Flying Over Friends

Saturday I drove out to KH. Phil was still there after a test flight. Joe had replaced the intake rubbers and this seems to have stopped all of the roughness with the exception of a minor amount around idle. Nothing like the hiccups it was having before.

Since the engine was still warm, I didn't prime it, which is our normal procedure. It still took forever to start and I eventually got the attention of Howard, a local Luscombe pilot. He said it was flooded and to turn the prop backwards twelve times with the throttle halfway open. This worked and within a few swings I had it running.

We took off and headed North to Wayne Janousek's place. I would have landed if I'd seen him outside, but buzzing his runway didn't bring him out though. He's rebuilding a Chief and I wanted to check it out.

We then headed East to Hubert's parent's place. We flew down their runway once then headed further East to fly by Hubert's house. Finally we got some attention! Hubert's sons came out and waved at us.

I had Travis do a few stalls, power-on, and power-off. I then demonstrated a power-on stall where I pulled up sharply. The nose gently dropped as I expected and then the left wing rapidly dropped! I didn't expect this, but picked it back up with the right rudder and told Travis he almost got to see his first spin! Yee-haw!

We then flew into Taylor to get some fuel and use their restroom (no not because of the near spin!). After fueling, I again found the engine flooded and used the procedure Howard had mentioned. It took a few pulls and she was running smoothly.

We were off again and flew by Travis' house. His family looked out of the window but stayed inside. We flew by a friend Paul's house and sent him an aerial shot of his house.

We headed back West and flew over Chris, then headed further West for a low pass over Breakaway Park! A Bonanza was landing 15, so we followed him in. I told him I was only making a low pass. He landed and waited at the other end for us to fly by. He then took off on runway 33, made another circuit and landed in about the time it took us to get North of the airport! I stayed West of the airport and headed North to Kittie Hill.

Soon we were back at KH, crossing over mid-field for entry into a right-downwind for 35. We taxied back to the hanger and I shut it down by pulling the fuel this time to avoid flooding it.

This day is a good example of the fun you can have flying a small plane and not really having anywhere to go! I had so much fun I never even pulled out my camera.

So now we think the plane is almost dialed in. Phil called Howard and he thinks it's flooding since the new needle in the carb is steel with no Delrin tip. This allows some fuel to weep. Hopefully this solves all of the problems. One more tweek of the idle to increase it slightly and I think we'll have some good worry-free flying ahead!

Jack "No Engine Problems" Fleetwood