Hour of the TopGun

What would you give if you could fly F-14 simulators for an hour to engage in air combat and try landing aboard the ship? We did exactly that over the Christmas holidays at the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola, Florida. By “we” I mean my wife, myself, my boys, and their wives or fiancés, totaling up to seven, just enough to man up all four of the simulators the museum owns. The cockpits are, as the museum advertises, four two-place fixed-base trainers really used to train F-14 aircrews. (We used them as NATOPS trainers, i.e., yearly re-qualification trainers for the F-14.) As you might expect, not much in them really works, but you’ve got enough to fly the sim. (For example, the rudders don't work but the throttles and stick do; you can fire missiles but only one kind; the radar has been replaced by a TV screen that shows what you see out the front window; backseaters can fire a missle using the real missile launch button in the backseat.)

The four cockpits sit behind a very large screen composed of a section for each aircraft. The field of view is wide enough not to be easily distracted by other players but still not so wide you can’t see what’s going on with the “airplane” next to you. The cockpits can be run together or separately. For our runs, I chose to run them all together. The communications systems allowed the aircrews to talk to themselves without doing anything special (just like the real F-14 intercom if it was configured for “hot mike”) and you could talk to another airplane by pushing a button on the throttle. Each aviator had his/her own headset, and the airplane’s canopies are closed for the simulator runs.

At sim start, you are flying high above Las Vegas, close to McCarran International Airport. The sim controller requested each aircraft fly down the airport’s runway just off the nose and fire one missile and a burst of the gun to see if they work. We were allowed to fly the airplane for a few minutes as we wanted so we could get a feel for it. Once everyone had a go, the controller reset the whole gaggle overhead a beachside city in southern California that had bogies heading inbound from over the water. We were told that black or red dots were okay to shoot. We all pressed in for individual kills.

I pushed the throttle forward, rolled, and pulled looking for some bogies as the controller made “bogey calls” over the radio. Unlike the real Tomcat, the simulators weapons system is extremely crude, with only a green circle on the heads-up display acting as a pipper for both guns and missiles with no range information displayed anywhere. As you flew the pipper to the target, you would hear a Sidewinder growl that would vary in intensity; so, the best you could do was put the pipper on the target with a good growl, squeeze the trigger, and hope for a kill.

As you pressed in, your target really would take shape. The bogies I saw appeared to be MIG 17’s. F-14’s would indeed present a valid F-14 shape, as I found out when I rolled in on one of my wingman in mistaken pursuit. I broke off the attack before I shot him. In fact, I don’t think we had a “friendly fire” downing all day, much to the credit of everyone involved.

One very frustrating bug of the simulation was that it did not appear to handle head-to-head passes. I took two MIGs down my starboard side on two different occasions and turned once hard horizontally and pursued another over-the-top to come down both times to an empty sky. While it’s possible I could have simply lost them in each case, I felt that was unlikely because I never saw any hint of them and the effort I put into finding them again. Unfortunately, no one else in the group attempted such a thing, so I didn’t have any experience to validate against except my own.

After about ten minutes or so of fighting MIG’s, the sim was reset to put us at sea with an aircraft carrier in front of us. A briefing from the sim controller told us not to get slower than about 150 kts and no faster than 200 when coming aboard and essentially to use the velocity vector to control the vertical glideslope, a terribly inaccurate rendition of the real thing. Most approach speeds I remember has us at 130- 135 knots; and, of course, we used the “ball” (Fresnel lens landing aid) to control the vertical glideslope inside 3/4 of a mile as well as the aircraft’s angle of attack indicator to control the speed. That said, teaching someone to control using the ball, which wasn’t terribly visible in this sim, and fly angle-of-attack probably couldn’t be done in a single session. We disgraced every Navy pilot alive by getting aboard with our screamingly wide conditions, everyone at least once. After letting us land twice with good conditions, the controller then made it tougher by throwing in some fog and then putting us at night, though I think I might have been the only one to progress to that latter. Frankly, X-Plane’s landing sim is a bit better than the one in the museum. The best sim I’ve seen so far belongs to Jane’s F/A-18, an old simulator for the PC built to run on Windows 95 and 98. (It will run fine under XP Pro if you run the sim in compatibility mode for Windows 2000. Don’t ask!)

The normal cost for renting a sim is 25 bucks for 20 minutes. If you instead rent a block of time, as I did, the cost drops to $45 for each hour per sim. One hour of good times for all seven of us cost me $180. Not bad for a roaring good time for all of us!

Everyone did have a good time. I’m back at my house now flying Jane’s to get better at landing at the ship and my air-to-air refueling. Who says an old Tomcat RIO can’t be taught new tricks?

A Solo at LVJ

My wife, our dog Rocky, and I often observe a little ritual on the weekends. We pile into my truck, drive down to McDonald’s and buy breakfast (which for Rocky is usually “a side order of bacon), and then head out to Pearland Regional Airport where we eat and drink it. If I’ve remembered to bring along my handheld aviation transceiver, we also listen to the radio calls from the traffic pattern as we watch airplanes takeoff, fly the pattern, and land.

So, on this Sunday morning not long ago, we watched a Grumman Cheetah from a nearby flight school enter the pattern for runway 32. We had positioned ourselves on a concrete slab next to the taxiway at the runway’s approach end, so we had a good view of the entire runway and most of the pattern. The Cheetah glided down, accompanied by standard position calls made by its student-pilot with a Middle-eastern accent, and touched down a little before the halfway point on the runway before turning back onto the taxiway. The airplane taxied back to us, turned left into the hold short for taxiway Delta where it stopped as its canopy slid back and a fairly young, dark-haired man stepped out from under it onto the wing. He then stepped onto the ground, out of the airplane.

“Looks like a first solo,” I said, and my wife agreed as the dark-haired American-looking instructor ambled off the taxiway to sit quietly in the grass behind it. Meanwhile, the airplane’s canopy re-closed and the airplane held at the hold short. There was nobody on final or even on base, though there were two other airplanes in the pattern. The Cheetah didn’t move.

“What’s he waiting for?” I mumbled. He had plenty of time before the traffic now on downwind turned toward him, making sure he’d have to wait even longer to get off. I looked back at the instructor to see how he was reacting. He wasn’t looking at his student at all.

Sure enough, the first airplane turned onto base, followed another minute later by the second. The Grumman held quietly until they both had passed, then we heard the student incorrectly announce his “N number” though he correctly stated he was taking 32 for departure. The instructor watched his student accelerate down the runway and take off but went back to his own cusps as soon as the student broke ground.

My wife and I watched the student fly his pattern and listened to his radio calls while the instructor continued to be more interested in whatever he was doing. It wasn’t until the student was on short final the instructor looked up just in time to watch him touch down and then ram the throttle home for his touch and go.

The airplane lifted off, and the instructor’s head went in the other direction.

Connie commented she wouldn’t want to fly with that instructor. First, she couldn’t understand why he didn’t have a handheld radio to allow him to talk to the student if anything went wrong. While I agreed that such a tactic was wise, I defended the instructor’s choice by pointing out it wasn’t required and some instructors would consider such a thing as “not letting the student go”. What I couldn’t defend was the instructor’s constant indifference to his student. Why wasn’t he watching the student’s pattern, not only to debrief it later but to watch for how the student was managing it in the presence of other traffic? Why wasn’t he watching the student’s base leg and final approaches and critiquing those in relationship to the student’s landing that were a bit long on each pass?

The student completed two more touch and go’s while the instructor’s head rarely came up.

On the fourth pass, the student taxied the Cheetah off the runway and back onto the taxiway. The instructor didn’t move until the airplane taxied to the hold-short, and then he entered. Moments later, the airplane engine revved up and the airplane surged forward, turning hard to align with the runway.

“The instructor’s got it now,“ I said, as his voice tumbled across the radio announcing they were departing three-two. The airplane jumped off the ground and then wobbled down the runway, gaining speed, at an altitude of about three feet. It roared straight at the pine trees near the runway’s end, pulling up hard to miss them, and then turning to the west, back toward the airport from which it had come.

Instead of making her go “goo-goo” at the instructor pilot, the maneuver turned my wife off. If she had been the student, she said, she would have felt both angry and shamed by his takeover and takeoff. What was supposed to have been her moment of glory would have been overshadowed by a risk-laden, testosterone-driven takeoff. She had a point. If I had been the instructor, I would have gotten back in the airplane and told the student to “take me home”, assisting him or her only as necessary. But in that Cheetah that day, the student did not get to wallow in such revelry.

I couldn’t help but wonder if that instructor had just set that student up for an accident. How did the instructor know the student, on his next flight, wouldn’t emulate the trick he had just demonstrated, probably with catastrophic results? Certainly, the maneuver said more about the instructor’s machismo than it did about his professionalism. Was this some guy who was instructing only to build time to make his way into the cockpit of heavy iron? An ex-military pilot who couldn’t make the transition into civilian life and aviation and would one day plaster himself on the side of a hill by pushing his airplane too hard? While I have only questions, I do know one thing is for sure. If I go to that flight school to fly one of their Cheetahs, he’s one guy I won’t fly with.

Unison Press Release False: Defective Mags Apparently Abandoned

As detailed on this blog some time ago, I bought a set of new Unison Slick magnetos from Aircraft Spruce and Specialty, Co eleven months ago. As also has been detailed here, they have never been right from the git-go. We initially thought the problem was in the left mag of the NEW mag set but I know now it’s been both mags that are showing premature wear. All three mags, including the left one replaced under the warranty, are in the problem set detailed by Unison Service Bulletins SB2-08A and SB3-08A.
In September, Unison had released a press article talking about a kit that would be made available to affected owners at a reduced cost to enable a permanent retirement of the two service bulletins above. I contacted Aircraft Spruce and, though they were unaware of the kits and the circumstances behind them (even though they had sold me the mags), they did a good job of chasing down the truth. For your perusal, I am publishing our e-mail exchange in its entirety, minus my personal e-mail address. (Like all e-mail chains, it makes the most sense if you read it from the bottom up.):

From: custsvc@aircraftspruce.com
Subject: Fw: Contact us inquiry: quote
Date: November 3, 2008 1:07:33 PM CST
To: Andy Foster
Hello,
Thank you for the info. We contacted Unison direct and they told us they do not have such a kit. This info was printed before Champion purchased the magneto division. They would not say if that was why they did not end up doing the replacement kits or not, but did confirm these are not available.
Regards,
Josh Solis


----- Original Message -----
From: Aircraft Spruce
To: customer service
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 10:12 AM
Subject: Fw: Contact us inquiry: quote

Josh,
Regarding the service bulletins SB2-08-A and SB3-08-A that Andy Foster was asking you about, he emailed the below attachment & I sent this email to Melody and she checked with Joe over at Unison. He said that Unison is not issuing overhaul kits - the bulletin below is NOT true.
Necia


From: Andy and Connie
To: Aircraft Spruce
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 3:35 PM
Subject: Re: Contact us inquiry: quote

Unison revises magneto service bulletins, issues overhaul kits

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA, September 15, 2008 - Unison Industries announced today that it is shipping magneto overhaul kits to authorized distributors for use with affected Slick and LASAR brand magnetos. When installed, the kits will constitute terminating actions for service bulletins SB2-08 and SB3-08 issued earlier this year. The service bulletins recommended inspections of distributor cams and carbon brushes for premature wear in certain serial number ranges of magnetos.

Revised service bulletins SB2-08A and SB3-08A, dated July 1, 2008 and September 11, 2008 respectively, recommend replacing the contact point assembly (including cam) and distributor block & gear assembly (including carbon brush) on magnetos within the serial number ranges specified with newly manufactured kits. Replacing these components will terminate the inspection regimes specified by the service bulletins. For a limited time, Unison is making both kits available to authorized distributors at a specially reduced price.

"The reliable performance of our products is a top priority," said Paul Theofan, Unison's vice president of marketing and sales. "After a thorough investigation, we have isolated the problems and developed overhaul kits to restore magneto performance to the level our customers deserve and expect."

Magnetos affected by service bulletin SB2-08A are those with serial numbers beginning with 0610XXXX through 0804XXXX and/or magnetos which have had the cam, or the cam as part of the contact point assembly kit, replaced with products shipped between October 1, 2006 and May 11, 2008.

Magnetos affected by service bulletin SB3-08A are those with serial numbers beginning with 0409XXXX through 08080453 and/or magnetos that have had the carbon brush, or the distributor block replaced with products shipped between September 1, 2004 and August 14, 2008.

All Slick and LASAR magnetos manufactured since August 15, 2008 and bearing serial numbers beginning with 08080454 are not affected by these service bulletins as they already contain the modified cams and carbon brushes.

Aircraft owners or mechanics with questions about these service bulletins can contact pistonhelp@unisonindustries.com for more information.

About Unison
Unison Industries, LLC, is a wholly owned subsidiary within General Electric Company's GE Aviation business unit. A leader in the design, manufacture and integration of electrical and mechanical components and systems for aircraft engines and airframes, Unison serves both original equipment manufacturers and aftermarket customers in the general, commercial and military aviation markets. Unison's headquarters are in Jacksonville, Florida, and it employs more than 2,000 people in eight manufacturing facilities and logistics centers worldwide. For more information, visit www.unisonindustries.com.

- end -

For More Information:

Contact: Wayne Moles, Marketing Communications Manager
(904) 739-4296

On Oct 27, 2008, at 7:18 PM, Aircraft Spruce wrote:
Andy,
We contacted our vendor and they do not have the kit you are refering to. Where did you see this kit advertised? I'm curious to see if someone is supplying a kit like this.
Regards,
Josh Solis


----- Original Message ----- From: "Aircraft Spruce"
To: "customer service"
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 9:54 AM
Subject: Fw: Contact us inquiry: quote


From; Andy Foster >
To:
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 8:25 AM
Subject: Contact us inquiry: quote


From: Andy Foster

I bought two magnetos last Nov from you, one of which was also replaced under warranty, and both of those are affected by Unison service bulletins SB2-08-A and SB3-08-A. Do you have the Unison kits that are being offered to fix the mags and invalidate those service bulletins? If so, how do I get 2? Thanks.

Surviving Ike

“The FlightBlog” has been quiet for a while not only because of the Cheetah’s continuing mechanical problems but because of damage suffered from Hurricane Ike. The airplane rode out the storm using two sets of tie downs, one rope and one strap type, under a tin-roofed area we call “the Carports”. Upon first blush, the airplane seemed to have weathered the storm rather well, much better than airplanes and hangars adjacent to and behind it that laid in metal strips strewn across the ground. A green Citabria was on its back amidst the debris; a Cessna 172 I had flown for many years in a local flying club laid with twisted wings and a broken nose gear, totally destroyed when its hangar disintegrated around it and exposing it to the ravages of the hurricane. In fact, one of the lessons I learned from Hurricane Ike is that the standard belief that an airplane is always better off in a hangar just ain’t true. The condition of the hangar MUST be considered. If the hangar is strong enough to withstand the rigors of the storm with little or no damage, then storing an airplane there is a good idea. Even so, a better idea still, is to store the airplane in a hangar with the control lock in place and with strong tie-downs holding it to the earth. Without those additional safeguards, once the hangar begins disintegrating, the airplane will try to fly while the remaining parts of the hangar provide material for the airplane to collide with.

In our case, I had secured the airplane with the ropes provided by the airport as well as with a set of high-strength tie-down straps with large metal hooks bought from Sporty’s Pilot Shop. When I returned after the storm, the airplane did not appear to have been moved though the small rope holding wheel chocks together had somehow lodged itself under the left wheel and one chock was slightly out of place. The only damage I initially spotted was to the passenger side of the windscreen. The canopy cover had rubbed scratches into the plexiglass, making for what looked like a spilled milk streak about eight inches long.

Luckily (I guess), the airplane went down for an annual a few weeks later. My mechanic spotted damage to the elevator trim tabs. They were slightly krinkled from ground impact and some paint also was missing, suggesting that the winds had wrestled the airplane back onto its tail despite the tie-downs. He also found five of the six wheel bearings were full of water, suggesting that the area had flooded to a water level about six inches deep. I have filed a claim with my insurance company and the adjuster has been here. I’m still waiting to see what they’re going to pay for.
My mechanic also discovered that the new magnetos we have on here (bought from Aircraft Spruce) are affected by Unison Service Bulletins 02-08A and 03-08A issued this year demanding inspection for advanced wear, which we have. There are supposed to be overhaul kits available to deal with this problem, but where they all are, nobody seems to know. So, here I am, having spent $1500 with both Aircraft Spruce and Unison for new mags that have put me on the ground and given me more problems than the old mags I replaced.

The long and short of it is I have no idea when my airplane will be airworthy again.

On Borrowed Time

It was a hot, bright Galveston Saturday. Under the supervision of my A&P, I had spent the day under his hangar door and the upper cowl door of my Cheetah replacing the baffling on the pilot’s side of the airplane’s engine bay. The job had taken all day. I was proud of what I had done, and I was also dehydrated and tired and still had to fly the plane back to Pearland. That was a short twenty minute hop that shouldn’t be a problem.

My A&P, Bill, inspected the job I had done, replaced a spark plug lead wire I had moved to avoid damaging, and declared the airplane airworthy and ready to fly back. Calling my wife in my iPhone, I told her I was about to leave and asked her to meet me at Pearland’s airport in about twenty minutes. Grabbing the airplane’s prop right at the hub, I pushed the airplane out into the bright sun and back about twenty feet before turning it ninety degrees, pointing the tail at the large, empty expanse of concrete ramp behind me. Then, I walked back into the hangar to get my headset which had been borrowed by astronaut Garrett Reisman so he and his wife, Simone, could work on the intercom in their Grumman Tiger. They thanked me for letting them use it, and I headed back with it and boarded my airplane.

I strapped myself in and ran through the pre-start checklist, yelled the obligatory “Clear Prop!” and started the Cheetah’s engine. I held the brakes as I flipped the beacon and radios on and listened to Galveston’s ASOS, setting the altimeter. I decided to go ahead and do my pre-takeoff checklist before taxi, so I performed it, in I then switched my second comm. radio up to the frequency for Pearland’s AWOS and flipped my primary comm. radio over to Galveston Ground. As I did, the pilot of a V-tailed Bonanza near the fuel pumps called for taxi. Ground cleared him to taxi to runway 17 via taxiway Echo, and I saw the tip of his vertical tail sharking its way out from the rows of airplanes to my left. I was closer to 17 than he was and thought about trying to get out ahead of he guy but decided to be courteous and wait. So, I delayed my call for taxi until the Bonanza was almost past. Unfortunately, the Bonanza pilot did not return my favor; in fact, he stopped in the middle of the taxiway between me and runway 17 and spun ninety degrees, blocking the taxiway, to do his pre-takeoff checks. I waited for a minute or two for him to clear; and when I had had enough, I called Ground and asked for permission to taxi in front of the Bonanza. The controller replied that the Bonanza pilot had just called Tower for takeoff as I saw the airplane start to move out. Switching up to Tower, I called for takeoff and Tower told me to hold short for the Bonanza, which I rogered and did. The V-tail roared down the runway; and as it lifted off, the tower cleared me for takeoff but said there would be someone on left base behind me. I pushed the throttle up and rolled for the runway, kicking left rudder to turn me left and align me with it. As the nose swung to the centerline, I advanced the throttle and the engine sputtered! I pulled the throttle back to idle and decided to try one more time since I had plenty of runway left and advanced it again. This time, it worked as expected. Roaring down the runway, I pulled back on the yoke at 60 and lifted off. All my engine instruments looked good and the airplane was climbing fine, so I asked for a right turn to the northwest from the tower at three hundred feet and got it. As I rolled right, the Tower asked me to take interval on the Bonanza also heading northwest. Spotting him, I called “tally ho!” and rolled out on my heading which was about thirty degrees more northward than his.

The Cheetah was climbing at about 700 fpm, a good rate for a still hot day, and I leveled off at 1600 feet MSL as I approached Tiki Island. The engine coughed once again, and I switched individually to the Left and Right magnetos to look for a problem. They seemed fine. I switched my comm. radio to the frequency for Houston Approach South and listened to the controller vector traffic as I otherwise non-eventfully cruised toward Pearland. I watched the oil temperature slowly creep up; the baffling job I had done had helped us out some but still seemed to be impacting the bottom line little. I looked forward to rebuilding the other side to see what effect the overall rework would have.

At about five miles out from Pearland, I switched the radio up to Pearland’s CTAF, pulled the power back to 2200 RPM, and began a descent at about 125 mph toward the field which was in sight. I could see no one else in the pattern and at about three miles I called my entry toward the left downwind leg of runway one four. That’s when all hell broke lose; the engine began sputtering and backfiring! SH*T!!!! It was only a matter of time before the engine quit.

With my heart in my throat, I leveled off at a thousand feet (pattern altitude) but let the speed bleed back on its own rather than forcing a slowdown. I decided not to touch the throttle in the hopes that the engine would continue to run, however roughly, until I could get abeam my landing point. I remember looking down about a third of the way down the runway with an uncertainty of how I would land it from there if the engine gave out, and I kept whispering to myself “Come on! Come on!” as we made our way alongside the runway. I hit the half-way point and ran down the landing checklist and, abeam my landing point, pulled the throttle back to idle. I decided to fly a simulated engine out approach from there rather than hang any hope the engine would continue, even though I was fairly sure it would be there.

I turned base at about eight hundred feet and as I slid perpendicular to the runway, turned toward it. I was holding best-glide, 83 mph, and intended to keep it there until I knew I had the runway made. Feeling I was high, I lowered the flaps down full as I turned onto a short final. But as I ran in toward the runway, I could see I was coming up a bit short, I lowered the nose twice to push my landing point more toward the runway but at about three hundred feet felt I needed to retract the flaps to get there for sure. The airplane sank like a stone but I did round out and touch down a couple of hundred feet past the threshold, much too close to the end for the scenario I had.

As I rolled out, I pulled the canopy open to get some cooling air in the airplane and I coasted to a stop on taxiway Bravo. Once clear of the runway’s hold short lines, I performed the post-landing checklist and then, with brakes locked, advanced the throttle up toward 1800 RPM. As the RPM approached it, the engine began backfiring and sputtering, and then quit, dropping 300 rpm, before starting again and repeating the surging. I swapped mags to see if I could isolate the problem, but I couldn’t. I taxied the airplane over to its parking spot in front of its little carport and shut it down.

Whipping out my iPhone, I called my mechanic and told him how the engine had misbehaved and that I was not sure whether I was going to have an engine for landing or not. We had been chasing this problem as either an ignition or carburetion problem, but I was convinced it was something else, i.e., a sticking intake or exhaust valve, and my bet was on the latter. I told Bill the Cheetah was “hard down” until he came up and looked at it, though what I really meant was it was “hard down” until we had a definitive cause we had fixed. Bill said he expected to be up my way next week.

I called my wife next. I had expected her to already be here but figured it was for the best she wasn’t. There was no way if she had been she would not have heard my problematic engine, and she’d have been freaking out until I was on the ground. When I got her on the line, I found out she was still at home; so, I asked her to bring me a Coke. I needed something to drink. I sat down in the shade of the “carport” to cool off for about ten minutes, then got up to park the airplane.

Pulling the towbar out of the airplane’s baggage compartment, I snapped it into shape and then onto the Cheetah’s nose. I turned the airplane about two hundred degrees until her tail was pointed straight back into her parking place and pushed her back into place as my wife pulled up. Once the airplane was spotted, I released the towbar and stowed it back in the baggage compartment and sat down with a Coke to get some liquid in my system. I’d finish tying down the airplane later.

I didn’t speak for a few minutes. Once I had some fluid in me, I told my wife the tale of the troublesome flight. For once, I said, I was glad she hadn’t been with me; we both agreed if she had she might never fly again. I told her about my conversation with Bill and what the implications of fixing a valve might be. In any case, it was pretty certain the airplane was going to be down a good, long while.

A few minutes later, when both shade and drink had cooled me, I got up and finished securing the airplane. As we drove back, she said she was happy I was all right and her eyes teared up and I said I was glad I was okay, too.

On Monday morning at work, I told a friend of mine who is also a CFI about the ordeal. I had been mentally evaluating what had happened ever since and knew I could have done better if I had thought it out. First, I had decided that if I had to do it over again I would have declared an emergency on 122.8 to ensure that any aircraft that might have been in the traffic pattern I didn’t see knew to steer clear of the approach end of runway 14. By not doing so, I had minimized my difficulty, which didn’t seem so bad because it had happened within an easy gliding range of the airport. But what if someone I hadn’t seen had hit final before me and I had to perform a go-around. Would I have been confident the engine would have been there for me? I knew the answer was “No!”. Secondly, during the interval when I only had about a third of the runway beside me and had the engine quit, I had several options. One was a quick left turn and a spiral down to the opposite end of the runway. Another was to continue straight ahead until I had lost only another two hundred feet and then perform a spiral turn back to land on 14 at the middle of the runway. Both solutions were reminders not to get “padlocked” on a single solution, i.e., touching down in the nominal landing zone on the runway I wanted. The winds were calm and landing in either direction would have worked just as well.

Hurricane Dolly just pushed ashore today south of here, and the change in the weather has all but guaranteed it will be another week before the Cheetah gets looked at. In any case, any kind of valve problem means I’ve been flying on borrowed time, and the Cheetah won’t be flying again until it gets fixed.

Miracles Happen but in Airplanes They're Called UA's.

I had planned to help my wife work around the house; but the engagement of one of my sons and his desire to hook up with us that night via iChat made an unscheduled trip to the beauty salon necessary for her. Suddenly, faced with no obligations, I decided to go back down to Galveston where my infirm Cheetah sat. I had said to my mechanic when I had left the night before we needed to run the airplane on the right mag alone to verify our analysis of the problems it was having. So, I decided to do just that, taking my flight bag with all my flight gear inside it. I hopped into my truck and headed south on that hot and sunny day toward the beach and the wide, towered airfield that was Scholes Field.

When I got there, after making my obligatory stop at the Terminal to hit the restroom, my airplane was sitting at the mouth of Bill’s hangar as if he had known I was coming. Bill, one of his interns, and probably the pilot of the Mooney they were working on were behind my airplane, huddled around the Mooney’s engine. Bill was threading a wire past its cylinders and seemed oblivious to my presence; I decided just to press on with getting the airplane ready to pull out of the hangar. As I checked out the cockpit, Bill came up and said hello and attached a tow bar to the airplane’s nose and we pulled the airplane out about twenty feet and turned it so the tail was pointing at the wide expanse of concrete behind me.

“You watch,” I said to Bill, “this darned airplane will check out just fine. What are we going to do then?”

Bill shrugged his shoulders.

“Go fly it?” he supposed. We were leaping off into the world of “Checks good on deck: cannot duplicate the problem” also known in NASA-speak as the “Unexplained Anomaly” or “U.A.”.

I laughed, hopping in the cockpit and rigging up my headset while grabbing my checklist and strapping in.

“Clear prop!” I yelled, after running through the pre-start checklist, giving the engine three shots of primer because it hadn’t been run much. I switched the Mags to Left and hit the Starter button. The prop cranked over a couple of times and I pulled the throttle full back and the engine roared to life. Her oil pressure was already on its way to the green as soon as I checked, so I brought the radios up and then checked the engine gauges again. Everything looked great.

I placed the Run-Up checklist on my lap and pushed the throttle forward, the engine following me up to 1800 RPM’s as I did. My feet mashed on the airplane’s brakes and she bucked against standing still; the wind was trying hard to blow off my hat not protected by the open canopy. I switched the Mags to Left and watched the RPM drop down about 125 and sit there. I switched them back to Both and they bounced back to 1800 and then dropped 125 again as I switched to Right. The damn thing had done what I had jokingly suggested; it had run like nothing had ever been wrong with it!
I taxied the airplane around in a loop just to give me something fun to do; and when I got the nose pointed back around again, I stopped the airplane, locked the brakes, ran her up to 1800 RPM, and checked the mags again. And, again, they passed!
By now, Bill was glancing at me from inside the hangar. Laughing, I have him a “thumbs up”. As he walked toward me, I shut the airplane down and hopped out.

“Do you believe that?” I asked.”

“Of course,” he said, “it’s an airplane!”

An airplane engine and its environs is the hottest about twenty minutes after it’s shutdown. I wanted to see if the problem we were looking for might be heat-associated, so I told Bill I’d let it heat-soak for 20 minutes and then restart it and try it again. I also decided that if it passed that mag check, I had no good reason not to take it flying. Bill agreed. I got on my iPhone to call my wife and we talked about the plan for the afternoon, which had just shifted due to a now-flyable airplane. She offered to cancel her hair saloon’s appointment about thirty minutes away, but I told her there was no need. For one thing, until I flew the airplane a bit, I really didn’t know if it was indeed “up” or if I needed to return it to the shop. My test plan was to fly it to Pearland, where I would do two touch and go’s and then land and check the magnetos. If they performed normally, I then would have the option of flying some more or pulling the airplane over into the shade of our covered tie-down and awaiting her there. If they didn’t and I trusted the airplane enough to get it back to Galveston, I’d be flying it back to where my truck was and wouldn’t need to fetch it back. She went on to her appointment with her hair stylist, and I went on to my appointment with the airplane.

I performed a complete pre-flight as Bill called the Evergreen FBO to inquire about the status of the fuel pump which has been down almost as much as my Cheetah this year. When they told him it was indeed broken, he asked them to drive the fuel truck down, and they agreed. I found a couple of inspection plates missing from the bottom of the right wing where Bill had been working and called out to him. He had overlooked them, and he finished buttoning them down as the fuel truck arrived. I asked the fuel truck driver to top off both wings. He said “Sure” and then got busy with his task. I finished the preflight and came back around the front of the airplane to find him finishing up and ready for me to pay. I have him a credit card that he processed and then I signed for the gas, turned, and saw that his truck’s grounding wire was still attached to my airplane. I told him to “hold up” as I detached it and then he reeled it back.

Hopping into the cockpit, I pulled out a Houston area terminal chart and put it up against the windscreen if I needed it for reference, strapped in and strapped my kneeboard to my right leg. Down the Pre-Start Checklist I went, priming the engine only once to make it ready to start.

“Clear prop!” I called, as I made sure no one was in front of me to get hit. I pressed the Starter button, the propeller spun clockwise, and the engine came to life. Ignition to Both and Oil Pressure was up. Leaving the intercom off, I brought the radios on and listened to the current Galveston weather that could have been summed up by “clear and HOT!” instead of by temperature and altimeter. Setting the altimeter, I noted the winds as I watched my KLN-89B GPS spin out error messages I hadn’t seen before. Months of sitting in a hangar had apparently killed its internal battery and perhaps more, though in a few moments it did have a correct bearing and distance to Pearland.

I decided to do my Before Takeoff checklist before I called Galveston Ground, so I ran the engine up and did the mag checks and everything worked like it was supposed to. I configured the airplane and radios for flight and then called Ground who gave me a clearance to taxi to runway 17 using taxiway Echo, an instruction that put the takeoff runway only yards away. Closing the canopy as I taxied up to the hold short line, I switched over to Tower for clearance for takeoff and got it right away. Spinning left to align the airplane with the runway, I pushed the throttle in all the way and we surged forward. At 60 mph, I pulled the stick back to what I use as takeoff attitude, and after staying there for only a moment, the airplane lifted off. As it climbed and the remaining runway slowly disappeared under the nose, I glanced at the engine instruments and they all looked okay. I hit four hundred feet above the ground and requested a right turn from the Tower which they approved, so I cranked her around to the right until I was heading back up to the northwest toward Pearland across the small waterway that was the Intercoastal.

Below me, the homes on Tiki Island formed a circle to protect themselves against the water surrounding them, while slightly off to my right and ahead the oil tanks and towers of a petroleum plant marked the southern edge of the coastline north of Galveston. I leveled the airplane off at 1600 feet and switched my radio over to Houston Approach to listen for any air traffic that might be coming my way. The oil temperature gauge was indicating in the green but, unfortunately, way over to the right as it had been doing since we installed the PowerFlow.

I had about ten miles of visibility due to haze, but it was still a glorious day. I was flying again! I had forgotten how much I loved it and often it seemed that the struggles we were going through to keep an airplane and ourselves airborne in it weren’t worth it. But, at that moment, despite the hot running engine and the peeling paint, I was grateful to have an airplane of my own and grateful we could fly. Tomorrow might be another story.

As I approached Pearland, I listened to its automated weather broadcast and set up for runway 14 due to small but persistent southern winds. I was the only one in the landing pattern, so I did two touch and go landings as planned and then rolled to a stop on the third. Once I was clear of the runway, I pulled the airplane over in a convenient spot, ran the engine up to 1800 rpm, ad checked the mags again. They were fine. Not knowing how much longer it would be before my wife got there, I taxied the airplane back to the covered tie-down spot she hadn’t seen in months and tied her down there in its shade.

It’s been about a week since we’ve gotten her back, and I’m pleased to say the fuel leak in the right wing does look like it’s been cured and the mags haven’t misbehaved. The GPS is going to need some service and I’m going to have to chase the hot running engine, but at least we can fly now and then.

Like they say, miracles happen; just when it comes to airplanes, don’t expect them to last.

Problems, Problems, Problems...

I haven’t blogged for a while due to a combination of things; and one of those has been continuing mechanical problems with the Cheetah. For a few weeks, I had thought we were catching up with her and then I made the “mistake” of trying to get ahead of the performance curve by adding a PowerFlow exhaust to the engine. That was when all hell broke loose, some of which had nothing to do with the PowerFlow and the other part of which we’re trying to understand and figure out whether the PF had anything to do with it.

The major bugaboo has been the right fuel tank leak that developed. I caught it during a preflight month’s ago. The Cheetah, like all Grumman singles, has a wet wing that contains gas by using a sealant. Sometime in a Grumman’s life, you can expect the tank to start leaking and the sealant to need replacing. Well, this became our time, though the presence of two spatulas left in from previous attempts and now retrieved from our wing indicates that the airplane has suffered from this problem before. (The logs are down at my mechanic’s shop so I can’t check them to see when this was a previous problem.) Bill’s on his fifth attempt to solve the problem, though to his credit he’s only charging us for one. His son-in-law, Robby, an Aircraft Inspector, indicated to me that this kind of trail and error was par-for-the-course when repairing fuel tank leaks. A Traveler owner down at Galveston just dealt with the same problem, though he managed to get his fixed on the fourth attempt. It’s frustrating ordeal for all of us, me because of the months of flying time I’m losing and Bill because of the money he’s losing. We believe we have it fixed wth this fifth attempt. I hope so. I just topped that tank of and with av-gas over $5 per gallon, it’s going to be an expensive test if we’re wrong.
I wish that was all that has been going on, but it’s not. Two things manifested itself with the installation of the PowerFlow exhaust system. Both mags began “popping” during the mag checks, and the left mag will often “surge” (drop 300-400 rpm and then recover and repeat it again) when the engine is run on the left mag alone. At first we thought it was a common heat-related failure induced the mag, but we saw it with a cold engine after changing out to a “new” mag. We have checked the switch, the wires, and the plugs using testers and can’t find a problem. Bill and I are both suspicious of the ignition switch, but there is also the possibility that the PF has uncorked a more serious problem with the engine.

Secondly, for the one or two short flights I have been able to make after we installed the PowerFlow, the engine oil temperatures have shot up to the high side of the green. It looks like this was induced by the PF system, and there was an article in the AYA Star (the Grumman owner’ group newsletter) that unfortunately appeared after I had installed the PF and discussed just a such an induced problem with the system in Tigers. Right now, though, with the mag drop problem we’re experiencing, I can’t say anything for sure about the cause. Once we get the engine operating correctly, then I’ll take a look at the oil temp and decide where to go from here. The article suggested opening more exit area at the bottom of the cowling, something I would do only after reworking my baffles and resealing every air escape hole in the top of the cowling I can find.

Bush Threatens to VETO General Aviation!!

A while back I wrote that George W Bush posed the greatest threat to general aviation it had seen in decades. I based that assessment on his proposals for user fees and his desire to give the airlines “more say” in a system already designed for them, a system that often tolerates rather than accommodates the average general aviation user. Some Bush apologist wrote in that he didn’t see how I could make such a claim as he made the totally illogical association with the implementation of light sport pilot provisions and a general uptick in general aviation activity. Neither of those really had anything to do with the Bush Administration, other than they happened on Bush’s watch.

Well, Mr. Bush Apologist, tell me how you can defend this President’s idiotic and heavy-handed policies toward general aviation now! Even though the House and Senate have come together to pass a FAA financing bill that bases upgrades in the system on gasoline taxes, funding it in the same manner it is today (with some increases), the President has let it be known he will veto any FAA financing bill that doesn’t contain user fees and that doesn’t give “the airlines more say”. (More say!!!? What, like no safety inspections at ALL!!!) There has never been another stance on a any subject since the Invasion of Iraq where Bush has demonstrated how totally out of touch he is. All we can hope for is there are enough bi-partisan votes to override the veto when it comes.

There’s no way we can impeach him over this, but I’m going to propose we change the Constitution to allow for Presidential Recalls so we never have to suffer for years again under a President who is two sheets into the wind and so out of touch with the country he governs.

I believe John McCain is also a proponent of user fees. So, every general aviation pilot out there needs to think long and hard about whom they’re going to cast their votes for in the next election. Republican or Democrat, it makes no difference. If they are for user fees financing of the ATC system, you better vote them right out of office before they vote you right out of the sky!