FLYING

Certified Aircraft Uncertified Aircraft Ultralights Builder's Logs

   

Flying Phase 1 - Certified Aircraft and Licensed Pilots

While teaching diving in Silicon Valley in the '80s I acquired a slightly used Plymouth Colt. It was the perfect car for what I needed at the time. The hatchback would hold all of the equipment for a dive class, it got great mileage and handled well enough I could keep up with Porches commuting back and forth over the mountain to Santa Cruz. I loved that car and intended to keep it as long as I could find parts for it. Sadly, in the winter of 1988, after moving to Seattle,  I was rear ended and my beloved Colt was declared totaled. The roads were icy and I had stopped in a left turn lane waiting for traffic. The guy behind me didn't stop.

A month under the care of a Chiropractor fixed me but the car was history. I settled with the insurance company for expenses, a $700 Ford Mustang II and and $2000. The Mustang II was a big part of the reason Toyota and Nissan nearly put Ford out of business but that is another story. It was the $2000 that changed my life. It bought me flying lessons.

When I was 12 years old I was diagnosed with a muscle imbalance in my eyes that has required corrective lenses ever since. The eye doctor told me then that I could forget a flying career for I wouldn't pass the physical exam. I was young enough that I got over it and that was that until I got rear ended. A fellow electronics instructor at the vocational institute I taught at near Seattle was a private pilot. During one of our lunch breaks he started talking about a flight he had recently made and I mentioned my eye problem. To my great surprise he informed me that a private pilot license allowed one to wear corrective lenses as long as the lenses corrected your vision well enough to pass the medical exam.

Clarity of vision was not my problem and within a few days I passed the third class medical exam required for a private pilot student pilot license. Shortly thereafter I too was a member of the Aviators Flying Club at Boeing Field and was taking lessons from CFI Willy Berg as often as I could schedule the time. 53 logged hours later, I passed my check ride and became a pilot! I was now a SEAL. Not the Navy variety, for whom I have the profoundest respect, but I was an accomplished diver under the sea, I had survived open ocean sailing and now I could fly. Sea, air and land, I had done them all, at least in my own small way. I suddenly realized that I no longer had any regrets at all that I had never been a good athlete for, in my own way, I had achieved a great deal and much of that success in things few people ever attempt. The lesson is simple but profound: Capitalize on your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

I have now been checked out in Aeronca Champ, Cessna 120, 150, 152, 172 and Piper Cherokee 180, 235 and 260. If you live near the Shelton, WA area and are looking for an economical way to fly, I am vice president of Shelton Flight, a non-profit flying club. Check us out.

Flying Phase 2 - Uncertified Aircraft and non-Licensed Pilots

Following our 1993 sail to Australia we met Kojak, one of the crew members on the Australian motor sailor Nordlys. Kojak's real name is Doug but he looks very much like Telly Savalas. Kojak was the manager of an Aussie Ford used car lot. Kojak met us at the Southport Yacht Club on the Gold Coast in Queensland where Nordlys was birthed and drove us down to Sawtel in New South Wales. Sitting on his lot was a used Nissan pop top "caravan". We bought the Nissan for $5000 Aussie dollars and camped up and down the East coast of Australia for 5 months in it. At the end of our visa, we left the Nissan with one of Kojak's friends in Sydney. Kojak bought it back, site unseen for $3000 Aussie dollars. He did that same transaction 3 more times, all to Yanks and then sold it to an Aussie who never brought it back.

I only mention the Nissan because while we were driving back from our first dive trip to the Great Barrier Reef, we spotted a small sign on a barbed wire fence that read, "Micro Flights." We figured that was a small airplane or a computer simulator. Either way we were curious enough to investigate the next morning. What we discovered was a small grass strip and an Airborne Edge 582. It was Vicki's turn for a flight and when she came back down after seeing the shadow of the trike inside a circular rainbow she announced that I could sell the boat but I had to buy her a trike.

It took a few more years to make it happen. I had to finally get around to finishing my degree in computer systems, find another job teaching computer networking and a place to live. But in 1997 we found a trike instructor in Albany, Oregon and began our lessons. We would drive down on a Friday evening and all too often spend the weekend in a motel watching it rain. After 10 or so hours with the instructor I was ready to solo but the weather just would not cooperate and stay calm enough to do the solo. Vicki continued her training and I began picking the instructor's brain to figure out where and how we would get our first trike.

As it turned out, one of the instructor's hangar mates began building a trike kit that sold under the name Venus. My conclusion was that if I could build the kit, I would be in a much better position to maintain it. The deal was done and I ordered a Rotax 503 engine to power my new Venus trike and a Sabre 16 SS wing under which to fly it. The build was relatively easy though I managed to destroy some aluminum learning how to drill holes in precisely the center of round tubing. Perhaps 40-50 hours of labor and we were ready for our first test flight.

We trailered the Venus down to Albany and watched nervously as our instructor slowly walked around it, pulling here and prodding there as he did a very thorough inspection. It was his rear end that would be in it for its first flight and I wanted very much to know if I had made any mistakes. We added a couple of tie wraps to better secure the wiring and the trike was pronounced safe to fly. Long story short, the trike flew very well and after our instructor did the first flight, I climbed into the front seat and got another lesson in it.

Like they say on the reality shows, "Don't try this at home!!!" After one too many rained out weekends we trailered the Venus back home, set it all up and did a thorough pre-flight inspection. I fired up the engine, drove to the far end of our short little grass strip at home, said a short prayer asking not to make any stupid mistakes and took off. 5 minutes later I landed at the Shelton airport and met Vicki who drove over with the trailer. We packed up the Venus trike and drove it back home. I had soloed myself. I rationalized what I had done with an old saying, "Never argue with success," but truthfully, anyone who tries to teach himself to fly is inviting Darwin to select him for a violent death. I had more lessons than I needed to solo safely and was truly ready to solo but my decision was not without additional risk.

In USA there is an FAA rule, FAR Part 103, that authorizes "ultralight vehicles" to fly under some very limited conditions:

Realistically, it is perfectly legal for anyone to fly a Part 103 compliant vehicle without any license, medical or training. You may do all of your own maintenance (no certified mechanics required) and your health is your own business. Realistically, you can jump into an ultralight and go kill yourself any time you like. We chose to get lessons and buy a kit from someone who appeared to know what he was doing. That made the self solo part hugely less hazardous.

The Venus had a design flaw and Vicki found it during her first lesson with Grant Smith. Grant is a licensed air transport pilot (747s, etc.), certified flight instructor and, for as long as it lasted, an ultralight advanced flight instructor. After assessing Vicki's skills, Grant had her doing what are called crow hops. The technique is to take off but fly very close the ground and land again as soon as possible. On one of the takeoffs, Vicki got a little too high and stalled the wing. Stalled wings don't fly and at about 15 feet, Vicki and Grant fell out of the sky. Neither was injured in the slightest, but the landing gear on the Venus broke, big time.

I replaced the defective parts and all seemed well until the first hard landing. A post flight inspection revealed a crack in a square tube that held the landing gear in place. This time I redesigned the whole system, adding a spring and wires between the wheels to add shock absorption and prevent undue stress to the landing gear. Vicki had another hard landing which forced the spring to stretch far enough that the propeller hit the ground.

I took the broken parts to the manufacturer and while there pointed to a crack in the same boss tube on his 2 seat trainer. He immediately redesigned the entire system to use shock absorbers on the struts themselves and gave me the new parts to replace all of my old ones. His redesign worked well but in the meantime, I had been invited to Scapoose, OR to test fly a welded steel trike called an Apex. I ordered a new Apex Cross-5 airframe a very short time later. The first Apex Cross-5 used the same Rotax 503 engine and Sabre wing of the old Venus and the Venus airframe was sold for parts.

The Apex was nearly indestructible but heavier and the 503 was working pretty hard to keep up and I thought we needed a faster wing. The instructor who eventually soloed Vicki sold a 4 stroke engine that was 80hp and he also became the Apex importer. I got a very good discount on a new Apex Cross-5x with a Verner VM133M 80hp engine. We sold the Sabre wing to a Canadian, the Cross-5 and Rotax 503 to a guy in California who still flies it and upgraded to the first strutted wing model that North Wing manufactured. Here is a link to the builder's log I created when I put the Cross-5X, N43886 together.

Just like diving, I eventually became an ultralight trike instructor earning a BFI (Basic Flight Instructor) exemption that allowed me to instruct in a 2 seat trike which meant that I could charge for lessons and keep the costs under control. I concluded that the vendor who sold me my Verner engine had little clue how to set it up or maintain it. That led to my own dealership and in March of 2005 I flew to the Czech Republic and went through a week of training at the Verner factory in Vikyrovice.

Sadly, the BFI program has been replaced by Sort Pilot which requires licenses and certified aircraft. Nearly all of the part time BFI instructors came to the same conclusion I did and declined to upgrade to CFI and buy new certified Special Light Sport aircraft in order to continue instructing. The result, as predicted by a great many, is that finding an instructor has become the old nightmare we went through. The Apex Cross-5X had to be registered as an experimental light sport aircraft (more money), and because it was experimental I could no longer use it for instruction after 2009 and the cost of a certified light sport aircraft, added to the cost of upgrading to certified flight instructor, was far more than I could ever recover teaching people how to fly. Add that Vicki never really liked the bigger engine or the faster wing and it was obvious that it was time to sell the Cross-5X.

Flying - Phase 3 - Back to Ultralights

 I still have my private pilot license and access to the flying club Cherokee 235. If I need to fly long distances I can do so for $80/hour plus monthly dues. We can be in Spokane in 2 hours, 10 minutes with no security pat downs at all.

But if I just want to fly locally for fun, an ultralight is far less expensive to own and operate. 1.5 gallons per hour instead of 12 and auto gas instead of aviation 100LL. The Cherokee is probably worth $30K used and 40 years old; a new ultralight, fully assembled and ready to fly in the $12-30K range. So Vicky now has her own North Wing ATF trike and I will soon take delivery of a fixed but foldable wing Belite.

The Belite has carbon fiber wing spars and aluminum ribs with an all aluminum airframe. The engine will be a new JCV-360 4-stroke, 35hp engine. Our plan is to fold up the ATF and stow it in the bed of the pickup. The Belite gets winched up into the pickup bed on blocks higher than the ATF and the ATF wing goes on top of the bus. With the pickup hitched to the back of the bus we can fly anywhere there is uncontrolled airspace. It takes about 45 minutes to set Vicki's ATF up but the Belite will be ready to fly in less than 20 minutes.

Stay tuned for more info and photos of the Belite. It is due to arrive in Jan. 2012. It will have to be painted, an engine mount fabricated and the engine installed. I have been informed that the best paint is a Stewart Systems 2 part paint and Stewart Systems informs me that anything less than a professional quality paint sprayer will produce very poor results. Judging from the peeling clear coat I put on the hood of our old KIA Sportage with my trusty Harbor Freight spray gun, I took their advice and am now the proud though broke owner of an insanely expensive IWATA spray gun. We shall see if the equipment can improve the quality of my skill set.