct path, when I was still thinking about diverting around the storms. Aimed at Albuquerque, more or less, and thinking we could turn south along the Rio Grande to get to Socorro. However, as I passed Vaughn (N17) I found myself looking at it longingly, thinking of just getting out of this bucking airplane, getting off my poor abused tailbone, and calling it a day. Fortunately, I took that as a sign, and looked for somewhere along my path to stop.
I spotted Moriarty, NM (E0E), and decided it looked big enough to likely have a hangar, and maybe even a lounge or a hotel nearby. In these things, it exceeded my expectations.
It turns out that Moriarty is one of the biggest glider airports around, and no wonder. My stubby-winged biplane had just gained 5000 feet of altitude without particularly trying, clearly someone who knew what they were doing, in a proper glider, could do amazing things in this environment.
As soon as I'd shut down the plane, a couple of guys walked up, and immediately engaged me in conversation: where I was coming from, where I was going, what about the plane, etc. Someone else drove up, and asked similar questions, and after about 10 minutes of conversation, I'd secured a hangar space, a crew car (the most delightfully decrepit Isuzu Pup pickup truck), and a recommendation for a traditional Route 66 motel. I am even now sitting in the Sunset Motel, having just had a good plate of enchiladas with red chile sauce (I understood the green chile sauce would be too spicy for me). I've been to the store to replace the food items I lost in Hinton. I've taken sunset-time photos of the Sunset Motel. I've finished today's entry, and all that's left is checking out my path for tomorrow and taking a well-deserved shower.
Then, my friends, glorious glorious sleep. These early mornings don't sit well with me, and I always go to bed too late. Not tonight. I'll be in bed by 10, and waking at 6. Perfect.
Copyright © 2022 by Ian Johnston.