August 17, 2006
Airport Rat Convention
Well, I haven’t flown in over a month. My last trip put me seven weeks behind in my home life and I needed to play catch-up. I’m ready to fly now. I just hope I haven’t forgotten how.
I’m getting ready to go to McMinnville, Oregon. It is the home of “The Spruce Goose”, Howard Hughes’s giant flying seaplane. It used to be in Long Beach, California but was purchased by the man that owns Evergreen Air and moved to McMinnville. I have seen the “Goose” before and believe it or not I once helped film a commercial of a couple of guys playing catch with a football on the top of the wing. My mission isn’t to see the “Goose” though. McMinnville is the home of the Northwest Antique Airplane Fly-in. Antique airplanes galore. Biplane rides and judging “Best of Show” and the like.
There is always a point during the day when an airport is closed for the aerobatic show guys. I’ve seen air shows for years and think I’ve seen everything you can do with an airplane, until I see the acts that are up for the day. There is always some guy who does something new. The new trick is usually named for the guy that did it first. It’s kinda like the “Fosbury Flop”. That was a new way to jump over the high jump bar at track meets. Mr. Fosbury may or may not have earned a gold medal. I don’t know. I couldn’t name one guy in the last ten Olympics with a gold but I do remember “The Fosbury Flop”.
Strangely enough a world class Czechoslovakian aerobatic pilot made up a new maneuver and it didn’t get named after him. He named it himself and insisted that it be called “Lomcevak”. Czechoslovakian for headache. I think I’d like to meet this guy. The maneuver looks like it would give you a headache, a very big headache. What made him try to do this in the first place? Did it really give him a headache? After he did it the first time what made him do it again? Does it give everybody a headache? Every time I see it performed I think about whether or not it would give me a headache. I think about it. I’ll never know the answer because I know it would give me an upset stomach. The pilot would never let me near any vehicle of his again. Not even his skateboard.
I’m going down to McMinnville on Saturday, August 19th. Early when it is calm. I may camp over night and leave in the morning on Sunday when it’s calm. Last year it was a hundred degrees and the year before it was sixty-five degrees and rained out. This year it’s looking to be on the hundred degrees side again. A hundred degrees at an airport isn’t like a hundred anywhere else. Everything is asphalt, black asphalt. My feet get too hot and I usually sunburn something that hasn’t been out in the sun yet this year. I have to wear a hat now. I’ve lost enough hair that I get sunburned up there easily. Selsun Blue and Head and Shoulders by the quart can’t deal with the giant size dandruff flakes I get about four days after attending an air-show.
It seems that all the fly-ins have these kinds of shuttles. They take Airport Rats from one place to another. The wagon has bails of hay arranged around the perimeter for seats.
Air-shows are really conventions for Airport Rats. I often think that it is a way for people that are already in aviation to suck money out of the Airport Rat’s wallets. The food is supplied by people that work traveling Carnivals. I don’t think I have the vocabulary to write about the quality of food that is served out of the side of a truck that has a Confederate Flag for a front license plate.
I have always had an interest in flying and took lessons in the 1970’s but after about 8 hours I quit. I just didn’t know what I would do with the license once I got it. (OK I confess, for about twenty years I was an Airport Rat. Not a pilot and hanging out at airports. Don’t tell anyone else.)
There are a whole pile of things you can do with a pilot’s license. There are always the obvious pilot’s jobs. You all know them, I don’t have to list them here. There are plenty of other things to do with an airplane that don’t involve making money. Almost everything that happens around airplanes involves spending money though. Aviation is really an odd place. You make money in miniscule amounts and spend it in large amounts.
I found flying camping. What fun. I took my family of four to some incredible places. My boys grew up going to wonderful places by small airplane and pitching a tent under the wing. Wish I had grown up like they did.
One of my favorite places is the airport at West Yellowstone, Montana. It’s a small town airport just outside the West entrance to Yellowstone National Park. The town wouldn’t exist if the park wasn’t there. The airport might as they base lots of fire fighting aircraft there for the summer forest fire season. There is a campground right on the airport property that is reserved strictly for flying campers. We have been there a couple of times and only once did we see another camper and he left at sunrise the next day. We always arrived at the height of the season when the park is full and there are no motel rooms for fifty miles in any direction. We were alone in our campground. Hot water showers, running water at the campsite, a fire-pit stocked with cut and split wood and a large picnic table. At the showers there was a kind of locked mailbox with a slot in the top and a sign that suggested a five dollar donation to help keep the hot water propane tank full. It’s an honor system. I put a ten in to make up for the jerk that stiffed them. Maybe no one stiffed them and they made a five dollar profit. I hope they had a burger on me.
I feel a rant coming on. An airplane cannot fly over a National Park while closer than two thousand feet from the ground. An airplane can’t linger over a National Park. It needs to be on a mission and just pass over. It’s about the airplane noise. Have you seen the huge Harley Davidson convention that happens in Sturgis, South Dakota every year? About one hundred thousand people show up in this town for a very privileged week of sharing drugs, arrests, venereal diseases, alcohol and Harley Davidsons. When they run out of drugs they go home. Every year about ten thousand of them take a scenic ride through Yellowstone Park for a few days. Huge trains of choppers cruising every road in the park for days. Do you have any idea what a train of a fifty choppers traveling in pairs sounds like? Bikers can do that but an airplane can’t make one circle over Old Faithful without the pilot loosing his license. Please! End of rant.
Arrival at McMinnville
Flying camping. All the fly-ins have camping by your airplane. Here are a few from McMinnville.
There were over a hundred campers.
I don’t think this guy was camping.
I’m very impressed by the antique planes at fly-ins. They actually have to get there by flying in. Once there the pilot has to clean up the plane for the judging process… Radial engines do leak oil, lots of oil.
Whenever I see someone in a really flashy and expensive car I think about many of the airplanes I’ve seen. The car usually goes down a bunch on the “impress-o-meter”.
Bugs seem to commit suicide on the front of airplanes. I don’t know what it is about bug mentality, they just seem to fly right into the leading edges of airplanes. Maybe they are trying to defend their territory?
I flew down in my Cessna. It’s not an antique. It is from 1966. My car is from 1963. It is my regular car and is my daily driver. No garage queen here. And, no I’m not stuck in the 1960’s. I may look like it but I’m right here and now.
Once I get my commercial license I have to sell the Cessna. Two airplanes, one hangar.
I wanted to be able to get back home in the same day. With the Cessna I can handle cross winds better than I can in the biplane at the moment. I expect to get better at biplane flying. What I really wanted to do at McMinnville was talk with some other ride sellers about their business and to ask some guys that have lots of time flying antiques if they have trouble landing their planes too. It’s still an issue with me. I’m still getting a surprise somewhere in the landing process once I’m on the ground but before I’m stopped.
The first two guys with the first two airplanes lined up for the show are wonderful to talk with. I had never met them before. They turned out to be the exact two guys I needed to talk with. It’s funny how that happens. It happened several times on my trip cross country. What do ya think causes that?
First two guy’s airplanes
One is an engineer who ended up with too much money from Southern California real-estate and now has converted much of that money into airplanes. The other is a Captain with Southwest Airlines with just a few short years to retirement. He only has one airplane but it happens to have the same exact type engine I have. Both of these guys were very helpful. The engineer took me around to look at about ten or fifteen airplanes that have the same tail wheel I have. He convinced me that theirs were mounted right and mine was wrong. I’ll get mine fixed right away. It’s simply the angle of the pivot point. Most of you know the problem from shopping cart front wheel chatter. I also have some wear in the landing gear leg attach points. This lets the front wheels move fore and aft a little and that changes a whole bunch of things that I don’t want to have change while right in the middle of landing. That’s a fix too. Then it’s back to getting the pilot fixed.
I start my training for a commercial license next week. I can fly, I’m not good at tests. Sometimes I think the stress that comes with flying examinations make being a pilot not worth it. It’s a fear of failure. It’s someone else having the right to say I can’t do something because I’m not good enough or that I haven’t studied enough. I know I’ll have all the answers and that I can fly well enough to pass the test. I just don’t test well. When not being tested I go fly with full confidence. I’m amazed by the view and how empty the sky really is. Minus the stress of taking the tests, flying worth an incredible amount to me, times ten.
I’ll let you know how it comes out. It’ll probably be a couple of months or longer before I can take the test.
One of the antique planes at the fly-in is a Ford Tri-motor. It was built by the Ford car folks. Henry decided to go into the airplane business as a safe airliner was needed. Three motors seemed safer than two. There is an engine on each wing and one on the nose. Ford made 199 of these from 1926 to 1933.
If you look closely at the picture you’ll see what looks like a set of stairs coming out of the bottom of the starboard (right) wing. It actually is stairs. They lead to the baggage compartment that is in the wing. I can hear the engineers at the factory in 1925, “The wing is a gigantic empty space. Let’s put the bags in it”.
Obscure airplanes are interesting. Here is a Seabee. It was designed by a guy named Percival Spencer. It looks like a guy named Percival designed it. The engine is on top of the wing and the propeller is behind the cabin. It’s a sea plane, note the boat hull.
August 28th, 2006
I’m not the only person who has a problem with being out in the weeds. And it seems it isn’t just limited to airplanes with a tail wheel. This was a nice Mooney. It’s actually a total loss. The people walked away.
All the best, Samdodge