flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Big thanks to Tony, Matt and Jesse for planning and implementing the midwest fly-in this weekend... It was a blast.
I arrived fairly late on Saturday (1:20 PM) after battling strong headwinds for a bit over two hours and could only say hi to Scott, Barry, and Grant on the radio. However, after landing I had the pleasure of meeting Matt (wby0nder), Jason (FlyNE), Chris Jones, James Dean, Javier (Tomahawk674), and seeing Chip, Greg, Tony, Jesse, and Lance again.
After eating some food (including some primo cookies baked by the Boys Wonder
), James gave me a ride in his nice FG Saratoga before he had to leave for Spencer. Unfortunately, Greg had to leave pretty early too. The rest of us went over to the other side of the field and started pulling out the glider and towplane. Tony flew the towplane and Matt instructed in the glider.
I went first. It was a bit of a challenge for me to get in the glider, but I managed to squeeze in OK. Matt has obviously done an awful lot of glider instructing, and his briefings and procedures were clear and concise. Matt did the takeoff and after we were a few hundred feet in the air he showed me the limits of the tow and turned it over to me.
Whoa, nellie! The glider turned back and forth a couple of times before I had a good feel for it. It certainly takes a lot more stick movement to fly on tow than off, and with the rope connecting the two aircraft it doesn't always do exactly what you tell it. That took a bit of getting used to, but it was really neat flying so close behind the Super Cub, and not having the noise of an engine. The wind noise was a lot more than I'd expected, but it's kind of a neat sound.
When we got near 4,000 MSL, Matt briefed me on the release procedure and shortly thereafter I pulled the release handle. As the rope fell away, I banked right and Tony banked the towplane left.
We flew around over Ames for about 20 minutes or so, varying between about 35-50 knots and anywhere from 200 fpm sink to just a bit of a climb at one point. On average, it was about 100-150fpm sink and 40 knots.
Matt briefed me on the approach, and actually let me take it all the way through landing and rollout. That takes some steel cojones. It wasn't overly difficult, it's just a matter of varying the speed brakes instead of engine power, and you don't flare until you feel like you're about to hit the ground. About the height you sit in an airplane is where you START the flare in the glider, since when you're actually down your butt is maybe six inches off the pavement.
Next, Jason went up in the glider and Jesse rode in the towplane. I shot some video from the ground perspective. It was really neat to be right next to the runway when the glider landed, it makes a unique noise which is really cool.
Finally, Chip went up in the glider and I rode in the Super Cub with Tony. Once I figured out that I could use the tripod to hold the camera up to the "greenhouse" (window on top of the Super Cub) and watch the glider, I could actually see what was going on! Chip did a great job flying the glider on tow. Tony gave me some stick time in the Super Cub on the way back down.
After putting away the Super Cub and the Blanik and getting Matt to sign some logbooks, it was time to go get a $100 pizza. Unfortunately, Jason and Chip had to go home. Tony jumped in the Baron with Lance, Chris in the 182 with me, and Jesse, Jason, and Chip in their respective birds and we began taxxing out and taking off when a 421 checked in with "Ames Traffic, Golden Eagle N123X blah blah blah any traffic in the area please advise." So, Jesse takes off and adds "any traffic..." to his call and the guy bit and re-stated his position again. Jesse was hoping the rest of us were going to add "any traffic..." to our calls, but we were laughing too hard.
Jesse got a head start in the 172, I ended up waiting for the 421 to land because he decided to use runway 1 while the rest of us were using 19. Tony and Lance gave us both a good head start and then, after deciding they weren't catching up fast enough, poured on the coals and zipped by. They passed us, and we passed Jesse shortly thereafter. Tony was talking smack on 122.75 about how speedy they were, but I ended up having to go around because the Baron was still on the runway when I came down. Jesse landed while we were in the pattern and helpfully made the first turnoff.
We headed over to Woody's Pizza and stuffed ourselves silly while we talked with Tony's uncle. Back at the airport, Jesse fueled the 172 and Lance headed home. Tony rode back with Jesse, and Chris with me again. We had some good tailwinds for the trip back. Chris and I landed first but went back up for a couple of trips around the pattern to get some night video. Thanks for being the cameraman, Chris! It turned out a lot better than it looked on the camera's screen.
After our return, Tony, Jesse and I went over to Matt's Halloween party for a bit. Mmmmm, hot spiced cider. Finally, we returned to Tony's place for some much-needed rest.
Sunday, we started a bit slow. After waking up at about 11, we munched on cold pizza for breakfast before heading back to the airport. We admired Matt's Fly Baby and headed back over to the hangar to clean up. Our "cleanup" soon turned some more brats into lunch.
Eventually Jesse and I took off and headed north. I stopped at Clarion for some $3.12 100LL and Jesse continued home. I flew back to Ames, where Tony and Matt had put the wings back on the Fly Baby. They took it out of the hangar to run the engine for a bit, and then Tony and I went up for an IPC in the 182.
Tony knows how to give people a workout. I won't give away his devious plan, but it involves a GPS approach with a miss that results in a hairpin turn onto an ILS at another field which would be a mere five minutes or so from the miss on the first approach to the miss on the second one. Hah! I'm not gonna fall for that one. When the localizer was already alive as soon as I'd tuned it, I asked for vectors back around to give me more time. At one point the DSM approach controller asked, "Are you Dan?" I figured there was some CFI around named Dan, and i replied "negative." Then a minute later, he said "Are you Kent?" I answered "Affirmative" and he said "yeah, I listen to the Pilotcast." Wow, cool!
Anyway, we finished off with a partial panel VOR approach back into AMW. While my CFII is hard-core into failing stuff, Tony was very helpful in teaching me how to use the technology in the plane a bit more. For example, using the ground track on the GPS to help determine a better outbound heading during a hold. Duh, why didn't I think of that? (Prolly because the 430 normally ends up covered with a post-it note for my instrument instruction flights.)
We grabbed a bite to eat at a very good little local restaurant before returning to the airport one last time for me to depart. And what a sweet flight it was... Good tailwinds. My just-over-two-hour trip to Ames turned into a one hour and fourteen minute return home with groundspeeds between 167 and 175 at cruise. As I was getting toward Madison, the Center controller said I was 15 miles out and there was an Airbus that was 35 miles out (Northwest, coming from MSP or DET) and it sounded like we were going to arrive at just about the same time.
No way. I smoked 'em!
I saw 204 knots groundspeed during descent. I landed on 14 so as to be out of the way of the Airbus but there was no need. I was parked on the ramp and even had my flight bag packed up before Northwest landed.
In all, an excellent weekend of flying. 9.1 hours in the 182, 0.4 more in the glider, and fun with friends... Can't beat it! Thanks again to our ringleaders and especially Tony for their efforts, hospitality, and flight instruction. I had a blast!
BTW, there will be some excellent video pushed through the Pilotcast video feed in the next few weeks... Something about gliders, and something about night flying. There's even a rumor that Tony Condon himself might make an appearance on the audio show. Or so I hear.
I arrived fairly late on Saturday (1:20 PM) after battling strong headwinds for a bit over two hours and could only say hi to Scott, Barry, and Grant on the radio. However, after landing I had the pleasure of meeting Matt (wby0nder), Jason (FlyNE), Chris Jones, James Dean, Javier (Tomahawk674), and seeing Chip, Greg, Tony, Jesse, and Lance again.
After eating some food (including some primo cookies baked by the Boys Wonder
), James gave me a ride in his nice FG Saratoga before he had to leave for Spencer. Unfortunately, Greg had to leave pretty early too. The rest of us went over to the other side of the field and started pulling out the glider and towplane. Tony flew the towplane and Matt instructed in the glider.I went first. It was a bit of a challenge for me to get in the glider, but I managed to squeeze in OK. Matt has obviously done an awful lot of glider instructing, and his briefings and procedures were clear and concise. Matt did the takeoff and after we were a few hundred feet in the air he showed me the limits of the tow and turned it over to me.
Whoa, nellie! The glider turned back and forth a couple of times before I had a good feel for it. It certainly takes a lot more stick movement to fly on tow than off, and with the rope connecting the two aircraft it doesn't always do exactly what you tell it. That took a bit of getting used to, but it was really neat flying so close behind the Super Cub, and not having the noise of an engine. The wind noise was a lot more than I'd expected, but it's kind of a neat sound.
When we got near 4,000 MSL, Matt briefed me on the release procedure and shortly thereafter I pulled the release handle. As the rope fell away, I banked right and Tony banked the towplane left.
We flew around over Ames for about 20 minutes or so, varying between about 35-50 knots and anywhere from 200 fpm sink to just a bit of a climb at one point. On average, it was about 100-150fpm sink and 40 knots.
Matt briefed me on the approach, and actually let me take it all the way through landing and rollout. That takes some steel cojones.
It wasn't overly difficult, it's just a matter of varying the speed brakes instead of engine power, and you don't flare until you feel like you're about to hit the ground. About the height you sit in an airplane is where you START the flare in the glider, since when you're actually down your butt is maybe six inches off the pavement.Next, Jason went up in the glider and Jesse rode in the towplane. I shot some video from the ground perspective. It was really neat to be right next to the runway when the glider landed, it makes a unique noise which is really cool.
Finally, Chip went up in the glider and I rode in the Super Cub with Tony. Once I figured out that I could use the tripod to hold the camera up to the "greenhouse" (window on top of the Super Cub) and watch the glider, I could actually see what was going on! Chip did a great job flying the glider on tow. Tony gave me some stick time in the Super Cub on the way back down.
After putting away the Super Cub and the Blanik and getting Matt to sign some logbooks, it was time to go get a $100 pizza. Unfortunately, Jason and Chip had to go home. Tony jumped in the Baron with Lance, Chris in the 182 with me, and Jesse, Jason, and Chip in their respective birds and we began taxxing out and taking off when a 421 checked in with "Ames Traffic, Golden Eagle N123X blah blah blah any traffic in the area please advise."
So, Jesse takes off and adds "any traffic..." to his call and the guy bit and re-stated his position again. Jesse was hoping the rest of us were going to add "any traffic..." to our calls, but we were laughing too hard. Jesse got a head start in the 172, I ended up waiting for the 421 to land because he decided to use runway 1 while the rest of us were using 19. Tony and Lance gave us both a good head start and then, after deciding they weren't catching up fast enough, poured on the coals and zipped by. They passed us, and we passed Jesse shortly thereafter. Tony was talking smack on 122.75 about how speedy they were, but I ended up having to go around because the Baron was still on the runway when I came down. Jesse landed while we were in the pattern and helpfully made the first turnoff.
We headed over to Woody's Pizza and stuffed ourselves silly while we talked with Tony's uncle. Back at the airport, Jesse fueled the 172 and Lance headed home. Tony rode back with Jesse, and Chris with me again. We had some good tailwinds for the trip back. Chris and I landed first but went back up for a couple of trips around the pattern to get some night video. Thanks for being the cameraman, Chris! It turned out a lot better than it looked on the camera's screen.
After our return, Tony, Jesse and I went over to Matt's Halloween party for a bit. Mmmmm, hot spiced cider.
Finally, we returned to Tony's place for some much-needed rest.Sunday, we started a bit slow. After waking up at about 11, we munched on cold pizza for breakfast before heading back to the airport. We admired Matt's Fly Baby and headed back over to the hangar to clean up. Our "cleanup" soon turned some more brats into lunch.
Eventually Jesse and I took off and headed north. I stopped at Clarion for some $3.12 100LL and Jesse continued home. I flew back to Ames, where Tony and Matt had put the wings back on the Fly Baby. They took it out of the hangar to run the engine for a bit, and then Tony and I went up for an IPC in the 182.
Tony knows how to give people a workout. I won't give away his devious plan, but it involves a GPS approach with a miss that results in a hairpin turn onto an ILS at another field which would be a mere five minutes or so from the miss on the first approach to the miss on the second one. Hah! I'm not gonna fall for that one. When the localizer was already alive as soon as I'd tuned it, I asked for vectors back around to give me more time. At one point the DSM approach controller asked, "Are you Dan?" I figured there was some CFI around named Dan, and i replied "negative." Then a minute later, he said "Are you Kent?"
I answered "Affirmative" and he said "yeah, I listen to the Pilotcast." Wow, cool! Anyway, we finished off with a partial panel VOR approach back into AMW. While my CFII is hard-core into failing stuff, Tony was very helpful in teaching me how to use the technology in the plane a bit more. For example, using the ground track on the GPS to help determine a better outbound heading during a hold. Duh, why didn't I think of that? (Prolly because the 430 normally ends up covered with a post-it note for my instrument instruction flights.)
We grabbed a bite to eat at a very good little local restaurant before returning to the airport one last time for me to depart. And what a sweet flight it was... Good tailwinds. My just-over-two-hour trip to Ames turned into a one hour and fourteen minute return home with groundspeeds between 167 and 175 at cruise. As I was getting toward Madison, the Center controller said I was 15 miles out and there was an Airbus that was 35 miles out (Northwest, coming from MSP or DET) and it sounded like we were going to arrive at just about the same time.
No way. I smoked 'em!
I saw 204 knots groundspeed during descent. I landed on 14 so as to be out of the way of the Airbus but there was no need. I was parked on the ramp and even had my flight bag packed up before Northwest landed. In all, an excellent weekend of flying. 9.1 hours in the 182, 0.4 more in the glider, and fun with friends... Can't beat it! Thanks again to our ringleaders and especially Tony for their efforts, hospitality, and flight instruction. I had a blast!
BTW, there will be some excellent video pushed through the Pilotcast video feed in the next few weeks... Something about gliders, and something about night flying. There's even a rumor that Tony Condon himself might make an appearance on the audio show. Or so I hear.
I really liked the professionalism of the multiple cameras. I was disappointed, though, that you didn't credit all the cameramen! Sorry I missed seeing you there!
That's actually only the 2nd video I've ever edited. I do enjoy it though. There's a 500GB hard drive on its way to me now so that I have some breathing room to do more. 
