Catching Up

Lately my personal windsock has been swinging around the compass, so this month I’ll touch on a few of the latest doings. The largest of which seems to be my hangar mate taking on a Murphy Moose build.

Hangar Space

Our hangar, already a warren of biplane struts and wires with cars stuffed in between (talismans from my former life), has taken on something of a submarine claustrophobia as the Moose-making ramps up. That’s OK, we’re all about squeezing the most out of our rented shelter. Rearranging the detritus to bring in a couple new workbenches and shelves hasn’t really changed much other than bobbing and weaving from one side of the shed to the other calls for a limberness more remembered than present in our stiff years.

It is a good reminder to consider the shop before starting the project. We used to sort of flip the compressor’s air hose across the floor to where it was needed, but not anymore. Now we’re looking at plumbing an air line and extra outlets around the hangar perimeter, which we should have done when we were young. It matters considering the amount of pneumatic Clecoing and un-Clecoing going on already. That, and a Moose is really large. It’s going to take more than rearranging the notepads on the Hindenburg before that beast takes complete form in our nest.

Speaking of pneumatic Cleco guns, have you seen one? They’re the bee’s knees, especially given the Moose’s big-as-British Columbia acreage. You don’t think a few extra rivets matter until it’s your forearm bulging like Popeye’s from Cleco squeezing. Not to mention the time saved. If I was building a metal airframe I’d be looking into one of these or nicking my hangar mate’s while he was distracted by the comely displayed pulchritude in his calendar collection.

Another reality driven home has been watching the angst over missing parts. The Moose came to my partner as an unopened, unmolested decades-old kit. A boxed barn find if you will. This is fine, especially as Murphy Aircraft is still around to fill in the missing parts. That’s right: Just because the kit box is factory-sealed doesn’t mean all the parts were necessarily in that box 30 years ago.

Plus, most older kits have been opened and pilfered or moved with resulting parts loss. That means an inventory is absolutely step one in kit assembly as getting those missing ribs or gussets could take longer than expected. And with an old kit, there’s the question of who pays for the missing parts. You say the box was factory-sealed, the factory says it’s been 30 years…negotiations will ensue and like the family law (great euphemism) lawyer says, when both sides are equally unhappy that’s about as good as it gets.

Ah, I mentioned pilfering. Stealing parts from Peter’s kit to pay Paul’s is a time-honored practice, but to me is a hanging offense unless practiced with the utmost diligence in replacing the pilfered parts immediately. Otherwise memory fails and some years down the road there you are facing the same problem except this time there are no parts to pilfer. There’s already some of this going on with the Moose build and it’s like watching a train wreck in the making. It’s frustrating and funny at the same time. Well, funny if it isn’t you looking for the parts 10 years from now.

Following the Breeze

I’m not daft enough to tilt at the climate change windmill in this column but will note that after operating out of the same airport for 52 years I’m seeing weather—including winds—new to me. Why is tough to say. It could be anything, including I fly more today than I did as the strapping Adonis that I was, so perhaps I’m just now experiencing winds that have always been there. But I’m not so sure of that.

In any case, an especially insidious pattern now common at our hilltop fly patch is calm at the surface and a north wind aloft. And when I say aloft I mean barely aloft, say 100 feet AGL on up. Naturally our calm wind runway is 18, so this leads to many downwind operations even though the last few feet are windless, the sock hanging limp.

This is a bad enough joke by the gods, but worse is so many pilots don’t recognize it or refuse to switch runways and there you are, trying to fit in with the pattern’s whirligig traffic, all of you being blown down our spacious 2180-foot-long runway and everyone wondering why their landings are so bad that day. Big bounces are the most common result, but toss in one of those guys who habitually lands a little too fast and you get a flying machine in the tall, green and uncut down at the far end of the field. Don’t laugh, it’s already happened to a pilot based here.

The same wind is also sometimes found at the big training airport a few hills over. You’d think a bunch of flight instructors would have this one figured out, but no, they keep going around in the calm wind direction (downwind on final). Yes, it’s not so noticeable in a C-172 compared to something more suitably primary, and with many thousands of feet of wide runway the extra speed eventually bleeds off.

But really…what is it with downwind operations? The north wind aloft is a peculiarly overt example, but it seems I see it if not frequently at least often enough to know the idea of an extra few knots landing speed is no reason to use the “other” runway for many pilots today. It sure wasn’t that way when I was renting flight school Cessnas.

For sure these guys didn’t learn in small enough airplanes, and certainly not taildraggers. Given the preponderance of 4500-foot runways and 1800-pound tricycle training aircraft I’m not thinking this questionable habit is going to be broken soon.

In case you haven’t run into the calm-at-the-surface, tailwind-on-final scenario, the first clue is things seem to be moving a little faster than normal starting on base. This can be subtle, as is the ground track tending to inside the normal pattern. But when you overshoot the base-to-final turn and it feels like your trusty ol’ Tumbleweed 500 has been comparing notes with a Schweizer, that’s when something funny in the prevailing breeze department should cross your mind. As could thoughts of mild wind shear close to the ground.

In fact, the typical finish to these approaches is a disquietingly zippy groundspeed, followed by a roundout leading to a similarly alarming sink that flaring does absolutely nothing useful about. It all makes sense afterward when you think about it but can take some experience to recognize in the moment.

Appreciating It

The hangar mate and I made a new acquaintance recently when a fellow pilot stopped by our hangar on an errand. His accent quickly gave away his foreign-born but, we soon realized, pleasantly agreeable nature. I’ll spare his story but to say his recounting of the agonizingly long, expensive journey to legally immigrate and ultimately gain U.S. citizenship was heartfelt.

I hadn’t heard one of those stories in a long time and it was a powerful reminder of just how good we have it in this country. Even with the useless dramas over replacing 100LL and the marathon of bureaucracy in our journey to MOSAIC, what we possess in our aviation and other freedoms in this country is unique. Worth remembering.