Saturday, July 11, 2009
up
The goal of this flight was to prepare for a long-distance cross-country flight down the Pacific Coast. It should help me test out equipment and procedures that I had never needed on local flights: my interactions with Chase, my retrieve driver; procedures and plans for interacting with him, including contingencies, communication equipment; and my 5-gallon fuel tank.
Planning.
To that end, I decided that a good goal would be an easy flight down a populous valley, only 170 miles and three hops. Why not fly from Seattle to Portland? And on the weekend of the big Seattle to Portland bike ride that I've ridden many times before? The STP weekend is pretty reliable for moderate weather, and it's the STP not the PTS because the weather is usually a high pressure system giving riders a northwest tailwind.
For my departure airport, I eyed a few airports in the area. The best bet was Apex, an until-recently private strip on the Kitsap peninsula: it was just north of Seattle, but west of the class Bravo airspace that protects Seatac, and far away from the congested areas and restricted airspaces from Renton south to Olympia. About a month ago I found myself cycling around the peninsula, so I rode up to Apex. I found Bill, an airpark resident, watering his garden, and chatted with him about the trip. He gave me permission to use his back yard to set up for my trip.
A straight course south of Apex intersects the class E surface area around Bremerton airport (PWT). Part 103 requires I receive prior permission before flying there. I call Seattle approach to talk to an off-station controller, and explain what I want to do. He is confused for a while, because ordinary (non-ultralight) planes don't require any such permission; class E is mostly transparent to them. Finally, I say, in a regulatory tone, "Part 103 requires that before transiting the lateral boundaries of the surface area of class E airspace that I receive prior permission from the controlling authority." With that stilted language, he realized that I was trying to satisfy a regulatory requirement rather directly handle a safety-of-flight issue, and he responded in an equally-regulatory tone (for the phone line is audio-recorded), "I grant you permission to transit the surface area of the Bremerton class E airspace for that flight." It was a classic moment of pilot-controller harmony. After that, we had a nice chat about actual safety (he suggested I monitor the Bremerton CTAF frequency).
In the Portland area, I'd be staying west of Portland, too. Hillsboro and its class Delta airport (HIO) are on my route, and Hillsboro also has a big slice of class Echo poking out to the northwest to protect the approach to runway 12. Another phone call to HIO tower gets permission through the Echo, plus a suggestion to call just before the leg to get permission through/over the Delta as well.
The destination airport is Newberg's Sportsman, an airport I'm quite fond of. It's six miles from the house I grew up in. When I was little, a family friend, "Grandpa Bill", would visit from Georgia, rent a Cessna at Sportsman, and take us flying. One time, once I got old enough to be scared, I freaked out and sat out the trip on the airport grass -- boy did I regret that, because Grandpa Bill didn't come around very often. That airport is where my love of flying was born.
0600 Wake up. Chase shows up, and we load the truck.
0710 We crossed on the Edmonds--Kingston ferry.
0815 We arrive at Apex. Bill's gone at the Arlington airshow, but his wife Linda is out watering the garden, and welcomes us to her back yard, which has a windsock and a runway. I set up the trike.
One of the goals of this flight was to find a communication mode that would be pretty reliable even when line-of-sight radios and cellphones weren't working well. The SPOT messenger (rightly derided as lousy from trails and canyons, and no replacement for a proper EPIRB/PLB) was perfect for this application: GPS location sent via satellite data uplink every 10 minutes. From there, my python script scrapes updates off the SPOT server and sends a cellphone SMS message to Chase. This way, if he loses track of me, all he needs to do is continue driving until he's in cellphone range, and he'll get my most recent update. The SPOT track begins here.
0945 Launch.
I'm able to hear Chase okay on the radio, but not for long. I point south at Rochester, a turf airport south of Olympia, my first intended stop. I don't have to climb far before I'm in a decent tailwind: cruising at 22 kts airspeed and 39-42 kts airspeed. 42 kts is 48 mph, and I'm not constrained to the twisty peninsula highway, so I'm rapidly outpacing Chase.
(Here's a bing map that coordinates Chase's position to each of my positions. The red end of each segment is Chase in the red truck; the white end is Jon in the mostly-white-winged trike. Zoom in to the airports, and you can see where he's parked the truck versus where I'm fueling the trike, for example.)
Bremerton goes by uneventfully; its traffic is typically arriving and departing east, and today is no exception.
1050 Around an hour after launch, I observe that the cylinder heat temperature (CHT) is pushing right close to the 500F limit; an indication of a lean fual-air mixture. I reach behind me and dial in a little richer mixture to cool it off. The engine coughs and misses a couple times, indicating a too-rich mixture. I dial it back lean, but it's still coughing. I doodle it back and forth, and even in the original too-lean position, it won't go back to smooth. Rats; perhaps I've fouled the spark plug? Adding throttle seems to smooth it out a little, but not completely.
1107 I arrive over Rochester airport, and observe white X's across the approach ends of the runways; they're closed. Chase will tell me later that, while we were setting up, he noticed that the A/FD actually says "airport closed except prior permission required" -- shame on me for not looking that up during planning. Now, however, I'm over open farmland (in case the engine further misbehaves), and Chehalis is not far away. I SMS my diversion to Chase, and I strike on towards Chehalis.
1126 I put down at Chehalis, and tie down.
I call Chase, and he's half an hour behind me on the roads. Chehalis once had two runways, but one fell into disuse, was sold to developers, and became a strip mall anchored with a Walmart. (click on the "satellite" button) As a pilot, this used to incense me. Today, however, it's a big win: I realize that my toolbox has a socket set, but not a 5/8" spark plug socket. I cross the runway and walk to Walmart, where I buy the missing tool and a cheeseburger; I'm waiting for Chase when he rolls into town.
Cleaning the spark plug doesn't fix the problem. Chase drives to Napa Auto Parts; his route out of the airport coincides with the STP riders circumnavigating the airport.
He brings back a plug the clerk said was "probably compatible". It sounds like the engine is running better; maybe it just needs the mixture fine-tuned again. I taxi out to the runway, take off, and the engine shudders and rattles and struggles, making only 5100 RPM. I can only climb about 100' over the runway. I land at the far end, and taxi back: clearly, the "running better" is a figment of my optimism.
1452 I call Dick, my father in law, for advice. He raced two-stroke race cars for 15 years. He goes through many scenarios; in almost every case the prognosis is "put the trike on your truck and drive home." He describes how, when they blew up an engine, they'd open the exhaust and shake out the piston fragments. He suggested that I might be sure I got the spark plug with the right heat range. He suggested verifying that the ignition system was secure ("solder, not crimp!").
We drive out to Shuck's auto parts to try a different plug. The road GPS tries to route us through the STP midpoint stop; roads are literally blocked by tents. On the drive back, I tell Chase that I think we've got a 90% chance of being done for the day. I inspect the piston (looks charcoally, but otherwise still flat) and the ignition system (three whole wires; they look fine). I put in the new plug, and still it skips and misses. I'm somewhere between frustrated and resigned. The engine is still running, still chattering; I know that when I shut it off this time, that's the end of the day.
I reach behind me one last time, and put my fingers on the coils of wire leading out of the shaft-mounted magneto to the ignition coil. The moment I touch it, the engine spins right up and hums with perfect evenness. I throttle up, and it responds forcefully. That was it!
I shut down. Sure enough, the ignition wires are actually attached with crimped slide-on spade connectors, and one feels a little loose. I pull it off, squeeze it a bit with pliers, and shove it back into place. The engine starts right back up and runs perfectly.
I holler at Chase on the FRS radio, "pack up! We're going to Portland!" We've been on the ground five hours.
1615 I take off from Chehalis.
The engine is humming in a very consistent, warm, comfortable way. My route now parallels I5, so I'm able to hear Chase much of the time on the av-band radio. South of Chehalis, I find that there are little hints and tickles of thermal lift over plowed fields; one thermal I'm able to work for about 2000' of climb (with the engine on). Perhaps it wasn't a strong thermal; or maybe I'm just not very good at coring them yet: farther down the valley, when I look back, I see a row of cumulus clouds has popped up right over the spot where the thermals were.
I raise Chase on the radio. He says he's at a big truck stop past where the freeway crosses the river. I see a giant gravel parking lot, big enough to land in, with big rigs at the perimeter. In the middle is a little red car. I thought Chase was buying gas, but I found out later that was him: he'd camped out there for the best view of the sky, and I'd wandered right overhead undetected.
I send him back on the road to buy more fuel for the next stop. I cross over Castle Rock, the 135-mile point on the STP, where I've camped before.
1738 Coming into Kelso, I'm at around 4000 feet. I'd like a closer look at the bridge over to Oregon, another major waypoint on the bike STP. I kill the engine and glide for a few minutes, trying to find best lift-to-drag speed. (Turns out it's pretty much at trim; my dragmobile min-sinks about 330 fpm.) I wander around the west side of town, and snap some nice shots of the bridge.
I saw the Cascades train zipping north below me.
I tried to call Chase on the av-band radio, to have him connect with Don. He couldn't read my transmission. Instead, I texted Don with Chase's phone number, and that worked out great.
1815 And soon, I was ready to descend into Woodland State airport. It's a little strip next to the freeway. I chose it because on many Tacoma-Portland drives I saw it and it furthered my desire to leave the road behind. It was also a nice fuel stop before Portland that kept Chase from having to cross over to Hwy 30, where the bicyclists were.
1830 Chase was ready with fuel, so it only took a few minutes to fill up the tank. Then I called the Hillsboro tower controller; he was happy to permit me to cross over the class Delta airspace. I took off, motored past Scappoose, and called Hillsboro up on the av-band radio. He couldn't understand much of my call. I'd learned at this point, in trying to talk to Chase, that my antenna setup had accidentally produced something very directional; it seemed to have good lobes to the sides of the trike and nulls front and rear. So I turned the trike 90 degrees to face west, called in again, and was able to communicate with the controller.
I flew over a strip of uncongested area east of the airport at 3100', with an easy glide onto the airport itself if needed. Ten minutes later, near the south edge of the airspace, I heard a crackly radio call for "<mumble>three eight victor". HIO cleared the plane to land, and I watched a white 172 fly straight-in to runway 30. I asked the controller for the full callsign, and sure enough, it was N1538V -- my airplane! :v) (I belong to Evergreen Flying Club, based at Renton, and hence own a little slice of 38V.)
1950 South of HIO, overflew the UBG VOR (radionavigation transmission station) on a peak north of Newberg.
I suspected Chase would be delayed again, due to a less direct route, and having to go through Portland to meet Don. I made a stop at Chehalem (because I like airports). Chase sent a text with his ETA at Newberg Sportsman, and after the Chehalem stop, I was right on schedule.
2020 I turned the corner, and there was a little red truck on the ramp, and Don jumping and waving enthusiastically with both arms. Cool! I circled around, flew a ridiculously high approach, drained altitude with a 360 and some more S-turns. I figured Don would enjoy seeing a trike takeoff, too, so I did a touch-and-go. The next approach was at a much more reasonable ultralight pattern altitude, and I managed to touch the wheels down right in front of Don.
Winding down Don and I packed up the glider. Chase repacked the truck to clear the front seat, and we squeezed three six-foot, 200-pound men into the front seat of a compact pickup. We were all famished, and quite ready for some good Old Town Pizza, Don's recommendation. Mmm. Chase and I pulled into a Motel 6 on I5 around 12:30am.
Sunday We got to hang out a bunch together, and see other friends Sunday. We even loitered around the STP finish line (all three of us are STP veterans).