Flying Aces Inc. Newsletter vol.32 #9 September 2001
The Leading Edge
GENERAL MEETING: SATURDAY the 8th at San Jose Jet Center at 7:30pm
PROGRAM "COCKPIT COMPUTER MANAGEMENT" by Ace CFI Rick Tarrel
INSTRUCTOR MEETING TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4TH 7PM at INBOUND.
BOARD MEETING SUNDAY the 23rd in Novato at John Nogatch's
CONGRATULATIONS TO A BUNCH THIS MONTH:<\H2>
Our newest Commercial Pilot is TERRY RIDGWAY
TOM MCNAMARA soloed under Mark Hernandez's wings
PRAVEEN GOPINATH got his Private last month working with Mark
and Mark's latest is new Private VINKATA KARPURAM. Way to GO!
And a Big One for CHRISTOPH BOHMANN who passed his CFI exam with flying colors
working with Doug Groom and he is now officially an ACES INSTRUCTOR
SEPTEMBER BIRTHDAYS
Terence Ridgway on the 3rd and Edmond Yuen on the 24th.
And for good measure my father, Birney Groom turned 102 today! b. 9/4/99
And he is well enough to know it. What does a 102 year old want for his birthday? A HAIRCUT!
AUGUST PICNIC AT WINGS OF HISTORY AT SOUTH COUNTY A WINNER!
Several Aces and family had picnic dinner at South County compliments of Aces
and John Gould. Follow up was a private tour of several hangers (!) of great
aviation museum displays and restoration shops. Everyone thought it was great
and well worth your trouble to get down to see.
WELCOME TO OUR NEWEST ACE:
MARK SCHEITRUM is VP of engineering at Chameleon Systems and is working on his
Private with Doug Groom. He has also graciously volunteered to fill the
Program Director board position vacated by Todd Whitmer. That's an ACE
ACES HAS OFFICIALLY GIVEN UP OUR SJC TIE-DOWN (18 YEARS) AND QUEST FOR AC!
DRUM ROLL PLEASE THE MOMENT WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR
We think we have come with a workable solution to the Squadron II access problem.
For consideration at the general meeting: Does the membership approve:
"Effective May 1, 2001, reinstatement for Aces who resigned in favor of
Squadron II membership and a $25 Squadron II membership subsidy for each month
any Ace submits an appropriate Squadron II receipt of previous month's aircraft
rental?" We'll see how this flies.
Buying & Moving a Challenger
Lou is the original founder of our micro-light group. Lou had been flying Quicksilvers out of
Lodi for several months when around April 2000, he arranged for a group of Anritsu
engineers to have intro-lessons. That day hooked me into wanting to continue to rent
ultralights. Lou continued to go, working on his BFI, but the 220 mile round trip to Lodi was
a problem for me.
Lou and I continued dreaming about micro light flying, searching for something closer. In
searching the counties of Santa Clara, San Benito, Monterey and Santa Cruz, there was very
little to be found. Taking a que from the movies, "build it and they will come", we formed an
EAA ultralight chapter. While we worked on our dream of where we could fly, we also
dreamed about what we would fly. Together our research concluded that a pure part 103
single seat is ok for local flying, but does not satisfy our recreational needs and wants. We
therefore expanded our thinking into two-seat trainers and the associated requirements for a
BFI rating to fly them. Challenger II was our selection based on our flying experience with
Bill Bardin from Ultralights of Sacramento. We even discussed purchasing his used trainer.
We determined that with 2800 Challengers built, it was a solid design and the Quad City
Corporation seemed solid for future support.
In our continuing look into the future we realized that the new Sport Pilot rules were going to
impact Ultralights; with some good and some pain. The good will be mostly the grand-
fathering but the pain is in the loss of the exemption for part 103 two seat trainers. Future two
seat trainers will require experimental registration. And in expanding our thoughts, we
realized that part 103 trainers were also limited to 10 gallons of fuel and weight, etc.
Therefore our conclusion was to source a used experimentally registered Challenger II.
We initiated our due diligence search of the whole US for experimental challengers to establish
aircraft value, while we began discussing registration of Bill's $14,000 trainer as experimental.
I first located one for $9500 in Fairfield Iowa, my home town. It seemed like a long shot, but
1. My brother, a pilot, inspected it and flew in it.
2. My grade school best friend, Mike, knew the owner and the aircraft and provided good
references. Mike is a hot air balloon instructor and a powered para-sail pilot. As a
professional mechanic, he also checked out the aircraft and was approving.
3. Another pilot friend, Ben, was planning to drive a Suburban back to Oshkosh and offered
to tow it back on a trailer.
We all got more excited and the three of us decided to fly it back with a 3 pilot rotation scheme
starting July 30. The Suburban chase vehicle would provide our backup plan for renting a
trailer and towing the aircraft home if there were mechanical problems. It was to be an
adventure. So we made a deposit on the aircraft with contingencies. Lou and I took Challenger
lessons with Bill while Ben took lessons with Carl in Santa Ynez. But alas, the title search
determined problems and a non-disclosed crash compounded by the owner wanting to pull the
registration number to limit his liability. We withdrew our offer and he returned our deposit.
Our search resumed and Ben had a lead from Carl in Santa Ynez for one in Camarillo. Carl
assisted us in contacting the owner Tony, a doctor with three aircraft and interests in a fourth.
He just was not flying his Challenger II enough. He was asking $9500. We said we will take it
and be down August 4 to fly it back. He was not able to schedule that and we delayed until the
next weekend, August 11 and 12.
Again we began to prepare for the flight. We needed radios and intercoms to go with our
headsets. Through the Aces and EAA network we found all we needed. Vaughn \(EAA founder\)
provided us his intercom to connect our headsets, Ben \(EAA\) provided us a radio with an
adapter to the intercom, and Skip \(Aces\) loaned us a radio for our ground crew. Hal \(EAA
founder\) volunteered himself and his truck for our backup plan of renting a trailer and towing
the aircraft home, if there were mechanical problems.
Our fairy flight goals were to make several hops and maintain a very conservative one hour
reserve of fuel. For planning we had a 10 gallon tank and a four GPH burn rate. We were
selecting airports for ability to self fuel and allow ultralight operations without control towers
for simplicity. We planned to actually drive to each airport and verify that the ground crew
would have access to refuel us and where we would meet on the airport.
On Saturday August 10 at 7:30 am, Hal and I departed to recon the planned route and
airports. Our first stop was to see Vaughn for breakfast at 8:30 near Salinas. We checked out
Salinas, then King City, next stop was Paso Robles and over the hill to Oceano. We drove
through Santa Maria and on down to Santa Ynez through Solvang. The final leg was up over
the coastal range at Santa Barbara. As we looked at the terrain I started to worry about
precautionary landing sites. I had not even considered flying over this rugged area to get into
the central valley and up I5. It would be too hot and windy, or so it seemed.
We pressed on and arrived at the Camarillo hanger around 4 pm to meet the Doctor and my
A&P friend, Jeff. All three of us went through the aircraft for several hours with no problems
or show stoppers. We broke for dinner and a motel until Lou could fly in at 8:00 AM Sunday.
Lou takes over the story here:
John and Hal drove down to Camarillo to look at the Challenger and called me to come, they
were already sold. I flew down to Burbank Airport via Southwest the next morning. They
were right this is a nice plane and we bought it. Tony, the previous owner, flew it alone and
didn't use an intercom. His antenna and radio worked ok. We set up a combination intercom,
radio headset interface and radio that worked on the bench but didn't work well in the plane.
So we connected just the radio and the pilot, no intercom and got out of the towered airport.
After we were some distance away I reconnected the intercom so John and I could talk. We
worked well as a team - John using his charts and notes to navigate and me watching and
reminding him to watch for engine out landing areas. I also used my GPS to verify our
position, distance to destination and ground speed. We used the IAS and GPS ground speed to
know what kind of head wind we were facing.
Our first hop was to Santa Ynez. Tony flew his Bonanza there and was waiting for us when we
landed. He'd have gone farther with us, but was on call and that's as far as his pager would
reach. John came in high and side slipped then made a descending turn which took us over the
numbers - we settled into a glide path but John wanted to flair too fast and too high: yep ,
those years flying Cessna's set in. We held off and slowed down to a soft touch down. Tony
who watched us from the ground commented, "a little high but looked good..." Hal rolled up
and we discussed the status of the trip, refueled and off to our next stop.
Oceano Airport was next. The runway points out to sea and goes up to the sandy beach. The
white caps were plentiful and the wind was almost right down the runway. Our set up for
landing was much better this time and it was picture perfect until we got on the runway and
got a gust from one side.John used the rudder but it wasn't enough - so I added more rudder
and we rolled straight down the runway. We learned that Tony being taller than John had the
seat back for his size. John couldn't reach to push the pedals all the way even with the pillow
behind him. We fixed that on the ground. We talked to a local pilot who said that the local
Challenger pilots don't use Oceano in the afternoon because of the winds.
We were off again, climbing out there was some turbulence but the John and the Challenger
did great.Over some mountains, like the Hamilton Range, no problem and plenty of places to
land if we had an engine out, to Paso Robles Airport.Long runways plenty of time to set up for
a landing - John landed without a hint of a bump.Great job John! Refueled and met Hal who
was driving up 101 while we flew the Challenger.Hal brought some cookies and water - great...
we discovered that Hal was not able to hear anything on the aircraft radio, ICOM A22, that
he was carrying in his truck. A little investigation found that the Garmin Street Pilot GPS was
generating so much noise in the aircraft band that communications was impossible. Turned
off the Garmin and the noise was gone. I was using a Garmin GPS III and it does not interfere
with the aircraft radio.
Into the air again, on our way to Mesa Del Rey (King City).The scenery was beautiful this
whole trip, mountains, hills, valleys, coast line, cities, towns and farms. It was getting late but
with good conditions we could make Marina. Good conditions would include a tail wind?
Well, that didn't happen. As we headed for King City the airspeed was 60, the ground speed
from the GPS was 42 to 45, OOPs! We were flying right up the valley into the onshore
afternoon flow. We tried different altitudes but it didn't vary more that a couple of miles per
hour. Fuel? No problem! Engine? No Problem, that Rotax 503 was smooth and happy to
cruise. So, we enjoyed the view and the longer flight than we expected. Landing, no problem,
60 mph airspeed and 42 mph ground speed. By that time it was getting late.The wind was
blowing strong and showed no signs of easing up. We decided to tie down at King City and
continue earlier in the day.
The last hop on Wednesday to Marina started before noon and was a walk in the park. We
expected to have some head wind, but that didn't happen, so we arrived ahead of Rosemary
who dropped us off at King City and picked us up at Marina.The Challenger is hangered
there in Marina. This trip was the best one day month's worth of vacation I've ever had...
Hal was a great ground support crew, who was also kind enough to carry many spare parts
that Tony had for the Challenger as well as emergency fuel and oil, that we fortunately didn't
need to use.
John Gould 8/26/01