Thursday, July 23, 2009

Picking up Justine

What we thought was a well planned trip to pick up my plane turned out to be a very different excursion than what was expected.

Chuck Carroll flew with me to Oshkosh a few years ago and was a real help when I was arriving along with 5,000 other planes for the first time. He was going to fly with me to Texas and back so we picked him up at 2:00 pm on Monday to go to Las Vegas. Passing through Laughlin, Nevada, we discovered that the road to US 95 was closed due to a fuel tanker truck tipping over. There was a thunderstorm with lightning going on so no cars were allowed to use the road. They suggested that we go through Kingman so we headed that way.

Arriving at the edge of Kingman we turned to Las Vegas on Highway 63 and saw a sign saying 97 miles. That was about what we had when we started, and we had already gone about 45 miles. Getting nearer to Hoover Dam we saw signs indicating delays. Tuning in to AM 1620 we discovered that all traffic was being inspected prior to crossing the dam. This was instigated after 9/11.


They also started building a bridge, but as all things government, it is still unfinished. It will be quite impressive if it ever gets completed.




Finally after five hours we made it to the CanCun Resort and checked into our room.

We were going to have dinner with Ronnie Fabre (a high school classmate of mine) and her husband, but he was suffering from Bronchitis so we decided to reschedule. Hsien-Ling and Johnny were staying overnight and going home in the morning. Chuck and I were to rest and catch a cab to the airport at 11:45 pm.

We all went to the Tropicana for dinner. Johnny told me to go gamble and he got half of what I won. I put a dollar in a machine and lost, only to discover it was a dollar machine. I found a quarter poker machine and put in another dollar, this time winning a few times. I quit when I had six dollars, and gave Johnny two dollars as his half of the winnings. He was elated.

Back at the resort, Chuck and I rested then went to the airport. Passing through security Chuck lost a bottle of water and a multipurpose corkscrew that his wife had put in his luggage for him. We were going to terminal D so we had a long wait for the tram and then a long walk to our gate. I listened in to a young couple from China for awhile and then surprised them by asking, in Mandarin, where they were from. We talked a little while then they went somewhere else to talk.

The flight to Houston was uneventful other than the beginning. The people in the row behind us got into and out of their seats no less than eight times before we took off. Every other time they did, they would knock the guy in the aisle seat in the head. Luckily he was pretty easy going. He was a pretty large man so Chuck didn’t sleep well. I slept the whole way, waking only to drink a soda.

In Houston we had a long walk to our connecting flight and stopped to have a snack of coffee and a roll/bagel. Along the way we saw rocking chairs along the side of the concourse.


Occasionally there were groups of travelers sitting together talking. Once in awhile there would be a single person sitting there carrying on an animated conversation with no one in particular, or maybe on their cell phone with an ear bud.

The flight to San Antonio was uneventful as far as I remember as I slept the whole time on that one as well. I woke up as we were descending into the clouds and as we broke out, only to fall back asleep and be rudely awakened as we clunked onto the runway.

David Welch from Sierra Engineering picked us up at the airport and told us it was his job to pick us up, take us to breakfast, and to drag his feet. Obviously the plane wasn’t finished. We got a tour of San Antonio including glimpses of the River Walk, and the Alamo. I got a few pictures of the Alamo, but that was it.




After breakfast at Denny’s we headed to Uvalde, about 75 miles away. I slept a lot of the time. When we got to Uvalde, David got us a room at the Holiday Inn Express so we could shower and take a nap while they finished the plane. We did. At 2:00 pm, Art Jackson picked us up and took us to see Justine.


She was finished, just needed one more test run-up.




Larry Montgomery gave me the two (old) $450 fuel strainers and the one $700 strainer as well.


I expected them to be gold and I wanted to melt down the old ones. We were to take off, test the autopilot, and if there was a problem, return for fine tuning. After getting all the paperwork and paying, we were off. There was no problem so we didn’t have to return.

We headed first to Wood County Airport where we were to be met by Bill Attwood and Cathy Cameron, great friends of mine from Bullhead City. Unfortunately, we couldn’t reach them from Uvalde or when we reached Wood County Airport. It turns out that Bill, who has the heart of a young girl (literally as he has a heart transplant) was sick in bed all day and their cell phone coverage is as bad as mine. There was a cold front moving to the area that should pass that night, and then become stationary. That would have kept us from leaving the next morning so we headed home. We had a little rain as we left Wood County and had to fly at 4,500 feet in the beginning to stay under the clouds. Later we stayed at that altitude for the smooth air and better tail winds. The front also kept us from stopping to see Steve Morris, a high school classmate who lives near Dallas. Time to spare, go by air.

We got as far as Graham before the sun set. Everything was closed at the airport and none of the hotels would come pick us up. I found some people sitting around talking in front of their hangar, and Babe Horton, a Cessna 210 driver, offered to take us to a hotel. We got an excellent deal and a great room at the Holiday Inn Express. It was brand new, and just like the one in Uvalde but about half the price. We walked about a mile uphill to the Dairy Queen for dinner but downhill on the way back.

In the morning we woke up at about 6:45, 15 minutes before our wake up call. Not bad since it was 4:45 Arizona time. I wish I could acclimatize this fast coming from Taiwan. The hotel had a full breakfast for us: bacon, eggs, s**t on a shingle, muffins, bread, bagels, juice and coffee. Who could ask for anything more? We took a couple apples for the flight. Chuck found us a “shortcut” back to the airport which was about the same distance away as the Dairy Queen. Fuel was reasonable so we topped off. I didn’t want to think about fuel as we slalomed around the thunderstorms.

We went along at 4,500 feet for quite awhile. Normally I fly much higher but the winds were better, a 5 knot tail wind rather than a 15 knot quartering headwind at higher altitudes. We stayed there until the ground rose up to try and meet us. We climbed, and the clouds dropped until we had to stop in Santa Rosa, Texas. We landed and I tied down the plane and took a nap, Chuck went exploring. They had a nice little pilot lounge with an air conditioner and a bathroom. They had a coffee maker but no cups. Someone had left a big note saying: “Cups would be nice!” Hey, I thought, if it’s that important, bring your own. It was more than I expected for free in the middle of nowhere. It was a very comfortable place to hang out, call weather service and take a nap.


After an hour or so we headed out again and stayed below the clouds and above the ground. By the time we hit Albuquerque we were at 8,500 feet and at the base of the clouds (within VFR limits of course). This was not high enough to fly over the airport unannounced so we called approach and got a number to squawk. We were almost on top of the runway as we rounded the mountain and were picked up on their radar. When they realized we didn’t want to land we were vectored to the south to avoid departing traffic, and then turned loose after we passed the airport area.

As we headed west we had to first divert around some 8,500 foot mountain tops, and later around thunderstorms. The zigzagging put us right over the top of the meteor crater between Winslow and Flagstaff.


After that it was just left right left right all the way home around one thunderstorm cell after another. I have a handheld Garmin GPSMAP 396 coupled to my S-Tec 30 autopilot (with altitude hold). I also have XM Weather so I can see a satellite image of the weather as I fly. It is an amazing time saver as I can turn early to avoid the cells and know whether to go around to the right or the left. It also lets me know when to stop and when to go after waiting. The cells topped out at about 45,000 feet so going over them was out of the question. That was according to Flight watch on 122.0, as my Garmin won’t give that information.




We finally touched down at A20 (Sun Valley Airport) about 3:30. 3.6 hours in the air on Tuesday and 6.6 hours on Wednesday.

When my plane was topped off for me in Uvalde I wasn’t there so I didn’t see how full it actually was. They put in 122 gallons. According to the book and the sales brochure it should take 138. Since it had actually been drained it might have taken even a gallon more. Now I have to run one tank dry and refill it to see what the actual capacity is for usable fuel. Just another excuse to fly…. Missing 16 gallons would put me short going to Japan from the Aleutians, but that is another story.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Back-packs for Kids


Every year the Legacy Foundation in our area puts together back-packs for the young kids starting back to school. The Kiwanis clubs in the area donate to help with the cost and we volunteer to help pass them out.

Today, we visited three schools (okay, so I missed the first one because I was cleaning up my yard) and passed out, I think they said, 3,000 back packs. The schools were Fort Mohave Elementary, Mohave Valley Elementary and Mohave Mesa Elementary. Could you guess we live in Mohave County? The Kiwanis has been doing this for years, but this was the first time I was able to participate.




Inside the back-packs are 5 pencils, a spiral notebook, a ruler, a comb and brush, a water bottle, A Phoenix Suns cap, glue, scissors, a box of crayons, an eraser, a pencil sharpener, a tooth brush and tooth paste. Just about everything one would need in school.


Once in awhile, a student would say that they already had a back-pack, that they didn’t need one, but “thank you for the offer.” The other Kiwanians would give that bag to the teacher. I would tell the student that that was great but that he should take this bag and give it to someone else who didn’t have one. That always worked for me. Maybe they didn’t want to argue with that dumb adult.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Maintenance

Don’t tell anybody, but I do have to work sometimes. Owning an airport, even with a partner, is not the most profitable venture I have ever been in. We have a lot of asphalt to maintain and not much to rent. This is the time to patch the asphalt, and it’s my turn.

Asphalt naturally expands and shrinks. The expanding is not as big a problem as the shrinking. As it shrinks it makes cracks. These cracks don’t disappear when the asphalt expands, but they do get bigger next time it shrinks. Small cracks can be sealed with a crack sealer that gets melted in a crack sealer machine and pumped out through a hose, then smoothed over the crack as it flows down inside. When the cracks get too big, the sealer just keeps flowing out every time it gets hot; which is every day from May through September.

Now is the time for the thick stuff, QPR. For big cracks we use a bagged patch material that looks like pea gravel with soft tar on it. It flows like hot asphalt and hopefully hardens up before getting stuck on the tires of whatever drives or lands on top of it.

We use two trucks with a compressor on the back of one and two trailers on the other. The second trailer was a small one that we dumped the material into from the bags to make it easier to shovel. When I went to pick up the trailer it had two flat tubeless tires. I was able to get one pumped up but the other had been flat for so long that the bead wouldn’t seal. I went down to Ron’s Tire shop on 95 and begged some goop, Foster’s Soap, I think, that gets smeared between the bead and the rim. It is about the consistency of axle grease. Then you just pump up the tire and it holds the air in until the bead seals. Amazing stuff. We also have a compactor that unfortunately I didn’t try to start before we needed it. It wouldn’t start of course. I had to use the van to compress the material. I had to clean it before Hsien-Ling saw it, and then cleaned a little more. Hsien-Ling saw me and thought I was so nice to clean the van for her. Whew.

The actual process involves first blowing out the cracks to remove the loose dirt or rocks,

(It's a tough job but someone has to drive the truck)


then shoveling in the mix.


The crack needs to be filled a little above the road level with the patch material so that it can be compacted into place.

John Cowgill and I drove to Las Vegas Monday to buy the material. This is John.

Unfortunately they had less than one pallet, only 50 bags. Two years ago, my partner, Jerry Bruner, used about a pallet and a half. Maybe it will be enough. Wrong.

We only finished less than one third of the runway and the cracks were getting wider and wider. I had scheduled two days to finish, and had officially closed the runway. Now I had to notify the FAA to change the NOTAM so pilots would know when they could or couldn’t come in. We also needed the compressor for Thursday but not for Wednesday. Luckily RSC Equipment rental told me to keep it and I would only be charged for two days instead of three. Great guys. I had to let the flight school know also. It is a bit of an inconvenience for them as they have to move part of their fleet to operate out of Laughlin-Bullhead airport while we work. They took the news well.

The material arrived in Las Vegas so John and I picked it up. We dropped the compactor off at Highway 95 Tool Repair and begged that they would fix it in one day. They did, but they closed at four and we were still out of town. Luckily my brother, John, picked it up for us. Now with two pallets of QPC we seemed to be ready to finish.



John and John getting the compactor out of the back of Doris's car.


Five am on Thursday arrived but the help didn’t. We had to roust John Cowgil from bed, and at 5:15 Manuel showed up. Jason showed up at about 5:30 and the third John showed up at about 5:45. Brother John hadn’t planned on working, but as Bill had been sick all night and couldn’t make it we were one man short, so he did. Having a brother can be either a curse or a blessing, probably depending mostly on which brother you are. To me, my brother was a blessing, so that must have made me the cursed one….

The blowing out was finished by about 9:30, so brother John took off and Jason came back and shoveled QPC with us. I alternated shoveling and compacting, but of course no one took my picture. At 11:45 we ran out of material again with about 750 feet still to finish. The cracks were getting farther apart, but also getting much wider and deeper. Oh BOY, another trip to Las Vegas.

Friday at 9:45 found John Cowgill and I on our way to Las Vegas again. We stopped at Cal-Nev-Ari, Kidwell Airport, for breakfast. This airport was built by Slim and Nancy Kidwell and is still run by Nancy. I took a refresher Private Pilot Ground School class from Nancy and Slim many years ago, and about three years ago bought my Cessna U206B from Ace Kidwell, Slim’s son. A couple years later my partner, Jerry Bruner, bought Nancy’s Comanche 250. Small world. After Breakfast we stopped and chatted with Nancy for awhile about old times. We discussed what it took to actually get water out of the ground and to all the houses at Cal-Nev-Ari, and how people now-a-days took everything so much for granted.

Back on the road we made our way to Las Vegas and to Construction Sealants and Supply. We bought another pallet of QPR and while we were there also bought a pallet of crack sealant figuring we would need about three in August and could only carry two at a time.



The trip home was slow because of the weight on the trailer: about 5,700 pounds. We stopped for lunch in Searchlight to let the wheels cool, and finally got home about 5:00, hopeful that we would have enough to finish the runway on Monday.

Monday morning, 4:00am came early. I picked up the ice and met John Cowgill at his house to ready the trailer with the trailer on the back. Two helpers showed up at just after 5:00am and we quickly settled into a routine of dumping the material into the little trailer and shoveling it into the cracks. As we got material down and it seeped into the cracks, I operated the compactor until I caught up with them and then rejoined in the shoveling. John Cowgill had an appointment that morning so brother John relieved him at about 7:30. By 8:50 we were finished filling the cracks, and still had 16 (out of 60) bags left over. Perfect. We got all the shovels and trailer cleaned up and officially re-opened the runway. Now that the cracks are all filled, we can wait a month and go back over them with the crack sealer. Maybe……………………no rest for the weary. Well, maybe a little.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Pimping Justine

Justine. That is the name of my plane: Cessna Justine Airplane, as in Cess na’ just ine airplane.

Johnny and I flew to Uvalde, Texas on Monday, 6/29. Just passing Phoenix we saw Roosevelt Lake where Charlie Wooldridge taught me to water ski back in about 1962.



The flight to Safford was 2.02 hours,



from there to Uvalde, Garner Field, was 4.2 hours. The air was smooth at 9,500 feet as far as El Paso, Texas.



Then we hit weather. Down at 7,500 feet under the clouds it was a little bumpy; we got back up for an hour or so, and then back down. We had to skirt a tiny restricted zone that I hadn’t been aware of until my GPSMAP 396 warned me. Looking very closely I was able to avoid it. It turned out to be a balloon surveillance site, but the balloon was still on the ground.



Altogether we left Bullhead City at 6:15 am and arrived at about 3:30 pm local time. It didn’t seem like an hour over two weeks…. It never fails to amaze me how big Texas is. It only takes us about 3:45 to get to El Paso, but that last two and a half hours across half the state seems to take forever. But we survived, Johnny a little worse for wear.

At Sierra Industries we were introduced to jets, turboprops, and piston engine singles and twins, all getting new engines or panels. Justine is probably the “most affordable” aircraft in the shop. Nothing like seeing million dollar aircraft getting two million dollar upgrades.


Justine was there to get auxiliary fuel tanks installed: an additional 54 gallons to the existing 84.



After the 7 hour trip back in a Comanche, (plus a stop for lunch) I started to wonder why I was doing this. One can’t stop for lunch when flying over water, I guess. At least, not if one wants to continue. It will probably be the most expensive upgrade that won’t even be visible until I top it off with fuel and look at the bill…. It does allow more flexibility in finding cheaper fuel though. Monday I bought fuel in Safford for $3.10 per gallon and Tuesday we paid $4.49 in Las Cruces because the Comanche didn’t have the range with an IFR reserve to go that far. Even more depressing was watching them dump the remaining 20 gallons I had in the plane before they started working on the tanks. We should have brought a clean can to transfer the fuel into the Comanche. Hindsight is wonderful.

While in Uvalde, Johnny and I got to see some vintage planes owned by the owner of Sierra industries. It was my first clue that I was paying too much. The second clue was the sales rep, Art Jackson’s new Hummer. These are the planes we saw:













We stayed at the new Holiday Inn Express and enjoyed swimming, playing on the computer and watching TV. Well Johnny did, I swam with him then watched TV and went to sleep. Johnny watched well past when I fell asleep saying it would help him sleep on the plane. When I asked how late he stayed up, he couldn’t remember. I am not raising a dummy.

Johnny wasn’t real enthused about the return flight as you can see.



In the air he slept all the way to Las Cruces


and even felt good enough to have a cheese burger and fries. Big mistake, he ended up bringing it home in a bag, giving it up of take-off. Luckily he slept most of the way home. Before we got to Phoenix it started to get rough at 10,000 feet so we went up to 12,000 and it got a lot smoother. The only trouble we had was getting ATC to okay our descent and had to stay at 11,000 until half way up the valley. This meant a 10,000 foot drop in ten miles. We did a lot of circling. It gave me a chance to take some pictures of the local golf courses and the airport as well as my house.