Warbird Information Exchange

And get to work!



It's fun to fool around with airplanes as couples.





Dave

Nice!

Eric and Berni are awesome.
It is always a highlight to see them at an event.
It's like meeting up with long lost family.

Andy

That was an awesome day of flying. You are right, finding that RV-6 was concerning. Bernadette really enjoyed her stick time in the Fairchild. I was not nervous at all in the back

_________________
The air resounds from the Rolls-Royce roar!
To an enemy the warning is dire: here only eagles soar,
and the last thing he'll see is a mirrored Spitfire!

We recently had another Firewood Day on the farm, where various menfolk arrived to make a mountain of firewood for my parents. But I had a cunning additional Plan!

First, we went into the fencerows -- chainsaws and splitters roaring, trucks racing about (because that's what you do with trucks in farm fields when the crops are off)...



... and then the Biggest Truck dumped, and we put up a nice stack of mostly oak.



All well and good. But every worker there is a pilot, and most have flown for the Airline, and my son Austin was recently promoted to Captain, so I had asked everyone to bring a uniform for a group photo -- after we cleaned up a bit!



Yeah, we let the Space Station Commander join in on the photo of all the exalted Airline Pilots

My ball-park estimate is that there about 105,000 hours in that photo, in everything from ultralights to floatplanes to spaceships. In the middle is the patriarch, Roger, who started the whole aviation thing in our family. I'm on his left. My brother Phil (Capt, 787, YYZ) is on my left. On Roger's right is my son Austin (Capt, A-320, YYZ) and on his right is John A (F/O, 777, YYZ -- and the guy who kept me out of trouble on my retirement flight). There are two missing, Eric G and Andy H.

What happened is that Roger started farming in the 60s after he joined AC, and things went well so he expanded, renting fields all over the township. He had almost no capital, so he bought many small old tractors and implements from the 1940s. We were pressed into service, but more labour was needed, so we recruited amongst our teen-aged friends, and eventually had a small army of machinery moving across the fields.

Eventually most of these young men got the flying bug. Several flew the family Taylorcraft from the farm. And all are experienced airline pilots today. (We grew corn sure, but really we grew pilots.)

The models are 3 of the 4 light aircraft we own at the moment. Missing is the RV6a. Which is looking pretty good I think since I finally built and installed the nose wheel pant.



These have been commissioned by my father from an AME whose prime job is working for United. He makes them out of wood, from photos. They are very-near perfect.

The Fairchild is my Christmas present this year!




I made the shelf, steaming some ash cut from my property.

Awesome family

_________________
Magister Aviation
It's all in my book

Thanks! We're just a family, with all the foibles of anybody's family, but we do like airplanes.

Trying to get airborne this winter has been very difficult. Brutal cold temperatures, snow streaming down from Georgian Bay, and howling winds.

But we had a freak warm front go through and I managed to scratch the itch. The Fairchild hangar doors are thoroughly bound in ice, so I drove to Edenvale and stole Robin's RV6a -- it has a vertical door, not a slider. The first step was to put heat onto the machine.


(It's a blow-dryer, feeding into a length of vacuum cleaner hose, clamped to that wooden frame, then blowing up onto the crankcase of the Lycoming. Works well, and cost almost nothing.)

Then, I got a workout chipping ice.

The OAT rose to 8C -- Tropical! -- and I went for lunch with the guys at ECAF, to talk Tiger Moths. By the time I got back, the afternoon sun had softened the ridge, and out I went.



She started! And I flew! It was great! And the conditions were horrible!

The upper winds were blowing 40 kts, a nasty front was lying to the west, and the air was mixing-bowl rough. We shook. We bounced. The seat-belt required cinching-down with force. But in a way it was fun. The fields all around were in deep snow still, and the RV had not flown in over a month, and I didn't care to get beyond gliding distance of the field. So I climbed up to 3500' or so, directly overhead, and did Lazy-8s for fifteen minutes, all turns towards the upper wind, and thus stayed over exactly the same spot on the earth. It was fun trying to keep the ball in the center with all the drift-illusions, and end up motionless over that one point.

Anyway, the airplane was reusable after the flight, and my itch was scratched.



And now it's cold again, -20C this morning, and forecast to stay cold for the next week.

Maybe I'll touch-up the paint on the wheel pants. And make airplane-noises with my lips, in the shop as I work...

Dave

Great to see you were able to get in the air there Dave. Another certain YouTuber from up your way (but quite a bit further west) was commenting on the cold yesterday in his video. I'm glad that I'm in the "cold" part of Texas where it gets to maybe -10*C during an average winter and -20*C in a really bad one. Not only that, but forbid there be precip during that time and everyone else stops working, so I get to enjoy my drive to work.

Agreed, CAP. Mind you, I don't miss those O-Dark-30 drives to the airport, in winter's dark, and blowing crap, with 40,000 other ticked-off people, one bit.

Spectacular model-aircraft flying here, set to music.

Defies all limits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kSvWriluy4

Another rare and brief confluence of favourable events -- temp up above freezing, light winds, sunshine, and little snow accumulation -- so, after a Herculean struggle with the doors (never plan sliding doors in a Canadian winter) we got airborne.

Lovely flying -- the kind of day when a Fairchild gets off the ground like a Super Cub, and a Super Cub gets off the ground like a Storch, and a Storch gets off the ground like a helicopter!

I met Dad at Stan and Sheila's to review the progress of the Stampe.



Terrific rate of completion! Engine on and horizontal tail feathers too.

Metalwork still to be done around the engine cowls -- interesting bits of history.



And who sees these big old fuses anymore?



Stan and Sheila are doing lovely work. For example I like the way they are running wires in the awkward places if we ever decide to modify/upgrade the aircraft later. Some things are very much easier when the machine is being assembled. Anyway, next thing is to give the engine an Annual Inspection, and then fly the thing as soon as the strip dries in spring.

Off we went...



... me to Edenvale to meet Robin, who had also been flying in the RV6a...



... and for apple-crumble in the restaurant. (Fresh, hot-out-of-the-oven!) The days are getting longer now, but no time to linger, so back into the air again...

But it was so much work getting out of the hangar that morning that I was determined to keep flying. Somewhere. Anywhere. So, remembering a task, I went up to Penetang and checked-out the tarps on the sailboat.

I see the bubblers are working well at the docks...



... and the tarps are still on top of the boat.



But, back to Alliston as the sun was setting, and to bed.



I sure like these repaired mud-guards in these sloppy, above-freezing conditions on grass strips.