Category: Flying

My son is a high school football coach in Northern Virginia. Last night was the final game of their season and if they won the game, they would be the district champions. I had already been to two games this season despite the fact that it is a 2.5-hour drive to NOVA. This time I decided to fly my airplane up to the game. Danny Anderson and I made the trip.

The first choice I needed to make was which airfield to fly into. Leesburg, Manassas and Dulles were on my short list. After looking at cost and logistics, Dulles was the clear winner. It was closer to the game site, and we could use the Metro to get to Langley High School. The FBO, Atlantic Aviation, pricing was very good (it costs less to park my airplane overnight than it would have cost me to park my car in the average DC parking lot).

The weather looked pretty crappy for the flight up, but by midday on Friday it was improving a lot and ended up being a very nice VFR trip. The wind even cooperated and we were essentially on a 40 mile straight into the 01L runway. After landing we had close to three miles of taxiing to get to the FBO.

Shout out to Atlantic Aviation. Super professional and easy to work with. Didn’t even push back when I complained about the below average selection of halloween candy they had at the check-in desk. Also, very nice for them to drive us over to the metro.

The game was GREAT. Drew’s team notched a solid come-from-behind win and won the district championship (5th time in the last 35 years). Danny and I went out to celebrate the win with Drew and the other coaches. Probably the first time I stayed out until 1:30am in several decades.

The weather for the trip back was miserable at our destination. Great ceilings, but low visibility with fog and mist. We decided to delay our departure until about 6am when the weather forecast was for excellent conditions at both KIAD and KFCI. It worked out great and the flight back was very easy. A two hour post flight nap was also very nice…

It may seem a bit intimidating to fly into a very big class bravo airport like Dulles, but it really isn’t too bad. The controllers are very, very good at what they do and everything operates smoothly.

Would definitely do it again.

A few months ago a young Navy helicopter pilot reached out to me about my airplane. He was interested in building an RV-10 but had yet to see one up close. I agreed to let him look at mine and fly in it with me.

He was stationed in Pensacola and had been trying to find an RV-10 to check out. His girlfriend stumbled across me (likely on Van’s Air Force) and suggested he call me. He texted me and asked if the two of them could see/fly my RV-10 the next time he was back in Norfolk, VA.

Without hesitation, I agreed.

Joe and Jordan both fly the SH-60 for the Navy. She is still stationed on the USS Eisenhower in Norfolk so he comes back to the East coast regularly.

We decided to meet on a Saturday morning to discuss airplane building, ownership and flying. The weather was near perfect, so we ended up doing a flight down to Johnston County NC to get some barbecue. My friend Dave flew a Cirrus SR-20 down too.

Overall, it was a really fun day. Hopefully, Joe and Jordan will become builders.

Danny Anderson and I flew the plane to Fernandina Beach (KFHB) on Monday morning. The plan was to make the short flight over to Lakeland early on Tuesday morning and “beat the traffic” to the air show. I thought if we got to the Lakeland area by 0800, the number of airplanes trying to get into KLAL would be at a minimum. Boy was I wrong.

As we began the arrival procedure, we noted 25 other aircraft all trying to converge on the same spot (F08) at the same time. That’s us in the middle of the conga line.

The good news is that we only had to stay in the hold for one trip and then we proceeded inbound. We were behind an old Cessna 170 so I got to practice slow flight for about five miles.

We got the airplane tied down, unloaded the gear and got our tents set up. Then it was off to the show. There is too much to say about all the airplanes we looked at and all the stuff vendors had for sale. A few highlights of the next two days:

• The Air Force F-22 demonstration
• Talking to the YOUNG pilots that fly NOAA’s P-3 Hurricane Hunter (nicknamed Miss Piggy)
• Walking inside NASA’s Supper Guppy (not sure how the thing even flies)
• The Kincer Chassis stuff ($$$ vintage truck restores)
• The Redbull aerobatic helicopter demonstration
• The evening air show on Wednesday
• The peach cobbler at The Peach House in Lakeland

Note: The Thunderbirds likely would have been on this list, but we only saw them fly their calibration flights. They fly their show on Friday and Saturday.

I entered my airplane to be judged for an award at SnF. I won’t know how it did until Saturday. I personally think it looked great, but the judging is a bit of a crap shoot and they give you very little info on exactly what they are looking for. Stay tuned.

Some more pictures:

We departed bright and early on Thursday morning for the trip home. The weather was gorgeous (as it was for the entire show). We had a nice tail wind so the whole trip was less than four hours.

I flew two long cross-country flights (and lots of shorter ones):

Richmond (KFCI) to Chicago, IL (KPWK)

Richmond (KFCI) to Hopkinsville, KY (KHVC).

Had a fantastic tailwind on the return flight from KY:

I got my CFI rating using my RV-14A for my check ride.

I got my CFII rating using my RV-14A for my check ride.

This probably isn’t the easiest way to accomplish those goals because some DPEs don’t want to fly in airplanes they are not familiar with. Luckily, I convinced two different DPEs to fly with me. Of the two, I would say that the CFII was the one I was most worried about (many people say the opposite). I think there are so many ways to bust the CFII check ride (get low, off course, bad radio work, etc. etc.). Somehow, I didn’t do any of those three but I did nearly fail because I didn’t know that I still needed to carry my commercial license with me when I have my CFI license. It actually says that right on the back of the CFI license, but I was blissfully unaware. The DPE actually let me call home and have my wife send him a copy of my commercial license (which was sitting in my top desk drawer).

I fixed a couple small things recently. The red LED cockpit lights used to occasionally blink. I didn’t use them often so I just ignored the issue. I recently tracked the issue to a loose connection in the switch/dimmer. It only took a few moments with a tiny screwdriver and the issue was gone.

I had an intermittent issue with the oil pressure sensor. Very occasionally, I would get the dreaded red x on the G3X MFD for oil pressure. I knew that it wasn’t really an oil pressure problem (no CHT issues, engine ran fine). Annoying as heck though. My first thought was it was a bad wire from the sensor to the Garmin GEA 24. I checked the wire multiple times but couldn’t find the issue. Turns out that I had an earlier version of the pressure transducer that had known reliability issues. Thanks to my friend (Jon) that happened to know that little tidbit of information. $300 and fifteen minutes of labor and I had the improved version 2 of the sensor installed and my problem is gone. 🙂

The last one is a bit more complex. I noticed that my Garmin autopilot in HDG mode would overshoot a turn to the right. For example, if I was on a heading of 180 and I commanded a turn to 270, it would go to 280 and then work it’s way back to 270. The auto roll trim would be pegged to the right too. I thought it was an issue with the roll servo or the Ray Allen trim servo. Turns out it was a setting in the G3X was backward. When the autopilot was calling for right roll trim, it was actually adding left roll trim. This would cause the autopilot to ask for even more trim. This would continue until it had commanded all the trim that was available. A talk with the guys at Steinair solved the problem. They had seen this type of issue before and had me make a single change in the configuration and the problem is completely gone.

BTW, I love the G3X system. Garmin has packed a huge amount of capability into the system and they continue to provide substantial updates to it.

A lot has happened between the first flight in November of 2020 and now, I just didn’t write about it. The reason I haven’t posted in a while is that I locked myself out of this WordPress site and I simply took two years to get around to getting myself back in…

I flew off the 100 hours required for the airworthiness certificate.

I had only a single significant issue to deal with. I had a small but persistent oil leak near the number one cylinder. After each flight I would find a fine mist of oil on the top of that cylinder but couldn’t identify where it was coming from. I eventually took it to a mechanic who quickly found a lose plug in an oil journal in the front of the engine case. Total cost to fix it was $950 which Lycoming covered under warranty.

Lots of flights in the local area (I was limited to a 100 mile radius from KFCI) and I was becoming pretty confident in my piloting skills and my new airplane. I did quickly realize that there is a lot to learn about the avionics in the airplane. I have to admit that I had the experience of “why is it doing that?” or “why isn’t it doing that?”.

My friend, John Jaromin and I flew the airplane to and from Sun n Fun in Lakeland, FL.

Marianne and I flew the airplane to Hilton Head Island for a brief vacation. Even got to fly in some yechy IFR conditions on the return flight.

I flew it to Smith Mountain Lake multiple times.

I flew it to State College, PA (picking up Drew in Leesburg, VA). Penn State won.

I worked on getting my commercial pilot rating for single engine land airplanes. I passed the check ride (woot!).

The airplane went to the paint shop in Alabama in late October of 2021. I thought it would be there for about two months but it actually took closer to six months. They did an amazing job and I couldn’t be happier with the result despite the long wait.

It’s been back for several months now and I realize that I STILL have a punch list of random things to do on it.

Airplane flies great

The paint job by Evoke is exceptional

Garmin avionics are very, very impressive

Still need to get gear leg fairings installed

Slightly more than 150 hours on the airplane now