The flying couple

It feels like years since I've made a decent landing in an airplane. I'm in a slump. I can't tell you for sure when it began, and now I can't tell you when it's going to end.

This is one of the problem with being a renter: It's too expensive to get out and keep one's skills sharp. Yesterday, Carolie and I flew along the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers to check out flooding that hit last week after some areas got 10 or more inches of rain in 24 hours.

Carolie usually doesn't fly with me, so it was nice to have her along. It was a little bumpy down low and she probably drove up the stock of Benadryl a fair amount, but she's a trooper:

 

And before the flight, I perform the traditional toast to the airplane.

 

Actually, I'm checking the fuel sample I just took out of the wing tank.

Then we flew...



The actual flying skills were fine -- better than fine, actually. I held altitude at 1,000 feet AGL in steep turns over Pine Island. While filming.



What else went right? Situational awareness. We flew well, we spotted the traffic (including birds) we needed to find, we did a great job of communicating through some busy airspace around Mankato, keeping everyone alert for us, and helping them navigate around us. We got a great view of tow plane, cutting its tie to a Civil Air Patrol glider over Mankato, and then diving for the ground.

There's just this landing thing to overcome.

We headed over to Red Wing for a bathroom break and a check of the Vikings score. Red Wing is a huge runway (5,000 feet), along the Mississippi, below bluffs on the Wisconsin side. And, sure, it gets a little squirrely, but it shouldn't have been as poor a landing as it was, especially given an incredibly stabilized four mile final.

But it was a bad landing, partially because the size of the runway makes you think you're lower than you really are, and partly because I'm not focusing on the far end of the runway, I'm looking ahead of the nose. I know this is the problem, I'm just not getting out enough to practice it.

So as we bounced down the runway, I firewalled the throttle and executed a go-around, which couldn't have thrilled Carolie, who rarely flies with me and didn't know what I was doing.

The second landing was a little better, but I still dropped it the last 10 feet or so.

And back at Flying Cloud -- a more familiar runway -- I had a better landing, but still not great.

As the RV-7A project nears its conclusion, I always think immediately after landings, "What would have happened if you were flying an RV?" I don't like the answer.

(If you're reading this via Facebook, you'll have to go to the "original posting" to see the video and Flash slideshow)

The end of winter by air

I love flying in the winter, probably more than any other season. In another month, the combination of dark and light ground in Minnesota will make for uneven thermals and turbulence, a few weeks after that the geese will be on the move, and after that, hot and humid weather will diminish aircraft performance -- not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Today the temperatures got well into the '30s with a gorgeous blue sky and little wind. In February in Minnesota, that brings people out like Key West at sunset.

I'm trying to fit in a flight review next week, so I went out in this perfect weather and ran through a few flight maneuvers -- stalls and steep turns mostly -- and a couple of landings out in Glencoe and did some sight-seeing on the way back to Flying Cloud Airport southwest of the Twin Cities.

On Lake Waconia, I found this ice-house neighborhood...

You can click the image to see bigger versions. This is the day Minnesota requires ice houses to be removed from lakes in the southern two-thirds of the state. You can see trucks pulling a few off.


And from this shot, you can see that there were probably more ice houses here before. Some of the "streets" remind me of suburban corn fields that have been subdivided for housing developments.



Of course, it's also manure-spreading season. A few weeks ago, a farmer down in Albert Lea made news because he spread the manure in the shape of a heart for a valentine for his wife. Do you suppose this guy got an earful?



Of course, as this picture attests, there's still plenty of winter left in Flyover Country. That diagonal black line in the middle of the picture is the Glencoe runway.



Here's a typical farm on the prairie. A windbreak around the house. It's needed. There's nothing between here and the Rockies to stop the wind. You'll want to click the image to see the bigger version.



As I approach this lake, if you look way off on the horizon -- straight ahead -- you can barely see the buildings of Minneapolis.

Fall flying

Famed RV-6A builder/pilot Alex Peterson (you may have seen his aerobatic video here) is like Batman. I -- and I guess this makes me "the commissioner" -- put out the Bat Signal a week ago on Van's Air Force. I needed a motivation flight. Alex saw the signal and stopped by South St. Paul today.

I've been stuck on the project lately and when I went to putter around today, I just ended up sorting nuts and bolts and screws and such; not something that's going to get a plane built. But that's the way building an RV can be; sometimes you need a nudge.

So Alex dropped in and took me for a spin. Here's the takeoff out of South St. Paul. Note the glider in the grass we pass on the way out.



Alex let me fly a little bit and I was consciously trying not to exert any backpressure on the turns, but I increased altitude so I must have. It was weird to look over at the airspeed indicator and see 160. I'm used to plodding along at 90 in a Warrior.

We flew up the St. Croix River, looked for Doug Weiler's house in Hudson (Doug heads the Twin Cities RV builders' group) and then headed back -- a half hour of good flying in which -- for the record -- neither Alex nor I opened our laptops during the flight.

After he dropped me off, he advised, "just start on anything and plow forward," and he and his friend, Benny (who was visiting from Israel) headed north back to Anoka.

And I plowed into some firewall forward stuff.

Mission accomplished.

Day-tripping: Madeline Island

While I'm building my RV airplane, I still need to keep current while I fly. Most of my flying is touch and goes and some local flying. My currency with the FBO I rent from is up next week, so this weekend we decided we needed to go somewhere. Carolie, who has never flown with me for any significant amount of time, was game for a day trip up to Madeline Island on Lake Superior for lunch. So we launched around 10:30 and by a little after noon, we were walking down the road on Madeline Island heading for the ferry.

It's probably somewhat significant that as we took the ferry back to the island later, an RV-6 circled overhead. Another reason to finish up the RV airplane project -- 3.9 hours of rental : $507. Criminy.

(Change the pictures by clicking the arrows --forward or backward -- below the captions. Or just click on the image.)



Related links:

Our trip to Madeline Island last year.

Sunrise on Lake Superior.