·:[ Darryl’s Coot Building Journal ]:·
• • • • •

What did I do this past weekend? Here I am with Russ Milham, who was in the left seat flying my Yankee. He did a couple of touch and gos and then landed the third time. We then joined an American Yankee Association fly-in at the Spruce Goose Cafe.

Fellow Coot-builder, Doug, has posted this wonderful video of the late Peter Breinig building a Spencer AirCar in five minutes.

In the opening scene, Peter is looking through Private Pilot and finds an article titled, “Build Your Own Airplane.” But the airplane shown is not a homebuilt airplane at all. It is a 1971 American Aviation AA-1A (built a year after my AA-1 Yankee). On the other hand, the AA-1 series was developed by Jim Bede, and was originally to be a kit plane.

I had an aviation mission today. Namely, testing out a second-hand piece of avionics (a Narco NAV 121 VOR reciever W/CDI) that is going into the Traveler project. Today was a knock-out stunningly beautiful day here in the Pacific Northwest (on the heels of a nasty March), such that, 6 hours later, I still haven’t managed to wipe the smile off of my face.

Anyway, here is the video of the test:

Between us, Russ Milham and I have three engines to rebuild. I have a Franklin 165 (6A4-165-B3) to rebuild for my Coot, Russ has his Continental O300 to rebuild for his Coot, and we jointly own a Lycoming 0320 for our Traveler project that needs rebuilding.

We looked at commercially available engine overhaul stands (example) and found that they cost about $200 for a basic stand, and a little less for a kit. These are probably fine, but we wanted a stand that could be disassembled and stashed away when not in use—shop space is getting scarce! And we wanted a stand that can be used with a variety of prop flange bolt patterns, and had more than two holes for bolting the prop flange to the stand. I agreed to undertake the project.

This post shows the construction of the stand. Rather than providing technical drawings, I’ll explain things with text, measurements, and photos, which should be ample information for others to build a similar stand. Here is what the stand looks like completed:

Bill of materials:

1. One 7″ x 7″ x 0.125″ (11 gauge) mild steel sheet (prop flange plate)
2. Three 3″ x 3″ x 0.125″ (11 gauge) mild steel sheet (foot pads)
3. Three 1.25″ x 1.25″ x 0.25″ x 36″ mild steel angle (legs)
4. Two 0.125″ x 1″ x 72″ rectangle mild steel (cut into cross-braces)
5. One 1.5″ x 2″ x ~6″ block of steel or aluminum (shim fabrication)
6. Twelve 3/8″ x 1″ grade-8 bolt, washer, lock washer, nut set
7. Twelve 5/16″ x 1.25″ grade-8 bolt, washer, lock washer, nut set
8. As required, metal primer and paint

Legs: The legs are constructed as two nested pieces that are bolted together, so that the stand can be disassembled into a relatively compact form. The short leg pieces are about 5.5″ long and the long pieces are about 31″ long. The -3 legs are cut at a 55 degree angle. A single cut is made at 5″ from one end and the cut is toward the long end.

(Another view.)

Here is how I cut the angle using a metal cutting bandsaw. A piece of angle aluminum was put into the vice to hold the angle steel at a 45 degree angle in the saw’s vice.

…and the vice was rotated to 55 degrees:

This one cut, thus, sets the proper angle for the stubby legs (that are welded to the flange plate), and the long legs (that are welded to the foot pads).

Prop flange plate: The prop flange must bolt to the top of the engine stand. This requires machining plate steel, to turn a rectangular plate into a circle (although you could skip this, if you wanted) and machining slots for bolts. I used 1/8″ steel for the flange plate, which works perfectly fine. You can go thicker, but don’t go any thinner.

First a note about prop bolt patterns. There are three commonly-used prop bolt patterns for small aircraft engines. I recommend machining slots that will provide for all three patterns. The standards come from SAE AS127D, #1, #2, and #3. Numbers 1 and 2 are used on Lycoming and Continental engines and are 6-bolt patterns, and #3 is used on Franklin engines and is an 8-bolt pattern. The bolts for all three are 0.375 (3/8″) diameter, and the flange pilot (the central protrusion from the flange) is 2.249″ in diameter for all three patterns.

Here is a sketch of how the plate can be machined:

The face includes a 6-bolt pattern with a circle diameter of 4.375″ for #1 and 4.75″ for #2 patterns. The pattern also incorporates four (of eight) bolts for the #3 (Franklin) pattern, with a bolt circle diameter of 5.25″.

So here is are the holes:

• Two 3/8″ slots from 4.1875″ to 5.4375″ diameter (these are the horizontal slots that are used for all three patterns)
• Two 3/8″ holes at 5.25″ diameter at 90 degrees from the first two slots (two vertically aligned holes that are used for the Franklin prop pattern)
• Four 3/8″ slots from 4.1875″ to 4.9375″ diameter at plus and minus 120 degrees of the first two slots

Note that you can make the slots longer. For example the four slots can go from 4″ to 5″, without problems, but don’t make the holes much bigger that 0.375″ (3/8″). The bushing diameter on the prop flange is 0.623″, and the six or eight bushings are the only contact between the engine and the stand.

Here is the sequence of machining:

First, beginning with a 7″ x 7″ plate, bore a 2.5″ pilot hole in the center of the plate. I held the plate in a four-jaw lathe chuck and located the exact center:

Then a pilot hole was drilled, and a hole of about 1″ was drilled. A 2.25″ pilot was then bored into the plate:

Once the pilot hole is finished, the four-jaw chuck is replaced by a three-jaw chuck to hold the plate by the pilot hole. And the square plate is machined into a round plate:

(I started machining the corners and realized it was going to take awhile. So I switched to a thick cut-off bit and came in from the side. Slow the lathe down near the end to prevent the corners from flying too far.)

The next step is to machine slots and holes into the flange plate:

Tripod Assembly: The next step is to weld the short legs onto the flange plate:

(More views here and here.)

The long legs can then be fitted to the small tripod. The long legs are fitted to the inside of the short legs. I used a belt sander to round the outer angle of the legs slightl where they overlap the short legs. This allows them to nest snugly.

Using clamps to hold the legs in place, move the long legs up and down until the top of the stand is perfectly level. Don’t skimp here!

(Another view here.)

…and drill four 3/8″ bolts to hold the legs together:

Next cut three 3″ squares of 0.125″ steel, and weld them on.

Bracing: Next comes bracing. There are several ways to do this, so feel free to figure out your own way. I chose to add two “layers” of bracing, one near the top and one near the bottom. I cut three pieces of 1″ x 0.125″ rectangle for each. Here they are resting in place:

(Another view here.)

Since the angle of the legs is 90 degrees, but the legs are spread 120 degrees apart, shims are necessary between the bracing and the legs. I chose to saw the shims out of a block of aluminum I had sitting around. Use whatever works for you. Here is a shim being test-fitted.

Slight asymmetries in the angle at which each leg was welded to the prop flange plate necessitated custom shim thicknesses.

Now, use C-clamps to hold the whole thing together and drill holes for the 5/16″ bolts. Here is the entire thing assembled (before trimming of the shims) with 350 pounds of semi-static load (I was bouncing a bit). The stand is rock solid.

The next step was to trim the shims, and stamp a label where everything fits, so it can all be reassembled without difficulty.

Finishing: The last step is painting the stand. The top of the prop flange probably shouldn’t be painted or else you may end up scraping paint off of the prop bushings after a rebuild.

I brushed on RustOleum metal primer (here and here) and then sprayed on a RustOleum enamel textured white.

(Another view here.)

Here is the assembled stand:

Using it: Within a week of finishing the stand, Russ and I had mounted the engine on it and pulled cylinders, pistons, and connecting rods. Splitting the case comes next….

(Another view here.)

This is part III of a series on N5814L, a 1972 AA-5 Traveler. Two weekends ago, we prepared the plane for trailering from Dave Wheeler’s Northwest Aviation at AWO to co-owner Russ Milham’s shop just north of Seattle.

Our adventures in trailering began with trying to find a suitable trailer. I posted a query on a regional aviation forum. A person named dww generously offered us his trailer, although it required a weekday pick-up an a bit of work to make roadworthy. The weekday pick-up proved to be difficult, because I don’t have a vehicle with a trailer hitch, and Russ’ vehicle wasn’t available during the week. But I also found a trailer for rent via Craigslist that was two minutes away from the airport.

Our trailering plans got put on hold for a week owning to an insurance snafu. Schedules didn’t allow us to get started until Saturday, mid-afternoon. When Russ showed up to pick up the Craigslist trailer, it was smaller than described and probably wasn’t going to work very well. Uh-oh. On top of that, the guy wasn’t willing to wait for Russ to do some measurements on the airplane and come back. Russ walked away.

I called an old friend, Richard V., who lives in nearby Marysville. Richard is a homebuilder with lots of connections in the local aviation community. His response? “I have a tilt bed trailer right here you can use. Come on over.” Wow!

After a few minutes rigging up an adaptor cable for the lights, we were on our way.

The Traveler is 8′3″ wide between the main gear tire midlines. We stopped by a lumber store and got a 2×8 cut to 8′6″, the maximum width allowed for a normal width trailer. With a little scrap lumber from a nearby dumpster, we rigged up a ramp.

(Another view.)

A couple of come-alongs were used to winch the plane into the trailer. The nylon strap from one winch was passed through the spar tube.

(Another view.)

The next step was to strap down the tail. Notice the 2×8 with a furniture pad underneath on top of the tail attach point. There is plenty of bendable aluminum in this area:

(Another view.)

…and lowering the bed of the trailer.

(Another view.)

The winches were replaced by cargo straps through and around the spar. A second strap was added to the tail, and engine components were secured with tie-wraps and covered in plastic and duct tape.

Finally, the wings were stacked under the fuselage with furniture pads in between. And the horizontal tail section was stacked on top of the wings.

(Other views: here, here, here, here, here.)

The road trip was uneventful. On our 30 mile trek down the I-5 corridor, we were passed by three police cars who, apparently, didn’t find it the least bit suspicious to be trailering an airplane under the cloak of darkness.

Unloading the plane was relatively simple using a thick piece of plywood as a ramp.

(Another view.)

The Eagle has landed.

The next stop was my house, where Russ dropped off the left wing and trailer. The day was a success, if a little on the long side—we end at about 1:00 a.m. Sunday. But quite a haul!

It was Saturday morning, 14 March 2009, and Russ Milham, a bunch of friends and I showed up at Northwest Aviation at AWO to dismantle N5814L, a 1972 Traveler, for trailering.

All of the photos in this post were taken by Steve Johnson, who also did a lot of disassembly work.

Here she is as we left her after inspection:

Here’s Russ surveilling the task ahead of us. Notice that cylinder one and its piston have been removed—that was from an inspection. We’re rebuilding the engine, so the rod was secured in a bed of cardboard for transportation.

And here I am bagging the lose stuff in the cabin.

The vertical fin is removed. You can see a person under the inboard end of each wing dealing with fuel lines and electrical connections in preparation for wing removal.

Following the service manual instructions was mostly helpful…as was the occasional swig of coffee.

My friend Tim Lange pulled the carburetor and alternator. The carb was sent out to a rebuilder the following Monday.

The last step was pulling the wings off, a process that required five people. One person was in the cabin to deal with the exiting torque tubes, two people were stationed at the outboard end and two at the inboard end. The idea was to engage in a coordinated rotation of the wing, with a bit of up-down rock to find the sweet spot where friction is minimized between the center-section spar and the wing spar.

We first tried the left wing. It was stubborn, but with persistent rocking the root eventually started pulling away from the plane 0.1 mm at a time. The first inch required about 90% of the effort. After that it was pretty simple. The right wing came off with no difficulties.

Steve was helping to pull the wing, so there are no photos of the process. Here’s the aftermath, with Russ and me tucking 14L into a corner.

All put away and awaiting a trailer….

We loaded everything but the horizontal tail section, the two wings, and the hull into our cars, and headed off into the sunset. Next post: Trailering a Traveler.

A couple of months ago, my Coot-building buddy, Russ Milham, and I were visiting Dave Wheeler and Northwest Aviation at their new location at the Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO). In one corner of the shop, we spotted some type of Grumman four seater.

We looked over the plane, an early AA5 Traveler, as Dave Wheeler explained that his shop was assessing the plane’s value for an estate. As it happens, Russ and I had been talking about a partnership in a 4-seater of some type. The AA5 family was definitely on our list. We took a closer look:

Don’t get me wrong…I love my Yankee, and it satisfies my mission about 80% of the time (solo local, solo cross-country, two-people locally). But the Yankee’s limited endurance with a passenger, limits on passenger weight, and limits on passenger height (to about 6′2″), sometimes gets in the way.

Anyway, Russ and I made a deal with Dave…we would do much of the labor required to inspect and assess the plane. That would give us a chance to do our private valuation, and the estate would get a less-expensive valuation. If we liked what we found, we would make an offer. Oh…I should mention that Russ is an A&P mechanic.

N5814L is a 1972 AA-5 Traveler, serial number 14. Based on on-board paperwork and logbooks, the plane has not flown since sometime around 2001. The interior is…well, old:

The panel is pretty basic and very dated. We didn’t evaluate any of the avionics, except to note that the ELT was missing.

Russ and I spend a couple of weekends opening up the plane and performing inspections. Our squawk list was long. There was a potentially un-reparable left aileron. Both fuel tanks leaked, a problem that requires an enormous amount of labor to repair. Shops charge may thousands of dollars per wing for resealing these tanks.

The engine needs an overhaul. It had had a field overhaul in 1994, but we had no paperwork whatsoever, aside from an insufficient log entry—no yellow tags for components or record of dimensional inspections. Either way, the engine has been sitting for eight years and is past Lycoming’s TBO of 12 years.

We made an offer to the estate. Dave Wheeler had assessed a similar value, and everything got passed onto the to estate. For several reasons, it took about five weeks for the estate to accept our offer and ensure a trouble-free transfer of ownership.

Last Saturday Russ and I bought the plane. We will do much of the work to return 14L to service ourselves. For starters, Russ is rebuilding the engine, and I am going to work on resealing the fuel tanks. (Of course, we’ll be shipping engine components out for proper measurement, inspection, and rebuild.) Most of the plane goes to Russ’ shop, whereas I get one wing at a time, and sort some of the components in mine.

Next installment…dismantling for trailering the plane.

The final leg of my trip was from St. Maries Municipal Airport in St. Maries, Iowa to Harvey Field (S43) in Snohomish, WA. This one-leg trip was, perhaps, the easiest of all.

I departed at 9:18 on a stunningly beautiful Saturday morning. After opening my flight plan, I contacted Spokane approach to get flight following (and permission to clip the edge of the Class C airspace). As it happened, I never received a traffic advisory on what I assumed would be a very busy (weekend) day.

The forecast was for calm winds aloft, which allowed me to fly the entire distance without stopping for fuel. In fact, I maintained 120 knots at 6,500′ across east and central Washington.

Just before I hit the Cascade mountains, I canceled flight following and climbed to 8,500′. Stevens pass was a piece of cake. When Kathy and I flew via Stevens Pass last May, we were at 5,500′ to 6,500′ the entire way. The lower altitude offers a way more breathtaking experience.

I rolled to a stop at Harvey field at 11:45, after 34.9 hours for the round trip (and excluding the few trips I made around the Madison area).

While at Harvey, I use MoGas that I haul in myself, whenever possible, so I did not measure the quantity of fuel used on this last leg. For the rest of the trip (again, excluding playing in the Madison area), I used 193 gallons of fuel for 34.2 hours of travel. That gives a fuel burn of 5.96 gph on average. The maximum fuel use was 7.05 gph on the very first leg of the trip (at 1000′ to 1500′ AGL with no leaning, and through some rain), and the minimum was 5.41 gph on the first day of the return trip flying at 4,500′ between Mankato Regional Airport (MKT) in Mankato, MN and Aberdeen Regional airport (ABR) in Aberdeen, SD

My gas millage should fall somewhere between the values by road (via Google maps) and the great circle distance. By the former, I got 18.5 mpg and traveled at, on average, 110 mph. By the latter, I got 13.3 mpg and traveled at 79 mph.

Of course, on the first day of my trip, I was forced to fly south to Portland and then diagonally across Washington state to St. Maries, ID, adding about 320 road miles to the trip. If we account for that little diversion, I got 20 mpg at an average of 120 mph. But this isn’t really fair, because I wouldn’t have had to make that diversion in my car!

In all…what a spectacular experience!

(Note: I wrote some of this en route on the evening of June 27, but I was too tired to finish it. Sorry about the delay…I hope nobody thought I was splattered against the side of a mountain for two thirds of July).

In a nutshell…day 2 was tough.

I began the morning with a low-level headache and lousy coffee. Instead of an early start, I showed up at the Hettinger airport (HEI), North Dakota at 9:15 CDT and preped the plane. The weather was looking good to my final destination at St. Maries, ID. I departed at 9:45 for Frank Wiley Airport (MLS) in Miles City, Montana. The first thing I noticed was the lousy ground speed–78 mph at 4,500 feet. At 6,500 feet I sometimes hit 85 mph. Fortunately, I had planned short legs, expecting something of a head wind.

The ride to MLS was long and bumpy, with gusty winds greeting me at the landing. I landed at 11:47. For such a large airport (two 5,600′ runways), MLS seemed rather lonely and desolate. I was off again at 12:20 on the way to Big Timber (6S0)

This trip was uneventful over relatively tame terrain. I arrived at around 2:20 pm, and after something of a carrier landing (the fiberglass main landing gears of the Yankee are remarkable!), taxied to the FBO for fuel. The FBO person was very friendly and sent me off with a bottle of cold water. It was getting very hot out.

Leg 3 was from Big Timber to Deer Lodge Airport (38S) in Deer Lodge, Montana. I had called earlier in the day to verify fuel was available and learned that the airport was unattended, but that there was a self-service fuel vending machine.

This leg proved to be the most challenging. It was hot out and I was flying through the Rocky Mountains, following I-90. Also, the wind had picked up to 20 knots with gusts, raising the possibility of hitting down drafts while crossing passes. Finally, there were density altitude warnings being offered on the navaids because it was hot outside. (I was pretty comfortable in the plane, however.)

I departed at 3:07, immediately noticing the decreased performance of the plane departing from an airport at 4,500′ with a density altitude of more like 7,500′. In a few minutes I passed Mission (LVM) and the mountain fun began.

The plane was struggling to climb. I wanted as much altitude as possible crossing Bozeman pass, which is at 5700′, but I was having trouble getting over 7,500′. The thermals helped. I stuck to the north side of the valley which was bathed in sunlight and creating some pockets of updrafts. I pulled the nose up to gain altitude and fly more slowly through thermals, and pointed the nose level to fly more quickly through the down drafts. That was enough to get me up to nearly 8,000′ as I approached the pass. And good thing, too. I lost nearly 1,000 feet traversing the pass under full power. I popped over the pass at 6,700′ with the Bozeman Class D airspace in my face. The ceiling of that airspace is 7,000′ feet (the airport [BZN] is at 4,500 feet).

I planned to overflying the Class D airspace at 8,000′ or so, now I found myself scrambling to get the ATIS and call the tower for permission to fly through the airspace. In fact, I was at 7,300 feet as I hit the edge of the controlled airspace, so it wasn’t strictly necessary, but it never hurts to talk to folks.

Bozeman is the start of a big, relatively flat, 50 mile valley. I began early gaining altitude for the upcoming mountians, but found that the Yankee would only climb to about 8,300′ using a little less than full throttle and aggressive leaning. Just past Whitehall, things got topographically more interesting and I was able to use thermals to climb to 9,000′, which was plenty of altitude over the pass just East of Butte.

Thirty minutes later I was in the pattern at Deer Lodge. The wind had died down somewhat but it was still gusty, and the approach end of runway 30 is on something of drop-off, so I used a fast and steep approach to avoid problems with gusts and down drafts. I landed at 4:50 pm, weary of being knocked around. One more leg to go.

While refueling, the airport manager, who I had spoken to earlier, drove to the airport to greet me. He was hinting that Deer Lodge would be a good place to stop for the day—and he almost convinced me!

At 5:36, I was running up the engine for departure on leg 4 to St. Maries, Idaho (S72). It was hot and gusty at 4,700′ feet of elevation, but I had a 5,800′ runway in front of me. And I needed every foot of it. The Yankee climbed very slowly—so slowly that I immediately rejected a straight-out departure and flew a complete pattern. I think I had 800′ of elevation when I flew over my departure spot. That was enough, though, and I again worked hard to gain altitude, although the ground elevation along I-90 was decreasing after Deer Lodge (actually, everything after Butte).

I flew over Missoula at 6:30, without any difficulties staying above the 5,700 foot ceiling of the Missoula Class D airspace. My ground speed was 94 MPH, meaning the headwinds were not so strong, and I wasn’t being bounced around too much. The last real pass is called Mullen Pass at 5,200′. It was a piece of cake! In fact, this part of the trip, which I anticipated would be the most difficult, was pretty easy. My ground speed picked up a little more as I headed west.

I landed with a smile on my face at St. Maries at about 7:50. I filled up with $4.65/gallon aviation fuel. The only hitch in St. Maries is that there were no rooms at the two motels. But I found a room in a wonderful old Victorian-style B&B.

I began my return journey from Blackhawk Airfield (8Y7) near Madison, Wisconsin, to Harvey Field (S43) near Seattle, WA. Last night (Wednesday) the weather was looking iffy. There was an area of scattered thunderstorms forecast along my route. Everything looked doable into central Minnesota. I flight-planned a hop to Mankato Regional Airport (MKT) and then one route straight west [MKT–>Aberdeen, SD (ABR)–>Bowman, ND (BPP)] and an alternative route to the north [MKT–>Wheaton, MN, Municipal (KETH)–> Bismarck Municipal (Y19)–> Frank Wiley Field in Miles City, MT (MLS)].

The first stop was for fuel at Morey (C29). I departed Blackhawk at 6:52 CDT, with my mother and step father waiving from the sidelines, and landed at Morey some 30 minutes later (I skirted under the MSN Class-C airspace). I was off the ground at Morey at 7:36.

As forecast, the weather to Mankato was perfect. I landed at 9:54 CDT and tied the plane down so I could do some additional flight planning. As it happened, the westward route looked a little better than the northwest route. I had had a tailwind heading out of Wisconsin and the winds aloft looked like more of the same through Montana. I departed MKT at 11:10 CDT for the leg to ABR. Things got a little bumpy along the route at 4,500′, but not unmanageably so.

Touchdown at ABR was 1:20 pm CDT. I spun the plane around in the middle of the 7,000′ runway and announced my back-taxi as if I knew what I was doing (well…I really did, this time). When the kid working the line asked me what kind of fuel I needed, I said, “Mogas, please.” To my surprise, he pointed to a fixed tank down at the end of FBO row. Cool! Why hadn’t I asked for mogas the first time I was here?

Aberdeen was hot at 1:56 pm CDT, departure time. And I expected plenty of light chop on the way to Bowman, ND. But, there was a light cloud cover to the west of ABR and the flight was silky smooth at 4,500′. About 40 miles out from Bowman, ND, the distinct fuzz of heavy rain was visible right where I wanted to go. Not only that, but I was watching the cell grow before my eyes. My alternate was Hettinger, ND, Municipal Airport (HEI), a “little” (4,800′ strip) that supposedly had fuel.

I flew by HEI with an estimated 70 minutes of fuel on board…I flew an extra 15 miles toward the cell just to be sure it really was where I though it was. It was. Not only that, I could see lightening strikes to the ground. I pulled a 180 degree turn, and headed for HEI.

I was met by a guy who does double duty of harvesting and attending to airplanes. He helped me get started with the fueling. I though I’d simply wait for the cell to move to the north—perhaps for an hour or so—and continue on to MLS for the night. I pulled out the laptop and started checking the weather while sitting on the ramp. After about 20 minutes, a second cell sprouted to the south. It grew very fast. There was daylight between the original cell and the new cell, but given how fast the second cell popped up, I was not about to try flying between them.

Another friendly airport guy walked up to me and said, “That storm is going to pass right over us in 10 minutes. You have three choices: fly between them, fly about 80 miles to the south to get around ‘em, or we can put your plane in the hanger for the night.” It turns out they had a car I could use, so I did a quick internet search for motels in Hettinger, ND, called, and learned that there was a room.

Five minutes later I was taxing into a hangar as the rain let loose. Apparently there was some hail at the motel, too. So, that’s where the tale ends for tonight. I am told the best steak house in the area is right around the corner from the motel.

I’ve been very busy the last week, and didn’t have time for any updates…I’ll fill in the details today.

On Friday, June 20th, I got a ride to Morey field (C29, in Middleton, on the far West side of Madison) so that I could transport the plane to Blackhawk field (87Y, in Cottage Grove on the far East side of Madison).

Blackhawk is very close to my Mother’s house, but there is no fuel available there. It turns out that the long runway (04-22, 2,814′ x 57′) is somewhat rough and is obstructed by trees. I landed on 04 and immediately wished I had not–the landing beat the shit out of my plane. The other runway (06-27) is 2,203′ x 56′ and is well groomed and unobstructed. The runway is plenty long for landing, and with a 500′ of displaced threshold in addition to the 2,203′ of landing space, was ample for departure as well.

Saturday, June 21st, I departed Blackhawk for the Coot fly-in at Sauk Prairie airport (91C). The landing at Sauk Prairie was challenging because there was a hefty cross-wind. There were eight or nine of us who showed up at Richard Steeves hangar for the meeting. Even though I flew in from Seattle, I was not the most distant traveler—Andy Adams showed up from California.

Unfortunately, Richard’s Coot was having mixture issues that kept him from flying (much). Instead, we piled into cars and headed to a Cafe in town for lunch and chat. The winds were stronger and gustier for my departure. As I rolled out, I noticed Andy Adams crouched on the edge of the runway with a video camera pointing at me. The return to Blackhawk was uneventful—only a modestly strong cross-wind landing. What I didn’t notice until the roll-out is that there were a couple of deer nibbling on trees off the distal right side of the runway. I stopped well short of them.

I tied down the plane for the week.

Day three brings me to my home town of Madison—my planned destination. It was a beautiful day for flying. Along much of the route I could see evidence of cumulus build-up to the north and to the south, but it was all very far away.

I got a late start today simply because I was tired and didn’t feel 100%. Oh…and I was still on Pacific time. The flight planning went excruciatingly slowly, considering I was planing on flying three point-to-point legs along a great-circle route. The stars aligned (wait…I mean, the airports aligned) and I found three legs with almost equal spacing (214 nm, 205 nm, and 216 nm).

I departed for the first of three legs at 10:00 am (that would be in PDT) from Bowman field (BPP) in North Dakota. Today’s journey was over mostly flat lands. It was a good day for exercising basic cross-country flying skills.

First stop was in Aberdeen, South Dakota (ABR). I arrived at 12:20 (again PDT). The only thing eventful about this was the construction that closed down taxiways and isolated the FBO row. I had to back-taxi about half-way down the 6,900′ runway. The maintenance people were taking the lead in helping out us timid transients. While I was running-up for departure, it was deja vu all over again when I heard a Cessna pilot ask “Maintenance, I understand I need to back-taxi runway 13 to get to the FBOs?” Except this pilot verbalized my stifled initial reaction, “Can I do that?!?” Yep…even the regional jets had to back-taxi and pull a 180 in order to depart 13.

Leg two was from ABR to Mankato, Minnesota (MKT). I departed at 1:00 pm. Aside from one evasive maneuver to dodge a flock of water fowl of some sort doing maneuvers at 5,500 feet (!!), the leg was uneventful. I arrived at 3:00 pm. The FBO people there were very friendly. The airport was a little difficult to navigate around because there was, apparently, some paving done and the markings for runways and taxiways had not been painted on. It was a great help to zoom in on the airport on the GPS.

The last leg was from Mankato to Morey Field in Middleton (C29). I departed at 4:00 (PDT or 6:00 CDT) knowing that I would have only an hour of daylight left on my arrival. I crossed the Mississippi at 5:13. The big river was awesome…even from 5,500′. The topography of south western Wisconsin was a refreshing break from the monotony to the West.

I though I would recognize Morey field. Some years ago, Richard Steeves took me flying in his Coot out of Morey field. But, the place has had a big upgrade. No more tie-downs in a grass field. I parked the plane at 6:00 pm PDT, which was 8:00 pm local time.

I’ll write more later…now I must sleep.