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.

Updating the Sportsman

Well, I finally dropped N9GZ over to Islip Avionics on the 13th of July to have the ARINC 429 module installed to bring the EFIS and auto pilot up to full functionality. Now, I knew this was not going to be as simple as just plugging the unit in but I was hoping for a fairly straight forward job. Tres at Islip Avionics was doing the work and he was eager to fiddle with the whole thing. Well, that's not all that needed to be done....

It turns out that the plane need to have the full IFR rectification done as it was past due. Somehow, I missed this fact during the pre-buy (it was clearly mentioned) Plus, the Garmins needed software updates as well. Ok, so it needs to be done. Gotta do it...

Anyway, to make a long story short, after a failed backup altimeter and shipments back and forth, along with endless software update for the EFIS, the plane was delivered back to the hanger yesterday. I hope to get back in the plane and fly it next week.

Deciding on the Glasair Sportsman

It wasn't soon after I started flying that I dreamed of one day owning an airplane. I trained in a Cessna 172 and had flown the Piper Arrow as well as a Citabria. I knew I wanted something modern with advanced avionics and was very interested in the Cirrus and the Columbia (now Cessna 350/450), but I also loved flying low and slow. Getting my tailwheel endorsement in the Citabria also opened my eyes to the joy of landing on grass strips and short runways. What I wanted was a plane that could still cruise fast but land short. It would also be great to have something special, not a plane everyone had.

Maybe I could buy an old Cessna 180 and update it. Maybe a Maul, or some other tail dragger that had speed and G1000 panel. The more I looked, the less I found in the certified category that fit the bill. I also realized that I wasn't going to take three other people flying with me. I can barely get anyone in my family to come ( just my daughter is interested) so do I really need 4 seats? So, it's really just for me and a buddy now and then. That's when I started looking at the Sportsman.

The Sportsman has it all. Speed, flexibility (trike or conventional gear set up) and a panel that is better that most certified planes. Compared to new certified planes, the Sportsman can be had for a lot less money with greater performance and a more advanced design. And look at that panel! But could I take two weeks off to build one? That looked like so much fun and as an engineer, it would have been a great experience. I took a trip out to Arlington and seriously consider it. But, I started thinking that just getting it to taxi, while a huge time saver compared to building one at home, was still just the first step in getting a airworthiness certificate, test flying, painting, etc. So I put the idea off and thought maybe I find one for sale. One that has low time, professionally built and a great paint job. Maybe.

Sure enough. I hit the jackpot. Now, realize that these aren't the best of economic times and I had lost a lot of money in the market over the last six months, but this plane is one beautiful bird! I always looked on Controller.com, Trade-a-Plane, for a Sportsman but found N9GZ on ebay ( a great site to see some neat planes). I had seen pictures of it on the internet so I knew of it before, but I was shocked to actually see it available! Could I actually own this great looking plane?

For those of you who have ever bought an airplane (especially an experimental), you probably know what I went through. The doubt, the questioning of your sanity, the thrill, the worry, the unknown, etc. Is this really the right time to buy a plane? Ahh, screw it. I began to realize that I liked the plane, and if I didn't do it now, I probably would never do it. And there are many reasons not to own a plane, but I flew every week and I wanted the freedom of flying whenever and wherever I wanted. And this plane had everything I wanted; the big engine, the full glass panel, the tailwheel kit, a cover, and float mounts ready to go. And that paint job. She's a real looker.. It's hard to walk away from this one.

The guy I bought it from was a great guy who was meticulous. I flew done to Asheville, NC to look it over and was not disappointed. It was everything I expected and more. Even though I had only an hour or so in the company plane out at the factory, I had no problem adjusting to flying the plane. At first, I flew from the right seat because I was so used to flying with my right had in the Citabria, but I eventually got comfortable flying in the left when I flew it home. The only other adjustment was figuring out the Advanced Flight Systems EFIS. Again, the flight home gave me plenty of time to work on that. The plane is easy to fly, with little adverse yaw and no surprises in a stall (it's very gentle).

I used AIC title service which was great. They handled everything and the seller was very helpful throughout the whole process. I can't say enough good things about him. It was tough for him to sell his baby but I told him it will get the kid glove treatment from me. The deal was done and a month later, my friend Lou and I flew it back on May 31, 2009.