Since last I wrote, there’s been a significant number of aviation adventures. And misadventures too……
First, there was the EAA Northwest Fly-In, or more commonly, the Arlington Airshow.
My company takes part as a major sponsor, and we brought a lot of airplanes up for the show. That of course means that somebody has to fly them up, and I’m pretty much the kind of a guy that will drop anything to go flying, particularly if I don’t have to pull my own Visa card out at the end of the flight.
It was the fourth of July, and we had been griping a bit in the days prior to that, because none of us really wanted to have to take time away from our all-important holiday to do something as mundane as ferry brand new sophisticated airplanes up to a grassy field where there was nothing but aircraft idiots by the dozens……
When we finally got our flight together, there were seven of us. For me this was a first. It wasn’t like the formation flying ride I had bummed last summer, with the Red Baron biplane team.
This was ME flying the airplane in a very loose formation. So loose in fact that we had little if any visual contact, but still, we were all occupying the same airspace, and there was something special about firing up seven airplanes and taxiing to the runway for takeoff clearances…..We’d agreed to monitor 123.45 (which yesterday I discovered is NOT intended for casual air-to-air conversations, but is instead a test frequency for avionics manufacturers…..who knew…?) so shortly after liftoff we were chatting back and forth….. a little bit of “where are ya?” and “didja see that….?” and so on. The high point was that it was, frankly, scud running, with a ceiling just barely legal, and conditions were somewhat less than my (previous) personal minimums. There was, of course, peer pressure, even though it was unstated……..and just as I was about to exercise my PIC right to turn around and run for the barn, a hole opened up over Lake Washington, and I could see that beyond the north end of the lake there was much improved conditions.
Now, we were flying two Diamond 20 C1 Eclipses, (VFR only, but with Garmin 430’s), three Diamond DA40’s with Garmin G1000 glass panels, a Diamond TwinStar (diesels, G1000, soon-to-be-certified for known icing, and a Columbia 400 (G1000 as well). So, there was a lot of avionics horsepower there, and it’s only a thirty minute flight from Boeing Field to Arlington….so there was little chance of anybody getting lost. Which is why when one of us said “hey K….., where ya at…?” and there was a long pause, then a “ummmmm, …….” we had to all bite our tongues to stop from laughing out loud, because if you can’t figure it out by looking out the window, you’ve got a half-million dollar computer screen in front of you with a little picture of an airplane over a moving map……
Anyway, we all got there safe and sound. And, set up our displays, and jumped back into the TwinStar and the Columbia to blast back to Boeing and get on with the fireworks and the partying later that night.
So, for the next five days, I had the distinct pleasure of being left seat in the Diamond TwinStar
as we commuted to work at Arlington each day, from Boeing Field. And I now feel a good deal more comfortable in that particular airplane than I have a right to expect. What a sweet ride she is….The weather was lousy for the first two days, so the crowds did not materialize, and the show was disappointing, but the TwinStar was the star, that was for sure. There was always a pile of toothless pilots gathered round, chucking their chins and tilting their heads to one side and finally sidling up and asking “Is that them there damn diesels……”
That particular group of pilots have been, disparagingly and impolitely, nicknamed by one of our previous co-workers as “whistling gophers….” because they walk up to a brand new airplane, scratch their chins and their receding hairlines, then ask “how much does that there damned airplane go fer….?” and when we tell them they purse their lips and go “Weeeeeoooooooohhhhhhh………”
On the third evening, heading home, four on board, me on the stick, the PIC (for I have no multi-engine endorsement) suggested that this takeoff we might just level out at 20’ or so, and retract the gear, and fly it down the runway in ground effect…….
Just as I was about to pull back on the stick, since the available runway was coming to an end, the airshow temporary tower controller, who had been VERY interested in the TwinStar, came on the radio and said something like “So, I see the TwinStar doesn’t climb very well with four on board…….” and that was the moment that the airspeed had reached a good deal more than was necessary, and I pulled the stick back into my crotch and as we screamed up into the sky the tower came back on the radio and all he say was “Oh…..!” and that felt pretty good.
Anyway, Arlington is a blast, and there was some serious aerobatic behavior going on each day.
I spent some time with my camera pointed at the sky, but my long lens doesn’t have image stabilization, so I’m disappointed with the results, but still, it was fun.On the last evening of the show we only had four pilots available to fly those wonderful airplanes back home, so we had to do two trips and commute back up one time. It seems that I’m developing a habit on the last evening of Arlington, which is that, even though I’ve flown AWO direct KBFI dozens of times, I seem to get lost heading home on the last flight of the weekend…..and I always find myself noodling around in the skies up above the Skagit Valley, which I what I consider to be a tiny bit of heaven. So, I celebrated another great Arlington by twisting a DiamondStar around the sky for a while, then headed home just at sundown and moonrise….for yes, it was very close to the full moon. A perfect weekend.
And since it’s bedtime, I’ll stop here, but there’s more coming, and it’s called…
It’s True, Blondes DO Have More Fun!
