Sentimental Journey

Last week my friend Scott and I made the trip up to Lock Haven , PA for the 75th Anniversary of the Piper Cub at the Sentimental Journey Flyin. This was my first trip up to Lock Haven and I give this flyin two thumbs up. We met at JGG for a planned takeoff at 8 AM, unfortunately we lost our 3rd plane at the last minute when the Vagabond dropped out. We left on time and flew direct to KCJR Culpepper, VA at 1500 feet in perfectly smooth conditions, a 10 knot headwind made this the longest flight of the trip.  With only 12 gallons and the C90 engine my range was the limiting factor on the trip. We decided to stop at Hagerstown , MD for fuel mainly because there were not any better options.  This also keeps you clear of P80 small and large and out of the newspapers ! We called ahead and the tower promised no problems.  The owner of Rider Aviation rolled out the red carpet and even gave us a great deal on fuel. Here is a shot of the Cubs if front of the FBO.

The flight up to Lock Haven, PA was uneventful and we landed right at 01:15. It started to get a little bumpy at the end and my butt was a little sore. 4 hours is just about right for a Cub day trip.
This flyin is small enough to enjoy with out too much walking but large enough to keep your interest with a lot of activities and flyouts. There was a different contest each day with spot landing, flour bombing and a poker run. They also had a flyout to a different airport each evening , it was cool to see a gaggle of Cubs headed off just like a gang of bikers! Here are some selected shots to give you the feel of the event.

Here's a J2 that flew continously.

Here's a beautiful Bird CK.

Here's a beautiful Kinner Sportster.

Even Aeronca's were welcome.

And Taylorcrafts.

This is a Clip wing Wag Aero Cubby, it has the PA11 cowl and the PA18 balanced elevators. I wanted to talk to the owner but never found him by the plane.

On Friday afternoon a cold front moved through and we had a light rain shower for about 15 minutes. It then cleared out and cooled off for a beautiful evening of flying. We departed Saturday morning and had tailwinds all the way home. We made the same stops as the trip up. On leaving CJR Scott and I climbed to 7500 feet and rode home in smooth, air conditioned comfort ! Here are a couple shots.

Here is my panel, you can see my new JPI digital tachometer at the lower left.

Just on top of the building clouds and turbulence.

Safe at home back in the hangar. Overall a great adventure.

100 hours

Last week I spotted this really cool Funk project on Ebay.

I have always liked the Funk, this is a B75L with the geared Lycoming GO145-C3 engine. Beyond odd ball, but right up my alley ! Check out the metal in the cowling.

You would think it would be updraft cooling but it's not. Air goes up, turns 180 degrees then exits at the back bottom of the cowl.  This project just happened to be right across the Delaware River from my friend Dave's airstrip, so I decided to fly the Cub up for a look/visit. Friday was forecast to be clear with some gusty winds so I left early to beat the turbulence. I left at 8 am and went direct to St. Marys MD 2W6 , I only made 55 knots on this leg. I then shot through the gap between the restricted airspace and the 30 mile ring. I climbed to 3500 feet for this over water leg and made better speed with almost a direct crosswind. I landed at Delaware Airpark 33N right at 11:00 , the crosswind landing was a little bouncy, but we got down in one piece.  Here is a shot of Dave's Cub and mine at 33N.

  
We are parked into the wind, you can see the trees that made that right crosswind interesting ! We spent a couple hours looking over the Funk and other airplanes he had for sale , then we had an excellent Crab cake sandwich at a place called Sambo's. It was right on the dock and you could watch them unload the catch while you ate! It took all the will power I had to get away with out making an offer on the Funk, just too many projects. We left and made the short flight across the river to Dave's strip 7NJ9. Here the wind was down the runway but with the trees close on both sides it was still challenging to get er down. We got the airplanes together for a group shot.

You can see the narrow runway behind the planes and the trees that make it interesting. Here are Dave's Cub and Pitts S1C , his friend's CASA Jungmann and my Cub. In this shot Dave's hanger / shop is in the background.

The next morning I got up early to beat the turbulence on the way home. I took off at 7:45 , climbed to 2500 feet and flew all the way to St. Marys without one bump ! Here are a few shots, say are you sure you torqued those rod bolts?

Over the Delaware river.

The tach reads 100 rpm fast, so about 2275 rpm, 95 indicated, GS was 78 knots at 2600 feet to go over some class D airspace at Dover. Oil pressure runs about 35 psi and the temp is about 150 it was cool in the morning , the heater is on ! The g's are from bumps during taxi. Here's my new fuel gauge, 10 gallons remaining.

Here I am crossing the Chesapeake Bay you can see the LNG facility and storage tanks. I have never seen a ship off loading. You can see Patuxent River  NAS in the background.  It was nice of them to leave a little gap for aeroplanes to get through.

My fuel stop is just ahead at St. Marys County, MD.  I love credit card fuel, that way I'm only a bother to myself for  5 gallons of fuel ! The flight to JGG was just as nice with just a little turbulence about 30 miles out. The Cub ran smooth the whole trip, and we turned 104 hours on the tach.

Carwil Type 61

This post will illustrate the differences between the Carwil Type 61 bubble face compass and the more common Airpath bubble face compass. This information is from my 1940 issue of the Airplane Parts and Supplies Catalog No. 101. It appears that the Carwil came first and the Airpath was a later improved model. Here are some pictures from the catalog.

  
Here is the description from the catalog that explains the different models.

I will show some of the differences between the Carwil model and the Airpath. Many of the parts are the same with the biggest difference being the front face appearance. I think this is a 60C even though the name plate says Type 61.

  

Here you can see the unusual compensator , it uses thin rod magnets inserted into drilled holes in a clear plastic block. It uses tiny brass doors to keep the rods in place. If anyone has any instructions for this procedure I would love to see a copy. Here is another shot with the unit removed.

You can see the little doors and the rod magnets.  Now here are a few shots of the later Airpath Compass you can see the difference in the front face.

The top of the back case also has a flat area that the early model does not.

The compensator from the later Airpath is much improved. It allows a much finer adjustment of the magnetic fields.

This side is for E-W adjustment and the other side compensates the N-S direction.

You can see that the later model is much longer and thicker than the original model. I have seen these ground down in a lame attempt to fit the early case. It does not work well.   The front plate is held to the compensator assembly by two small drive screws, then held to the compass by one small screw. I have sen these read Carwil, Airpath, and Taylorcraft.

When I did a Google search for Carwil Type 61 nothing came up maybe this will fix that! If I have time this week I will post some pictures of my antique compasses !

Va EAA Flyin

Today I flew the Cub down to Suffolk, VA for the VA EAA flyin. With a stationary front laying along the VA-NC border the weather forecast was for rain showers in the afternoon so the turnout was light and mostly local. I had a beautiful smooth flight down with a high overcast keeping the temperature a little on the cool side. Here are a few pictures from the day.

I was parked between a Pietenpol and a 1965 7ECA Citabria, down the line is a British Bulldog , a Lancair, and a C-195. you can see the cloudy skies. There was a cold North East wind also. Here's the little Citabria , I've always liked these, this one was a little rough.

The highlight of the day was getting to sit in one of the "new" built ME-262's at the fighter factory hangar. My friend Scott knows the Chief pilot there. I forgot to get a picture of me in it. It is just like the original F-18, "one man, one hour, one bomb" . With only 400 gal fuel and 2 CJ-610 engines, and no RVSM you would be out of fuel in about an hour! Here's Mike and Scott.

I spotted this in the Ultralight area, just where you want to see pipe wrench marks, on the Jesus nut that holds the prop !! For goodness sake buy the right wrench !!

I spotted this in the RV area. I'm not sure if he wanted this effect or if he F'ed up??  Not sure you can really see it in the pictures but the skin was sunken in between the ribs, like a fabric airplane.

How did he do this ? It looks like a plywood covered wing after 20 years. You can see the effect in the reflection in this shot.

There was also this nice Pietenpol over in the camping section.

I left right after the Parade of Flight at 1:30 but I stayed too long and got caught in some rain about 15 south of Williamsburg. I turned this into an opportunity to clean up the Cub so she got a sponge bath and towel dry in the hangar. Since the airport is on wet lands the EPA says we can't wash airplanes.
That's about it  for VA EAA,  nice flight down, great pancake breakfast with good friends, low turn out but some nice aeroplanes. They were actually lucky , it could have been a complete wash out.

Antenna Completed

I finished the wiring of the antenna last week and have been doing some testing. Unfortunately the spring winds have arrived and I have not done much flying. It has been an odd spring, either 70-80 degrees with a strong SW wind or 50 degrees with a strong N wind. Here is a shot of the wiring installed and the cover plate installed.

 The initial test flight was a disappointment, by moving the antenna forward I now had some ignition noise causing the radio to break squelch. The Icom A6 has a very sensitive receiver , it picks up everything wanted or not.  However after some tweaking I think this installation will be OK. First the ANL (automatic noise limiter) got turned off, with it on the ignition noise is barely noticeable. Then by increasing the squelch setting to 15 from 10 (the range is 0-24) the radio worked much better. With the lower sensitivity of the internal antenna I needed the lower squelch setting.
While not perfect this is an acceptable solution. I can now receive the ATIS at Richmond 33nm away at 1500 feet, most importantly when the airplane is pointed that way! Of course there are trade offs. There are a couple narrow blank spots where the landing gear blocks the antenna and directly aft off the tip of the rod.  I would say about 4:30, 6:00 and 7:30 positions are a little weak with fantastic airborne performance from 7:30 around to 4:30 in front of the airplane. Here is a shot of the final install.

  
I fixed one last little item that had been bothering me last week with the oil change. These inter- cylinder baffles kept blowing out of position.

I bought these from WagAero and just assumed they were correct. It seems that the mounting hole is too far outboard and the moment created by the air load allowed these to move out of position. I removed these and relocated the mounting hole 3/4 inch inboard. So far they seem to be staying in position.

With 85 hrs on the engine the oil change was due, compressions were all mid 70's, screen and magnetic drain plug were clean and everything looks clean and tight. Ready for a summer of evening patrols.

Antenna Issues

I have been working to optimize the communication antenna installation on the Cub. My home airport has significant transient traffic, so a good radio is a must for safe operation. I started with just the short antenna that came with the radio, however that had limited range and a tendency to feed back through the microphone wiring.  I had purchased a dipole antenna for my Taylorcraft and could never get it to work properly. It was installed in the tail behind the cockpit. I still had it so I thought I would give it a try in the Cub. Here is a link to the antenna web site.

 http://www.advancedaircraft.com/

To make a long story short, I have tried this antenna vertical, angled right , angled left, angled forward and back, side ways, and curved in every direction . In every case the reception to the sides is great but the signal is blanked directly to the front. The only place it will fit due to it's length is behind the seat in the fuselage.

The combination of tubing , pilot, passenger, engine, fuel tank, and firewall, must shield the antenna from any forward signal. You can turn 15 degrees left or right and receive a usable signal.
My test procedure is to takeoff from KJGG and climb to 1500 feet and tune the ASOS at KAKQ 20 nm away. I then execute a slow 360 degree turn while monitoring the signal. In every case the signal is blanked to the front where you need it the most. On my Taylorcraft I gave up on this antenna and installed a bent whip on the bottom of the boot cowling.
On the Cub this would be more difficult because there is no access to the inside of the boot cowling to install a proper doubler and to attach connectors. It took some brainstorming but I finally figured out a method. I decided to attach the antenna directly to the bottom of the forward floor boards, all the loads would be absorbed here. The physical antenna would protrude through a small hole in the lower boot cowl. Here is the attach bracket I came up with, it's formed from 0.040  2024-T3 aluminum.

Using a 2 inch hole saw I cut a hole in the forward floor boards.

Here is a shot of the completed mounting bracket with nut plates installed and a coat of alodine.

 
With the help of my friend Scott , we figured out a process to install the antenna , add the insulator, install the bracket, and tighten it all up. It was a slow careful process because anything you drop is a frustrating exercise in fishing to recover. If it's not magnetic you have just lost and hour.  Here are some shots installed. Once the wiring and testing are completed I will make an aluminum cover plate and remove the AN970 washers, painted black you will hardly notice it.

The safety wire is the path the antenna wire will follow under the floor boards. Here are some shots outside.

I'm not sure how this will work with the landing gear so close and the limited area for ground plane provided by the narrow boot cowl. It was an improvement on my Taylorcraft so I'm hoping for the same here. I would settle for being able to transmit and receive in the direction I am traveling. I hope to wire and test this on Friday, tomorrow is my father's 91st birthday!