11:30 on a Sat night and I'm posting on the forum. Is that pathetic or what?

Anyway, went to work this afternoon to clean up the car. Seems that right after I cleaned it earlier this week it rained. Afterwards I shot these pictures of planes taking off overhead. Just finished processing the pics and figured I might as well post them now.

I apologize for some of these pics being less than tack sharp but I'm still figuring out my camera and I didn't want to use to high of a shutter speed because I wanted a little prop blur. It also didn't help that I was using a zoom lens without a tripod, the wind was blowing, and that these pictures have been enlarged and cropped.

The Lancair is suppose to be a homebuilt but considering the kit is 100K USD, the engine (a turboprop in this case) 50-100K and avionics at least 50K; most of these wind up being built in a shop for the owner. The FAA is not too pleased since the owner is suppose to be the builder but the FAA looks away since the shop does a much better job, and this leads to a much safer airplane. If you look closely you can see that the left main landing gear is still retracting and the flaps are down.

I'm not real familiar with helicopters so can't relate much about this one other than that I like the blade blur.

The Warrior pic shows the distinct break in the wing leading edge at midspan. An elliptical wing like on the British Spitfire is the most efficient form for lower speed flight but this wing shape is difficult and expensive to manufacture. The tapered wing on the Warrior has about 90% of the efficiency of an elliptical wing yet is far easier and cheaper to build.

The Bonanza is the V tailed version. Can you believe that the first flight of the Bonanza occurred right after WWII? A sixty plus year old design still being built today. Of course in the late forties one could be bought for $7,500 USD. Today plan on spending at least 400K.

Finally there is the Cessna 172. Think of it as the Accord/Camry of the aviation world, just without the reliability. The flaps on this one are also still extended.

 

my buddy owns a Bananza, he would sell it for less than 400k though...I had a Cessna 150...too expensive a hobby, so I am doing the Crossfire instead...it is just about as fast....but, w/ traffic...

 

Too bad, Brent, that you don't live a thousand miles or so closer to my homeland here. The Experimental Aircraft Assoc. holds a "fly-in" every year, this year in late July, early August, that hosts thousands upon thousands of aircraft, you name it, it's probably there.
WWI, WWII, show planes, ultralights, helicopters, if it flies, it's in Oshkosh. The Concorde was here a couple times. It's awesome (& I don't use that word very often)!
I try to, at the very least, just drive down to Oshkosh every year to watch the chaos. There are planes everywhere: planes 500 ft. above other planes 500ft. above other planes 500ft. above other planes. I cannot imagine what kinda meds. the controllers are on but I would certainly need something! It is absolutely insane but a gas to watch.
The EAA website home page: http://www.eaa.org/
The airport (Wittman Field, which is usually dead the rest of the year) is visible from U.S. Hwy. 41 which usually slows to a crawl because drivers are much too busy watching things flying over their rooftops instead of paying any attention to the road. People actually pull off onto the shoulder of the 4-lane until the State Patrol shoos them away. Everything around Oshkosh comes to a halt during that week. Hotels are booked for months, even 60 miles away here in my town.
If you ever get a chance it's worth the trip.

 

Oshkosh is the Mecca of homebuilders. My shop has a customer who flies his Grumman Tiger to Oshkosh every year to attend. One of these days I'll go but it will probably be by car since flying in can be dicey - as you've pointed out. During the event Wittman Field becomes the world's busiest airport and I don't know either how the tower controllers handle it.

Here in San Diego when Miramar, the marine air base, hosts their annual show traffic will also slow and stop on Hwy 15 to watch the military jets and warbirds come in to land.

Oledoc2u, a new Bonanza goes for at least 400K; a used one is, of course, considerably cheaper but also considerably older. And I have to disagree about the Crossfire being almost as fast as a 150 - maybe when driven in reverse.

I also had a 150 but sold it five years ago to the local community college district. The school has an airframe and powerplant program and has a hangar next door to my shop for training. Every so often they use my former 150 to teach the students how to taxi a plane. It was a fun plane but also tiny, tinny and to limited to keep and since I couldn't get it to fly consistently in a club I sold it. Got a pretty good chunk of change for it though. As small as the Crossfire is, it's a snap to get in and out of compared to a 150.

Of course I did NOT learn any lessons from the 150 and now have a 172 and Warrior. There's a reason why I bought a Crossfire 14 years after my previous new car (a time frame when the average Crossfire owner would have bought a dozen cars, or so it seems).

How do you make a million in aviation?
Start with two million.

Wat are the five forces keeping a plane in the air?
Lift, weight, thrust, drag and money.

What's the difference between an airplane renter and owner?
When the renter is flying along, and the engine quits, the first thought is "OMG! I"m going to crash!".
When the owner is flying along, and the engine quits, the first thought is "OMG! How much is this going to cost me?".

 

Sounds like I'm preaching to the choir Brent!
You & our ex-neighbor would of gotten along swimmingly. He owns his plane (darned if I can remember what the heck it was) & is at AirVenture every year.

 

Looks like a Bell Jet Ranger which model I'm not sure. Worked in the oil patch out in the Gulf of Mexico when I was a kid.
Seen an awful lot of these fly onto the production platforms.

Just my Dos Centavos !

 

Helo info:

It's a Eurocopter AS-350B Ecureuil. Ecureuil is the model name, though how one pronounces that is beyond me. The Ser. no. is 1924. The helo is registared to Shier Aviation Corp in San Diego. The date of registration is Jan 22, 1997. That's 22 Jan 1997 for you Continental folk.

 

My Bad !!!
Didn't think to look up the registration number, good catch Brent !

 

I didn't think to look up the N number either at first. I used the database from Landings.com. Heck, I'm even in the database.

 

The controllers at Oshkosh are volunteers.

Arriving aircraft circle over Ripon (several miles away) and are let into line there. After that they follow the controller's instructions without replying. Landing at Oshkosh the controller will instruct them to land short or long on the left or right side of the runway. It is typical during that week to see 4 aircraft landing at the same time on the same runway. The volunteer controllers are much more aware than most of the differences in airspeed of the various types they are dealing with and sort them into fast and slow lines on the way in from Ripon.

In spite of the apparent chaos Oshkosh has an excellent safety record.

The Experimental Aircraft Association is very strong on good citizenship and as a result there is no trash left on the grounds by the 1,000,000+ visitors, there are first aid stations all over the area, there are shuttle buses and wagons that will take you anywhere you want to go and all of the volunteers strive to be polite and helpful and if you have a problem with your airplane it will be fixed by volunteers at the onsite repair station.

On the other hand the Oshkosh city police tend to look the other way during that week while the local bars and restaraunts do a fantastic business and temporary "massage parlors" spring up.

If you have even a mild interest in aircraft you owe it to yourself to attend at least once.

Plus they shut down the airport for two hours every afternoon for the best airshow you will ever see which includes 50+ WW2 airplanes in the air.

 

No doubt about it, it's a blast to see. The sheer chaos is overwhelming & exciting!
The Fly-in does indeed have an excellent safety record though there usually is at least one crash per year somewhere. Plus, seemingly without fail, there will be one kick-butt thunderstorm that will occur over the grounds every year.
Do you attend every year, John?

 

I don't know which would scare me more: being in the landing pattern or being a controller juggling all the arrivals.

One day I will go....

 

Too bad you can't fly the Crossfire here, Brent!!

 

I attended several times in the 70s and early 80s.

I remember driving north through Wisconsin to get there late one night watching a tremendous lightning show ahead of me.

Flying there in an antique airplane is a rediscovery of the best of the country. I was coming in to a controlled regional airport on the way there in the rain in a Great Lakes (open cockpit biplane) when the wind changed while I was on base. The controller notified me of the wind change and let me do a 270º turn in the pattern to line up with the runway with the least crosswind. When I went up to the tower to thank him for that unusual courtesy he said "we get lots of you guys this time of year and we try to accomodate you".

I was forced down by a storm front at Waukeegan and the heavens opened as I landed. Out of the pouring rain comes a guy who directs me to his friend's vacant tie down and offers me a hot meal and a bed for the night.

A young couple I met at Oshkosh had been forced by fog to land their newly restored 1946 Taylorcraft in a soybean field. The farmer and his wife hauled their airplane to their barn and put them up for three days until the weather broke and the field was dry enough to take off from. They never said a word about the damaged soybeans.

There are vast areas of this country that are still small towns 10 miles apart surrounded by family farms and when you travel into that country the people act like we would like to believe they acted back in the 40s and 50s.

 

Nice things to say, John.
If I can be so bold as to speak for my collective fellow Wisconsinites I'd like to think we still try to live that philosophy.

 

Is/was the Great Lakes yours? Do you have any pictures?

One day four years ago a friend and I took off for Phoenix. It was a rough ride so we decided to stop in Gila Bend for a break. After we landed a fellow drove up and literally handed us the car keys. All he asked in return was that we put in some gas. Since we didn't know were to go for lunch he wound up driving us around. We offered to buy him lunch but he declined. This would never have happened in San Diego.

After lunch my friend made the mistake of calling his wife. She was not happy to find out he was in Arizona and told him to get home now. So our trip to Phoenix was axed.

The few airports I've seen in Arizona are well maintained. The one in Gila Bend had just been repaved. Arizona, unlike California, recognizes and appreciates the usefulness of airports. I also noticed that due to the temperatures in Arizona, the runways are quite a bit longer than the ones in la la state.