|
 |
||||
I have been planning on going to Airventure/Oshkosh 2012 for some time. My original plan was to fly up to Detroit for a wedding over the weekend, then continue on to Oshkosh. Mother Nature had other plans for me. The east coast was socked in IFR the few days leading up to my buddies wedding. I decided to bite the bullet and fly up there commercially. I flew back to Baltimore on Sunday and then took off early on Monday AM for Oshkosh, WI. Shortly after takeoff, I saw my oil temp fall to 59 degrees. 59 seems to be the default reading on the GRT EFIS's when the probe is malfunctioning or not connected.  And about 30 minutes later it started working again! I was contemplating turning around to fix the issue, but I have never had oil temp issues.  On the way out to OSH, there was some weather in Northern IN/OH that I needed to scoot around.  When I got to Columbus things got a little rainy, but nothing too terrible.  Some light precip to the south....  and a nice window to sneak through right aheard without getting wet!  I didn't have any pictures leading up to landing at Oshkosh. I read the NOTAM for the arrival procedures the night before and took some extensive notes. When I arrived at RIPON, I heard no one on the radio. I was contacted by ATC and they told me no one was in front of me and I could go as fast as I wanted to (approach speed to OSH is 90 kts). Landing was a piece of cake on 27, however, it was quite the taxi to homebuilt parking. My oil temps got up to 230 degrees (it was over 100 degrees on the ground!). One guy parked next to me complained of the same thing. He flew in from Arizona and said his oil temps have never been that high. The following are just my random pics of what I thought was cool @ Osh:                       It was the celebration of the 75th aniversary of the Piper Cub. I believe there were 184 cubs on the field!  I have a soft spot for the 195....and any airplane with a radial engine.   Very nice nose art.  Next up was one of my missions for Oshkosh - taking a look at all of the RV's paint jobs on the field. I would like to stick with a Red/White primary paint scheme with a checkerboard rudder.        While I don't intend on doing an over-the-top paint job, this RV-10's paint was amazing. The detail was just awesome.    This RV-10 had a great plenum. All metal on the top, with fiberglassed intakes. It looks like it seals great.  I really wish I would of seen this before I did mine. Very nice top-notch design.         I really liked the checkerboard design on the bottom of the flaps. Looks very sharp.        I also saw some of the more recognizable RV's on the field. This is Paul Dye's RV-8  And his RV-3. To be honest I didn't like the way his paint job looked in any of the pictures I saw. However, in person it's very impressive.     The cowl/intake plugs on this are hysterical.  One Oshkosh tradition I like to attend is a bunch of us on Rivetbangers.com get together at a great steak house in Appleton. This is their 72 oz prime rib.  Captain John also attempted the 72 oz "King Cut".  On the menu they had a 140 oz prime rib. The waitress brought one out to show to everyone. It's just massive!  After 3 days of being at the show, I was all "Osh'd" out. I had seen everything I had wanted to see and to be honest, I was just tired. Oshkosh covers a very large area. In the 3 days I was there I probably only saw about 50% of what they had to offer. I decided to get a pic of my RV in homebuilders parking to prove I was there. My friend Jack who I stated with all week had his RV-8 parked at Brennand (79C) which was about 10 miles north of Oshkosh. We decided to try to meet up in the air on the way home.  The skys over southern WI were very nice.  On the way home we had a nice tailwind.  Our original plan was to fly to mid Indiana to get fuel. However, the skies around Chicago were solid overcast. A bit North of chicago we needed to duck down to 1800'. Jack and I decided to stop in Morris:Washburn (C09) to get some fuel and check on the weather ahead. Little did we know we would get to meet a celebrity of Morris the Cat!  Although it appeared as if he was sleeping, he kept an eagle eye on the FBO.....  The weather to the east actually looked good. Jack and I were able to climb up to 3,500'. We passed some cool stuff on the ground. Here is a huge wind generator field in OH.  A pic of Jack's RV-8. We kept about this distance for the entire ride home. It was great to have someone else to bounce ideas off of to how to get around weather.  Haulin' ass with a 36 kts tailwind!  181 kts! Not bad.   In western OH my EGT for #2 went up. I know it was a wiring issue. The connectors I used just aren't meant to be in high temperature locations. I am going to swap them all out when I get back.  See what I mean?  Getting home was very interesting, and having onboard weather really helped out. Here we are dodging a thunderstorm to our south.  And here is the storm out the window.  Looks like a brutal downpour!  Our next adventure was getting around a solid line of storms to the east of Columbus, OH. We decided to try to pass to the south of the storms instead of trying to get through a hole.  We snaked around the very southern tip of this storm. Although the ADS-B weather showed us as going through it, there is a slight delay in the time between when the radar imagery is updated.  This is what it looked like to our North. Just a wall of rain. It was without a doubt the most amazing thing I've seen from an airplane.  I tried to get another shot with my camera, but it wasn't working out. The rest of the trip home was uneventful. The following day we ran into a guy who couldn't make it through the storms because he didn't have onboard weather. The best part of flying home was flying with Jack. He has a ton of flying experience (he built an RV-4 and put 1,000 hours on it before he built the -8) which was invaluable to me. Great trip! What a machine. 
|
|||||
|
http://RVplane.com |
Last Modified: October 5, 2024 |