Farewell Flight

A friend at the gym had a friend who had recently lost her father. She felt that she had never really been able to say goodbye to him. He was a pilot and she wanted to go up in a plane for the first time to say goodbye in the element that he loved. I agreed to take her for a ride.

Last week the weather was nice and we decided to go up at sunset on Sunday. Desiree arrived with her boyfriend and I showed them the plane and gave a quick briefing. She was nervous, but eager for what she thought would bring her closer to closure with her father.

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All loaded up and ready to go with Desiree in the copilot seat. The weather is perfect and the sun is low in the sky.

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She is comfortable as we cruise around in the late afternoon light and takes the stick to try her hand at flying.

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Sunset. It is one of those times that really does feel spiritual. I am happy to be up here and to be able to give her this experience.

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Back on the ground. I feel like this was a worthwhile flight and that she really got something she needed out of it. It always feels good to share the gift of flight with others.

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Repairs and Upgrades

You may remember from the last post on the flight to Maryland, I had an alternator failure. The red light in the panel in the shot above is the alternator failure warning light. I flew back home on the back up systems, and confirmed that the voltage regulator on my alternator was shot.

I pulled the alternator and decided to replace it. That's where the fun began. It is a 60 amp automotive alternator made by Denso.  The good news is that they are very reliable, powerful, and cost only $130, 1/4 the cost of an aviation alternator. The bad news is that there are hundreds of models and the model sticker on mine had fallen off somewhere over the years.

I spent hours on line looking for the identical one, checked with the guys at NAPA and other parts dealers, but couldn't find the exact one to fit my mount. I ended up having it rebuilt, which was about the same price as buying a factory rebuilt one.

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My shiny good as new rebuilt alternator a week later.

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Lower cowling off and ready for the new alternator.

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Since I had taken the time to wire in an automotive attach plug, reinstallation was, literally a snap.

Partly hung. Note the custom plug ready to attach.

Installed and reconnected. Just needs to be safety wired.

Back view.

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Next up, I needed to replace a faulty line to my air/oil separator. There is a pressure relief valve in the line that sends oil out a vent on the bottom of the cowl if the line gets blocked. This was a retrofit after an RV driver blew out his engine when a fitting coked up. The problem was that I was still getting lots of oil on the cowl. The relief valve had obviously failed. We traced the problem to the O rings, which don't like Cam Guard additive I use. They were replaced with Vyton rings, which solves the problem. I got the replacement part for free and installed it in a few minutes. Good customer service from Antisplat Aero.

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Next up will be a new nose gear leg. My vintage kit (mid 90's) had a taco weld in the support gusset that can crack and fail. This requires constant inspection. At Oshkosh this year I helped replace one on the field for another Velocity pilot after he had a hard landing on arrival. I decided to replace mine after John Abraham agreed that I might have the beginnings of a crack. I ordered one from Velocity and was impressed by the finish and by the heavy new gusset. Here are some pictures.

Side view

Top view

After having it match painted.

I will install this as soon as I get a chance.

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Hagerstown for Lunch at 3 Miles a Minute

Garret and I are running out of destinations to check out within a 100 mile range. Last Saturday, we decided to check out a new restaurant called Runway 29 at Hagerstown, Maryland. It is 90 miles away and advertised great food and that you could taxi right up to the door of the restaurant. That sounded very promising. The weather was foggy but forecast to clear up by 11:30, so we headed out to the airport. As promised, the fog lifted and we headed out. Here is a shot of us mid- flight, southbound at 180 knots.

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Here are some pictures as we head southbound. It was just beautiful.

Gorgeous cirrus overhead and great vis ahead

Garret's view to the West

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Hanover, PA

York, Pa

Closer.....

Velocity cam view of a neighborhood

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As we were getting closer, we got repeated high voltage warnings, culminating in an alternator failure. Luckily, I have double redundant backup systems, so it was more of an annoyance than an in flight emergency. We continued on to the destination.

Copilot's view of the screens

Gettysburg Airport. Right next to the battlefield.

Uh- oh. The alternator has failed.

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We contact the tower at Hagerstown and are given a nice straight in approach. We make a nice landing and taxi over to the restaurant at the Rider Jet Center. It is new and very impressive. They seem to be all about customer service. It is clean, new AND they have cheap fuel.

This place looks great. Very modern, with a covered area to load/unload.

The red carpet treatment

Everybody gets a greeting and a red carpet when they pull up.

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We are hungry, as in very hungry, so we go right in to the restaurant, which is as nice as the reviews promised.

Entrance to restaurant. This is an airport restaurant? Wow.

Very nice inside.

View of the Velocity from our table.

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The menu is great and the prices are surprisingly reasonable. The service was very good and the food was wonderful. I had a "Cheese Steak" made from actual steak and Garret had the Runway Burger, which looked awesome. I give the food a 10 out of 10.

We discussed the malfunction while we ate. The voltage had gone up from 13.7 volts to almost 16 before I shut down the alternator. The aux fuel pump had also been surging.

We called several other Velocity friends and they agreed that the voltage regulator on my Denso auto alternator had crapped out. We decided that the 925 amp battery and backup batteries would more than last the 30 minute flight home with no problem and sat back to enjoy our meal.

Great menu, great food, low prices. I love it.

Garret's burger.

My gourmet cheese steak on fresh roll. I'm a happy pilot.

They even have a nice bar, which we can't enjoy for obvious reasons.

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After lunch, we check out the rest of the FBO. This is a terrific facility with a great restaurant, pilot shop, pilot lounges, flight planning room and even luxurious bathrooms. I highly recommend the place.

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After lunch, and checking the place out, we head back out to the plane, fuel up on the cheap fuel and head out. We leave the alternator shut off to avoid damaging the avionics. Everything works fine on the backup systems.

Heading out to the ramp.

A view of the screens on departure

Northbound approaching the mountains

Past the mountains and northward.

Nice canard view

Great views on course.

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Here are some more shots of the trip back. We again cruise at 180 knots, to the 90 mile trip will take only 30 minutes. Incredible!

Shot of the screens and the view ahead

View out the pilot's side

Check out that airspeed!

Short final for 29 Chester County and home

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It was another great trip. I found a replacement alternator at NAPA and will install it tomorrow. The weather looks great, so I hope I can get up in the air.

Thanks to Garret for another great job as flight planner and copilot.

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