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Sun 'N Fun
2004
We'd like to dedicate this page to John and all the other soldiers who couldn't be at Chopper Town this year because they are over in Iraq defending us and our country so we can do things like this.
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This is the card everyone signed to send to John on the other side of the world.
John we miss you and sure wish you could have been here!
We missed the 2003 show because of work but this year one way or another we were at least going to get to go for the weekend. Donna and I had to fit in all the fun we could have in one and a half days and thanks to some wonderful people we actually pulled it off.
We didn't get to leave Knoxville until noon Friday so we didn't make Chopper Town until 11 PM.
We pulled into the gate and followed the silver painted lines into the camping area ever so carefully squeezing our bus between the helicopters on the flight line which wasn't very easy in the dark. The camping area inside the fence of Chopper Town appeared to be full, lucky for us Bill and Bobbie Myers had held a spot for us. The upside to this spot was that it was right in the middle of all the goings on in Chopper Town. The down side was that it put us right in the middle of some pretty rowdy people. On our right we had the Safari camp and on our left we had the Spurling camp. At the same time Donna and I looked at one another and said "Kewl!, It doesn't get any better than this" lol. John Spurling, John Pohlman, Stan Maige, and a few others helped us back our bus in the spot and after chatting a bit Donna and I hit the hay.
The next morning, like two kids on Christmas morning, we were up and at 'em at 6:30 am.
After breakfast we hit the door and the fun was on. There were alot of folks here this year and unfortunately there was also a lot missing in action (and you know who you are!). After shooting the bull for awhile with everyone I went to the pilots briefing with the guys and Donna went bopping around visiting everyone.
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My view at the pilots briefing
These are charts of the Lakeland Airport that Bill uses to show all the pilots where they can fly and where they can't.
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Sun 'N Fun Flight Patterns |
Sun 'N Fun Site layout |
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If you can't see this chart well enough be sure to print it and take a good look at it. It will give you an idea of how tough it must be for these fellows to put a show like this on and how the flight patterns work out. The folks who laid all this out sure deserve some major credit. I can't even begin to imagine how the tower personnel keep up with it all. |
This is pretty much just a layout of the airport grounds showing where and what everything is. |
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Satellite views of Lakeland Airport
The grand finale of the pilot briefing was being buzzed by the Goodyear Blimp lol.
Just as things were about to come to a close the top of the tent got dark and all you could hear was the roar of the engines on the blimp. I have no idea what it was doing but this pic doesn't do justice to the view we actually had. When it came over the tent it couldn't have been more than a couple of hundred feet above us.
Now the fun is starting!
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Next on the list was getting to go for a ride in a PRO162SF with John Spurling.
This ship has Pro-Drive's New Secondary Setup installed in it, hence the initials SF (Secondary Fix). The ship also has the Pro Drive Cog Belt, Electric Clutch and Tail Rotor setup installed in it. Donna and I just got our ship back together after having an elastomeric bearing go out. While we were at it to avoid the problem again we also changed out some other major parts in the rotor blades and rotor heads and have been balancing it for the past month. Any how the reason I brought that up was since I had just come out of ours last weekend I could feel the difference in the two ships right off. This ship was smooth as silk both in hover and forward flight. We weren't too far off the center of the chart on our ship and what a difference, of course Im sure the Pro-Drive Tail Rotor setup also had a bit to do with that feeling too.
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While John flew I took pictures of the Show from the air for the first time since we've been coming.
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Lift off |
Heading out to the H for take off |
South |
Just after turning North after the west leg |
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Still North |
Still flying North over one of the camp grounds |
Turning to enter the East leg |
East leg looking down on the venders booths and buildings |
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Still on the east leg |
Still on the east leg |
End of the East leg |
2nd lap on the West leg |
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2nd Lap on the East leg |
One of the planes that were busting our altitude in the pattern to the south |
And another, they look alot further away in these pics but you can get the idea |
On final heading in for a landing at Chopper Town |
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On Final over Chopper Town |
On Final over Chopper Town |
I think this was the cross wind leg heading east just prior to turning down wind in the small landing pattern lol |
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Turning Base for Final. See those orange cones, that's our flight path and when we hit the black top we make a super hard left turn to that H on the Chopper Town field you see in the next picture |
Turning Final. This pic doesn't do the turn justice. We were flying North West on the base leg then a super sharp left turn to get on Final |
I got out of John Spurling's ship and Donna jumped in for a ride with Spurling and I got to jump right into one of the Safari helicopters and fly the pattern again with Mark, Safari's Chief Pilot.
Donna and I have known the Safari folks for several years now and have spent a great deal of time with them. Every person in the bunch is just super good people not to mention they have a great helicopter. If they are half as easy to do business with as they are to be friends with we can't see how anyone could go wrong getting involved with them or their company.
Its quite a bit different from our RotorWay not only in looks but also in the way it flies. It's got a cabin with an awesome view of the world and room to spare. One of the big pluses Safari has going for it is it can fly safer in higher winds. Mark, Safari's Chief Pilot, can really make it dance too. He flies it like it's part of him and never seem to miss a beat in it. Mark is the guy that introduced me to my first mach speed torque turn at Homer's one year and if you've been keeping up with my flight training experiences I'm sure you are aware by now I'm not the kinda guy that enjoys the wild red line maneuvers alot of helicopter pilots seem to like. I guess you can tell I've got alot of trust and respect for him lol. Anyhow Mark and his ship make it all look easy and if I can be half as good a pilot as Mark is some day, I'll be a pretty happy camper lol. I didn't get any pictures on this flight, we stowed the camera under the seat. Once we got to altitude on the south leg of the pattern Mark let me take the cyclic of the ship and fly the rest of the pattern over the air show. I bet he makes a good instructor, he only yelled at me once for letting the airspeed fall off a time or two or three or four and he did it in a very nice way too lol.
Mark
returning
from a flight
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Dew covered Safaris on the flight line and Karo taking a second look at it all.
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Safaris Display helicopter
This ship,
like all the other Safaris,
was looking good and always drew a large crowd.
It had a
good looking paint scheme
and a super nice interior.
Homer bell flew the Turbine Helicycle
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This ship looks and flies great.
This was a company kit built helicopter that flew this year at the show. It looked great.
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The one is privately owned. The owner told me it was the first prototype of one like the yellow one. It appeared to boast what I think was an aluminum Chevy (Douglas) V8. It was for sale by the way, If I heard it right the selling price was the first offer over $100.000.00. It looked like an awesome built and flying ship.
Otto's Ship
The Star of the show
At least as far as we were concerned lol.
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This Pilot (Roger) puts on one hell of a show with a Schwietzer Helicopter and if you had to travel half way around the world to see him perform when it's over you'll be glad you did.
He does every thing during the show we're taught in flight school to never ever do lol. We've even seen him pull a banner. We have videos of the fellow in action and when we get around to it we'll put them on here.
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This is Mike and Charlene's ship.
It's for sale if your looking for a RotorWay.
It used to belong to Scott and Brett Newhart and it's one of the nicest RotorWays out there. The only reason they're selling it is their son grew up (still growing actually) and Mike and him together are too much weight for it. Their goal is to buy something bigger that can carry the whole family, my guess being an Enstrom or a Bell 47. Knowing this crew it's hard telling what they will end up with because from what we know of them, they sure don't let any grass grow under their feet lol.
Bobbie Myers
Bobbie and Bill are the two who keep Chopper Town alive and well for all of us!
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Wandering the grounds of
Chopper Town
Donna and John Pohlman
Donna watching the goings on during the airshow when the red flag was up.
The guys were balancing the prop on Mike and Charlene's Gyro Copter.
Vendors
These are just some of the vendors that setup shop at Chopper Town.
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Views of the Skies
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Night Time Fun
The nights are as much fun as the days.
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At night everything slows down and after dinner every one sits around spinning yarn n stuff and tell some very interesting tall tails lol. These are the times you don't want to miss out on. You'll learn more hanging around the camps at night than you can in several days when you come to one of these fly in things.
This is my sister Vickie
She lives in Lakeland and came to Chopper Town to visit with us Saturday afternoon.
Good Ole John Deere loaned these things to Sun 'N Fun for the air show this year.
It ain't no flying machine but none the same there worth a mention.
They look great and they are easy to get on and off of for us old folks and if your in a hurry they go like a bat outta hell lol. We just bought a new Honda ATV and I've got to say these John Deere ATV's ride is alot smoother.
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Saying bye to Bobbie. We sure hate to leave all these people
Telling every goodbye and leaving one of these events is pretty tough. As many of them as we've been to it doesn't get any easier. We have made some wonderful friends here and really look forward to seeing them again.
My father lives here in Lakeland so before we left town we got to stop by and visit with them.
This isn't related to the airshow but we figured we would share it anyways.
The fellow in the pics below is my father and if ya think we like our toys take a look at him lol. He's got a awesome Hog and its got it's own Hog Hole he hangers it in lol. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where I got my love for machines from not to mention my meticulousness from, I'm pretty proud of him. Unfortunately we didn't get to spend more than an hour or two with them and in no time at all it was time to hit the road for the (suposedly) 11 hour trip back to Knoxville.
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The big bang!
We had an event on the way home we sure could have done without.
Our inside right rear tire blew out going about 80 down the freeway. Luckily it was an inside rear or we sure would have had a hell of lot worse ride than we did. Not wanting to play tire guys on the side of the interstate we motored up to a rest area about 4 miles up the road from where it blew out at. We pulled in and after a figuring out a way to jack the thing up began taking the tire off. Well wouldn't you know it, we had every socket you could imagine on the bus except a 7/8 socket lol. At that point we stowed everything and headed for Gainesville, Florida, an evil place Donna doesn't really care for (something about being the home of the Infamous Florida Gators lol) about 2 more miles up the road. After a bit of looking we literally got lucky and tripped over a Lowe's Hardware store about 3 blocks from the interstate and bought us a replacement socket. After that we had to find a place to change the tire and as luck would have it there was one of them motorhome friendly Wal-Marts right next door to the place. Seeing that tire up close and personal was a site to see, the entire outer band was completely missing in action and all that remained was the threads across the two side walls of the tire.
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When the tread exited the wheel house it damaged some of the storage lockers
and the exhaust pipe and who knows what on the cars who were behind us when it happened.
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Monday afternoon I went out to get the tire size off a tire so we could obtain a replacement for the one that blew out. I noticed that the right front tire was also about to blow, the side walls on it were delaminating and bulging. We called our local tire peoples here in town and they said to bring it to them so they could take a look them. The fellows there pointed out that not only the right front but also the left front and one of the rear ones on the left side was also ready to come apart (seperated), Lord that's not even close to what we wanted to hear lol. Anyhow at 31,600 miles we have four out of six tires that are shot to hell and it's most likely the two remaining ones are too. The folks at the tire store had to wait until Tuesday to check with the Firstone Representative to see what they would do for us.
Well the same night, Monday, we got on the net and found out that we're not the first nor are we the last to have big time problems from this particular brand and model of tire. Seems there are bookoo law suits all over the states and maybe even the world in the works over this tire. Shortly after we obtained our RV the big Firestone Tire recall thing was going on and we had checked to be sure ours were not on the list of them and sure enough they weren't and still aren't.
The NTSB has recorded 16 deaths and over 600 injuries and thousands of complaints directly related to this tire blowing out and says that the ratio of deaths and injuries compared to the amount of these tires that are out there on the road doesn't warrant an investigation on them. We think that's pretty sad.
Donna and I are left wondering just what the magic number of deaths is before they do something about it.
After doing a bunch of research we found a tire that has about a 4% complaint ratio on it and decided that its the one for us.
The bad news
The Firestone people here in town told us they would give a super good deal on a new set of tires like the ones we had and they would give us a whopping 150 dollar credit to make up for our loss toward the purchase to boot.
Wow what a great company lol. The up side to that deal is the total cost to us for the Firestone tires would be some where around $700.00 less the 150 credit leaving us with an out of pocket expense of $550 dollars plus whatever the cost of another tire would be for a spare. That's about $650 bucks at this point. Looking at this realistically we know, well we're guessing, that most likely in about another 30,000 miles or less we would be needing to replace them again, and that's providing they hang in there that long and were lucky enough to survive the next Possible blow out.
The same night pounding the net we found some Michelin tires that appear to be better. The bad news is after shopping around the best deal we could find they are $1,080 bucks. We could get by cheaper by buying the same Firestone tires again but after reading all the reviews and horror storys on the Internet about them and their competing tires we decided to literally go for broke and buy the Michelins tires that had the least amount of complaints and bad reviews. Personally we think it's because there isn't as many of them out there but who knows. We did call our buddies at KUB and Rural Metro who both use the Michelin XPS Rib on their trucks and ambulances and they both said they are a GREAT tire but expensive. We figure our lives are worth another $400 even if we don't have it right now lol.
Its like the rest of things in life, you put your faith and trust in them, pay your money and takes your chances.
If you have a vehicle that has Firestone Steeltex R4S II 225/75R16 Load range E tires you best get your keaster to the tire store and get something different or you may be the next statistic like we just about were.
