Category: Cavalon

June 30, 2018

When I started flying ultralights in 1999 my instructor, John Wall, was based at Bailes Airport on the outskirts of Angleton, TX.   Bailes is also the home of the EAA 347 chapter.  In the same time frame as my solo, I purchased a Quicksilver, which gave way to a trike (Rossi), and then a RANS S12-XL, all which were hangared at Bailes.  Sometime around February 2003, I sold the RANS and the plane that replaced it — the Aventura II — was to be hangared at Hooks and then West Houston.  So I was at Bailes Airport for about three years… three years of a lot of fun, great fellowship, a few minor tragedies, and one major one.

A week ago, the current EAA 347 president — John Kotke — invited us to visit the airport for their monthly Saturday meeting, so we accepted.  It has been over 19 years since I first started visiting Bailes, and probably 5 years since I last visited the airport.  Our plan was to fly directly there, then after the meeting pop over to the Runway Cafe at Texas Gulf Coast Regional (< 5 miles away), then fly back to Anahuac.  The weather looked great, but a few days prior there was a huge influx of airborne desert sand from the Sahara (yep, the big one, in Africa!), so before we even got to Anahuac it was plain to see: the sky was quite hazy.

This picture (taken later in the day) gives you an idea of how bad the haze was.

In fact, to the human eye, it was worse than this.  (The camera seems to have done a fair job of picking up details that I couldn’t see.)  It is potentially dangerous to fly when you can’t see the horizon or anything else that gives you a visual indication of flying “wings level.”  (I put that in quotes since my Cavalon doesn’t technically have wings, but it means the same thing even for a gyroplane.)  Being in that kind of situation is little different than flying into a cloud… no form of visual reference.  So, we were cautious.

Upon arriving at the Anahuac hangar, the gyro club members were out in full force, very active in flying or working on their gyro’s.  After a few conversations we were off.

At first, we started off by following the coast of Trinity Bay rather than launching ourselves across the open bay.

We then climbed above the clouds.  The base of the clouds seemed to be at about 2500 feet, so I had to be below that by about 500 feet, or above the clouds.  Once we got to about 3500 feet, there was less haze, but it still wasn’t great.  In fact, although some clouds were easy to make out, other blended into the haze which made it difficult to tell their boundaries.  And if you don’t know the boundaries of a cloud, you have to assume they are bigger and/or more spread out than you can see, and that made me uncomfortable.  (The photo below — as most of these — have been tweaked to provide WAY better definition and contrast than we saw at the time.)

When I took the photo (above), the bigger cloud just kind of melted into the haze.  I couldn’t see a horizon — or any land, for that matter — but the clouds themselves gave me a visual reference.  I decided it would be wiser to fly under the clouds and so descended almost as quickly as I had gotten to 3500 feet.  Several minutes later, a break in the clouds and I could see land.  Below me, near the transition between Trinity Bay and Galveston Bay, a boat was making circles in the water.  The bay is so shallow that the boats’ propellor was stirring up the bottom silt, creating a cool looking palette of wavy browns.

Ahead of us was League City and we were out of that hazy water area and now flying over solid land, with a nice (if still quite hazy) horizon.

About 65 minutes after we left Anahuac, we were circling the pattern at Bailes.  Even my approach to the runway brought back memories of the many times, many planes in which I had done this.  Power lines to the left, fence line to the right, and a nice, long strip of grass.

In my Quicksilver, I struggled to get over those power lines in order to stay in the pattern and do touch-n-go’s, but the other planes I owned didn’t have those issues.  Now turning base and final were just pleasant turns, then line up for final, put the engine to idle, gentle descent, flair and some bumps before leveling off my rotors and turning back to the hangar.  Yep, just like I remember it!  Very sweet.

There were several aircraft already parked, so I sidled between two of them and powered down.  There was also a crowd of people welcoming us, which felt pretty good.  I turned off everything and got out, then put the sock on the end of the rotor.

The EAA members then approached and started asking questions.  It was fun to be able to share my love of flying gyroplanes with them.  A few couldn’t quite believe there was any significant difference in comfort between fixed-wing and gyroplanes, so they turned to another authoritative source… Amy!  She just smiled and confirmed what I had said, that there is a huge difference in comfort, the rotor blades not just cutting through the bumps, but because they are flexible they also soften them.  That is one of the primary reasons I switched from fixed-wing… in a very light fixed-wing, if you fly in the middle of the day, the roiling air just beats you up and you have to fight to keep wings level.  It’s exhausting.  But in the Cavalon and other gyroplanes, we can not only fly comfortably during mid-day, but we can fly in winds that keep most fixed-wing aircraft in their hangars.

I walked through the hangar to see what they had, and there was only one ultralight, a Kolb Firestar that used to be owned by an old flying buddy, Jimmy Young.  I had flown alongside him when he had the Firestar and I had a Kolb MkIIIC, and taken many pictures of him in that plane.  Most of the aircraft in the hangar were older GA planes, and one Hummelbird, a small, kinda funny looking aircraft but very capable.  The members were an enthusiastic group and it was fun to be around them.

After an hour, our stomach’s were rumbling, and Amy had wanted to do a “lunch run” to Texas Gulf Coast Airport (KLBX), to the Runway Cafe, as we have done before.  So, we bid farewell to everyone, hopped in and took off.  Though the distance to KLBX was short, we still had to position ourselves correctly, fly over mid-field, do the 270-degree turn and end up in right-downwind for runway 17.  The wind was really blowing which always makes for a very short and soft landing, then we taxied to a spot near the restaurant.

About an hour later we were climbing back into the Cavalon, with full tummies.  (The Runway Cafe does a good job with their meals… recommended!)

The flight back was uneventful, and with a nice 10 knot tailwind this leg took a lot less time.  As we approached Trinity Bay again, we noticed that the haze had improved a little, but not enough to do a bee-line across it to the Anahuac airport.  We turned a bit toward the north, keeping land in sight at all times, then as the town of Anahuac came out of the haze, we pointed the Cavalon straight to the airport.   Soon it was tucked into its hangar, waved goodbye to the gyro club members, and we were driving home.

Here is a overview of our flight profile:

Overall, 156 miles flown, and about 2 hours 7 minutes of flight time.

 

Note:  If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  Go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

 

June 22-24, 2018

Now that it’s summer and the doors are off the Cavalon, I wanted to branch out a bit and stretch the legs, so to speak.  Up in the Dallas/Richardson area, I have several family members so I figured a flight up there wouldn’t be too much to bite off.  After making sure everyone was going to be available, and that we’d be picked up and housed for the weekend, we set our sights on the June 22-24 time frame.

Friday morning, June 22, a quick weather check showed that a later start would be better than an early one (due to low clouds).  So we got to the airport, stowed our meager luggage (which is all the plane will hold) and got things ready to go.  With the tank near full, full luggage and two people, this was going to be an MTOW (the aircraft is at Maximum Take Off Weight) departure.

A few weeks ago, I intentionally did a full MTOW take-off and landing, just to make sure I could do it in the summer.  The roll-out was longer, of course, but I ensured the rotor was up at a higher rpm than normal before I engaged the throttle.  I also kept the brake on until that moment, to ensure we had all the runway available to us.

We got off the ground without much of an issue — around 12:10pm — even though there was a density altitude of over 2500 feet!  The climb out was slow so my turbocharger was engaged much longer than normal but still a lot less than the 5 minutes maximum.  Before long, we were at 1500 feet and heading NNW across Lake Anahuac.  On days just prior, the weather forecasters had predicted a nice tailwind.  Today, though, the wind had moved around so it was

blowing from the SW, not from the south, so our anticipated tailwind was reduced to almost nothing.  Still, that’s better, by a long shot, than a headwind!

The flight plan for this trip was about as simple as they get.  It was a straight shot, with no deviations required.  I did go under the Class B just a bit, but I was planning to be lower than 3,000 feet, so I wouldn’t come anywhere close to that airspace.  Between Anahuac and Rockwall, there were no other airspace I had to avoid or otherwise deal with.  Easy!  The only thing left to do was get in the plane and go, and so we did.  Here is a shot of the panel just after we got airborne:

There may be some readers who will wonder what everything is, so let me explain some of it.  (If you’re in the know, then skip down a couple of paragraphs.)  The largest component — just left of center — is an iPad Mini 4.  I run my navigation software on it.  The other rectangular device — just right of center — is my smart-phone.  It, too, runs my navigation software.  I run both for redundancy.  And having two screens lets me zoom into one or look up information while leaving the other one as it is.  Either or both of these devices can be connected to my ADS-B “network”, but usually I just have the iPad connected.  The ADS-B allows me, among other things, to electronically “see” other aircraft that are similarly equipped.

The round instruments on either side of the smart-phone are (on the left) the airspeed indicator and (on the right) the altimeter.  On the far right side are all the switches and circuit breakers that control power to all the instruments.  On the far left is a cluster of analog gauges that tell me rotor rpm, engine rpm, oil pressure and temperature, water temperature and a fuel gauge.  Scattered around the rest of the panel are my radio and transponder, compass, manifold pressure gauge, pressure system gauge, temp gauges, and more.  At the top of the panel is where I put my SPOT locator, for emergencies.  Behind it and partially obscured is the vertical card compass.  There’s not a frivolous instrument on the panel, which is the way it should be.  If you’re not accustomed to it, it looks complicated but with some training, it is easy to figure out.

Another great addition to the cockpit is my wonderful co-pilot!  While she is not a pilot, she does understand a lot about aviation and is always willing to learn more.  She doesn’t want to become a pilot, but she definitely wants to know enough to help me out when I need it.  And, it’s fair to say, she is excellent and a great help!  So, yeah, best “component” in the plane!

My first trip in the Cavalon was and still is, the longest I’ve made… from Maryland to Texas.  That trip was in winter, this one is in summer, so the environment I’m flying through for this trip is surprisingly different.  And I’m not just talking about temperature.  Summer is full of roiling air while winter air is (usually) calmer.  Summer storms can spin themselves up quickly.  Winter storms are usually just associated with a known air mass, or front, and usually with a lot of advanced notice.  Given all the differences it seems easy to say that winter flying is better, but none of the aircraft I’ve owned prior to this one were enclosed or had cabin heat.  I have done some cross-country flights in open cockpits when air temps were in the 50’s, and it wasn’t fun.  Ultimately though, one generally likes to just fly and will put up with a fair amount to do it and summer is one of those things you just put up with.

Anticipating the summer heat, I took the doors off the Cavalon and it certainly does make it less hot when on the ground.  When the doors are on, I typically leave the doors open until just before I take off, and, when landing, open them as soon as I’ve landed and am taxiing.  When flying above about 2,000 feet, the air gets cooler and cooler so having the doors on and closed wouldn’t be too bad, but I do like to fly low, to be able to see things and take pictures.  (No doors means better photography, too.)  And the time from “doors closed” to 2,000 feet can be several minutes, depending on what’s going on at the airport, so that period of time could be quite hot inside the cockpit.  This flight to Rockwall will be the first time we’ve spent long periods without the doors so I was a little concerned about being wind-whipped.

I’d love to say that my concern was misplaced but I can’t.  We were, indeed, buffeted constantly by the wind.  It’s actually quite similar to being in a car, driving down a west Texas highway at 75 mph with the windows open versus the windows closed.  It’s somewhat louder and, just as in the car with the wind blasting through the windows, you get a little worn out after a while.  Even above 2,000 feet where it was a very nice temperature we still suffered from the small but constant battering.  Describing it this way may make it seem bad but it wasn’t that bad.  Just a little more tiring.  I can easily say that compared to an open gyroplane or one of the fixed-wing ultralights I used to fly, this was still so much nicer.  I may yet experiment a bit more with the doors on during the summer.

One advantage I leave behind with the doors off is being able to go much higher.  Temps drop about 3-4 degrees Fahrenheit per 1,000 feet.  A sweltering 96°F on the taxiway is only a warm but pleasant 88°F at 2,000 feet. (Humidity is usually lower, too, and with some wind coming inside there’s a wind chill factor as well.)  If I wanted to go to 9,500 feet — something I could have done on Sunday to reduce headwinds considerably — I’d be dealing with 58°F temps… or even lower, really, because of the wind chill factor.  I know, it’s surprising, but being June we didn’t bring winter coats with us.  If we had had the doors on we could have gone to 9,500 feet, fired up the cabin heat and been very comfortable at 75°F.  My conclusion after this flight is that anything over 2 hours may require some serious consideration of keeping the doors on.

Besides the occasional buffeting it was a pretty nice day to fly.  The clouds didn’t go as high as they usually do and there was a bit of haze, but it was generally very pleasant.

The slight tailwind was nice, too, inasmuch as it allowed us to get to Rockwall Airport in a reasonable period of time…  3 hours and 18 minutes.  My plan was for us to average 70 knots, getting there in 3 hours, but when the plane is fully loaded, it seems to prefer slower speeds.  Honestly, after takeoff and achieving my cruising altitude, I just tend to fly the plane faster and faster up to the point where I start to feel a bit uncomfortable.  There are small cues that occur at faster speeds: primarily the sound of the rotor and the shaking of the cabin.  I am 100% confident the aircraft can easily withstand this increased speed, but I prefer not to.

When in smooth air I’ve gone up to the red-line of the aircraft, 85 knots, and felt comfortable.  But I’ve only done that when I don’t receive those cues.  I am able to go fast quite frequently when flying in winter but it’s more rare in the summer when the air is bubbly.  I can’t quite put an exact number on any of it but I know when I’ve reached that point.  Despite what the aircraft can handle, I simply prefer to enjoy my flight and try to feel comfortable, even if it takes me a bit longer to get to my destination.  So my average speed going to Rockwall was somewhere just above 65 knots (76 mph).

Even on the best of days the Cavalon is not a fast aircraft and is not intended for only flying from Point A to Point B quickly.  It excels in local flying for fun and being close to the ground to see things.

For example:

Obviously, a trip from Houston to Dallas is not trivial so the Cavalon can be used for cross-countries… it is arguably one of the best gyroplanes for cross-countries, in fact, being quite comfortable and, with doors on, isolates the occupants from the wind and can keep them warm in the winter.  It also has a large fuel tank, allowing flights of 3-4 hours without stopping.   And it can fly at altitudes beyond 10,000 feet, making it very versatile for short or long distances.

For this trip to Rockwall, with the doors off, the Cavalon was comfortable despite having the doors off and having to deal with occasional gusty winds.  About 3 hours 18 minutes after we left Anahuac, we are in the pattern at Rockwall.

My nephew, Brian, and his family were soon there to pick us up.  Before they arrived I had the plane refueled to be ready for tomorrow.  I had offered to take anyone in the family up for a short flight.  I brought my own chocks and put them around one wheel and, as a precaution, I looped a tie-down chain around the front wheel.  (Unlike fixed-wing aircraft, a gyroplane isn’t greatly affected by winds on the ground but it never hurts to be careful!)  Then I put the cover over it.

This was only the second time I had used the ‘travel cover,’ the other time on my way back from Maryland.  But I had the doors on the plane, then.  With the doors off, the travel cover doesn’t quite close off the open doors.   Hmmmm.  If it rained, I could easily see some water finding its way into the interior.  This is something I hadn’t thought of.  A quick weather check and it seemed like there was only a tiny chance of rain overnight, so I decided it was good for now.  I checked with the FBO and they did have a hangar (just a covered, open-air spot, commonly called a T-cover) I could rent for the night but I decided I’d wait until Saturday night to do that.

After dinner and a fun evening with my nephew, his wife and two young sons, we got some much needed rest for the next day.

Everyone showed up at the airport around 10:30 am and the elder of the two sons got to sit in the plane while millions of pixels got altered in everyone’s cameras.

Soon enough the cloud base was high enough for some local flying so I started by taking my nephew, then my niece, then the two (much older) sons of another nephew, and then my brother.  Mostly we flew to the east of the airport, out in the rural areas.  Somewhere in there Brian’s wife was talked into just a quick flight around the pattern and I think she’s glad she did it… she had a smile on her face the entire 4 minutes!

I tried to record each flight so they’d have a kind of keepsake…. here is the track when my niece had her flight, heading east but then circling back around and over the lake:

At one point, we started to see some raindrops on the windshield, so after landing I quickly put the plane under its T-cover and waited a while.  But that was short-lived and soon we were again flying around the area.  The last flight was with my brother who had a mission for me.  There were a couple of churches in Plano he wanted some aerial photos of, so I marked them in my navigation software and off we went, this time to the west.

After over-flying the two churches I realized that my nephew’s house was close by so we diverted south-southwest, took a few shots of the house as we turned, then headed back.  Here is that track:

At the end of the sixth flight I rolled the Cavalon into its T-cover space for the night, chocked it and covered it, then again went to my nephew’s house.  Whew.  It was fun to let them enjoy the flight of a gyroplane but it’s also a bit tiring.

The next day, Sunday, the weather looked like it was going to cooperate with us, but I did note that the wind was going to be directly against us.  It may be as much as a 20-knot headwind!  Based on weather maps, the only altitude that may provide some relief was at 9,500 feet but, with the doors off and lack of winter clothing, that was out of the question.  We knew we were going to be in for a long, slow return home.

We left around 10:30 am… again, to let some of the low clouds rise up or burn off and, in general, the air column was less hazy than the prior two days but the cloud base was still only around 3,000 feet.

Our return track was virtually identical to the one we flew on Friday.  I did offset the track by a mile or two to the west just so we’d see slightly different things.  But the big things like lakes were the same.

Flying into wind, objectively, wasn’t much different than flying with a tailwind.  We were still subject to buffeting and gusts but, generally, we were quite comfortable and at 2,000 feet the air temperature was pleasant.  But subjectively, we could look down and see the very slow progress we were making.  Shadows of clouds were rushing by us, heading north, while we crawled south against a 15- to 20-knot headwind.

There were times when our ground speed was only 40-knots!  Ugh.  I managed to keep it up around 50-knots (ground speed) most of the time.  We had to do some recalculations on fuel, of course, due to the slower ground speed (which means a longer time in the air).  Ultimately we decided that we probably wouldn’t have enough fuel to make it home (and still have a normal safety margin) and did a precautionary landing at Livingston Airport where I added about 7 gallons of fuel.  With the fuel already in the tank plus the added 7 gallons, we had 2 hours of flight time available to us and needed a little more than 1 hour to get home, with no diversions.

Here is the Cavalon parked at Livingston:

We also took advantage of (what we think was the) FBO’s tiny air-conditioned office, available to pilots, to gulp down our lunch and take a much needed break.  Soon enough we were back in the air, with a bit more than an hour to home.  Though we were anxious to get there, wishing for it didn’t do any good and our ground speed did not improve.  Still, there were more interesting things to see as we looked around:

Just minutes from our home airport the clouds started to look darker, more threatening.  Many of them had very dark bases and a few drops fell on us here and there.  I even decided to fly around one particularly dark and low cloud as I didn’t want to be the recipient of a sudden downpour.

Based on frequent radio calls on the Anahuac CTAF there didn’t seem to be anyone in the pattern so I made a direct descent to runway 17, landed at 3:12 pm and taxied to the hangar.  It had been a very long return trip.  From Rockwall to Livingston we had been in the air for almost exactly 3 hours.  That means a ground speed of about 52 knots!  Ugh.  From Livingston to Anahuac it took 1 hour and 13 minutes for an even slower ground speed of 48 knots.  No wonder we were tired.  Altogether that’s 4 hours and 14 minutes in the air or almost a full hour longer than our flight to Rockwall.  If we had had the doors on and climbed to 9,500 feet, we likely would have avoided most of the headwind.  This has caused me to have second thoughts about leaving the doors off, in summer, for long cross-country flights.

The other significant variation was that, flying near MTOW, my fuel consumption was much worse than my flight from Maryland when I was lighter and flying in the cold, dense air of January.  I managed 4.4 gallons-per-hour for the 1,335 mile flight from Maryland, but this weekend’s 500 mile trip I only managed about 5.6 gallons-per-hour.  The increased fuel consumption becomes more of an issue when fighting a headwind!  My range is definitely affected.

Overall I was very happy with the flight and performance of the Cavalon.  With no special clothing or helmets required, able to eat or drink as needed (and, if we had wanted, we could have listened to some music), we were about as comfortable as driving down Highway 67 from Marfa to Presidio with the windows open… but we were a lot cooler, most of the time, and had a better view.  It was great to see my family and show them the fun I’m having with my gyroplane and I loved the quality time I spent in the air with my wife.  Can’t imagine a nicer weekend!

To see the full track and where the photos were taken, check out my Ramblr page for this flight:  http://rblr.co/gLLD

I made a short video showing my family members’ smiles as they fly with me (no music, so, you might want to mute it):

Statistics:

Anahuac to Rockwall:
.    Distance: 217.86nm (250.7 sm)
.    Time:  3:18 (3.31) hrs
.    Average speed:  65.82 nm/hr avg speed (75.74 mph)
.    Fuel used:  18.5 gallons
.    Fuel consumption rate:  5.59 gph

Rockwall to Livingston:
.    Distance:  155.92nm (179.43 sm)
.    Time:  3.01 hrs
.    Average speed: 51.8 nm/hr avg speed (59.61 mph)
.    Fuel used:  16.9 gallons
.    Fuel consumption rate:  5.61 gph

Livingston to Anahuac:
.    Distance:  58.86nm (67.73 sm)
.    Time:  1:13 (1.22) hrs
.    Average speed:  48.25 nm/hr avg speed (55.51 mph)
.    Fuel used:  6.9 gal
.    Fuel consumption rate:  5.65 gph

Entire trip:
.    Distance:  432.64 nm (497.87 sm)
.    Time:  7.54 hrs
.    Average speed:  55.29 nm/hr avg speed (66.03 mph)
.    Fuel used:  42.3 gallons
.    Fuel consumption rate:  5.61 gph (considerably worse than my 4.4 gph from Maryland to Texas, but for that trip I was lighter and it was in the winter)

Also, I spent almost 2 hours in the air, combined, with my Dallas-based family members.

My average altitude overall was at 1,971 feet.

 

Note:  If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  Go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

 

 

 

June 22-24, 2018

Now that it’s summer and the doors are off the Cavalon, I wanted to branch out a bit and stretch the legs, so to speak.  Up in the Dallas/Richardson area, I have several family members so I figured a flight up there wouldn’t be too much to bite off.  After making sure everyone was going to be available, and that we’d be picked up and housed for the weekend, we set our sights on the June 22-24 time frame.

Friday morning, June 22, a quick weather check showed that a later start would be better than an early one (due to low clouds).  So we got to the airport, stowed our meager luggage (which is all the plane will hold) and got things ready to go.  With the tank near full, full luggage and two people, this was going to be an MTOW (the aircraft is at Maximum Take Off Weight) departure.

A few weeks ago, I intentionally did a full MTOW take-off and landing, just to make sure I could do it in the summer.  The roll-out was longer, of course, but I ensured the rotor was up at a higher rpm than normal before I engaged the throttle.  I also kept the brake on until that moment, to ensure we had all the runway available to us.

We got off the ground without much of an issue — around 12:10pm — even though there was a density altitude of over 2500 feet!  The climb out was slow so my turbocharger was engaged much longer than normal but still a lot less than the 5 minutes maximum.  Before long, we were at 1500 feet and heading NNW across Lake Anahuac.  On days just prior, the weather forecasters had predicted a nice tailwind.  Today, though, the wind had moved around so it was

blowing from the SW, not from the south, so our anticipated tailwind was reduced to almost nothing.  Still, that’s better, by a long shot, than a headwind!

The flight plan for this trip was about as simple as they get.  It was a straight shot, with no deviations required.  I did go under the Class B just a bit, but I was planning to be lower than 3,000 feet, so I wouldn’t come anywhere close to that airspace.  Between Anahuac and Rockwall, there were no other airspace I had to avoid or otherwise deal with.  Easy!  The only thing left to do was get in the plane and go, and so we did.  Here is a shot of the panel just after we got airborne:

There may be some readers who will wonder what everything is, so let me explain some of it.  (If you’re in the know, then skip down a couple of paragraphs.)  The largest component — just left of center — is an iPad Mini 4.  I run my navigation software on it.  The other rectangular device — just right of center — is my smart-phone.  It, too, runs my navigation software.  I run both for redundancy.  And having two screens lets me zoom into one or look up information while leaving the other one as it is.  Either or both of these devices can be connected to my ADS-B “network”, but usually I just have the iPad connected.  The ADS-B allows me, among other things, to electronically “see” other aircraft that are similarly equipped.

The round instruments on either side of the smart-phone are (on the left) the airspeed indicator and (on the right) the altimeter.  On the far right side are all the switches and circuit breakers that control power to all the instruments.  On the far left is a cluster of analog gauges that tell me rotor rpm, engine rpm, oil pressure and temperature, water temperature and a fuel gauge.  Scattered around the rest of the panel are my radio and transponder, compass, manifold pressure gauge, pressure system gauge, temp gauges, and more.  At the top of the panel is where I put my SPOT locator, for emergencies.  Behind it and partially obscured is the vertical card compass.  There’s not a frivolous instrument on the panel, which is the way it should be.  If you’re not accustomed to it, it looks complicated but with some training, it is easy to figure out.

Another great addition to the cockpit is my wonderful co-pilot!  While she is not a pilot, she does understand a lot about aviation and is always willing to learn more.  She doesn’t want to become a pilot, but she definitely wants to know enough to help me out when I need it.  And, it’s fair to say, she is excellent and a great help!  So, yeah, best “component” in the plane!

My first trip in the Cavalon was and still is, the longest I’ve made… from Maryland to Texas.  That trip was in winter, this one is in summer, so the environment I’m flying through for this trip is surprisingly different.  And I’m not just talking about temperature.  Summer is full of roiling air while winter air is (usually) calmer.  Summer storms can spin themselves up quickly.  Winter storms are usually just associated with a known air mass, or front, and usually with a lot of advanced notice.  Given all the differences it seems easy to say that winter flying is better, but none of the aircraft I’ve owned prior to this one were enclosed or had cabin heat.  I have done some cross-country flights in open cockpits when air temps were in the 50’s, and it wasn’t fun.  Ultimately though, one generally likes to just fly and will put up with a fair amount to do it and summer is one of those things you just put up with.

Anticipating the summer heat, I took the doors off the Cavalon and it certainly does make it less hot when on the ground.  When the doors are on, I typically leave the doors open until just before I take off, and, when landing, open them as soon as I’ve landed and am taxiing.  When flying above about 2,000 feet, the air gets cooler and cooler so having the doors on and closed wouldn’t be too bad, but I do like to fly low, to be able to see things and take pictures.  (No doors means better photography, too.)  And the time from “doors closed” to 2,000 feet can be several minutes, depending on what’s going on at the airport, so that period of time could be quite hot inside the cockpit.  This flight to Rockwall will be the first time we’ve spent long periods without the doors so I was a little concerned about being wind-whipped.

I’d love to say that my concern was misplaced but I can’t.  We were, indeed, buffeted constantly by the wind.  It’s actually quite similar to being in a car, driving down a west Texas highway at 75 mph with the windows open versus the windows closed.  It’s somewhat louder and, just as in the car with the wind blasting through the windows, you get a little worn out after a while.  Even above 2,000 feet where it was a very nice temperature we still suffered from the small but constant battering.  Describing it this way may make it seem bad but it wasn’t that bad.  Just a little more tiring.  I can easily say that compared to an open gyroplane or one of the fixed-wing ultralights I used to fly, this was still so much nicer.  I may yet experiment a bit more with the doors on during the summer.

One advantage I leave behind with the doors off is being able to go much higher.  Temps drop about 3-4 degrees Fahrenheit per 1,000 feet.  A sweltering 96°F on the taxiway is only a warm but pleasant 88°F at 2,000 feet. (Humidity is usually lower, too, and with some wind coming inside there’s a wind chill factor as well.)  If I wanted to go to 9,500 feet — something I could have done on Sunday to reduce headwinds considerably — I’d be dealing with 58°F temps… or even lower, really, because of the wind chill factor.  I know, it’s surprising, but being June we didn’t bring winter coats with us.  If we had had the doors on we could have gone to 9,500 feet, fired up the cabin heat and been very comfortable at 75°F.  My conclusion after this flight is that anything over 2 hours may require some serious consideration of keeping the doors on.

Besides the occasional buffeting it was a pretty nice day to fly.  The clouds didn’t go as high as they usually do and there was a bit of haze, but it was generally very pleasant.

The slight tailwind was nice, too, inasmuch as it allowed us to get to Rockwall Airport in a reasonable period of time…  3 hours and 18 minutes.  My plan was for us to average 70 knots, getting there in 3 hours, but when the plane is fully loaded, it seems to prefer slower speeds.  Honestly, after takeoff and achieving my cruising altitude, I just tend to fly the plane faster and faster up to the point where I start to feel a bit uncomfortable.  There are small cues that occur at faster speeds: primarily the sound of the rotor and the shaking of the cabin.  I am 100% confident the aircraft can easily withstand this increased speed, but I prefer not to.

When in smooth air I’ve gone up to the red-line of the aircraft, 85 knots, and felt comfortable.  But I’ve only done that when I don’t receive those cues.  I am able to go fast quite frequently when flying in winter but it’s more rare in the summer when the air is bubbly.  I can’t quite put an exact number on any of it but I know when I’ve reached that point.  Despite what the aircraft can handle, I simply prefer to enjoy my flight and try to feel comfortable, even if it takes me a bit longer to get to my destination.  So my average speed going to Rockwall was somewhere just above 65 knots (76 mph).

Even on the best of days the Cavalon is not a fast aircraft and is not intended for only flying from Point A to Point B quickly.  It excels in local flying for fun and being close to the ground to see things.

For example:

Obviously, a trip from Houston to Dallas is not trivial so the Cavalon can be used for cross-countries… it is arguably one of the best gyroplanes for cross-countries, in fact, being quite comfortable and, with doors on, isolates the occupants from the wind and can keep them warm in the winter.  It also has a large fuel tank, allowing flights of 3-4 hours without stopping.   And it can fly at altitudes beyond 10,000 feet, making it very versatile for short or long distances.

For this trip to Rockwall, with the doors off, the Cavalon was comfortable despite having the doors off and having to deal with occasional gusty winds.  About 3 hours 18 minutes after we left Anahuac, we are in the pattern at Rockwall.

My nephew, Brian, and his family were soon there to pick us up.  Before they arrived I had the plane refueled to be ready for tomorrow.  I had offered to take anyone in the family up for a short flight.  I brought my own chocks and put them around one wheel and, as a precaution, I looped a tie-down chain around the front wheel.  (Unlike fixed-wing aircraft, a gyroplane isn’t greatly affected by winds on the ground but it never hurts to be careful!)  Then I put the cover over it.

This was only the second time I had used the ‘travel cover,’ the other time on my way back from Maryland.  But I had the doors on the plane, then.  With the doors off, the travel cover doesn’t quite close off the open doors.   Hmmmm.  If it rained, I could easily see some water finding its way into the interior.  This is something I hadn’t thought of.  A quick weather check and it seemed like there was only a tiny chance of rain overnight, so I decided it was good for now.  I checked with the FBO and they did have a hangar (just a covered, open-air spot, commonly called a T-cover) I could rent for the night but I decided I’d wait until Saturday night to do that.

After dinner and a fun evening with my nephew, his wife and two young sons, we got some much needed rest for the next day.

Everyone showed up at the airport around 10:30 am and the elder of the two sons got to sit in the plane while millions of pixels got altered in everyone’s cameras.

Soon enough the cloud base was high enough for some local flying so I started by taking my nephew, then my niece, then the two (much older) sons of another nephew, and then my brother.  Mostly we flew to the east of the airport, out in the rural areas.  Somewhere in there Brian’s wife was talked into just a quick flight around the pattern and I think she’s glad she did it… she had a smile on her face the entire 4 minutes!

I tried to record each flight so they’d have a kind of keepsake…. here is the track when my niece had her flight, heading east but then circling back around and over the lake:

At one point, we started to see some raindrops on the windshield, so after landing I quickly put the plane under its T-cover and waited a while.  But that was short-lived and soon we were again flying around the area.  The last flight was with my brother who had a mission for me.  There were a couple of churches in Plano he wanted some aerial photos of, so I marked them in my navigation software and off we went, this time to the west.

After over-flying the two churches I realized that my nephew’s house was close by so we diverted south-southwest, took a few shots of the house as we turned, then headed back.  Here is that track:

At the end of the sixth flight I rolled the Cavalon into its T-cover space for the night, chocked it and covered it, then again went to my nephew’s house.  Whew.  It was fun to let them enjoy the flight of a gyroplane but it’s also a bit tiring.

The next day, Sunday, the weather looked like it was going to cooperate with us, but I did note that the wind was going to be directly against us.  It may be as much as a 20-knot headwind!  Based on weather maps, the only altitude that may provide some relief was at 9,500 feet but, with the doors off and lack of winter clothing, that was out of the question.  We knew we were going to be in for a long, slow return home.

We left around 10:30 am… again, to let some of the low clouds rise up or burn off and, in general, the air column was less hazy than the prior two days but the cloud base was still only around 3,000 feet.

Our return track was virtually identical to the one we flew on Friday.  I did offset the track by a mile or two to the west just so we’d see slightly different things.  But the big things like lakes were the same.

Flying into wind, objectively, wasn’t much different than flying with a tailwind.  We were still subject to buffeting and gusts but, generally, we were quite comfortable and at 2,000 feet the air temperature was pleasant.  But subjectively, we could look down and see the very slow progress we were making.  Shadows of clouds were rushing by us, heading north, while we crawled south against a 15- to 20-knot headwind.

There were times when our ground speed was only 40-knots!  Ugh.  I managed to keep it up around 50-knots (ground speed) most of the time.  We had to do some recalculations on fuel, of course, due to the slower ground speed (which means a longer time in the air).  Ultimately we decided that we probably wouldn’t have enough fuel to make it home (and still have a normal safety margin) and did a precautionary landing at Livingston Airport where I added about 7 gallons of fuel.  With the fuel already in the tank plus the added 7 gallons, we had 2 hours of flight time available to us and needed a little more than 1 hour to get home, with no diversions.

Here is the Cavalon parked at Livingston:

We also took advantage of (what we think was the) FBO’s tiny air-conditioned office, available to pilots, to gulp down our lunch and take a much needed break.  Soon enough we were back in the air, with a bit more than an hour to home.  Though we were anxious to get there, wishing for it didn’t do any good and our ground speed did not improve.  Still, there were more interesting things to see as we looked around:

Just minutes from our home airport the clouds started to look darker, more threatening.  Many of them had very dark bases and a few drops fell on us here and there.  I even decided to fly around one particularly dark and low cloud as I didn’t want to be the recipient of a sudden downpour.

Based on frequent radio calls on the Anahuac CTAF there didn’t seem to be anyone in the pattern so I made a direct descent to runway 17, landed at 3:12 pm and taxied to the hangar.  It had been a very long return trip.  From Rockwall to Livingston we had been in the air for almost exactly 3 hours.  That means a ground speed of about 52 knots!  Ugh.  From Livingston to Anahuac it took 1 hour and 13 minutes for an even slower ground speed of 48 knots.  No wonder we were tired.  Altogether that’s 4 hours and 14 minutes in the air or almost a full hour longer than our flight to Rockwall.  If we had had the doors on and climbed to 9,500 feet, we likely would have avoided most of the headwind.  This has caused me to have second thoughts about leaving the doors off, in summer, for long cross-country flights.

The other significant variation was that, flying near MTOW, my fuel consumption was much worse than my flight from Maryland when I was lighter and flying in the cold, dense air of January.  I managed 4.4 gallons-per-hour for the 1,335 mile flight from Maryland, but this weekend’s 500 mile trip I only managed about 5.6 gallons-per-hour.  The increased fuel consumption becomes more of an issue when fighting a headwind!  My range is definitely affected.

Overall I was very happy with the flight and performance of the Cavalon.  With no special clothing or helmets required, able to eat or drink as needed (and, if we had wanted, we could have listened to some music), we were about as comfortable as driving down Highway 67 from Marfa to Presidio with the windows open… but we were a lot cooler, most of the time, and had a better view.  It was great to see my family and show them the fun I’m having with my gyroplane and I loved the quality time I spent in the air with my wife.  Can’t imagine a nicer weekend!

To see the full track and where the photos were taken, check out my Ramblr page for this flight:  http://rblr.co/gLLD

I made a short video showing my family members’ smiles as they fly with me (no music, so, you might want to mute it):

Statistics:

Anahuac to Rockwall:
.    Distance: 217.86nm (250.7 sm)
.    Time:  3:18 (3.31) hrs
.    Average speed:  65.82 nm/hr avg speed (75.74 mph)
.    Fuel used:  18.5 gallons
.    Fuel consumption rate:  5.59 gph

Rockwall to Livingston:
.    Distance:  155.92nm (179.43 sm)
.    Time:  3.01 hrs
.    Average speed: 51.8 nm/hr avg speed (59.61 mph)
.    Fuel used:  16.9 gallons
.    Fuel consumption rate:  5.61 gph

Livingston to Anahuac:
.    Distance:  58.86nm (67.73 sm)
.    Time:  1:13 (1.22) hrs
.    Average speed:  48.25 nm/hr avg speed (55.51 mph)
.    Fuel used:  6.9 gal
.    Fuel consumption rate:  5.65 gph

Entire trip:
.    Distance:  432.64 nm (497.87 sm)
.    Time:  7.54 hrs
.    Average speed:  55.29 nm/hr avg speed (66.03 mph)
.    Fuel used:  42.3 gallons
.    Fuel consumption rate:  5.61 gph (considerably worse than my 4.4 gph from Maryland to Texas, but for that trip I was lighter and it was in the winter)

Also, I spent almost 2 hours in the air, combined, with my Dallas-based family members.

My average altitude overall was at 1,971 feet.

 

Note:  If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  Go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

 

 

 

June 3, 2018

If you know what the Houston corridor is, just skip to the third paragraph.  For those of you not yet informed, read on!  Houston has two big airports, Intercontinental (IAH) and Hobby (HOU).  One sits north of downtown, the other is south.  Big airports mean big airspaces (Class B) that are primarily geared towards big (commercial) aircraft.  Throwing smaller, slower GA (general aviation) aircraft into the mix is not a good idea and requires the tower to grant clearances and takes attention away from the airliners.

So GA aircraft would normally* stay away from the bigger airspaces by going around them.  But because these two Class B airspaces are so big and, well, there are two of them covering the whole of Houston, going around is asking a lot!  So, whether intentional or not, there is an east-west pathway — called a corridor — that is about halfway between Intercontinental and Hobby.  Below is a “vector map” that shows what is considered to be the corridor.  I used to hangar my aircraft west of Houston so, to go east, I’d have to go around the big airspace or fly through the corridor.  Now that I’m on the east side of town, I have to fly the corridor to get to the west side.

Today I wanted to fly from my home airport (which is off that map and just to the right) to see, from the air, some property that is in the northwest area of Houston (just off the map, in the top left corner).  To do that, it makes sense to “fly the corridor” rather than go around the big airspaces.

The Houston corridor is certainly convenient for east-west traffic, but there are restrictions.  First, it’s only about 4 miles wide.  Second, the ceiling (how high we’re allowed to fly before “breaking” into the big airspace) is only 2,000 vertical feet.  But you don’t have 2,000 vertical feet to maneuver.  You still have to maintain at least 500 feet (1000 feet is better) above the ground (and buildings), so at the very best, there is 1,500 feet of vertical space.  But there’s also a new twist that’s been added in recent years… stadium TFRs!  (TFR = Temporary Flight Restriction… basically, it’s off-limits to most aircraft.)

It’s hard to make out, but slightly to the left-of-center of the red area I marked as the corridor, and slightly below it you’ll see three gray circles.

Those represent airspaces that we are prohibited from entering when there is an event going on at the stadiums in their centers.  The one at the top, as you can see, butts into the corridor for quite a ways.  In fact, if that TFR is active, then aircraft will only have a 1-mile wide choke-point in the corridor.  That’s 5,280 feet, and only half of that is your “lane,” or 2,640 feet.  The corridor “box” available to a pilot suddenly got a lot smaller… 5 times smaller, in fact.  What’s worse is that any aircraft coming from the opposite direction isn’t required to stay in their “lane.”  You just have to hope they do.  Aircraft moving across your vision are fairly easy to pick out, but one coming straight at you has very little relative motion (sometimes none) and so they are hard, if not impossible, to pick out.  When traversing the corridor, I always have my landing lights on; I hope the other aircraft do, as well.  Anything helps!

Those are the down-sides of flying the corridor but, on the up-side, saving time and fuel by cutting through Houston is only one advantage.  The other is simply that you get a great view of downtown Houston!  Without entering the big airport Class-B airspace, this is the closest you can get to downtown in a GA aircraft.  Without a TFR active, you can get quite close, flying along the southern edge of the corridor, and can nab some great photos.  On my flight on June 3rd, it was pretty hazy, but the photos are still fairly good.

I both love and dread the corridor.  Does that make sense?  Here is the track of our flight:

And a few pictures we took along the way:

(Note: these photos are not up to par.  I accidentally took them 5-stops under-exposed, so they are heavily photoshopped to get them at all viewable.  And, yes, I’m very sad about that.)

Also, I’ve mentioned flying the corridor in two other Texas-Flyer stories, “The Aventura’s Last Trip” (Sep 2005), and “Ferrying My New Plane, The Aventura” (Aug 2002).

I probably need to point out that from the FAAs perspective, there is nothing “official” about what I’ve described above as “The Corridor”.  In other areas of the country with busy airspaces, there are official corridors, but this isn’t one of them.  But I think you’d agree with me, looking at the sectional, that there is a de facto corridor between the two airports.

Radio communications through the corridor

As far as I know, there is no special radio frequency used when traversing the corridor…. but, man, I sure do wish there were!  (If you know of any frequency that typically pilots use, please enter a comment at the bottom of this page and let me know!)  You can bet I’d have my radio tuned to that frequency, if it existed.  The general rule in aviation is to tune your radio to the closest airport.

As stated above, the closest two airports are IAH and HOU.  Each has one or more frequencies for aircraft landing at the airport.  As near as I can tell, they only share two frequencies:  Unicom @ 122.950  and “Nearest ATC” @ 124.7.   It’s unlikely that ATC would be concerned with aircraft in the corridor, but it might not be a bad idea to tune to 122.950 while traversing that airspace.

The other alternatives are the more ambiguous air-to-air frequency of 122.75, or 123.025 for helicopters.  I say “ambiguous” because I know for a fact that both fixed-wing and helicopters (not to mention gyroplanes like mine) traverse the corridor, so which do I monitor?  Also, many pilots use 123.45 for air-to-air.  And it can get worse. Just do a web search for “air-to-air frequency” and you’ll see a lot of different frequencies in actual use, regardless of the official rule.

So, it sure would be nice if the FAA would assign a frequency for choke points like this.  It would make passing through the corridor much safer and less nerve-wracking.

Update:  ADS-B saves the day

As of January 2020, aircraft flying in the airspace “corridor” are required to have ADS-B/Out.  (Yes, there are a few exceptions, but rare.)   This — in theory — means that any aircraft in the area will be on your EFB navigation screen, assuming the aircraft has ADS-B/In and the proper avionics to display traffic.  The other aircraft will certainly be on my EFB screen!  This arguably reduces the importance of having common radio communications (but, in my opinion, there should still be an assigned frequency for corridor traffic).

Because of ADS-B, my “love and dread” has changed to “love and trepidation,” haha.  It’s still a choke point so great care will always be needed.

*  “Normally” is, of course, a specious term.  Many GA aircraft fly in Class B, particularly if they are either flying an IFR flight plan, or on Flight Following.  My friend, Chuck, sent me a track showing him going right over downtown Houston.  ATC sent him that way when he was on Flight Following.  Another example: I was flying near Destin, FL and on Flight Following, and the ATC controller sent me right over the main runway at Eglin Air Force Base! Yow!  So, I’m really talking about GA aircraft that, for whatever reason, are not currently on IFR or Flight Following.  And, to be really thorough, you don’t actually have to be on IFR or Flight Following to get Class B clearance.  On a quiet day, they’d probably let you traverse the airspace, but if it’s busy, they can deny your clearance request.

 

– – – – – – – – – – –

If you are not viewing this post in a web browser, but would like to, click here.

To leave a comment, please scroll down to the bottom of this page.  Thanks!

If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  To subscribe, open this page in a web browser (if you haven’t already) and go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

 

June 3, 2018

If you know what the Houston corridor is, just skip to the third paragraph.  For those of you not yet informed, read on!  Houston has two big airports, Intercontinental (IAH) and Hobby (HOU).  One sits north of downtown, the other is south.  Big airports mean big airspaces (Class B) that are primarily geared towards big (commercial) aircraft.  Throwing smaller, slower GA (general aviation) aircraft into the mix is not a good idea and requires the tower to grant clearances and takes attention away from the airliners.

So GA aircraft would normally* stay away from the bigger airspaces by going around them.  But because these two Class B airspaces are so big and, well, there are two of them covering the whole of Houston, going around is asking a lot!  So, whether intentional or not, there is an east-west pathway — called a corridor — that is about halfway between Intercontinental and Hobby.  Below is a “vector map” that shows what is considered to be the corridor.  I used to hangar my aircraft west of Houston so, to go east, I’d have to go around the big airspace or fly through the corridor.  Now that I’m on the east side of town, I have to fly the corridor to get to the west side.

Today I wanted to fly from my home airport (which is off that map and just to the right) to see, from the air, some property that is in the northwest area of Houston (just off the map, in the top left corner).  To do that, it makes sense to “fly the corridor” rather than go around the big airspaces.

The Houston corridor is certainly convenient for east-west traffic, but there are restrictions.  First, it’s only about 4 miles wide.  Second, the ceiling (how high we’re allowed to fly before “breaking” into the big airspace) is only 2,000 vertical feet.  But you don’t have 2,000 vertical feet to maneuver.  You still have to maintain at least 500 feet (1000 feet is better) above the ground (and buildings), so at the very best, there is 1,500 feet of vertical space.  But there’s also a new twist that’s been added in recent years… stadium TFRs!  (TFR = Temporary Flight Restriction… basically, it’s off-limits to most aircraft.)

It’s hard to make out, but slightly to the left-of-center of the red area I marked as the corridor, and slightly below it you’ll see three gray circles.

Those represent airspaces that we are prohibited from entering when there is an event going on at the stadiums in their centers.  The one at the top, as you can see, butts into the corridor for quite a ways.  In fact, if that TFR is active, then aircraft will only have a 1-mile wide choke-point in the corridor.  That’s 5,280 feet, and only half of that is your “lane,” or 2,640 feet.  The corridor “box” available to a pilot suddenly got a lot smaller… 5 times smaller, in fact.  What’s worse is that any aircraft coming from the opposite direction isn’t required to stay in their “lane.”  You just have to hope they do.  Aircraft moving across your vision are fairly easy to pick out, but one coming straight at you has very little relative motion (sometimes none) and so they are hard, if not impossible, to pick out.  When traversing the corridor, I always have my landing lights on; I hope the other aircraft do, as well.  Anything helps!

Those are the down-sides of flying the corridor but, on the up-side, saving time and fuel by cutting through Houston is only one advantage.  The other is simply that you get a great view of downtown Houston!  Without entering the big airport Class-B airspace, this is the closest you can get to downtown in a GA aircraft.  Without a TFR active, you can get quite close, flying along the southern edge of the corridor, and can nab some great photos.  On my flight on June 3rd, it was pretty hazy, but the photos are still fairly good.

I both love and dread the corridor.  Does that make sense?  Here is the track of our flight:

And a few pictures we took along the way:

(Note: these photos are not up to par.  I accidentally took them 5-stops under-exposed, so they are heavily photoshopped to get them at all viewable.  And, yes, I’m very sad about that.)

Also, I’ve mentioned flying the corridor in two other Texas-Flyer stories, “The Aventura’s Last Trip” (Sep 2005), and “Ferrying My New Plane, The Aventura” (Aug 2002).

I probably need to point out that from the FAAs perspective, there is nothing “official” about what I’ve described above as “The Corridor”.  In other areas of the country with busy airspaces, there are official corridors, but this isn’t one of them.  But I think you’d agree with me, looking at the sectional, that there is a de facto corridor between the two airports.

Radio communications through the corridor

As far as I know, there is no special radio frequency used when traversing the corridor…. but, man, I sure do wish there were!  (If you know of any frequency that typically pilots use, please enter a comment at the bottom of this page and let me know!)  You can bet I’d have my radio tuned to that frequency, if it existed.  The general rule in aviation is to tune your radio to the closest airport.

As stated above, the closest two airports are IAH and HOU.  Each has one or more frequencies for aircraft landing at the airport.  As near as I can tell, they only share two frequencies:  Unicom @ 122.950  and “Nearest ATC” @ 124.7.   It’s unlikely that ATC would be concerned with aircraft in the corridor, but it might not be a bad idea to tune to 122.950 while traversing that airspace.

The other alternatives are the more ambiguous air-to-air frequency of 122.75, or 123.025 for helicopters.  I say “ambiguous” because I know for a fact that both fixed-wing and helicopters (not to mention gyroplanes like mine) traverse the corridor, so which do I monitor?  Also, many pilots use 123.45 for air-to-air.  And it can get worse. Just do a web search for “air-to-air frequency” and you’ll see a lot of different frequencies in actual use, regardless of the official rule.

So, it sure would be nice if the FAA would assign a frequency for choke points like this.  It would make passing through the corridor much safer and less nerve-wracking.

Update:  ADS-B saves the day

As of January 2020, aircraft flying in the airspace “corridor” are required to have ADS-B/Out.  (Yes, there are a few exceptions, but rare.)   This — in theory — means that any aircraft in the area will be on your EFB navigation screen, assuming the aircraft has ADS-B/In and the proper avionics to display traffic.  The other aircraft will certainly be on my EFB screen!  This arguably reduces the importance of having common radio communications (but, in my opinion, there should still be an assigned frequency for corridor traffic).

Because of ADS-B, my “love and dread” has changed to “love and trepidation,” haha.  It’s still a choke point so great care will always be needed.

*  “Normally” is, of course, a specious term.  Many GA aircraft fly in Class B, particularly if they are either flying an IFR flight plan, or on Flight Following.  My friend, Chuck, sent me a track showing him going right over downtown Houston.  ATC sent him that way when he was on Flight Following.  Another example: I was flying near Destin, FL and on Flight Following, and the ATC controller sent me right over the main runway at Eglin Air Force Base! Yow!  So, I’m really talking about GA aircraft that, for whatever reason, are not currently on IFR or Flight Following.  And, to be really thorough, you don’t actually have to be on IFR or Flight Following to get Class B clearance.  On a quiet day, they’d probably let you traverse the airspace, but if it’s busy, they can deny your clearance request.

 

– – – – – – – – – – –

If you are not viewing this post in a web browser, but would like to, click here.

To leave a comment, please scroll down to the bottom of this page.  Thanks!

If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  To subscribe, open this page in a web browser (if you haven’t already) and go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

 

June 1, 2018

No, this is not a blog entry on what ADS-B is, how it works, deadlines, etc.  All of that information is readily available via a few short Google searches (or the link I provided, which takes you to Wikipedia and more than you’ll ever want to know about ADS-B!).  What this is, then, is a short description of my experience of having an ADS-B in/out installed in my Cavalon.

Why ADS-B and why now?  As for ‘why now,’ well, there is a deadline (Jan 1, 2020) which, at some point, I knew I would have to pay attention to.  Why ADS-B?  Since I have done, and will likely do, a lot of flying outside of the immediate area of my home airport, having an ADS-B — telling other aircraft where you are, and seeing where they are — is definitely a nice safety factor.  On cross-country flights, getting weather and NOTAM information is helpful, too.  The decision to get one wasn’t hard.  The decision about which one to get was considerably more difficult.  And the installation issues… well, that’s not easy either.  Just about every aircraft is different, so the decisions those owners make will vary from mine… this is not a review nor a recommendation!

I had been researching various ADS-B vendors and when I made my trip to Sun-N-Fun, I was able to chat them up at their booths.  Again, this isn’t a comparison or a review, so I am not saying my choice is the best (and the vote is still out on whether it was even the best for me), but it’s what I did and what I thought was the best at the time.  The vendor I chose is uAvionix, and the unit I selected is the ‘echoUAT’.  The device provides both ‘in’ and ‘out’ functions, so I can retire my slightly used Stratux (which provides only ADS-B ‘in’ function).

While my Stratux has performed well, and I got it at an excellent price point, it was kind of a hassle to set up.  I’m in a community hangar so lots of people have access to my plane.  I didn’t feel good about leaving the Stratux installed in the plane.  Also, the Stratux was not wired into plane power so I had to have a separate battery pack for it, take it home and ensure it was charged up, then remember to take it back to the airport.  All of that is a lot of hassle plus I have to set it into a holder in the cockpit, plug it in, and then make sure it works.  Often the power connection would not work so I had to jiggle the wire and I worried about a disconnection while in flight.  Overall it wasn’t the most worry-free way of going about getting that functionality.  One of the main things I was looking forward to with an installed ADS-B in/out is that all those issues would go away.

The ‘echoUAT’ is a very small box, about the size of a deck of playing cards.  I also got an antenna (it looks identical to my transponder antenna) and a GPS source (they call it the SkyFYX-Ext).  One nice feature of the ‘echoUAT’ is that it doesn’t require any wiring between the transponder and itself.  It can acquire the information it needs from the transponder ‘over the air.’  So, there is one wire connecting the SkyFYX-Ext to the echoUAT, and the rest of it is just wiring it into the airplane power.  Oh and the antenna needs to be installed too, of course, with a cable between the echoUAT and the antenna.  So the installation process, over all, is pretty simple.

Because my Cavalon is an all-composite aircraft and there is very little metal used to hold things together, wiring into airplane power is a little more complex but only a little.  You can’t just ground something to the frame and have it work, like in a lot of aircraft.  I had to have discrete positive and negative wires to get power and ground.  Luckily in the wiring bundle behind the circuit breaker panel there is at least one spare positive/negative lead.  Having secured a source for power I only needed to decide where to put the antenna and echoUAT box.

Below the passenger seat, there is a small “hold”, an empty area that is mostly unused.  That is a good spot for both the antenna and the electronics.  Here is the echoUAT box, bolted in place.

I also needed to create a “ground-plane” for the antenna.  In metal aircraft, that isn’t usually necessary as the metal structure/frame becomes the antenna’s “ground-plane.”  In the case of the Cavalon, you have to make one.  I ordered an 8″ copper disc that I use for the “ground-plane”.  A 1/2″ hole is drilled in the center, another hole is drilled through the composite, holes are aligned, then the antenna fits nicely through both and secured.  (Using copper was probably overkill, as just about any metal would work…. but it’s kinda pretty!)  Here is a picture of that assembly:

The echoUAT box is very close, so I ran a RG400 cable that is only 1-foot long between the box and the antenna.  Then the harness of the echoUAT and the wiring from the GPS source are connected, and it all runs through a separate circuit breaker and switch.  That’s pretty much it, in general, but as always there are a hundred tiny details.

For example, the SkyFYX-Ext is a small, white puck-shaped object which is designed to be mounted outside on the surface of the aircraft.  But it sits very nicely on the top of the panel and gets a great view of the sky.  It works quite well in that location — and no more holes need to be drilled! — but the white color reflects on the windscreen and gives the impression of a UFO.  So, I have to attach some black felt pieces to it to make it dark.   And there are many other tiny details like this that need to be attended to.

Here’s a shot of everything nice and neat.

Finally, I was able to make a test flight on Friday, June 1, 2018.  There isn’t really anything to do but ensure it’s on, the transponder is on, it’s configured properly, and you get confirmation from your EFB (electronic flight book).

Here’s my monitor screen, confirming my configuration:

Last, when in-flight, I bring up the ADS-B situation screen on my EFB and I see this:

That tells me that the EFB is communicating with the echoUAT and is receiving data on other aircraft… i.e., ADS-B “in”.   Success!  But getting verification that my ADS-B “out” is working is a bit more difficult.

To find out if the FAA thinks my ADS-B “out” is a success, I submit information about my flight to the “Public ADS-B Performance Report Request” web page.  Within 30 minutes, I get an email from the system with a report, and the report says I’m within tolerance.  So, from the FAA:  success!

At this point, I’m mostly done.  (If you know aircraft — especially experimental aircraft — you know you can only rarely say you’re completely done!)  I do have to do some firmware upgrades on the echoUAT, and put a grommet here and a bit of shrink wrap there, but mostly done!  I can certainly get in my plane now, turn on the master switch, go fly and know that I will be seen by other aircraft with ADS-B, and I will see those other aircraft with ADS-B out.  Yeah, Big Brother will be watching and know everything I do, right or wrong but, at the same time, I will be flying more safely.

I know I’ll be asked if I can recommend this particular solution.  From a pricing and ease of installation POV it certainly gets very high marks.  However I’m reserving my final opinion until I have more hours under my belt with it.  It has a few glitches but the firmware upgrades may resolve those.  And the company has been quite good to work with… emails are returned fairly quickly and, in a bind, a phone call to tech support has always gotten through, so high marks there.  Regardless of who you select, I do think to have it is better than not.

Here’s hoping your install goes as easily as mine did!

— Update, 6/7/2018 —

After some tweaks, I flew again and requested another report, but this time I got an error.  I updated the firmware, flew again, requested another report, but now I’ve got two errors!  Yikes!  Conferring with uAvionix, they’ve given me instructions on how to improve the echoUAT sensitivity — which they imply are the reasons for the errors — so I will try that next week and report back.

— Update, 6/27/2018 —

The threshold sensitivity tweaks did not seem to help.  But a few days ago, I was reading my transponder manual, and then later I was looking at photos of the panel I had taken while in flight.  It suddenly occurred to me:  when I was taking my transition training in January, the instructor told me that the transponder was in Mode C.  So, all the time since then I’ve been flying it, thinking it was in Mode C.  I happened to notice in a photo that the transponder seemed to be in Mode S.

Now, being in Mode S isn’t a bad thing… the ADS-B system will work if the transponder is in Mode C or Mode S.  But the problem is, the transponder was not configured with the right information for Mode S.  So it was broadcasting “garbage” rather than the proper information.  This had to be the problem.  I now suspected that the reason so many errors were being generated is that the data being passed on by the ADS-B system was incorrect.

A quick trip to the hangar, switched the transponder to Mode C, then I flew for about 40 minutes and requested a report.  SUCCESS!  The report came back with only a few small errors, but none of them were significant, so, my ADS-B system has now PASSED!  Yea!

I felt pretty stupid for not double-checking that element, but I just had it in my head that it was already in Mode C.  When I made the change, I could see in the transponder screen some pretty definite differences that indicate it’s now in Mode C, so I knew that was likely the issue.  I passed on this to the uAvionix people who were very glad I solved the problem, and that they now had some additional data to look out for, in case someone else was as dunderheaded as I was.

 

– – – – – – – – – – –

If you are not viewing this post in a web browser, but would like to, click here.

To leave a comment, please scroll down to the bottom of this page.  Thanks!

If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  To subscribe, open this page in a web browser (if you haven’t already) and go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

 

 

 

June 1, 2018

No, this is not a blog entry on what ADS-B is, how it works, deadlines, etc.  All of that information is readily available via a few short Google searches (or the link I provided, which takes you to Wikipedia and more than you’ll ever want to know about ADS-B!).  What this is, then, is a short description of my experience of having an ADS-B in/out installed in my Cavalon.

Why ADS-B and why now?  As for ‘why now,’ well, there is a deadline (Jan 1, 2020) which, at some point, I knew I would have to pay attention to.  Why ADS-B?  Since I have done, and will likely do, a lot of flying outside of the immediate area of my home airport, having an ADS-B — telling other aircraft where you are, and seeing where they are — is definitely a nice safety factor.  On cross-country flights, getting weather and NOTAM information is helpful, too.  The decision to get one wasn’t hard.  The decision about which one to get was considerably more difficult.  And the installation issues… well, that’s not easy either.  Just about every aircraft is different, so the decisions those owners make will vary from mine… this is not a review nor a recommendation!

I had been researching various ADS-B vendors and when I made my trip to Sun-N-Fun, I was able to chat them up at their booths.  Again, this isn’t a comparison or a review, so I am not saying my choice is the best (and the vote is still out on whether it was even the best for me), but it’s what I did and what I thought was the best at the time.  The vendor I chose is uAvionix, and the unit I selected is the ‘echoUAT’.  The device provides both ‘in’ and ‘out’ functions, so I can retire my slightly used Stratux (which provides only ADS-B ‘in’ function).

While my Stratux has performed well, and I got it at an excellent price point, it was kind of a hassle to set up.  I’m in a community hangar so lots of people have access to my plane.  I didn’t feel good about leaving the Stratux installed in the plane.  Also, the Stratux was not wired into plane power so I had to have a separate battery pack for it, take it home and ensure it was charged up, then remember to take it back to the airport.  All of that is a lot of hassle plus I have to set it into a holder in the cockpit, plug it in, and then make sure it works.  Often the power connection would not work so I had to jiggle the wire and I worried about a disconnection while in flight.  Overall it wasn’t the most worry-free way of going about getting that functionality.  One of the main things I was looking forward to with an installed ADS-B in/out is that all those issues would go away.

The ‘echoUAT’ is a very small box, about the size of a deck of playing cards.  I also got an antenna (it looks identical to my transponder antenna) and a GPS source (they call it the SkyFYX-Ext).  One nice feature of the ‘echoUAT’ is that it doesn’t require any wiring between the transponder and itself.  It can acquire the information it needs from the transponder ‘over the air.’  So, there is one wire connecting the SkyFYX-Ext to the echoUAT, and the rest of it is just wiring it into the airplane power.  Oh and the antenna needs to be installed too, of course, with a cable between the echoUAT and the antenna.  So the installation process, over all, is pretty simple.

Because my Cavalon is an all-composite aircraft and there is very little metal used to hold things together, wiring into airplane power is a little more complex but only a little.  You can’t just ground something to the frame and have it work, like in a lot of aircraft.  I had to have discrete positive and negative wires to get power and ground.  Luckily in the wiring bundle behind the circuit breaker panel there is at least one spare positive/negative lead.  Having secured a source for power I only needed to decide where to put the antenna and echoUAT box.

Below the passenger seat, there is a small “hold”, an empty area that is mostly unused.  That is a good spot for both the antenna and the electronics.  Here is the echoUAT box, bolted in place.

I also needed to create a “ground-plane” for the antenna.  In metal aircraft, that isn’t usually necessary as the metal structure/frame becomes the antenna’s “ground-plane.”  In the case of the Cavalon, you have to make one.  I ordered an 8″ copper disc that I use for the “ground-plane”.  A 1/2″ hole is drilled in the center, another hole is drilled through the composite, holes are aligned, then the antenna fits nicely through both and secured.  (Using copper was probably overkill, as just about any metal would work…. but it’s kinda pretty!)  Here is a picture of that assembly:

The echoUAT box is very close, so I ran a RG400 cable that is only 1-foot long between the box and the antenna.  Then the harness of the echoUAT and the wiring from the GPS source are connected, and it all runs through a separate circuit breaker and switch.  That’s pretty much it, in general, but as always there are a hundred tiny details.

For example, the SkyFYX-Ext is a small, white puck-shaped object which is designed to be mounted outside on the surface of the aircraft.  But it sits very nicely on the top of the panel and gets a great view of the sky.  It works quite well in that location — and no more holes need to be drilled! — but the white color reflects on the windscreen and gives the impression of a UFO.  So, I have to attach some black felt pieces to it to make it dark.   And there are many other tiny details like this that need to be attended to.

Here’s a shot of everything nice and neat.

Finally, I was able to make a test flight on Friday, June 1, 2018.  There isn’t really anything to do but ensure it’s on, the transponder is on, it’s configured properly, and you get confirmation from your EFB (electronic flight book).

Here’s my monitor screen, confirming my configuration:

Last, when in-flight, I bring up the ADS-B situation screen on my EFB and I see this:

That tells me that the EFB is communicating with the echoUAT and is receiving data on other aircraft… i.e., ADS-B “in”.   Success!  But getting verification that my ADS-B “out” is working is a bit more difficult.

To find out if the FAA thinks my ADS-B “out” is a success, I submit information about my flight to the “Public ADS-B Performance Report Request” web page.  Within 30 minutes, I get an email from the system with a report, and the report says I’m within tolerance.  So, from the FAA:  success!

At this point, I’m mostly done.  (If you know aircraft — especially experimental aircraft — you know you can only rarely say you’re completely done!)  I do have to do some firmware upgrades on the echoUAT, and put a grommet here and a bit of shrink wrap there, but mostly done!  I can certainly get in my plane now, turn on the master switch, go fly and know that I will be seen by other aircraft with ADS-B, and I will see those other aircraft with ADS-B out.  Yeah, Big Brother will be watching and know everything I do, right or wrong but, at the same time, I will be flying more safely.

I know I’ll be asked if I can recommend this particular solution.  From a pricing and ease of installation POV it certainly gets very high marks.  However I’m reserving my final opinion until I have more hours under my belt with it.  It has a few glitches but the firmware upgrades may resolve those.  And the company has been quite good to work with… emails are returned fairly quickly and, in a bind, a phone call to tech support has always gotten through, so high marks there.  Regardless of who you select, I do think to have it is better than not.

Here’s hoping your install goes as easily as mine did!

— Update, 6/7/2018 —

After some tweaks, I flew again and requested another report, but this time I got an error.  I updated the firmware, flew again, requested another report, but now I’ve got two errors!  Yikes!  Conferring with uAvionix, they’ve given me instructions on how to improve the echoUAT sensitivity — which they imply are the reasons for the errors — so I will try that next week and report back.

— Update, 6/27/2018 —

The threshold sensitivity tweaks did not seem to help.  But a few days ago, I was reading my transponder manual, and then later I was looking at photos of the panel I had taken while in flight.  It suddenly occurred to me:  when I was taking my transition training in January, the instructor told me that the transponder was in Mode C.  So, all the time since then I’ve been flying it, thinking it was in Mode C.  I happened to notice in a photo that the transponder seemed to be in Mode S.

Now, being in Mode S isn’t a bad thing… the ADS-B system will work if the transponder is in Mode C or Mode S.  But the problem is, the transponder was not configured with the right information for Mode S.  So it was broadcasting “garbage” rather than the proper information.  This had to be the problem.  I now suspected that the reason so many errors were being generated is that the data being passed on by the ADS-B system was incorrect.

A quick trip to the hangar, switched the transponder to Mode C, then I flew for about 40 minutes and requested a report.  SUCCESS!  The report came back with only a few small errors, but none of them were significant, so, my ADS-B system has now PASSED!  Yea!

I felt pretty stupid for not double-checking that element, but I just had it in my head that it was already in Mode C.  When I made the change, I could see in the transponder screen some pretty definite differences that indicate it’s now in Mode C, so I knew that was likely the issue.  I passed on this to the uAvionix people who were very glad I solved the problem, and that they now had some additional data to look out for, in case someone else was as dunderheaded as I was.

 

– – – – – – – – – – –

If you are not viewing this post in a web browser, but would like to, click here.

To leave a comment, please scroll down to the bottom of this page.  Thanks!

If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  To subscribe, open this page in a web browser (if you haven’t already) and go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

 

 

 

April 4, 2018

My wife, Amy, is currently on a cross-country bike ride.  It’s coast-to-coast… she started in San Diego, CA on March 3, 2018 and will end in St. Augustine, FL on April 23, 2018.  That’s quite a trip!  And, no, I didn’t go with her.  Cycling is her passion, mine is aviation (ok, you probably guessed the latter).

Her group is on the “southern route” which takes them through Texas.  (Specifically, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida.)  When she reached the halfway point — near Kerrville, Texas on March 29  — she was within flying distance, so I got it in my mind that I’d go fly over her route, see if I could find her and take some photos of her from the air.  Unfortunately, the weather (and other obligations) didn’t cooperate until today (April 4).

While it was clear blue skies today, the wind was pretty blustery.  I’ve had good luck so far with flying the Cavalon in gusty winds so I figured this won’t be too bad.  I was partially right.

I started fairly early, in the air before 9:30am, and had about 80 miles to go to be in her area, near Shepherd, Texas.  As usual, I look for anything interesting to take photos of, so….  the first, very noticeable element to the land below me was, it was flooded!  At this area, the Trinity River was definitely causing some flooding havoc.

Despite the flooding, there was this very pretty field, with yellow blossoms throughout… where it wasn’t flooded, that is.

And though this house in the middle of a flooded field looks sad, looking at it closer I realized that it seemed to be just slightly above the flood waters, thanks to a pier-and-beam foundation that lifts it off the ground a couple of feet.  So, hopefully they didn’t get much damage.  But it’s probably a challenge to go to the grocery store.

About halfway to my destination area is the Cleveland, Texas airport (6R3), and I got this nice shot of it:

Another 20 minutes and I’m now close to Coldspring, Texas, which is at the east end of a road segment I knew they would be on.

Using a smartphone app called ‘Glympse’, I could see where she was, but the information is usually about 10 seconds old.  But still that’s not bad so I could get a good idea if I was above her.  Like a good part of her trek, she rides with another woman, Linda, so I just looked for two cyclists close together.  It turned out to be a good thing they were together because, real time, while flying, I was having a hard time making out Amy’s orange helmet.  In the end, though, I got several good shots of her and Linda, as well as a few shots of some of her other trek members.

Yes, I could have flown a lot lower and gotten better pictures (probably), but it would not have been safe.  The gusts were frequent and while not unpleasant, it was still a handful.  Trying to take pictures at the same time as handling the Cavalon, well, that wasn’t too bad, but it was hard to also keep her in view.  So, between all the task loading, I felt a lot more safe by maintaining a higher altitude.

My track for that period of time I’m trying to get pictures is interesting:

The overlapping yellow circular area is where I was trying to keep away from a cell tower.  While I did that, I took a short GoPro video:

At that point, there wasn’t anything to do but head back to the airport.  But I was near Double Lake, a state park that I frequented during my teenage years, so I figured I’d fly over and take a few shots.

Here’s a shot of Highway 59 — locally, we call it the Eastex Freeway — looking southwest toward Houston:

As I get closer to the airport, I see the flooding once more:

In summary, it was kind of a hike to get to where she was cycling, but I enjoyed doing it and I know she appreciated the effort.  Though it was a very breezy day, the Cavalon redeemed itself quite nicely… I simply had to slow things down a bit to make it comfortable.  Overall gas consumption for this trip was an amazing 3.8 gph!  Time in the air, about 2 hours 50 minutes, with 161 miles covered.

 

Note:  If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  Go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

April 4, 2018

My wife, Amy, is currently on a cross-country bike ride.  It’s coast-to-coast… she started in San Diego, CA on March 3, 2018 and will end in St. Augustine, FL on April 23, 2018.  That’s quite a trip!  And, no, I didn’t go with her.  Cycling is her passion, mine is aviation (ok, you probably guessed the latter).

Her group is on the “southern route” which takes them through Texas.  (Specifically, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida.)  When she reached the halfway point — near Kerrville, Texas on March 29  — she was within flying distance, so I got it in my mind that I’d go fly over her route, see if I could find her and take some photos of her from the air.  Unfortunately, the weather (and other obligations) didn’t cooperate until today (April 4).

While it was clear blue skies today, the wind was pretty blustery.  I’ve had good luck so far with flying the Cavalon in gusty winds so I figured this won’t be too bad.  I was partially right.

I started fairly early, in the air before 9:30am, and had about 80 miles to go to be in her area, near Shepherd, Texas.  As usual, I look for anything interesting to take photos of, so….  the first, very noticeable element to the land below me was, it was flooded!  At this area, the Trinity River was definitely causing some flooding havoc.

Despite the flooding, there was this very pretty field, with yellow blossoms throughout… where it wasn’t flooded, that is.

And though this house in the middle of a flooded field looks sad, looking at it closer I realized that it seemed to be just slightly above the flood waters, thanks to a pier-and-beam foundation that lifts it off the ground a couple of feet.  So, hopefully they didn’t get much damage.  But it’s probably a challenge to go to the grocery store.

About halfway to my destination area is the Cleveland, Texas airport (6R3), and I got this nice shot of it:

Another 20 minutes and I’m now close to Coldspring, Texas, which is at the east end of a road segment I knew they would be on.

Using a smartphone app called ‘Glympse’, I could see where she was, but the information is usually about 10 seconds old.  But still that’s not bad so I could get a good idea if I was above her.  Like a good part of her trek, she rides with another woman, Linda, so I just looked for two cyclists close together.  It turned out to be a good thing they were together because, real time, while flying, I was having a hard time making out Amy’s orange helmet.  In the end, though, I got several good shots of her and Linda, as well as a few shots of some of her other trek members.

Yes, I could have flown a lot lower and gotten better pictures (probably), but it would not have been safe.  The gusts were frequent and while not unpleasant, it was still a handful.  Trying to take pictures at the same time as handling the Cavalon, well, that wasn’t too bad, but it was hard to also keep her in view.  So, between all the task loading, I felt a lot more safe by maintaining a higher altitude.

My track for that period of time I’m trying to get pictures is interesting:

The overlapping yellow circular area is where I was trying to keep away from a cell tower.  While I did that, I took a short GoPro video:

At that point, there wasn’t anything to do but head back to the airport.  But I was near Double Lake, a state park that I frequented during my teenage years, so I figured I’d fly over and take a few shots.

Here’s a shot of Highway 59 — locally, we call it the Eastex Freeway — looking southwest toward Houston:

As I get closer to the airport, I see the flooding once more:

In summary, it was kind of a hike to get to where she was cycling, but I enjoyed doing it and I know she appreciated the effort.  Though it was a very breezy day, the Cavalon redeemed itself quite nicely… I simply had to slow things down a bit to make it comfortable.  Overall gas consumption for this trip was an amazing 3.8 gph!  Time in the air, about 2 hours 50 minutes, with 161 miles covered.

 

Note:  If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  Go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

March 19, 2018

In 1785, Robert Burns composed a poem, part of which is very famously used probably daily by someone, somewhere on Planet Earth.  The part you’ll know is (in modern English): “The best laid schemes of mice and men, often go awry.”  (My title — Gang aft agley — is the Scots language version of ‘often go awry.’)  We all experience this at some point.

My plan for St. Patrick’s Day was to fly to Dublin, TX for a fly-in.  It is one of the few fly-in’s that focus on gyroplanes (but not exclusively so).  From my home airport, it was a 3-hour straight-shot to the northwest.  My brother, Jim, agreed to go, as well, so it was to be quite the outing!  Yet, despite the weather in Dublin being good throughout the day, the weather around my home airport never got much better than “misty.”

Even the night prior, it was clear that it, uh, wasn’t going to clear.  Fog was forecast until about 11 am.  To get to Dublin with time to walk around a bit, we would have to have left no later than 9 am.  The trip to Dublin was out, then.  Yet, since the forecast said the cloud base would rise above 2,000 feet by 1 pm, I told Jim to meet me at the hangar by noon, and we’d choose an alternative local place to fly to….. perhaps to Brazoria County airport again.  Ah, optimism!

I’m lucky in that I can go out to the hangar on weekdays, so I usually have the entire place to myself.  When we arrived, we found out that not only was it a typically busy Saturday, but there was also a club meeting!  Needless to say, there were a lot of people and a lot of things going on.  But it was nice to see the other members and chat a bit.  Looking at the sky, it was hard to tell what the ceiling was, but it was low.  The air was heavy with moisture, and occasionally I’d feel a bit of mist.  We decided to give it a shot.

I had almost full fuel, and my brother is somewhat heavier than I am, so we were near MTOW (max take-off weight).  The factor I hadn’t thought too much about was the density altitude.  It was a warm day… 85-87 F, and since the time I ferry’d the plane from Maryland (in January), this would be the warmest day I had yet flown.  But I wasn’t thinking about that.  (Later, I calculated the density altitude to be around 2100 feet.)

Rolling down the runway, that ignored factor soon became front-and-center.  I could tell almost right away that everything was happening more slowly than I was now used to.  I picked up speed slower, the nose-wheel came up later than I was used to and didn’t try to leap up.  We were lumbering down the runway for quite some time before finally lifting off, then my ascending speed was definitely much slower.  For just a moment, I wondered if I should abort because it would be really bad if I couldn’t gain any altitude!

But ascend we did, albeit slowly.  Usually I’m at 500 feet by the time the end of the runway is under me.  This time, the engine was at full blast for another minute or more.  We did manage 1000 feet before I throttled back to a normal RPM, but even the normal RPM was higher than I was used to to maintain this altitude.  When we leveled out, I could pry my attention away from the aerodynamics for a moment, and looked around at the conditions.  It was…  misty.  The ceiling was only a little above us.  This was not looking good.

Despite that, we decided to fly around the local area for a while, to see if anything opened up.  We’d go a few minutes in one direction, then we’d see rain on the windshield, and turn away… go a few minutes in that direction, and hit more light rain… and so on.  So, we meandered around trying to find anything that resembled something other than the poor conditions we’d already experienced, but with no luck.  After almost 40 minutes we finally decided to give up.

I landed a little fast due to the extra weight, but it was probably not necessary and in any event was uneventful.  Back at the hangar, the sky looked slightly better, but we knew better than to be seduced by a few patches of blue sky.  We stood around chatting for a while, hoping conditions would improve but it was not to be.  I reluctantly de-geared and pushed the plane back into its spot, cleaned it up and said ‘cheerio’ to the members that were left.

Shortly after we left the airport, my brother and I stopped to eat a late lunch/early dinner, and noticed the sky was now mostly blue.  “It’s mocking us,” I said.  Jim agreed, but it was too late in the day to do anything about it.  Sigh.  Still, we did fly a bit and Jim — an accomplished fixed-wing pilot in his own right — got his first experience in a gyroplane.  Not a total loss, then.  We both had fun!

The important information I came away with from this day was that a density altitude of 2000+ would have a fairly profound affect on my performance.  I can’t be sure, but it seems my fuel consumption will increase by almost 20%, so I must make my future flight planning with that in mind.   It’s good information to know.

 

Note:  If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  Go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

March 19, 2018

In 1785, Robert Burns composed a poem, part of which is very famously used probably daily by someone, somewhere on Planet Earth.  The part you’ll know is (in modern English): “The best laid schemes of mice and men, often go awry.”  (My title — Gang aft agley — is the Scots language version of ‘often go awry.’)  We all experience this at some point.

My plan for St. Patrick’s Day was to fly to Dublin, TX for a fly-in.  It is one of the few fly-in’s that focus on gyroplanes (but not exclusively so).  From my home airport, it was a 3-hour straight-shot to the northwest.  My brother, Jim, agreed to go, as well, so it was to be quite the outing!  Yet, despite the weather in Dublin being good throughout the day, the weather around my home airport never got much better than “misty.”

Even the night prior, it was clear that it, uh, wasn’t going to clear.  Fog was forecast until about 11 am.  To get to Dublin with time to walk around a bit, we would have to have left no later than 9 am.  The trip to Dublin was out, then.  Yet, since the forecast said the cloud base would rise above 2,000 feet by 1 pm, I told Jim to meet me at the hangar by noon, and we’d choose an alternative local place to fly to….. perhaps to Brazoria County airport again.  Ah, optimism!

I’m lucky in that I can go out to the hangar on weekdays, so I usually have the entire place to myself.  When we arrived, we found out that not only was it a typically busy Saturday, but there was also a club meeting!  Needless to say, there were a lot of people and a lot of things going on.  But it was nice to see the other members and chat a bit.  Looking at the sky, it was hard to tell what the ceiling was, but it was low.  The air was heavy with moisture, and occasionally I’d feel a bit of mist.  We decided to give it a shot.

I had almost full fuel, and my brother is somewhat heavier than I am, so we were near MTOW (max take-off weight).  The factor I hadn’t thought too much about was the density altitude.  It was a warm day… 85-87 F, and since the time I ferry’d the plane from Maryland (in January), this would be the warmest day I had yet flown.  But I wasn’t thinking about that.  (Later, I calculated the density altitude to be around 2100 feet.)

Rolling down the runway, that ignored factor soon became front-and-center.  I could tell almost right away that everything was happening more slowly than I was now used to.  I picked up speed slower, the nose-wheel came up later than I was used to and didn’t try to leap up.  We were lumbering down the runway for quite some time before finally lifting off, then my ascending speed was definitely much slower.  For just a moment, I wondered if I should abort because it would be really bad if I couldn’t gain any altitude!

But ascend we did, albeit slowly.  Usually I’m at 500 feet by the time the end of the runway is under me.  This time, the engine was at full blast for another minute or more.  We did manage 1000 feet before I throttled back to a normal RPM, but even the normal RPM was higher than I was used to to maintain this altitude.  When we leveled out, I could pry my attention away from the aerodynamics for a moment, and looked around at the conditions.  It was…  misty.  The ceiling was only a little above us.  This was not looking good.

Despite that, we decided to fly around the local area for a while, to see if anything opened up.  We’d go a few minutes in one direction, then we’d see rain on the windshield, and turn away… go a few minutes in that direction, and hit more light rain… and so on.  So, we meandered around trying to find anything that resembled something other than the poor conditions we’d already experienced, but with no luck.  After almost 40 minutes we finally decided to give up.

I landed a little fast due to the extra weight, but it was probably not necessary and in any event was uneventful.  Back at the hangar, the sky looked slightly better, but we knew better than to be seduced by a few patches of blue sky.  We stood around chatting for a while, hoping conditions would improve but it was not to be.  I reluctantly de-geared and pushed the plane back into its spot, cleaned it up and said ‘cheerio’ to the members that were left.

Shortly after we left the airport, my brother and I stopped to eat a late lunch/early dinner, and noticed the sky was now mostly blue.  “It’s mocking us,” I said.  Jim agreed, but it was too late in the day to do anything about it.  Sigh.  Still, we did fly a bit and Jim — an accomplished fixed-wing pilot in his own right — got his first experience in a gyroplane.  Not a total loss, then.  We both had fun!

The important information I came away with from this day was that a density altitude of 2000+ would have a fairly profound affect on my performance.  I can’t be sure, but it seems my fuel consumption will increase by almost 20%, so I must make my future flight planning with that in mind.   It’s good information to know.

 

Note:  If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  Go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

February 26, 2018

For the pilots out there, yes, yes, the title of this blog entry is a riff on the old “$100 Hamburger” that you’ve likely heard many times.  For non-pilots, the old saw of the “$100 Hamburger” has to do with using a plane to go to another airport to eat lunch.  By the time one factors in all the costs involved, the hamburger you ate cost about $100.  It isn’t necessarily $100… the point is, it’s simply more expensive.  Yet, we do $100 hamburgers because we don’t need much of an excuse to go fly.  So it might as well be for something you’d need to do anyway, such as eat lunch.

The title of this blog entry is a good-natured dig at the Cessna, Piper, Mooney (etc) pilots who may, indeed, spend that much money to go eat lunch at another airport.  Having an LSA (more fuel efficient), and using MOGAS (motor fuel, as used in cars, which is less expensive than aviation fuel) overall makes the endeavor much less expensive.  For this trip, we flew a total of 166 miles over 3 hours.  That means I used 13.8 gallons of fuel @ $2.90/gallon, or $40.02 total.  Our meals was about $35 total, so we spend about $75 for two people, or $37.50 each for our “hamburger.”  (I had a fish po’ boy, and my wife had grilled catfish.)

(I’m not trying to start a cost-of-$100-hamburger-war, because the faster GA planes won’t spend 3 hours on this flight.  However it calculates out, it is very likely that the LSA will be less expensive, but in certain scenarios, maybe not!)

The GA pilots may get there faster, but we sure did have fun going low and slow and seeing what there was to see!

The other theme I wanted to express is, I’m really loving my gyroplane inasmuch as it’s mostly immune to just about any turbulence.  Most of my flying hours since the year 2000 when I learned to fly) have been in fixed wing aircraft. And I don’t miss the turbulence one bit.  The rotors of the gyro cut through the turbulence and at worst you might get a gust that blows the tail to the side for just a bit.  We also do rise and fall with thermals and cool spots, just as anyone would, but it’s nothing dramatic.

So, because I wasn’t too fond of having to deal with turbulence, a large fraction of my flying hours were spent in the early mornings or late afternoons, when turbulence is usually low.  The times I did cross-country flights and had to fly in the middle of the day, I inevitably encountered turbulence and had to deal with it.  And while, like all other pilots, I did deal with it, that doesn’t mean it’s pleasant.  YouTube is full of video’s showing small GA aircraft dealing with turbulence, and it’s not pretty.  I recommend you check them out.

No aircraft is perfect, though, and gyroplanes excel in handling turbulence but are very difficult to learn to fly and even more so to master.  You can learn to fly them, though, and with a lot of practice, they can be mastered.  But as someone with hundreds of hours of flying time under their belt, I can assure you it’s not that straightforward.  I would never want to dissuade anyone who has the interest, because while it’s more difficult than fixed wing, it’s not that much harder.  There is only the key element of rotor management that needs to be attended to.

You might hear that takeoffs and landings in a gyro are difficult, but really those aren’t bad at all, but it’s during takeoffs/landings when you are dealing with the rotor, and that takes a lot of training and practice.  I’m still struggling with the particular eccentricities of the Cavalon, which are different from the Magni M-16, which are different from the Gyrobee, which are different from the Predator, etc., ad nauseam.  They are all similar, but the actual manipulation of the controls associated with rotor management can make them all different, too.

I really didn’t intend for this blog posting to be about the nuances of gyro’s vs fixed-wing, but more about the flight from Chamber County Airport (T00) to Texas Gulf Coast Regional (KLBX), for lunch.

For both my takeoffs and landings at both airports, I had a fairly stiff 90-degree cross-wind.  And I’m freely admitting that my level of expertise in the Cavalon is limited, so I knew I would have my hands full.  The takeoffs aren’t too difficult since most of the rotor management occurs just prior to the wheels leaving the ground.  I am learning, though, that the Cavalon is pitch sensitive, even more so than any other gyro I’ve flown (5 different types).  And that pitch sensitivity changes as the aircraft changes speed, and is greatly affected by the TOW (take-off weight) and density altitude.  So, it may be sluggish for a while during the take-off roll, then suddenly quite sensitive.  It takes an understanding and practiced hand to deal with that.  My takeoffs improve a tiny bit each time, but it’s a very slow process.

My landings are the real problem (for me).  I did eventually get fairly good at them in the other 4 types of gyro’s I’ve flown, but I’m still not there yet with the Cavalon.  The worst part is, there’s little consistency.  I can have one really good landing, and then 5 bad ones.  Even when I spend hours just doing touch-n-go’s, I feel inconsistent.  At the end, I’ll feel improved, but only (on average) a small amount, so more t-n-g’s are the order of the day.  I’ll eventually get it — just as I did taking off from water in the seaplane I had for a while — but it’s taking me longer than I like.  I’m not happy with my own performance.  But I am very happy with the way the Cavalon flies.

Once in the air, the Cavalon is so pleasant to fly that it almost puts you to sleep.  There is no drama, no sudden shifts, no fighting the stick, and no wishing you were on the ground.  My wife loves it, and so do I.  That’s not to say you can’t have fun… the ability to turn, go slow (almost zero), and land short is unmatched.  No, we can’t go more than about 100 mph (87 knots), but at least the Cavalon is fuel efficient and has a large tank, so its range is quite good for such a tiny aircraft.  It’s an all-day aircraft, something I’ve not owned before.

The shell that gives the Cavalon its distinctive shape results in air flow variations that change whenever there is a change in engine rpm, ascent/descent attitude, and whether one is turning.  On the control stick is a little “coolie hat” trim button, and I’m learning to use it aggressively, depending on what else is going on.  I’ve definitely improved getting the trim right and done quickly, which makes flying it even easier for the pilot.

The day we flew to KLBX, it was pretty cool, so the doors were on.  I haven’t yet flown the Cavalon with the doors off, but I do look forward to that day.  And since very hot days are common in SE Texas, it won’t be too long.  One of the reasons I love to fly is to be able to take pictures and, while I think the doors are great (especially when it’s cold), they aren’t the best thing — with their reflective acrylic — to have between my camera and what I’m taking a picture of.  So, warm days and doors off are the ticket to some better photography, I hope!

Below are some photos that my wife and I took during the trip.  For the trip to KLBX, we flew down the beach, jumped over the Galveston airport air-space, then turned west at San Luis Pass.

The return trip was a bit more direct but, because of the head-wind, the time to return was about the same as our longer out-going leg.

To see the route better, and where the photos were taken, the web site Ramblr is much better so jump over there if you’re curious to get more details.  The photos below are a sub-set of those on the Ramblr stories.

– – – – – – – – – – –

If you are not viewing this post in a web browser, but would like to, click here.

To leave a comment, please scroll down to the bottom of this page.  Thanks!

If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  To subscribe, open this page in a web browser (if you haven’t already) and go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.

 

February 26, 2018

For the pilots out there, yes, yes, the title of this blog entry is a riff on the old “$100 Hamburger” that you’ve likely heard many times.  For non-pilots, the old saw of the “$100 Hamburger” has to do with using a plane to go to another airport to eat lunch.  By the time one factors in all the costs involved, the hamburger you ate cost about $100.  It isn’t necessarily $100… the point is, it’s simply more expensive.  Yet, we do $100 hamburgers because we don’t need much of an excuse to go fly.  So it might as well be for something you’d need to do anyway, such as eat lunch.

The title of this blog entry is a good-natured dig at the Cessna, Piper, Mooney (etc) pilots who may, indeed, spend that much money to go eat lunch at another airport.  Having an LSA (more fuel efficient), and using MOGAS (motor fuel, as used in cars, which is less expensive than aviation fuel) overall makes the endeavor much less expensive.  For this trip, we flew a total of 166 miles over 3 hours.  That means I used 13.8 gallons of fuel @ $2.90/gallon, or $40.02 total.  Our meals was about $35 total, so we spend about $75 for two people, or $37.50 each for our “hamburger.”  (I had a fish po’ boy, and my wife had grilled catfish.)

(I’m not trying to start a cost-of-$100-hamburger-war, because the faster GA planes won’t spend 3 hours on this flight.  However it calculates out, it is very likely that the LSA will be less expensive, but in certain scenarios, maybe not!)

The GA pilots may get there faster, but we sure did have fun going low and slow and seeing what there was to see!

The other theme I wanted to express is, I’m really loving my gyroplane inasmuch as it’s mostly immune to just about any turbulence.  Most of my flying hours since the year 2000 when I learned to fly) have been in fixed wing aircraft. And I don’t miss the turbulence one bit.  The rotors of the gyro cut through the turbulence and at worst you might get a gust that blows the tail to the side for just a bit.  We also do rise and fall with thermals and cool spots, just as anyone would, but it’s nothing dramatic.

So, because I wasn’t too fond of having to deal with turbulence, a large fraction of my flying hours were spent in the early mornings or late afternoons, when turbulence is usually low.  The times I did cross-country flights and had to fly in the middle of the day, I inevitably encountered turbulence and had to deal with it.  And while, like all other pilots, I did deal with it, that doesn’t mean it’s pleasant.  YouTube is full of video’s showing small GA aircraft dealing with turbulence, and it’s not pretty.  I recommend you check them out.

No aircraft is perfect, though, and gyroplanes excel in handling turbulence but are very difficult to learn to fly and even more so to master.  You can learn to fly them, though, and with a lot of practice, they can be mastered.  But as someone with hundreds of hours of flying time under their belt, I can assure you it’s not that straightforward.  I would never want to dissuade anyone who has the interest, because while it’s more difficult than fixed wing, it’s not that much harder.  There is only the key element of rotor management that needs to be attended to.

You might hear that takeoffs and landings in a gyro are difficult, but really those aren’t bad at all, but it’s during takeoffs/landings when you are dealing with the rotor, and that takes a lot of training and practice.  I’m still struggling with the particular eccentricities of the Cavalon, which are different from the Magni M-16, which are different from the Gyrobee, which are different from the Predator, etc., ad nauseam.  They are all similar, but the actual manipulation of the controls associated with rotor management can make them all different, too.

I really didn’t intend for this blog posting to be about the nuances of gyro’s vs fixed-wing, but more about the flight from Chamber County Airport (T00) to Texas Gulf Coast Regional (KLBX), for lunch.

For both my takeoffs and landings at both airports, I had a fairly stiff 90-degree cross-wind.  And I’m freely admitting that my level of expertise in the Cavalon is limited, so I knew I would have my hands full.  The takeoffs aren’t too difficult since most of the rotor management occurs just prior to the wheels leaving the ground.  I am learning, though, that the Cavalon is pitch sensitive, even more so than any other gyro I’ve flown (5 different types).  And that pitch sensitivity changes as the aircraft changes speed, and is greatly affected by the TOW (take-off weight) and density altitude.  So, it may be sluggish for a while during the take-off roll, then suddenly quite sensitive.  It takes an understanding and practiced hand to deal with that.  My takeoffs improve a tiny bit each time, but it’s a very slow process.

My landings are the real problem (for me).  I did eventually get fairly good at them in the other 4 types of gyro’s I’ve flown, but I’m still not there yet with the Cavalon.  The worst part is, there’s little consistency.  I can have one really good landing, and then 5 bad ones.  Even when I spend hours just doing touch-n-go’s, I feel inconsistent.  At the end, I’ll feel improved, but only (on average) a small amount, so more t-n-g’s are the order of the day.  I’ll eventually get it — just as I did taking off from water in the seaplane I had for a while — but it’s taking me longer than I like.  I’m not happy with my own performance.  But I am very happy with the way the Cavalon flies.

Once in the air, the Cavalon is so pleasant to fly that it almost puts you to sleep.  There is no drama, no sudden shifts, no fighting the stick, and no wishing you were on the ground.  My wife loves it, and so do I.  That’s not to say you can’t have fun… the ability to turn, go slow (almost zero), and land short is unmatched.  No, we can’t go more than about 100 mph (87 knots), but at least the Cavalon is fuel efficient and has a large tank, so its range is quite good for such a tiny aircraft.  It’s an all-day aircraft, something I’ve not owned before.

The shell that gives the Cavalon its distinctive shape results in air flow variations that change whenever there is a change in engine rpm, ascent/descent attitude, and whether one is turning.  On the control stick is a little “coolie hat” trim button, and I’m learning to use it aggressively, depending on what else is going on.  I’ve definitely improved getting the trim right and done quickly, which makes flying it even easier for the pilot.

The day we flew to KLBX, it was pretty cool, so the doors were on.  I haven’t yet flown the Cavalon with the doors off, but I do look forward to that day.  And since very hot days are common in SE Texas, it won’t be too long.  One of the reasons I love to fly is to be able to take pictures and, while I think the doors are great (especially when it’s cold), they aren’t the best thing — with their reflective acrylic — to have between my camera and what I’m taking a picture of.  So, warm days and doors off are the ticket to some better photography, I hope!

Below are some photos that my wife and I took during the trip.  For the trip to KLBX, we flew down the beach, jumped over the Galveston airport air-space, then turned west at San Luis Pass.

The return trip was a bit more direct but, because of the head-wind, the time to return was about the same as our longer out-going leg.

To see the route better, and where the photos were taken, the web site Ramblr is much better so jump over there if you’re curious to get more details.  The photos below are a sub-set of those on the Ramblr stories.

– – – – – – – – – – –

If you are not viewing this post in a web browser, but would like to, click here.

To leave a comment, please scroll down to the bottom of this page.  Thanks!

If you enjoyed this or any of my other blog entries, I suggest you subscribe to this blog so that you are automatically notified when I make a new entry.  To subscribe, open this page in a web browser (if you haven’t already) and go to the top of this page, and look along the left side for the subscription field.