Dan Heath wrote: > If Mark trys to play down his ability to fly that thing, don't believe him. > You will see a pic of him, already tail down and very little of the runway > used. Never heard a squeek, this guy is good.
Thanks for the kind words, Dan. I'll get that $20 I promised you in the mail tomorrow! That was a fun trip, all the way to Columbia, SC and back in one day, although way too quick. I didn't get out of here until 10:00AM, and if I were a really safe pilot, I wouldn't have left then. Ceilings had been 600-700 feet "with mist" all morning, and I had given up twice and started driving home, but after seeing blue sky just a few miles south, drove back to the airport knowing that one of those holes would come my way eventually. So, I took off and flew up through a hole and immediately got on top, and it went from broken to scattered just a few miles from the airport. I climbed to 9,500 for the trip over to Dan's place, to save fuel and make sure I could glide to an airport if I needed to. I burned 9.9 gallons covering 330 miles, which is an average of 33.3 miles per gallon, and I did that in an hour and 45 minutes takeoff to shutdown, which is 188 mph average and 5.6 gallons per hour. Yes, I had a bit of a tailwind. I didn't have as much time to check out Dan's plane as I'd have liked, but he ran it for me, and it sounded like a sewing machine, both at idle and full throttle (if that was full throttle). It was way quieter than mine. It looked ready to fly to me. Beautiful body work and interior too, not to mention the engine. Gotta love those big VW's. : ) It also has a lot more headroom than mine. The workmanship in that thing is awesome! Fortunately Dan got to fly my plane, and he did an excellent job of it. With the experience he had in his first KR2 "Little Beast", I'll bet he's ready to fly. See http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/flights/051230047m.jpg for a glimpse. You know what they say, "there's a time for building, and a time for FLYING!" The trip back was way different, because as I climbed up to 10,500 it became obvious that I wasn't going to make it home before sundown with that kind of headwind, so I kept decending until my ground speed was a respectable 170 mph at 3400 rpm, but that was at 3000 feet, which was 500' AGL in places! I haven't always been real comfortable at that kind of altitude, but I think I got that way today! I had to hop a few mountain ranges on the way, but it was a real blast flying 500' off the ground over some of those plateaus, and then have the ground fall away from below, just like an OmniMax movie. At 500', you really get the feeling that you're screaming along, and you are! I keep wondering why I never see anybody up at 10,000' but airliners, but today I think I learned why! I kept comparing the GPS to the fuel totalizer, and it was clear that I was going to get home 15 minutes after sunset, but with only 5-10 minutes of fuel left, despite my leaning efforts. Sorry, but not only is that "way" not enough margin, but I don't trust this stuff that well! So I dropped in on Dalton Georgia, straight in. Threw them a $20 for some 100LL, and took off from the halfway point on the runway (half of their runway is as long as my home airport's whole runway). That cost me 12 minutes, but now I didn't care about leaning and really honked on the way back. I still managed to snap this photo of Lake Guntersville at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/flights/051230078m2.jpg while I terrified the rural countryside. I may not be much of a pilot, but I know a good picture when I see one! I landed 20 minutes after sunset, another straight in job, facing a dark wall of clouds and lightening 20 miles off to the west. That's cutting it way closer than I like to do, and I'll try to make sure that doesn't happen again. Sounds kinda like "gotta-get-there-itis", I guess. I didn't reset the totalizer at the last stop, and when I landed at home it said I'd have had .3 gallons left, if I hadn't stopped at Dalton. One of these days I'm adding another wing tank! I burned 15.4 gallons on the way back, so I guess the average for both directions is 29.3 mpg, which still beats my Volkswagen GTI and Jeanie's Audi A4. Mapquest says it's a 15 hour drive there and back, and I did it in 4 hours and burned a lot less fuel, and had a whole lot more fun than driving! YeeeeeeeeeeHAAAAAAAAAAA! The plane now has 113 hours on it. What a hoot! Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net --------------------------------------------------------------
