A Man and His Airplane

Yesterday the weather was beautiful. For various reasons, I decided to knock off work early, head out to the airport, and take advantage of it. Something that I had wanted to do the last time I was flying was to visit another airport, but the weather was marginal and I decided against it. Yesterday was a different story. I headed north toward the Arlington airport, tuned in the CTAF frequency, and listened to traffic. It was somewhat busy, which wasn't surprising given the weather, and the fact that it's a much larger airport than Harvey Field. I circled around the airport with a radius of a few miles to familiarize myself with the area a bit, notifying the other traffic of my position as I did so. The last time I'd been there was years ago during my flight training. I then decided to perform a touch and go so, as I was circling around south of the airport I announced I would be heading around to the west to enter the 45 for a right pattern to land on 16. As I was approachi...

I've had my share of cars in my life. The first car I ever purchased and owned outright was a 1980 Honda Civic that I bought off the street in 1992. I was 23 years old at the time. I'm almost 52 now. Including that Civic, I've owned a total of eight cars. My current car is a 2017 Mustang, and it's a great car. The last several cars I've owned have been four-door sedans. They were good cars, and nice to drive, but there's something about a rear wheel-drive "sports" car that's just so engaging. It's the Ecoboost model, so it doesn't have a big V8 in it, but that turbocharged 4-cylinder engine still puts out over 300 horsepower and that's plenty, thank you very much. I put the word sports in quotes because, although this car is presented as such, it's really not. In fact, when you look at it's design and capabilities, it pretty closely fits the definition of a grand tourer despite not having the letters "GT" in its name....

Some years back, I had a friend who is also a pilot, though he hadn't been flying in a while. For various mundane reasons, he and I drifted apart and aren't in touch with each other anymore. It's nobody's fault, it just is what it is. One day, we were talking about airplanes, as we often did. While we were talking, a realization hit me. I asked him, "Do you know what the best plane is? The best plane is your plane." The realization was that the plane you have is always going to be better, for you, than the plane you don't have. That doesn't mean you don't aspire to have a better plane, or to improve the one you have. It means that any plane you don't have access to is useless to you, regardless of how good a plane it is. It's the same concept behind the old adage, "The best camera is the one you have with you." When the opportunity to take a great photo presents itself, the simple point-and-shoot camera or smartphone you have in y...

Despite the forecast, today turned out to be a decent day for flying. I was initially planning to fly to another nearby airport, because I've yet to go to another airport since getting current again. However, I didn't like the weather in that direction so I stayed in the local area and mainly practiced flying the pattern and landing. I did ten take-offs and landings today. I also had one go-around because the airplane that had landed before me wasn't quite clear of the runway. If I'd stayed on the approach, I think he would have exited before I touched down, but I didn't know for sure if he would so I got to practice going around. I'm really loving this plane. As long as your speed is good on the approach, and you pull back enough for the mains to touch first, it lands quite nicely. I'm not perfect yet, and never will be, but I'm getting better. The comm system worked fine for most of the flight, but then it started getting flaky again. I think the inter...

The previous owner of my plane posted a bunch of photos online so he could send the link to any prospective buyers. I still look at them from time to time, because I'm still learning about the plane and there are sometimes things I want to look at when I'm at home. Several days ago, I was looking through the photos when something caught my eye. The photo in question was this one: Below the transponder is a small light, and what looks like a small audio socket. When he was showing me the plane, the seller explained what the light was for but I couldn't remember what it was. And I didn't recall any mention of the jack at all. So I emailed him about it. The light is for the ADS-B out transmitter. If it experiences a fault and is no longer transmitting my position, this light will illuminate. I looked up the pilot guide for the Garmin GDL-82 that is installed in the plane and it has a reference to this feature as well. One question answered. As for the thing next to the lig...

When I got my license, there was no such thing as a smartphone, let alone an iPad. During my flying hiatus, I was aware that electronic flight bag apps for smartphones and tablets had come into being, but I never had the need to check them out. Once I decided to get current again, one of the first things I started looking at was the selection of EFB apps available for both iOS and Android devices. Because I didn't want to commit to a subscription plan right away, I started out looking at the zero-cost options that were available. I settled on FltPlan Go, which is available for both iOS and Android devices. I could run it on my iPad Pro, and on my Android phone, though the Android version lacks a couple of features that the iOS version has. It works pretty well, and is relatively feature-rich. It's support for ADS-B is actually pretty nice, and the iOS version even has audible traffic alerts if another aircraft comes close enough. It only says the word "traffic" over a...

My handheld backup radio arrived a few days ago and I've had a chance to play around with it a bit. I haven't actually used it yet, but I wanted to give my initial thoughts on it. First of all, it feels well made. It's pretty dense, even without the battery pack installed, and it seems to be pretty rugged. The controls don't feel flimsy or delicate. It appears to be designed to throw in a flight bag without worrying about whether or not it's going to break. I have my amateur radio license, though I haven't used it in a long time, and I have a handheld radio transceiver that I purchased back in the 90s. It's an Alinco DJ-580T and I was impressed at the apparent quality of its construction. The PJ2 reminds me of that. One of the selling points of this particular radio is that you can plug a standard headset into it directly without requiring an adapter. I've tried this, and the headphone and mic jacks fit firmly and snugly in the sockets on the radio. This...

I think it finally really hit me earlier today. Owning my own airplane has been one of the biggest dreams of my entire life. I had sort of forgotten that it really was a dream and not just a desire, and I finally realized how important this accomplishment truly is to me. There are different kinds of dreams. There are those dreams which are not really reasonable. For example, I have always dreamed of traveling beyond Earth's atmosphere, to orbit, to the Moon, to Mars, even to other stars. However, while it wasn't impossible for me to be an astronaut, my path diverged from the path to space a long time ago. Then there are those dreams which are attainable, even if difficult or unlikely. I'm not including in this category those desires which are common, such as finding a spouse or owning a home. Rather, I'm talking about those dreams which are aspirational, that are personal, and which are not shared by many, if not most, other people. Owning an airplane is one such dream...

In my initial post, I mentioned that my plane had been upgraded since it rolled off the production line. In this post, I will detail what those upgrades are, and also describe other upgrades that have been performed since then. According to the POH I received with the plane, N5113R is a "Beechcraft Sport 180 B19". The POH does not contain the word "Musketeer" though the model is often referred to as a "Musketeer Sport" as it is derived from the standard Model 23 Musketeer. The primary differences are that it lacked the third window on each side, and it had a 150 hp Lycoming O-320-E2C engine. It was intended as a trainer aircraft. The previous owner told me that the plane was purchased new by the University of Illinois aviation program and that they quickly realized that it wasn't meeting their needs. So it went back to the factory for installation of a couple of upgrade kits. The most important upgrade was the replacement of the engine with the 180 hp ...

I called up the shop today and put in a work order to get most of the outstanding issues taken care of. Most of these are minor, but a couple are relatively major. The plane is currently airworthy, or else I wouldn't have flown it a few times since purchasing it, but it's time to get the big ones taken care of. I might as well have the other items addressed as well. The items I've asked them to work on include: Investigating the issues I've experienced with the comms system. This is probably the most important as it most affects flight safety. Replacing the left half of the stabilator trim tab. It has a crack in the underside near the outside end of the tab. It's been there a while, as it's been stop-drilled a couple times, but it has lengthened to the point where it should be replaced sooner rather than later. Re-attaching the wing root seal on the right side. On the underside of the wing, the seal has come loose along part of its length. It's still attache...

I woke up this morning, looked outside, checked the weather forecast, and realized that I could actually go flying today. So I did. Today's flight had three main objectives. The first was to see if the comms still worked. The second was to do some pattern work and practice landings, and the third was to continue becoming familiar with the plane. I'll address these in reverse order. I'm definitely becoming more familiar with the plane, and with the procedures for flying it. I was told this plane would make me a better pilot and I feel pretty confident in saying it's doing exactly that. I'm a lot more comfortable with it, I'm learning it's features and idiosyncrasies. For example, I've figured out where to set the trim for approach and landing to get the correct speeds. Like a 172, if you have the trim set correctly on your downwind, all you have to do is lower your flaps at the right times and you'll be at the right speed for each phase of the approac...

Even though the radios and the rest of the comm stack worked fine in my tests yesterday, I decided that I was going to give myself an additional layer of security. Therefore I ordered a hand-held radio. All I need is a simple two-way VHF radio so I ordered the PJ2 from Sporty's. It appears from what I can tell to be a decent, simple radio that will serve well as a backup. One of the nice things about it is that it has full-size jacks so you can plug a headset into it without the use of an adapter. When you need it as your backup radio, you don't want to be looking for an adapter, and trying to hook it up. It's just an extra layer of complexity. It should be here some time next week. I doubt that the weather will be good enough for flying before it arrives so I will hopefully have it with me on the next flight just in case.

I just got back from the airport. The weather isn't good enough for flying VFR, at least as far as my comfort zone is concerned, but I had other reasons for going out there. The first was to take some cleaning supplies out to the hangar. It's not an enclosed hangar but it does have a small cabinet mounted to the short wall section at the rear where you can keep stuff. I have several quarts of oil that I received with the plane, along with cleaning supplies. There's a roll of paper towels, a half-gallon bottle of water, a spray bottle of water, and a spray bottle containing Simple Green diluted with water. When I took over the hangar, all three bottles were almost empty so I picked up some Simple Green, brought the bottles home, and refilled them. Today I took them back out. I also took the opportunity to use the newly-filled bottle of Simple Green to clean off the bird droppings that had landed on the wing during the past week. I'm going to submit a request to the airpo...

As with most other vehicles, an airplane must be registered with the government. Unlike most other vehicles, it has to be registered with the federal government in the form of the Federal Aviation Administration. I haven't checked what the requirements in other states are, but in Washington, you must also register it with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). Starting with the state, the cost to register my airplane was $65. This is comparable to registering a car, at least if you don't live in the area of western Washington subject to the additional fees for building the light rail system. Fortunately, I live outside that area, but that's a topic for another blog. Basically, I went up to the WSDOT website and filled out the form saying I now own the plane. A few days later, I received an email that the plane had been added to my account. Finally, I went to the website again and paid the fee using my credit card. The previous owner said that the WSDOT e...

In my last post, I described a couple of technical issues that I ran into. I've been thinking about one of them, and I performed an experiment to see if I could reproduce the other one. When it comes to the issue with FltPlan Go crashing when displaying traffic, I set up my Stratux receiver and iPad mini at my desk at home, connected them as before, and set FltPlan Go to the map view with traffic displayed. Even in my house, it's able to receive ADS-B out broadcasts from nearby aircraft. I let it run for a while as I worked. I let it run for at least half an hour and it did so with no issues. It didn't crash, and kept the display on like it's supposed to. I don't know why it was behaving differently the other day in the plane. I'll try it again on a future flight and, if it happens again, it has to be something specific to operating in the plane. Perhaps it was unable to maintain wireless communication with the Stratux and crashed when it disconnected. It's ...