Two Weeks in the RV

A long, loose box contained 2 quarts of oil (used one), paper funnels, paper towels, windshield cleaner, and microfiber cloth (no smushed six-legged souvenirs from Missouri allowed), and a tie-down kit that I was sure I wouldn’t use. That awkward box made loading everything else difficult.

A backpack on the front seat held electronics, including a MacBook Air, an iPad (which was never used), a GoPro in its case, a plastic container with all of the MacBook air cables and chargers, an extension cord, and the iPhone charger. An additional plastic container held business cards and whatnots and was seldom used. In-flight snacks lived in this backpack too.

The other, larger backpack contained a plastic container of toiletries, plus another container with the doctors’ prescribed pills, potions, lotions, and lozenges, those things that they thought would keep the pharmacist in business till the next physical. It was hard to get that backpack into the baggage compartment, jousting with the long box and two duffel bags of clothes, enough for two weeks without doing laundry. 

Age was a big factor on this trip. A year ago, I was 65, but then my right knee quit working, and the only solution was a total knee replacement. Suddenly, I was 75, my chronological age. Although I’ve had three months of physical therapy and have full range of motion, overall energy and endurance have not fully recovered. Remember the “F” in IMSAFE, the big F for Fatigue? That was a major consideration on this trip.

The original plan was to leave Monday before Oshkosh—Savannah to Missouri to meet and to fly with my editor. However, I’d been feeling less than 100 percent and didn’t want to attempt a long flight day without good rest the day before, so as to help keep the big F under control. Tuesday, I felt much better, enabling a Wednesday departure.

My preference is to break up long trips into legs of no more than two hours, both for physical and physiological comfort, and so I can comfortably fly to another airport in case I can’t get gas at the destination. Failed card reader? Hose jammed? No gas on weekends? I’ve encountered all of those, and glad I had the fuel reserves. And I was surprised on this trip to find at least two airports that didn’t sell gas on weekends, fortunately I learned this before heading their way.

The first leg was boring, flying across northern Georgia on autopilot toward the fun and friendly FBO at Pell City, Alabama, a lucky choice. The fidgety fuel flow and manifold pressure gauges refused to sit still, and the 4-cylinder engine was not completely smooth. It does that when it thinks it deserves clean spark plugs.

Then came perhaps the most satisfying leg of the flight. I was headed to central Missouri from Pell City, straight across a quilt of many colors on the ADS-B radar. The weather was… interesting. I was IFR at 4,000 feet, skimming the bottoms of the clouds, but visibility was at least 20 miles in all directions. I could see the rain showers both on ADS-B and out the window, so avoidance was no issue. I generally prefer flying visually under the clouds to flying in the clouds so that I don’t fly my tiny little RV-9A into an embedded cell, which could be all kinds of no fun.

As I watched the storm move east, I changed my destination again. I wasn’t sure about the second change, as that airport was just ahead of the storm, and my gas reserves would have been 90 minutes, less than I’d want circumnavigating storms. ATC pointed out how quickly the storms were moving, so I went to Cape Girardeau, my original destination, landing in visual conditions with two-hour reserves.

Just to be clear, although I avoid flying in “hard” IFR, all of my IFR practice includes approaches to minimums, go-arounds, and holding patterns—just in case. “Soft” IFR is what you plan for, and “hard” IFR is what you might get. On this leg, being able to fly under the clouds was an unexpected gift.

The glass cockpit overshadows the cooperative, complacent RV-9A’s character. Fussing with the avionics to keep tabs on the weather gave many more knob touches than the airplane itself. 

The next leg, and the two after it, followed my standard cross-country plan. I filed IFR, mostly so that I could get the altitude I wanted without having to worry about cloud clearances, and so if some little squirt cumulus popped up, I could blast through it or just nick the side of it. One of my ground rules is that I never fly through a cumulus I haven’t checked out visually, and there were those obnoxious teenage mutant cumuli that were easily avoided.

It was in Indiana that I got my only scare in recent memory. Kentland has a 4,000-foot runway, east/west, with a crosswind straight out of the north. Nobody answered on unicom, and the facilities were at the west end of the airport, so I decided on left traffic for Runway 27. As I got on downwind, the ADS-B went totally nuts. There was a plane headed away, then climbing, descending, then heading right toward me, and not on unicom. What the…? I turned base early, slipped the RV-9A as hard as it would go, landed halfway down the runway, and stood on the brakes. After I turned off the runway, I saw the traffic… a crop duster. The rest of the flight north was unremarkable by comparison.

From northern Michigan, it was straight across the lake at 10,000 feet IFR on oxygen, then into an airport near Oshkosh to avoid the arrival confusion. I’d rather drive an hour to Oshkosh than hold an hour around some lake with hundreds of my closest, in both senses of the phrase, friends.  This year, my secret was out, and there were maybe a dozen other planes there.

With my already low energy levels from the knee replacement surgery, Oshkosh was tiring, even at 50 percent participation. Next stop was Iowa to visit an old friend and to veg out and recover. The first two nights there seemed calm, but about 9 p.m., the radar on the cell phone showed a vindictive cell headed in, obviously taking umbrage at my expressions of how glad I was not to live in Iowa anymore. Still, those four Iowa years provided outstanding friends, but other circumstances were tough, shall we say, and leave it at that.

The FAA weather said a thunderstorm was forecast, gusts to 6 knots. There was also a link to a bridge for sale.

We got out to the airport with flashlights to provide guidance in the dark as I taxied through the deep grass to the tie-down rings. I lamented that there was no tail tie-down until I remembered that I had brought three welded rebar tie-downs and a heavy hammer to drive them in. Good call, as there was abundant lightning, wind, and torrential rain that night. I was glad that I had contingency packed.

Next morning, I was looking for where a front would be thinnest, so the flight plan had a big 90-degree turn in it after penetrating the front visually. I headed due south, not on course to the southeast. After a fuel stop, I flew through the front, IFR again with only occasional time in clouds as the front was already dissipating. The direct route still looked frisky on the radar, so that big zigzag was the cost of doing business.

Knoxville, Tennessee, was a pleasant visit with family, but overnight at the Signature FBO and 20 gallons was $250. And I’m based at Signature at another airport. If you’re the only FBO on the field, and there’s really only one airport for the town, you’ve got a monopoly. And I think the owners of Signature are English, more of that taxation/representation stuff.

And on short final at Knoxville, I got chirps from a flock of unrecognized electronic birds, telling me something but not in airplane-speak. Turns out that it was the cell phone announcing pent-up text messages, finally released by cell coverage. When I turned off the in-flight music on the cell phone, I should also have turned off the cell phone on the audio panel. Lesson learned.

Next morning, it was time to head for Savannah. In good weather, I’d go straight over the Smokies at 9,500 feet but only if there was enough visibility of the ground that I could find somewhere to land if the engine went poop. Or at least to gauge the slope of the land when I landed in the trees.

Over southern Missouri and some of Kentucky, and over lots of the Deep South, there’s nothing but forests. My maxim is to never fly over an overcast less than 1,000 feet, so I have time to choose a landing site if the engine goes out. That’s a great theory, but with all those trees, it’s barely better than nothing. 

I’d had plenty of time to think about this and other topics in the humid air over Missouri, 79 degrees at altitude. Many days at Oshkosh were cooler than that—and dry.

The Midwest has bugs too. Flying at low altitudes in Georgia, the angle of attack is such that bug strikes are on the leading edge and some on the underside. But cruising at altitude in the Midwest, the higher speeds meant lower angle of attack, which meant lots more bugs on the wing top leading edge. Back home, a first pass with soapy water and fingernails exhumed half of the bug cemetery, but I may need to use Extreme Simple Green Aircraft & Precision Cleaner for the rest.

For the last leg going home, the plan was to fly west to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and go around the Smokies before turning east toward Savannah after the morning low level goo burned off and before the thunderstorms had time for their second cup of coffee. Off the left wing I could see all kinds of unforecast cumulus buildups that I was glad to be circumnavigating.

After turning the corner, I was rewarded with tailwinds of up to 22 knots, so the big detour cost me only 15 minutes. But just to make it interesting, when I got home, ATC had me very high on downwind, above the departure corridor for the cross runway, and still high on base leg for the visual approach. 

The RV-9A was its usual, docile, complacent, compliant platform on final. Full flaps and 80 knots, trimmed, the airplane asked, is this what I really wanted?  Yes, because that stationary spot in the windshield was just short of the runway.

Didn’t make the first turnoff, barely, but was quickly at the hangar to unload the interlocking baggage and enjoy the humid, 92-degree Georgia summer.

This 21-hour trip, four hours logged actual IFR, would have been theoretically possible without ADS-B weather, the autopilot, and graphical preflight weather on the iPhone, but it would have been a ton more work with much more weather risk.

What else? With my bionic knee and general stiffness, loading the RV-9A is a pain, as is getting in and out. Carrying a passenger would have required seriously rethinking the baggage. But as long as it’s just me… Otherwise, an RV-10, maybe a Glasair Sportsman 2+2, or (gasp!) a Cessna 182, but those prices, like everything else the last four years, are out of sight.

No complaints. I’m blessed.