Rough River

The best canard fly in is coming up next week, Rough River. www.roughriver.org I am taking all of next week off since I need to use up my vacation time.

I'll be flying up to Buffalo to pick up Dan, who flew with me to OSH this year and then down to Rough River. It would be nice if I actually finished the heat in the plane, but I do not think I want to do anything risky that may prevent me from going on this trip.

I thought I had a leaky right mag gasket. I pulled the mag and replaced the gasket. I parked the plane nose down in the hangar and there was no puddle of oil under it. I think I have that leak beat. It would probably leak a tablespoon of oil an hour. It makes an incredible mess!

Rough River was great!

From HWV to IAG was 1:50 min. I picked up Dan and we flew over the falls, cool view! If I remember correctly it was 2:11 to Rough River. My pictures will be posted at my FlyingGallery

I gave some demo rides. One was more exciting than the other. Here is the video of the brake failure...

Then later that evening after a field repair on the brakes, I got caught in some soup that had a nasty churn to it! I was full throttle, nose down at stall speed falling at 2k ft / min. SCARED ME BAD! I turned around, throttled back, and flew back to Akron and spent the night! I did have to file IFR to get Dan to IAG and myself back to HWV, but it was not that big of a deal! On the way back to Brookhaven, I was at 7k over the top, it was really nice!

I got back, ordered some Grove brakes for the plane. They are much better than the Clevelands! The dual piston brakes are really grabby! If you are building new definately go with the Matcos!!!

The problem was not the brakes but the maintenance. I change my pads every annual. This year I did not. I flew half the hours I did in past years. Hours does not tell the whole story. Pad wear and inspection does. The pads wore enough to let the piston come out far enough to let the seal loose, whammo! No brakes! Properly maintained Clevelands would have never been a problem. The Groves give better stopping power, and have bigger pads, the wear should be less, I will still change them every year, no matter what!

ALong with that is inspecting the pads before every flight. I am adding a disk shaped door in the top og my wheel pants, with an offset hinge and a magnetic catch.

Misc flight reports

In the last few weeks I have been flying every weekend.

Labor Day Weekend:

Sunday I flew out to see Jon Matcho http://www.canardzone.com/members/JonMatcho/

We flew around in his neighborhood, he bought me pizza at a place walking distance from the airport. Have I mentioned I love talking aviation and airplanes? Good chatting with him after our many phone and e-mail exchanges. I have been promising him a ride for years now!

Sunday night I took a friend for a flight around NYC, it was clean and amazing!

Monday morning I went with friends to Nantucket, it is a one hour flight even going to 9.5k and flying over land as much as possible. We went to shops the beach, there is the most amazing ice cream there! We then had a campfire dinner, it is amazing how nice the locals are, when you are a friend of a friend! Just a totally different pace and life style, as I write this from my NYC office, with sirens blaring from the street below. I felt bad, we ate and had to run at 8:00, I get up for work at 6:00 am

The stars are amazing as viewed from the plane, you could see the milky way, just beautiful!

More later!

OSH 2008

I am writing this a month late, better lat than never.

I flew to OSH with Dan, a builder from Canada. He flew into Newark NJ, then took a train to Penn. Station and then the LIRR out to LI.

We flew to Harrisburg PA, stayed overnight at my Dad's, the next morning we stopped at BTP http://www.airnav.com/airport/BTP my hangar mate Rob, had alternator problems and I dropped off tools for him. His plan was to take the whole family to OSH. He ended up backtracking to Harrisburg, and spending some time at Hershey park.

We flew on to OXI, it is in the Chicago area, cheap gas, free dogs, dounuts etc. It is an hour out of OSH. Good to take a break before flying into OSH and freshen up.

As we approached Ripon, we were above a layer, and had to find a hole to descend through, we were looking for other aircraft and saw none. That was pretty scarey! We are going into the world's busiest airport and there are no planes to be seen!

I have been getting chicken about the approaches into OSH and if I was going to be solo, I Was going to land at another airport. They were even doing 2-way communication on the radio. I was shocked! We flew the high speed approach, never saw another plane the entire approach, until flying left pattern for 18 right and there was a breezy to the left, below me and landing ahead of me, I was landing past him.

There are few things I like better than talking airplanes to airplane people! Dan camped, I stayed at the regular farmhouse a mile South of the field.

I did the 2 Cozy forums, the Explorer hot dog BBQ, thanks Terry, and all the volunteers! Mark Beduhn's BBQ and the Cozy Dinner. It is great to meet the canardians that you e-mail on a daily basis. Thanks the people that came up to me and introduced themselves to me!

It was a great pleasure to speak with Terry Schubert, he gave me an hour long talk about Lean of Peak, cooling and drag reduction. THANKS Terry! I flew back at 9.5k from OSH to BDR 701 NM (for cheap fuel) in 4.5 hrs, averaging 7.1 GPH. LOP is amazing! Keep it full throttle, pull the mixture back, watch the EGTs peak and keep pulling back I had 10 plus gallons left after landing.

I am eagerly awaiting the trip to Rough River!