rpadula
En-Route
Hey everyone, I finally made it to a fly-in with my own plane! Last weekend, well over 50 other Commanders and their owners & spouses (and at least two dogs) converged upon Cape Girardeau, MO for the annual Commander Owners Group fly-in (local news story here).
The weather was CAVU, but the winds were awful. The 112 models are usually derided for their lack of speed, but having 30+ knot headwinds from that giant Low that dumped all that snow on MI & NY made for a long ride. I averaged about 90kts groundspeed flying from Atlanta to the Cape, and it took me right at 4 hours to get there. On top of that, just west of Shelbyville, I encountered pretty good and constant turbulence that basically lasted for the entire second half of the trip. Somehing about the terrain seemed to set it off. Facing a Hobson's choice of either climbing higher to suffer even worse headwinds or going lower to get beaten up worse, I just tightened the seatbelt, slowed down to Va, and sucked it up.
As I saw CGI, I thought "Hey, I'm flying west of the Mississippi." Barely. Then I had a worse thought: "please don't let me F up the landing in front of all the other owners!" Positive thinking (and that great trailing link landing gear) prevailed and I greased it on.
This event also marked the one year anniversary of Commander Premier Aircraft selecting CGI as its home base of operations. It was great to see all of the jigs and materials purchased out of bankruptcy set up and nearly ready to get to work again.
We were also treated to two safety presentations by ASF's own Bruce Landsberg. Thank you, Bruce, for the great discussions.
But perhaps the best treat was to see the STC'd Super Commander. Aerodyme's Jim Richards has engineered a 320-hp Lycoming IO-580 installation onto the 114/115 and it is studly. At 75 kt. demonstrated climbouts, it had a 20 degree pitch up that looked so much like jets I've seen taking off. I'm not joking. With this, and the very popular Hot Shot turbo normalizer for the 112's, the Commander portfolio is expanding nicely.
On the flight home, the winds were still there, so I had a 40+ knot tailwind and a nice smooth ride at 7 and 9000, with the picture to prove it. A landing right at sunset after a 2 1/2 flight capped the day.
Enjoy the pics.
-Rich
The weather was CAVU, but the winds were awful. The 112 models are usually derided for their lack of speed, but having 30+ knot headwinds from that giant Low that dumped all that snow on MI & NY made for a long ride. I averaged about 90kts groundspeed flying from Atlanta to the Cape, and it took me right at 4 hours to get there. On top of that, just west of Shelbyville, I encountered pretty good and constant turbulence that basically lasted for the entire second half of the trip. Somehing about the terrain seemed to set it off. Facing a Hobson's choice of either climbing higher to suffer even worse headwinds or going lower to get beaten up worse, I just tightened the seatbelt, slowed down to Va, and sucked it up.
As I saw CGI, I thought "Hey, I'm flying west of the Mississippi." Barely. Then I had a worse thought: "please don't let me F up the landing in front of all the other owners!" Positive thinking (and that great trailing link landing gear) prevailed and I greased it on.
This event also marked the one year anniversary of Commander Premier Aircraft selecting CGI as its home base of operations. It was great to see all of the jigs and materials purchased out of bankruptcy set up and nearly ready to get to work again.
We were also treated to two safety presentations by ASF's own Bruce Landsberg. Thank you, Bruce, for the great discussions.
But perhaps the best treat was to see the STC'd Super Commander. Aerodyme's Jim Richards has engineered a 320-hp Lycoming IO-580 installation onto the 114/115 and it is studly. At 75 kt. demonstrated climbouts, it had a 20 degree pitch up that looked so much like jets I've seen taking off. I'm not joking. With this, and the very popular Hot Shot turbo normalizer for the 112's, the Commander portfolio is expanding nicely.
On the flight home, the winds were still there, so I had a 40+ knot tailwind and a nice smooth ride at 7 and 9000, with the picture to prove it. A landing right at sunset after a 2 1/2 flight capped the day.
Enjoy the pics.
-Rich
And that's Chattanooga in the background on the other one.
