Homebuilders Workshop - September 2013
More Oshkosh Details
By Ed Wischmeyer
The gating factor for flying to AirVenture on the airlines is not airfare, it’s rental car rates. This year, I was late renting a car, and the rates in Appleton and Madison were both well north of $100 per day. However, Milwaukee still had rates a third of that, so that’s the airport I flew into. And for an extra $10 per day or so, I rented a Mustang.
The Mustang’s speedometer needle turned through only 180 degrees of arc, and the markings looked like they’d been copied from the 1970s – cluttered and hard to read. There were numerical readouts between the tach and speedometer that were clear and crisp, but the radio etc. panel in the center of the car had pixels as big as pizzas and as dim as your old girl friend. With the floaty suspension and the imprecise steering, you kind of herded the Mustang down the road as the slow-shifting automatic transmission encouraged the engine to make raucous noises before acceleration set in.
To be fair, this was a rental car, and there are undoubtedly other versions that are better tuned, but even the high-powered Mustang in the Ford pavilion had the same funky clunky speedometer markings. Disappointing.
My new RV-8 has very precise handling, by comparison, and I’m well on the way to flying it as well as I used to fly the old RV-4. Part of the drill is to do wheel landings and keep the tail up in the air as long as possible, and part of the drill is to not overcorrect on the steering. That’s all coming back, and today’s flight was at a much lower anxiety level than past flights. Now to start getting the G-tolerance back, something that might take a while at age 64. But back to Oshkosh.
Titan Aircraft had several of their T-51 aircraft, two seat P-51 lookalikes but with wings that appear proportionately smaller than the original P-51’s. The real news is that instead of the original 100 hp Rotax engines, they now support 245 hp Honda 3.5 litre V-6 engines. Cruise is 180 mph, but the rate of climb is a sparkling 2,500 feet per minute. Vne is 215 mph, and stall speed is a low 52 mph. The numbers are otherwise comparable to my new 170 hp RV-8 (except the T-51 has a better rate of climb), but the T-51 looks a whole lot sexier.
There are a number of new engines showing up in the 80 to 150 horsepower range, but I didn’t find them at AirVenture, I only read about them. One that I did find was the D-Motor from Belgium. Four stroke, flat four cylinder, 80 hp at 2,900 RPM and only 110 pounds. Pretty sweet! And the tops of each bank of cylinders remind me of the old flathead Ford V-8s from the 30s. But the real trick is not developing an engine, the real trick is establishing a business and a support network.
Another engine there was the Engineered Propulsion Systems Vision 350 diesel. They advertise it as a turbocharged, eight cylinder, 180 degree “V” (everybody else would call that a flat eight), and they designed and built the first one in something like a year. It’s got impressive specific fuel consumption numbers, like other Diesels, and I hope they can make a go of it.
Meanwhile, down at the ultralight area, there were three electric-powered airplanes flying. My favorite was the Earthstar eGull, flown by Mark Beierle. And it’s available as a kit. I’m not sure that I’m ready for the quirks of current lithium batteries, but the idea of going for an hour’s sightseeing in a plane that can barely be heard from the ground is most appealing. Back in Arizona, my standard tour in the AirCam was an hour.
The FAA had at least a nominal presence at AirVenture. The Administrator was not present, and the excuse was long-standing family obligations. My guess is that the White House told him to inflict as much sequestration pain as he could, as other government agencies have done, and that the family obligation was planned at the same time as the pain. I don’t blame him for skipping out.
But the good news is who from the FAA was present, like, the regional flight surgeons. These are the folks who can actually act on petitions and such, and I had one. I had my most recent second class flight physical on a bad allergy day, and my vision was just a little worse than 20:20 due to goo in the eyes. Consequently, my medical certificate said that I had to wear corrective lenses when flying. When I went to the eye doctor, my vision was again not quite 20:20, but when I washed my eyes out, it was almost 20:15 in each eye! Armed with all the supporting documentation, I had a very pleasant chat with the FAA folks and came home with a new medical certificate, with no limitations. And in years past, the flight surgeon got another limitation removed from my medical.
Speaking of politics, the Icon amphibian was granted a weight exemption by the FAA. Supposedly this was because of the “safety equipment” installed on the plane, like, a bigger wing, but the highly qualified aeronautical engineer with whom I consulted said that there was no engineering justification – it was all politics. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Light Sport Aircraft weight limitations now as other manufacturers joust for regulatory equity.
On Friday, I attended a sample meeting of the IMC Club, sponsored by Hartzell. Local chapters meet once a month and review a video of a challenging IMC situation, and then all discuss. It’s a great concept, but like other discussion groups, the quality of the comments can vary from the astoundingly astute to the other end of the spectrum.
And all too soon, AirVenture was over and it was back to the airlines and back to the Georgia summer. Last year was the summer of heat, and this year is the summer of rain. And more rain. And very limited flying. Before I get too old, I need to have a whole summer to enjoy, the kind that Oshkosh provided this year.
