Airventure 2010

Well, I finally was able to make it to Oshkosh for the first time and in my own plane to boot! After planning and putting the week aside on my calendar, I was anxious to make the trip. As many of you might know, flying into Oshkosh can be frightening and I was not going to do it for the first time alone, so I asked Karl Findley, an instructor at Heritage Flight Academy to join me. Another way to minimize the "pucker factor" was to go with a group in a mass fly in. Well, the other Glasair/Glastar owners were meeting in Madison on Saturday, the 24th for a Sunday arrival, the day before the official opening. This would be a great time to meet the other owners whom I relied on so much during my first year of ownership and to plan the actual arrival. Turned out to be a great decision. Here's my flight track for the trip from KISP to KMSN. We made two stops; first in Johnstown, PA (KJST) and then Wabash, IN (KIWH). We stayed a little bit south because of the weather, but it didn't add that much to the flight. We flew for 7 hours and 50 minutes and covered around 954.8 miles.

The weather in the Mid West was just awful the weeks leading up to the event. Oshkosh became "splashkosh" as the rains closed most of the parking area before anyone could arrive. Planes were being rerouted to Appleton and only vintage, classic and homebuilts were allowed to fly in on Sunday. This turned out to be a blessing in a way as there was little traffic over the first arrive point, FISK. The other owners were telling of horror stories of planes cutting each other off, coming in from above, below, flying to fast, etc., but for us it was smooth sailing.

I have attached a short clip on my arrival. It really was just awesome to land my plane at AirVenture and I ended up staying through Thursday. I can't wait to do it again in 2011.

Flying to Oshkosh - Getting Ready

Well with my trip to Oshkosh just 5 days away, I've planned my trip and now eagerly watch how the weather will be. It's been a wet summer in the mid west but I hope there's an opening for my flight to Oshkosh.

Conversion to Conventional Gear

Well, having owned N9GZ for about a year and starting to get real comfortable with it, I was ready to do what I wanted to do ever since the day I bought it. One of the beautiful things about this plane was that it could easily be converted to trike, conventional and amphibian gear. I had about 100 hours in a Citabria and really enjoyed the challenge of tailwheel flying (or landing I should say..) According to Glasair, the Sportsman could be converted to tailwheel in "about an hour". I must admit that I was a little nervous about going back to tailwheel flying. I wanted to wait till the winter was over, the winds to calm down, and those grass strips to open before I got back into it.

So back to Ed at A&P to make the conversion. On April 13th, 2010, I dropped N9GZ off and worked with Ed to make the change. When I bought the plane, the previous owner gave me a tailwheel conversion kit as well as an extra set of main gear struts. I thought it would be a simple change. Well, nothing is quite as easy as it seems.

All in all, after a few starts and stops for some missing parts, the conversion was done in about a day. Honestly, I'm not sure I'd do this back a forth all the time, but I now know what to expect. Boy, does it look neat! I couldn't be happier with the plane (at least the way it looks!) How would it handle in the new configuration?

The weather here in NY was still a little raw and I knew there was no way I could take it up myself. So I contact Adam Rosenberg at Heritage Flight Academy and made an appointment with him in the Citabria once again. It had been a year but I was confident that I would jump right back in like I never left. Boy was I wrong. Well I must first say that the weather just was not cooperating at all. Every day was windy ( 10-12 kts, gusting to 18) and it never seemed to be down the runway, but I went up 3 times with him and did about 25 landings and felt pretty good. But now it was time for my plane.

On April 23rd, Adam and I took N9GZ in the new configuration for my first flight. The winds were forecast to be moderate but once again, while taxing out, we both realized that this was going to be a borderline day. Again gusting to 15 kts, but at least it was somewhat down the runway. As I taxied by the tower, the controller commented on the plane, which made me feel great. There was a lot of play in the taxi, as the brakes seemed to take a lot of pressure to get it to go where I wanted. But soon enough we were lined up on runway 15R and in the pattern.

I wish I could say that it was a great day and I transitioned easily. Nothing of the sort. In fact, I was downright miserable. It was the worst landings I had ever done, worse than when I started out in a tailwheel years ago. Ok, granted the wind was swirling but I've been in worse before. I landed hard several times and I swear I saw something fly off the plane once. I must have broke something! But I was never close to losing it and for what it's worth, Adam said considering the wind, I did just fine.

I went up with Adam a few days later and still was not comfortable. Again the winds were gusting and again I had a hard time. First my three pointers were bouncy, then my wheely landings were hard. Again and again I went around the pattern, determined to master tailwheel landings, only to be disappointed. It was at that point that I started to question my logic in making this conversion. What was I thinking? Every error in tailwheel landings is exaggerated while errors in trike landings are minimized with that front wheel. Boy was I discouraged.

Finally on the third day with him, I stared to get a sense of what I was doing. Even though I was not close to where I wanted to be, Adam pronounced me safe to fly solo again. He cautioned to pick a good day with little wind and I'd be fine. Sure enough, the next time out was a beautiful day and I nailed everything. It was like I had been flying tailwheels all the time. That was over a month and a half ago and I must say I'm having a ball.

One thing is for sure though, I realize that once I think I got it all figured out, I bounce another landing. So it goes with the tailwheel.

Next up, will I make it to Oshkosh this year?

The First Annual

Toward the end of January, 2010, it was time for my first annual. There were a few minor things that needed work and I wanted to replace the landing lights with new HID lights. I did some research on HID light and I decided on Rigid Industries 50 W MR16. They are made specifically for Vans, Glastars and Sportsmans and the word around the forum was that they worked well.

The annual went pretty much as I expected. The total time on the aircraft was 218 hours and the compressions were 75,76,76,75. I was having intermittent use of the electric elevator trim and did find out through Glastarnet forum that the original Ray Allen relay switch was too small and replaced it with a larger one (REL-2). That solved the problem. A couple of missing Vortex Generators, tighting a few couplers, screws where minor leaks were, and that was pretty much it.

I have to say Ed did a great job on the light installation. There was a perfect spot on the firewall for the ballasts and with the new HID lights, the brightness was incredible. Unfortunately, the wires were too short and we had to get extensions which solved the problem. The other real problem was heat. The HID's were too hot and the plexiglass lens might not fair too well if I was on the ground with the lights on for too long. We needed a solution. Again checking the forums showed several people with this issue and Ed and I labored with a how to best solve the problem. He came up with a guy in Brooklyn who could make a lens out of Pyrex that would work perfectly. When it was all said and done, the lights were great.

Next up: Time to go to conventional gear.

Owning a Sportsman

Well, it's been 8 months since I'v posted about my Sportsman and I have many things to update. In a nutshell, I've been really happy with the plane. I flies great and handles beautifully at slow speed. Since this is my first airplane, I've learned what most of you owners probably already knew; you're always tinkering with it. I'll list here some of the minor things that went wrong and let you judge how common this is.

The first thing I noticed was that the landing and taxi lights were working intermittently. Not that I do a lot of night flying but it bothered me that it wasn't working right. Ed at A&P found some loose connecting terminals and a couple of hundred bucks later, things were right again. But after a few flights, it happened once more. So I looked into replacing the lights with something better, mainly some HID lights. More on that when I talk about my annual.

Next I had the database not show up on my Garmin 530W. One day the display showed no airports, no airspace, nothing. Now since the autopilot and PFD run off it, I couldn't do much in the way of navigating. I still have the 430W so no problem there, but no coupled approaches, no IFR.

It turns out the Database card was bad. How often does that happen?? Garmin got me for $75.00 for a new card. Ouch! But problem easily solved.

I few months later I had a problem with the second smaller display on the copilots side of the panel (The whole glass panel is from Advanced Flight Systems) I didn't know it at the time but the engine monitoring displays on the AF-3500 were red x-ing out and then the whole AF-3400 panel would reset and restart, claiming the backup battery needed to be replaced. No flying that day. So I checked in with Oscar at Islip Avionics (who has been great with the whole set up) and we needed to send the display back to Advanced for a processor upgrade. It seems they have seen this before. One week later and at no charge from them, the unit was back in and working.

So that takes me to the fall of '09. I basically keep my flying local, with some IFR flight plans here and there. I did make it to the Simsbury Fly-in in October. Got a lot of interest in the plane there. Not too many people seen a Sportsman, but I did meet a few who were in the process of building one and really look over my plane. Saw some other great plane there:

Also took some video with my new Canon HD Camcorder and got this great shot of my dream plane, a Grumman Widgeon coming in for a landing. Awesome sight...

So between the beginning of June till about the end of the year, I put on about 60 hours on the plane really enjoying it. Always trying to fly every week and keeping current with my IFR rating. The hardest thing has been fully utilizing the AFS and Garmin GPS for approaches. I really still need to learn more on getting the most out of the system.