“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.
