Warbird Information Exchange

Thanks for these updates, looks like fun.

This is a tremendous read! It's the saga of a flight from South Africa to OSH in a F-24W.

http://www.warnerenginecompany.com/VWO% ... shkosh.pdf

Also, there is good data on that website, which, for some reason, is new to me.

Dave

We had a wonderful set of days in Robin's RV6a, on the Labour Day weekend. We had no agenda, no commitments, no schedule, just days with nothing on the calendar -- and a huge High-Pressure area in the NE, held steadily in place by tropical storm Hermine off the coast.

Robin was antsy, so we improvised a plan, put the dog in the kennel, filed the eApis, and set off. First leg was to Niagara Falls for customs. This was very simple -- meeting customs and clearing customs was a lot simpler than filing the eApis.

I bought a map and an Airports book at the FBO there. (Everybody looked at me like I was quaint.)

Then we flew to Joe C's strip at Royalton NY, just to the east of IAG. (Joe flies the Hurricane at VWoC, and has appeared on this thread in places.) Lovely little quiet country airstrip with one paved runway and a nice bit of grass. He pulled his Stearman out of his hangar and put our RV6 in.



And the reason he did that was because he lives nearby, and has cleared a taxiway from the airport to his house. So he fired up the C-670 and taxied over, where we staked it down, put the covers on, and had a big steak BBQ -- with lots of guitar and banjo music.

Next morning...

... he said, "Would you like to fly it?"

Now, I've got about 700 hours in various biplanes, but never flew a Stearman, so of course the answer was, "Yes, please!", and off we went.

This isn't the place for a pilot-report, but I found it very enjoyable. What an incredibly benign stall! A burble comes across the elevator long before it departs, telegraphing it clearly, probably better than any aircraft I've flown. And you can horse it around on the stall's edge with very little concern. Loops are easy, although a stock 670 should be kept positive so that the oil pressure doesn't flicker, which means you come out a bit below where you entered. As for rolls... well... best to barrel them. It ain't a Taperwing.

Landing was a change. It went from pussycat to predator. I rolled it on the narrow paved strip, from the front seat, and immediately had to work my feet to keep it there. No dawdling. Nothing benign about it on the ground. But overall, a very enjoyable airplane.

Later, Rick V came in with his Harvard -- also not benign on the narrow strip -- and took up Joe's friend Sheila, whom, as it turns out, loves aerobatics. Bonus! A keeper!



A great little airport, full of treasures.

Robin had made friends with Juliet G-L, a competitor in the Air Race Classic, who invited us down to the Eagle's Mere Air Museum, in PA, so we RV6-ed our way over that lovely wooded, hill-country, to that invitation-only private field.

http://www.eaglesmereairmuseum.org/acollection.shtml

Landing was interesting. The airstrip is on a hilltop and slopes down to the east. The wind was ENE. That meant you either landed uphill with a tailwind, or downhill with a headwind. We opted for downhill with a headwind in the grass because the grass slows you down, but after watching the biplanes flying there for a while I think I'd land uphill and takeoff downhill unless the wind was really significant.

What a great place! Perfect little country jewel of an airfield, lined with a row of hangars filled with '20s and '30s treasures! Rare and wonderful things everywhere! And since most of them fly at least once in a while, it was like a Candy Store!

We parked in the grass and were welcomed by Juliet and husband Steve -- both airline pilots who fly the biplanes on days off...





... and who immediately took us up in the Brunner-Winkle Bird. (Another type I'd never flown in before.)

When Robin was up they went ribbon-cutting (throwing out a roll of TP and circling around to cut it), which neither of us had done before, and they managed to intercept it 3 times. Good fun!

Victorious!





The Bird is a lovely sesquiplane. The front seat isn't as big as a Waco for ride-flying -- you'd have a hard time squeezing 2 adults up there -- but the aircraft sure has a lot of lift. A fine old gentle biplane.

We very much enjoyed our visit. The Collection is extraordinary. The hangars are full of surprises. The man behind it all is Mr. George Jenkins, who with much effort and investment and time (and I'm sure aggravation), has created this wonderful thing -- and flies the aircraft. (That was his Zlin, too.)

The staff pilots such as Juliet and Steve fly one of the collection about every hour or so. It's not an airshow -- they simply take off and land -- and they don't take up passengers (too complicated and liable), but the visitors get to hear the starters whine, the radials cough and roar, see the blue smoke fly, and soak up that lovely rumbling round-engine sound as a Travelair or a Curtiss or a Boeing does a touch-and-go. For many visitors it's the only time they've heard it, and they're getting an introduction to a History they know nothing about.





There's is even the occasional in-line engine!

Anyway, after a lovely evening of pilot-talk at a local restaurant, with tall tales (all of them true!) covering everything from B-777s over the pole, to care-and-maintenance of impulse magnetos, to How-Can-We-Make-This-Old-Airplane-Thing-Pay, we waved goodbye to our hosts and wandered off.

We literally put a finger on the chart and said, "That looks nice. Let's go there," and took off for Seneca Falls in the Finger Lakes.

Another pleasant hour-long flight over Rural America green and gorgeous, we landed at a very nice small municipal airport, tied down...



...and were ferried into town by the Airport Manager. This was very kind of him, and most generous. I LOVE small-aircraft flying in the USA. It's the best in the world, and Seneca Falls is a perfect example of a fine facility run by a friendly person.

It was the Sept long weekend, and warm and clear, and we found a lovely old large home as a B and B. It had been built in 1860 by the town lawyer. We had a suite, and it was great to get out of the sun and rest for a bit. Later we walked along the Canal and through the downtown. (SF may be the town used in the movie It's a Wonderful Life, with Jimmy Stewart.) Then dinner at the big hotel in the downtown square, and bed.

Next morning, (huge B and B breakfast!) we were ferried back out to the aircraft by the B and B host (again, more USA hospitality!), found the airplane undisturbed...



...prepped and made ready to cross the border back to Canada. Robin is now very good at this, got it done in no time, and we climbed in, fired up and then... oh crap... the radio didn't work. The display head was a jumble of dots and strokes. No numbers, no letters.

Rats. What to do? Can we get it home? It's a lot easier to fix it there. Can we get across the border without a radio? Clear Customs?

Well as it turned out, we could. We had to re-file to a Canadian airport that didn't have a control tower, avoid all controlled airspace, call up Rochester Approach and get a transponder code, but then it all worked! No problem.

We flew via a circuitous route to Collingwood ON, landed, called Customs, quote our Canpass numbers, and were cleared to proceed.

Lovely little RV6a walkabout trip! Gotta do more of this!

Dave

Robin and I had a wonderful weekend sojourn to an invitation-only gathering in SW Ontario. A GBH (great big high) was centered overhead delivering perfect blues skies and light winds, and we piled stuff into the Fairchild, and flew away.

Lovely long smooth grass strip. I joined a row of classics and modifieds. (They let NW aircraft in too, if they're flown by particularly polite pilots.)

I tented. Robin scrounged a bed in a cabin (it was 6C that night).



But I had to peg the tent down very securely.

Lovely weekend of old friends and new friends, swapping rides, admiring classic types and new-builts, endless hamburgers and campfires at night.

Thanks to our hosts TJ and LJ!

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That looks absolutely ideal.

I had work-day (if you can call it that!) over at Stan's place recently. Each year we do a hot compression-check on the Warner over at Stan's to see if we're going to have to pull a cylinder during the Annual or not. If not, then we do the Annual at my home hangar. If we do have a cylinder repair, Stan would prefer to do it at his place.

So I flew the :20 over to Grand Valley North, and landed. Nosed into the hangar and interrupted their work getting a Pietenpol airworthy.



The compressions were good! And that's always a relief!

The next order of "business" was to test-fly the Fox Moth. I'd ferried it there in June to have some engine-controls work done, plus quite a bit of fabric touch-up and repair. So we needed to see what engine RPM it would give with the settings and adjustments Stan had made.

We towed it out of the hangar...




Dan Hillinger photo

... and unfolded the wings.


Dan Hillinger photo

The cockpit still looks as unique as ever. That porthole in the panel is for the pilot to communicate with the passengers -- and to peer through when you're trying to avoid running into things on the ground (you can see a bit through the front cabin side windows).