Copyright Ben Ransom, 1995.
March 21, 1995 I finally flew my airplane!! First flight was Sunday March 19th at Lodi, CA and mostly uneventful -- but then that's a good way for flights to go. I spent a lot of time fiddling around before jumping into the sky, trying to iron out carburetor idle mixture and wheel shimmy problems caused by lousy brakes. I ended up removing the brake shoes early in the day just to be able to keep going. The carb’ problem wasn't entirely solved, but since I was 100% certain that it was only at idle, I didn't let that stop me either. Once the brakes were off I made progressively faster runs down the main runway. Wind was ~10mph, more or less straight ahead, and a little gust lifted my wheels slightly even on the first run. Wow, this thing starts early! On each successive run I was in the air longer, with hops extending to essentially flying down the entire runway at ~10' AGL. I pulled over, did another pre-flight to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be, and then took off, climbing to about 2k' AGL. The plane flew very well -- essentially hands off -- although the controls are "light" enough that you can't just ignore it. Roll control was real nice and crisp compared to some of the other ultralights I've flown. I didn't do any wild pushes to the envelope, but checked out the beginnings of a stall (~<30mph). I mostly wanted to see how things felt at Vmin so didn't really quite stall this time. I was pleasantly surprised to find no apparent pitch change with throttle change. Going from 1/3 to full throttle at ~45mph is just like pushing the up elevator button. I returned to the airport after only about 15 minutes as I was a little under-dressed for the occasion (kind of cold) and was getting smacked repeatedly in the face by an excess shoulder harness flapping in the breeze. After landing, I dug into the carburetor to resolve the idle mixture problem with the help of a local ultralighter. It began to rain so I called it a day. Actually, having dreamed of building my own plane for as long as I can remember, this was a most extraordinary day. 7-23-95 Hard to believe, but I almost burned out on flying by Sunday. I had gone Thursday evening for a short bit of showing off for Dan and others, then 2.5 hours Saturday, then 1.5 hours Sunday. Leaving the plane at Bill Hollman's farm makes me feel like I should take advantage of having it ready, but I don't end up saving a whole bunch of time compared to leaving it on my trailer in the driveway. So, I'm going to try to do that more and not feel like I must go flying so much within a short time block. By Sunday I was starting to wonder what is so darn fun about flying; you worry about everything being perfectly safe, then just go sit up in the sky for awhile. You can't do anything too fun because it may also be too risky. Compare that to wind surfing: You can push your skill in lots of ways, and until you are trying radical stuff or conditions way beyond your skill level, a mistake generally means you simply just get wet. Well, perhaps "all things in moderation" applies to flying too. I am really enjoying the bush plane type of stuff. Saturday seemed really fun flying compared to overdoing it by Sunday. I flew up the Cache Creek, varying between 10' and 1800' AGL for about 35 minutes which is about to the town of Guinda. In the Capay valley it gets exciting because you can fly right on the 1600' ridge running along the east side of the valley. Flying only about 100' away from the ridge you can easily view this remote terrain, plus catch a little ridge lift, and an engine failure would allow you to safely glide down into the valley.
At Guinda I went up above the ridge line and found a really pretty basin area with a large pond and occasional Live Oaks. I had been wondering where I might stop to transfer fuel from my spare container into the main tank, and the surprise discovery of this beautiful and isolated pond made me say quite clearly to myself, "this has got to be it!". There were a couple of possible landing spots, although somewhat tight. I chose one and made it in perfectly on the second pass. The "runway" was a weeded, unused dirt road about 300' long up to a small rise. I was good enough on Saturday to roll to a stop by the top of the rise. On returning Sunday I touched down a little long, was a tad fast, and had a very slight tailwind. These all put me at about 10mph still at the top of the rise. I considered very briefly gunning it, but the risks imposed by a slanted short "runway" ahead, with hills and trees beyond pushed that idea away immediately -- which was all the time available to consider such a move anyway. So, I just aileroned the wings level and bumped down the rise, across a more heavily traveled dirt road and up another rise, with weeds and the rise slowing me down pretty quickly. Lesson #437: Don't always think that what you got away with yesterday will be as easy today.
Taking off required some mental visualization too, as I had no great excess of "runway" taking off from the top of the rise in the reverse direction of my landing. I figured I could be off the ground with at least 100 feet to spare, but this was an estimate, and going long or loosing my engine would possibly have been damaging but not dangerous. To add a little to my advantage, I backed the plane below the top of the rise, figuring I'd be at 10 mph and full power by the time I got there. If things seemed at all weird at the top of the rise I'd kill it; otherwise, it's "T - 2" to blast off with no second guessing. Well, this worked fine both Saturday and Sunday, so seemed very cool. Even so, I felt like I was asking a lot of the plane on Sunday, whereas the day before the same thing felt like a calculated but reasonable accomplishment.
I really appreciate the big prop and blast-off power, as it literally launches me in just a few seconds. Mike timed this for me once: it took 3.5 seconds from full stop to lift off from a hard surface runway into a 10 mph headwind! And even then I was unable to reach full throttle till the last second due to the strong propwash swirl requiring full left rudder as I added the juice. In contrast, landings in the bush are sometimes at the pure mercy of inertia, gravity, and bumps, because without brakes the rollout takes a lot longer than the takeoff roll. I'm beginning to be a little amazed that others have bent their aluminum gear legs on their Firestars. I've certainly tested mine with some rough fields and have found them to still be straight.
An interesting footnote to my feeling vulnerable to long landing rollouts: A very experienced Kolb flyer related to me that, if needed, he reliably and safely stops his plane on a dime by skidding it side to side right after touch down. He stuffs full rudder and then, just as the turf starts kicking from the skidding mains, he stuffs full opposite rudder until turf spews up again in the opposite direction! He has never even seen a wheel lift even though conventional wisdom would define this as the prescribed method for a ground loop. I decided to just stick that handy little idea in the back of my brain -- waaay back.
On Saturday I did a couple of engine off landings at Hollman's farm. After 2 T&Gs with the engine at idle the full way, I shut it off on downwind about 500' AGL. This worked fine, as I hit my "spot" just right. It seemed so nice and quiet, and I had a few minutes of fuel left, so I powered up and went to 2k' AGL and shut it off again. I tried mid-air restarting, which worked, so having proved this to myself, switched off again and glided on in. It's pretty nice enjoying the quiet, and there's a novel sensation flying through the subtle air bumps that are normally masked by the engine vibration. On Sunday I changed over to AV-2 oil, and am pretty sure my cylinder temperatures were a little higher than previously with the Penzoil. This seemed to level out by late in the flight, so could have just been that I was running too lean in the cooler morning air.
I've had second thoughts about the brilliance of my remote off-field landings. I am being conservative, but that is relative and a matter of judgement. One day's apparent walk in the park could be the next day's foolish risk. The main thing I need to do is get some form of communication, as I will always be wanting (or needing) to land in out of the way places. I even thought about getting stranded by a rattlesnake while walking around the lake on Saturday, causing me unnecessary risk and others lots of worry. I sure wish I could combine aircraft band radio with cell phone capability. Almost every time I go flying I have to find a phone to tell Bev that I won't be home by my ETA. Being able to call from Hollman's by cell phone, and mayday radio from the sticks would be very nice.
About 3 weeks ago I tried out spins. Anybody I say that to says incredulously, "Intentionally?!" Well, yes of course! I'm here aren't I? My very first spins were over a year before in a Taylor-Craft, which has an FAA approval for spins, and with an FAA Certified Flight Instructor aboard. In that relatively protective environment I only did 3 or 4 and wondered "why all the fuss?" -- these are no big deal. But in my own personally built plane as a test pilot, spins felt quite a bit more nervy.
The Firestar manual says the plane will begin to turn quite rapidly in a well developed spin, and advises against them. This is most likely a liability disclaimer, as the manual then also states that the Firestar will always exit normally with proper recovery technique -- which is essentially just relaxing the controls. The "rapidly" and "advise against" definitely added to my pucker factor in these first spins, and I kept all of them less than one turn because of that advice. No way would I have done them without the "always exits normally" bit in the manual. After 3 or 4 of these spin entries, I held the stick back and rudder in just long enough to do a full turn. Not exactly Bob Hoover, but not bad for a beginner.
Anyone familiar with aviation knows that pilot spin training is a controversial issue; some say it should be mandatory so that all pilots are familiar with proper recovery technique, while others claim it should remain optional or even explicitly disallowed. Spins seem much more alarming than stalls. As the spin first starts, the suddenly dropping wing is much more dramatic than the mild buffeting of a straight ahead stall. Furthermore, the first part of the spin points the nose to what feels like straight down, and it happens quickly. My brief experience with spins has kept me convinced that spin training is a good idea, but not so much for the sake of improved flying skill. Rather, it is the only way to impress upon oneself how suddenly a spin starts, and how much altitude you will lose. These 2 little pieces of knowledge always seem not so far back in my mind now, especially when I am slowing into a landing pattern, or am in climbing turns. In essence, spins taught me that if I entered one while turning base or final, recovery technique would likely be a moot point.
Last weekend I installed a strobe light and made a huge production out of it for some dumb reason. FAA rules allow flying ˝ hour before sunrise and after sunset if the ultralight has a strobe light. So, this extended flying curfew into the late evening makes a strobe one very nice little addition. That last ˝ hour of dusk brings spectacular sunset colors, still air, and somehow you can even smell the alfalfa on low buzzes back to the airport.
So yesterday I loaded up my plane at lunch time, then ducked out of work at 4:30 to go flying. For some reason it was especially fun. I landed in all kinds of little spots down toward the Sacramento delta and buzzed a lot of tomato harvesters. It's pretty amusing to see their incredulous look at "that weird little yellow thing". I also made a not too intentional full stop landing at a crop duster strip because my carb was too rich for the hot (undense) air. This was no big thing as I just changed the circlip on the carb' needle. The exciting part was that I happened to choose to do this right next to several stacks of bee-keeper hives. The bees seemed to like my bright yellow airplane -- thinking it was maybe the new big queeny. I tried to make short business of the carb' tweak but this is one of those things that takes longer the more you hurry.
Highlights of Flight to Turlock, 9/16/95
This was a highly anticipated trip for me. For starters, I had not been to any air shows this summer and felt deprived of that sort of aviation immersion. Then also, I had envisioned making this my first overnight trip, bringing my sleeping bag and sacking out under the wing just like flying adventures were meant to be. But most of all I knew it would just be fun to go somewhere far enough to test my dead reckoning skills, fledgling as they were. In the days preceding I had just finished modifying my cheap auto store compass by draining out the old dampening liquid and refilling it with some 20-weight clear oil from the hardware store. Hopefully, this would eliminate the past experience of the compass card jittering around in circles the minute I fired up the engine. Although the jittering compass would typically settle down when I got up to cruise RPM, it was certainly a shabby excuse for any realistic navigation instrument. Instead, I always referred to my backpacking compass in spite of having to get it out of a pocket each time I wanted to check my heading. The mere fact that I found what seemed like a good dampening oil and successfully plugged the refill hole I had drilled in the auto compass seemed like a very good omen.
Although I left work a little early on Friday, my plans to have the plane all set up and ready to go from Bill Hollman's field Friday night were, as usual, more effort than I had envisioned. In fact, the BIG event had already degraded from an overnight to just a Saturday flight. Before setting up, I talked with Bill a little bit as I hadn't seen him in awhile. He quickly clarified this by pointing out that although he hadn't seen me, he had heard me quite clearly; I had awakened him from his nap the previous weekend when I dropped in from Davis to practice landings. This was pretty embarrassing. Here Bill had given me the huge favor of using his front yard as an airport, and out of dumb luck I happened to interrupt what was probably a good Sunday afternoon nap. Darn!
I drove home 2 hours after sunset, not because I finished setting up the plane, but because I was terribly inefficient doing last minute preparations in the dark, and knew that a full night's sleep was one of my bigger priorities. I had fumbled around trying, among other things, to re-jet the carb which requires three dexterous hands even in daylight. Even tying down the plane in the dark was a pain, literally, as I poked holes in my fingers from the sharp star-thistle weeds while groping around for Bill's tie-down hooks. He has them placed for "real airplanes", a little too far apart for ultralights. To top all this off, part of Bill's story telling to me that evening was about all the vandalism he's experienced over the years -- not exactly comforting as I finally left my plane and headed home. I had yet to pack my emergency tool kit, oil, camera and other acutraments as well bring a gas container over to Mike's. Mike planned to drive down as his plane was just a little too inexperienced to take on the 210 mile round-trip to Turlock. This worked out well for me as he would give me a quick refuel at my first stop in Lodi at 8 a.m.
Lodi is only 44 miles from Bill's field, but with a headwind and possible lousy fuel consumption in a 2-stroke, this often takes 3/4 of my fuel. Mike meeting me there would make it easy to top off my tank as I joined the other two ULers for the next leg to Oakdale. I had gotten off the ground at Bill's by 7:20, a little late, but this didn't seem to matter much. As I rose to 1000 feet in the still, crystal clear morning air I could see for over a hundred miles. As advertised, this really is a terrific time to fly.
Skirting the East side of Davis I aimed toward Lodi with only a cursory check to my compass. I had made the trip to Lodi several times so was actually checking the accuracy of my compass more than allowing it the authority to check my course. No surprise, the crummy little thing said I was headed Southwest! At least it wasn't vibrating too badly to read, but in fact I was headed almost into the sunrise, and even most Cub Scouts know this isn't Southwest. Oh well, maybe just a little adjustment was still needed. More realistically, I was thinking about throwing the darned thing overboard as I seriously doubted I would ever trust it.
At this point, the compass check was purely academic as my familiarity with the surroundings allowed me to relax and take in the beauty of a huge portion of the Sacramento Delta. I noticed wind waves below showing 10-15 mph of quartering cross wind. It's odd to get that much wind without any noticeable turbulence. By Lodi, that wind was gone again, so in just less than 44 miles I went through the narrow corridor of summer sea breeze that blows into the Sacramento valley. That breeze is interesting to keep track of: On summer afternoons I have often found the temperature to suddenly drop from 100 to 65 degrees abruptly at 400 feet AGL. The cold sea breeze pushes inland, squeezing under the hot air pocketed in the Sacramento valley with surprisingly little mixing. I could almost picture two air masses like cold milk poured into a hot cup of coffee. Then again, maybe I really was just cold and dreaming about a good cup of hot coffee!
I was bundled up well enough that I had left my seat pillow in the "baggage compartment", but quickly regretted this as I could feel the spare fuel container transferring engine vibrations straight into my lower back. Ugh! Otherwise this would be perfect flying! The early morning colors are really rich and it is awesome to have them all to yourself. It almost seemed like I was getting away with more than I deserved. Off to the East a forest fire had started in the foothills, and its rising anvil of orange smoke added to the already picturesque sunrise. I think this is that lonely, beautiful, and strangely undeserved feeling that relatively few people -- pilots in this case -- get to experience when they briefly steal the gift known more naturally only to birds.
Landing at Lodi I met 5 others: Jim, John, Ken, and Ray, as well as Mike with my 5 gallons of pre-mix. This was a brief but "small world" kind of get together. I had only arranged to meet and fly down with Jim and John. But, I had spotted Ken and Ray's ultralight floating into Lodi even from 40 miles away while over Davis. Ray is the guy Mike took lessons from 6 months ago. And he was flying the exact same Beaver 650 that Roger and I had taken demo rides in 4 years earlier down in Turlock. The other guy, Ken, was flying in a rebuilt Kolb Firestar that I had considered buying 5 years previously, but had easily decided it was way beyond repair. Funny too was the fact that the guy selling that wrecked Firestar was the same guy that Mike bought his Ultrastar from in 1993. Last but not least, John is a pilot that had just moved to Northern California from Delaware, and we had previously "met" by way of by email corresponsdence. So this largely coincidental meeting brought a lot of loose connections back together for the morning.
Having never flown with a group before, I tended to go with the flow as Jim, Ray, and another local ultralighter, GT Jim, "organized" our 40 mile flight to Oakdale. Since Ray had a GPS, he would take the lead. After all, how can you argue following someone with a GPS? They pinpoint your position within 50 feet! This quickly turned into lesson #438: Just because someone has a GPS or any other fancy piece of equipment, don't assume that they a) know how to use it, b) have batteries for it, or c) actually feel inclined to turn it on. Five minutes out of Lodi, this was starting to seem like a pretty inadequate "plan". I felt sure that all of us knew we were heading the wrong direction but had no method to communicate an interest in correcting it! It seemed that Ray and his GPS were probably just joy riding down Highway 99! This is even more frustrating as you know that it will be difficult to figure out when, where (and if!) you return to your pre-planned course, as the progression of known landmarks is lost. It just isn't a piece of cake to hold onto a map in an open air ultralight. Added to that is the real concern for mid-air collisions with others in the group, as we had made no plan for where we would fly in relationship to each other. This, I'm sure, was due to the fact that the one thing we all did know was that none of us were experienced enough to presume any practical knowledge of formation flying. A couple of times this trip I looked all over the place worrying that somebody might be too close. In fact, I did have a fairly close miss, but with a Mooney, not another UL in our group! He was flying straight at me and, in spite of my strobe light, showed no signs of seeing me till maybe 10 seconds ahead. I had already begun a fairly sharp, diving bank to the right, and he probably whizzed by 300 yards to my left. Not real close, but with all that sky it seemed a little unnecessary! I'm still not sure he ever saw me.
In spite of ourselves we were soon obviously over Oakdale and it wasn't too hard to locate the airport. It's odd that, when inexperienced, you can practically fly right up to an airport and be strenuously searching all over the place but not see it. Suddenly you realize you are practically right on top it! Some of us refueled and we took off for Turlock. This was only a 20 mile leg, and with visibility at 19 miles, nobody felt it necessary to make a big deal out of the scenic route method of navigation we took on the first leg. The return trip would show fallacy even in this!
The Turlock fly-in was sort of anti-climatic. This was my first airshow as an owner instead of a wannabee. It turns out there are advantages to both. I felt I had had about enough flying just in getting there and getting home, so chumped out of the flying "competition". I also was less interested in the competition when I found that the spot landing contest allowed for full use of the engine instead of an idle glide from the downwind leg. Power-on landings to within a few feet of a mark requires more luck with the wind gusts than it does skill. What a bunch of babies!! In fact, power-on landings are so nearly pointless that I've never even practiced them. In my mind, using the engine on approach means you've already misjudged the approach.
Ray and his GPS (and passenger) left early, so our group departure included only Jim, GT Jim, John and myself. After a delay for John to change fouled plugs, we all got away and joined up very loosely over Turlock for the return leg up to Oakdale. All three others were to the East of me, and our separation increased as we progressed north. I figured getting to Oakdale was duck soup; we had just been there that morning, and the course was parallel to the major street lines below. The only added challenge was a 15 mph quartering headwind.
But, as I began to make out the airport in the distance the other three planes were too far East to even see. I landed, refueled, and waited, …and waited. Two of the failures of our "plan" were not discussing how much, if at all, we would stick together, and what we would do if we got separated. I was getting ready to get on with my next leg to Lodi when I spotted John finally approaching the field. He landed and related to me that they all had mistaken another small town for Oakdale. Realizing he was lost, and worried about low fuel, John landed in an alfalfa field and asked a woman watering her backyard two questions, "Where am I?", and "Do you have any gas I can buy?". Ah, the good ol' days! With about a gallon of possibly rusty gas from a barn can and the valuable information that Oakdale was "12 miles that way!", John made it to Oakdale. While telling me his alfalfa field saga, John was trying to figure out how much gas to buy. He was basing this important purchase decision on the amount of 2-stroke oil he had, which was unfortunate because most of his oil was being carried by the other two lost pilots, not to mention the fact that it had nothing to do with how much gas he needed to make it back to Lodi! With all seriousness, he turns to the increasingly impatient gas attendant and asks for 250 ounces of low lead! This and the gas attendant's purely dumbfounded reaction was about the funniest thing you'd ever see. I checked the 50 to 1 premix math units with John, probably still flustered from his navigational "incident". To the gas attendant's relief John asked for 2.5 gallons of gas -- still not the sale of the day, but at least the units were understandable. I decided at that point that John and I would stick together, no matter what. I credit him with very good judgment to have landed in a decent alfalfa field and ask for help, and decided he was somebody I should fly with more often. Furthermore, I knew that 2.5 gallons was probably barely enough to get him to Lodi, especially with the stiff headwind we faced.
After finally landing at Lodi, a very sunburned John told me that he was literally down to the last drops in his tank. It was at this point he told me he had no gas gauge and cannot even see his tank from the cockpit! Jim Hope, who had gotten lost south of Oakdale ended up beating John and I to Lodi because he had a 10 gallon tank, which afforded him the luxury to fly back non-stop, including the extra miles while lost. Of some concern, GT Jim was unaccounted for and Jim (Hope) put in a call to the CHP to report him missing.
I found out 3 days later that GT Jim did in fact run out of gas near Oakdale. In preparing for an engine out landing he actually stalled the plane while reaching up for his flap lever, but was lucky enough to recover in time and make a rough landing in a plowed field. I honestly hate to tell the rest, but stopping here would be untruthful. The rough, emergency landing had broken off his landing gear, but he found help from a local farmer to weld it back together. He borrowed a large flashlight and (good grief!) took off after dark to get back to Lodi! This still boggles the mind, for if he couldn't find Oakdale by following straight along the North-South roads from Turlock in broad daylight, finding Lodi in the dark after a long and harrowing day seems incomprehensible. In addition, flying ultralights after dark is illegal, and, he had mentioned to me earlier in the day that his strobe lights were not working, and, I believe Lodi did not have runway landing lights then! By some miracle he did make it to Lodi, but not without one more anxious moment, because …he dropped the flashlight turning final!
As for me, I still had 45 miles to go, so refueled at Lodi and headed for Bill's farm in Woodland. Overall, I learned some lessons, felt pretty good about navigating better with my lousy compass than the others with GPS and VOR, and fell asleep that night with absolutely no trouble whatsoever.
10-30-95
I had a great day yesterday, with a LOT of flying. I logged 5.7 hours, starting at 0845 PST and final touchdown at 1710 PST.
Route: Davis - Dunnigan - Sutter Buttes
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Colusa: Stop for Gas
I was surprised how long my roll-out was, as the gravel was not squishy at all. It was indeed rough, as I had briefly glanced sideways to see the landing gear legs taking up an awful lot of shock. I could also feel the gravel acting like ball bearings, allowing slight side to side skidding as I played the rudder pedals to stay straight. Just like other off-field landings, this allowance to skid essentially makes things easier than hard-surfaced runways. The slight, easily controlled skidding reminded me of the advice to radically skid side to side if you need to stop in a hurry, but that was just a thought as I still had plenty of room before getting wet.
I switched off and got out to admire my situation. As you can imagine, I felt like the cat who caught the canary. Other than the river water swirling by, the only noise was an occasional clink from my engine exhaust manifold cooling down another notch. Oh, what those rich Bonanza drivers just don't know!
After blasting off from the Sacramento River bed I traipsed North along the river and picked a spot to cut northwest over to Orland. Unfortunately, I was so taken with my gravel bar landing that I lost track of my position. Between the sectional and landmarks below I couldn't decide whether I was at my cut-over point, or at least 10 miles further north. Part of my confusion stemmed from my navigational planning. In addtion to the appropirate aviation sectional, I had brought a County road map. Trying to switch between the two map scales (as well as the real life scale in the view below) got fairly confusing. Sometimes I over-do it, and need to just remember KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), this time with regard to the two different maps.
Almost all the way over toward Hwy 5 I began to realize I overshot Orland, so kept on going and landed at Corning, 15 miles further north. I was glad to see the big "corning" letters on the runway below, but this was certainly humiliating! At the start of this trip my rinky-dink compass was off by 20 degrees, so I was flying primarily by matching landmarks to the sectional, then road map, then back. What a fiasco. Visibility was about 6 or 7 miles, and next time I think going higher up would give me a view through the haze to pick out towns. Without even seeing it, I let the city of Chico pass only 8 miles off my right wing! Well, Corning wasn't too bad all the same. In fact, for future reference, there's even a shower in the building there! I didn't bother to land at Orland on the return as I had plenty of fuel.
Future Desirables: