Yeah, Yeah, it’s been forever since I’ve posted. I’ve been super-busy though… really! As some of you may know, I decided to give the Glastar, affectionately known as “Whistler” a brain upgrade. My experience with my Blue Mountain Avionics EFIS was – how should I put this delicately.. “mixed”. I can’t be too harsh on the BMA folks though. They’re a smart bunch and they’ve been helpful despite being shuttered as a business for over a year now. They were definitely fast movers in the market but I don’t think their cost structure was able to keep up with the market. That’s just a guess though – no insider information! 
So I’ve wanted to put an autopilot into Whistler for quite a while now. When I started shopping, I was zeroing in on the Trio Pro Pilot. It looks like a solid unit and it’s gotten good reviews. One problem though, the price tag. For about $600 bucks more, I was able to take advantage of the Dynon BMA trade-in program and get the Dynon SkyView plus auto pilot. GOOD DECISION! The electronics were easy enough to install. The mechanical servos, we’ll that’s another story and probably another post. Suffice to say that it was TOUGH! I’m happy to report though that the SV sytem has been working flawlessly and after a bit of tweaking, the autopilot is working just great after initially wanting to aggressively bank to capture a track and then “hunting” back and forth to try to stay on course.
The following short clip has also been keeping me busy. I came up with this business idea (sky-gadgets.com) to mix great video footage with product demonstrations and tutorials to form a little online business. Trouble is that I have no idea how to video tape much less edit so off I go to get some practice. I bought a small “lipstick” camera that I mounted on the Glastar’s cage and a copy of Final Cut Express. What follows is a piece of footage that I edited together from along continuous shot filmed from Suffolk, Virginia (SFQ) to my home base in Chesterfield (FCI)
“I’ve come to realize that there two categories of kit built airplanes: 1) Under construction and NOT flying 2) Under construction AND flying.”
The first long flight of the season is always interesting. It’s even more interesting if the flight is following major maintenance which was the situation this year. At the end of last season a friend of mine and I were going to head out on a short cross country. When I opened the hanger door to start the pre-flight, av-gas fumes flooded my nostrils and made my head feel like floating tissue paper. Uh oh… The rubber tanks that I thought were such a good idea at one time had rebelled for the very last time. I spent a better part of the winter taking the old bladder tanks out and replacing them with the stock aluminum tanks that originally came with the kit. Ah, had I known then what I know now! The assumption that the rubber tanks would give more capacity and be safer in an accident turned out to be false, the more capacity part anyway. Thankfully I’ve never tested the crash worthiness (knocking vigorously on wood).
Last Saturday a friend of mine and fellow Sportsman builder, Dee Whittington and I did a nice little cross country to shake out the bugs. Mercifully there were none. Although a little warm and just a touch bouncy, our trip from Chesterfield to Petersburg to Wakefield to Sufflolk to Chesapeake with stops at both Suffolk and Chesapeake for their open house, proved to be completely uneventful. Can I fly now, huh, can I can I huh??
This weekend it’s back to Suffolk for the annual Festival of Flight Fly-in. It should be fun! Fly there, drive there or walk there if you have to!
!!!! NEWS !!!!
I’ve been corresponding with a fellow daring aviator who successfully flew a Velocity from the United States over to South Africa by way of Iceland, Europe and Egypt to Africa. James Arestad is his name and I watched is Video Blog in snippets over the course of several days. Apologies to my employer but I couldn’t help myself, his story is just too compelling! I reached out to James and he’s agreed to do a pod-cast which I’ll post here as soon as it’s done. In the meantime, check out James’ adventures on YouTube.
