2006
Seymour Airpark
Pictures
'n Stuff
Sunday January 8th 06
Today turned out to be a gift from God for us.
We got to the airport Saturday midday but it was just too cold and overcast to try anything so we just chilled out and watched a movie, cooked dinner and camped out expecting Sunday to be, according to the weather people, sunny and 60 degrees. However, Saturday's late night 11pm news weather folks said we would have high winds of 25 to 35 mph throughout the entire day Sunday. When we got up Sunday morning there wasn't any wind blowing at all so we logged onto our favorite weather site on our trusty laptop and low and behold we had a window of mild winds up until 2pm this afternoon before the high winds were to be upon us. This was some pretty good news for us because I haven't gotten to get any airl time in since November 11th due to the storm damage repair we are having to do at home and the really sad weather we have had for the past two months.
At a nice brisk 33 degrees we rolled the heli out of the trailer and positioned it on the skirt of the runway. We fueled it up and did a preflight check of the ship. Not having flown in just a few days short of 2 months I left Donna on the ground and got in to fire the ship up. This part of the flight didn't go to well because we had trouble getting the ship to fire up. At first after a bit of cranking it finally fired up but alas when I tried to bring the clutch in it stalled. At that point our FADEC gave me an error code of low voltage so we ended up having to jump start it to get it running. It fired up on the first try after that and I was good to go. The rest of the flying was done today was absolutely fantastic. The ship never missed a beat and although I was a bit rusty did pretty well considering the lag time I had since my last flights. As usual I started out doing hovering maneuvers for the first 10 minutes or so and then jumped out onto the active and did at least 3 quick stops. After that I headed into the air to not only to fly the pattern but also to look around and see if I could spot a fellow pilot that wasn't accounted for. Prior to his flight he told us he would be staying in the pattern and didn't have his radio with him but we hadn't seen him since he departed the 24 runway. First I flew my normal RH helicopter pattern I'm supposed to do to avoid the airplane traffic and on my next go around I entered a LH pattern the planes are supposed to do and wasn't seeing hide nor hair of him. Midway on the 24 LH downwind at 500 agl on I spotted him about mid field around 250 agl over the airpark doing flying a RH pattern. It was a relief to see him and know he was ok but it wasn't a good thing seeing him flying my helicopter pattern at such a low altitude. I'm not clear as to whether or not the rules say ultralight planes are to also fly opposite patterns or not so I didn't say anything to the fellow about it. If we aren't careful someone's more than likely going to get hurt before it's all said and done.
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Flying the pattern |
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The tail end of a Steep Approach maneuver |
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The tail end of a Quick Stop maneuver I did at 25 agl and 50 mph indicated |
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Hovering maneuvers around one of the runway lights |
Taking my 4th ever passenger since I got my ticket Bennie Lay for a short ride and coming in on my 9th or so touch down landing of the day. Bennie lives about 4 miles north of the airpark and finally got to see his house from the air for the first time today. He also said that although he's spent many years around RotorWays not to mention attending Homer's Fly-In's for the past several years this was his first ride in a RotorWay Exec. Something's wrong with that picture so you fellow RotorWay pilots at the fly-in's have got some catching up to do as far as talking folks for ride goes. |
Some new folks that stopped by for a lookie loo at the airpark watching me fly our bird. They are looking at buying one of the lots on the other side of the runway. |
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February 25/26 2006
This weekend was pretty interesting.
We've been super busy with other events in our life and this was the first chance we have had to get out to the air park and fly since our last post.
Some friends we've made in the RotorWay community Bob and Sill St. Dennis came up for a visit from Florida via Clarksville, TN, to meet us and have a look at our ship. We arrived Saturday morning and had a rather difficult time finding a spot to park our RV due to most of the grounds being soft from the wet weather we have been having.
Larry and Kathy have been busy as bees revamping the airpark and as our usual spot was fubared from large dump trucks driving over it filling in the land in the north east corner of the property.
After trying to set it up in 3 different places it we finally got it lol. Anyhow after that bit of fun we got the ship out and onto the airfield fueled it up and did our preflight. Bennie Lay stopped by and we got to visit a bit with him. It was a beautiful day for flying, 4 to 6 knot winds and cool temps of about 57 degrees. I didn't get to fly long due the fact that our visitors arrived. About all I got to do was do was about 10 minutes of hovering maneuvers and a couple of quick stops. After that I got in about 15 minutes of flying close the air park, mostly to the north up to highway 411 and back a few times. I got in a steep approach, a low altitude 75 agl or so fly by on 24 and a extended approach for 24 and it was over. The ship did great and to my surprise so did I considering the limited flight time I've been able to put in this past several months. The St. Dennis's are very nice folks. Both Bob and Sill are both airplane pilots and each have their own planes. Bob has recently purchased a RotorWay Exec and is in the process of learning to hover and fly it.
Bob and Sill
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Bob and I playing Q&A
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Sill touring of our ship |
Bob, Sill, and I doing the Q&A thing |
On a down side this weekend
Larry
said we needed to move our trailer again because it was in the way
of new construction he was fixing to be doing. First it was to
be moved onto the grass just short of where the planes do their
runups prior to taking off on runway 24. That didn't seem like
a good idea to us because it would put us in the prop wash if a pilot
got careless. Looking around we really didn't see any other
options so we decided to just take the ship home for awhile. We
have a 25 hour service to do on it which we would have rather did at
the airpark but in light on having to move again plus we need to pull
the trailer/ship back to the shop in a couple of weeks anyway to get
it ready for Sun 'N Fun in the event we get lucky and get to go.
We spent Sunday doing an unplanned pack it up and move finally
finishing that task at about 4:30pm that afternoon. That sounds
like a long time but over an 1 1/2 hours of that was from Donna having
to return to our shop to retrieve our trailer receiver hitch.
In short all
that means we won't be able to fly our ship again
until Sun
'N Fun and after that who knows.
<sigh>
END
