It was a lovely change of command ceremony, one of my favorite people in the world gave up the 125th Strike Fighter Squadron at the end of an arduous 18 months in battery. Chilly has the three q’s: High q (dynamic energy), high IQ and high quality. Unlike many men in his position, he left attendance to his ceremony to the discretion of his people, declining to force them into ranks on a hot summer’s day. That was a nice gesture, I thought – they can read the plan of the day on Monday, if they missed the news.
He said a few kind words about your humble scribe as he gave his speech, summat to do with being a mentor when such were few on the ground, but the fact of the matter is that yer man is one of those fellers junior to you that make you understand your own limitations. I knew him when he was a lieutenant and I was an O-4, and he hasn’t changed all that much in the intervening time, command at sea and bonus command notwithstanding.
He didn’t need to change all that much.
Off to Tampa now with his long suffering and their clan, for to tighten up the SOCCOM folks. Who’d better get ready for some heavy rolls.
‘Twas a fair bit to go for an hour long ceremony in the middle of July in the San Joaquin Valley. Wouldna been another couple I’d have made it for, but hizzoner and his lady are that special.
Hot and getting hotter as I headed out to the aerodrome. The left magneto was playing the fool at the hold short, dropping off nearly 300 RPM when tested, and running her rough. I leaned her out a fair bit with the cowl flaps open and burned the plugs clear at 1800 RPM, which did the trick of letting me get home rather than asking for services at the local FBO.
The Flight Service Station briefer noted that it was 33° C on the ramp, and that I’d be advised to check density altitude. The airport itself is only a couple of hundred feet high, the strip 5000 feet long, the surrounding terrain unremarkable and we left 20 gallons of fuel in the tanker for the two hour flight back south. I wasn’t much concerned. At least, not until the trees at the departure end came into clear view, as they’re wont to do when you’re fretting over a fouled plug.
I’m still not that accustomed to taking off from a non-towered airport. You call in the blind to whomever might be listening in and hope that anyone planning to land as you’re taking off will notice. Somehow it feels like cheating, taxiing around and taking off without a by-your-leave. I reckon you get used to it after a bit.
The Cardinal scoots along pretty well for only 200 horses under the cowl, but she’s no banshee in the climb. Seven hundred feet per minute or so when the wheels come up and the flaps are stowed, but it trails off to 500 FPM or so all the way to 9500 feet, which was right for direction to cross the Tejon Pass southbound. I still get a little quilty over rough terrain in a non-turbocharged, single engine piston. That doesn’t have an ejection seat. When you’re flying a single engine prop job, you supposed to be on constant lookout for a place to put her down should the spinner quit. There’s about a ten minute window flying over the mountains north of LA where you’d do just as well to keep your eyes shut.
LA Approach showed every semblance of happiness to clear me through the Class B on the Shoreline Route, so long as I conformed to the profile.The Cardinal’s Lycoming engine hummed along like a sewing machine, delightfully ignorant of the terrain contours below.
Managing heat in the tightly cowled engine is a bit of a trial: We’re taught to pull no more than 1″ of manifold pressure per minute to avoid warping the engine block, but of course the MP increases as density altitude decreases in the descent, so you’re right back where you started when the minute hand comes round. Somehow we got her down below Sandy Eggo’s Class B and into the pattern for a successful landing.
Lots of folks talk about the Cardinal “crow hop”, which apparently comes when an over-eager 172 driver tries to force her on deck when she’s carrying too much smack. All well and good in a Skyhawk, but the Cardinal has a stabilator rather than an elevator, and dumping the nose apparently can lead to some pretty wild rides. I’ve got many more hours flying stabilator aircraft than 172s, so – thus far at least – patience has been my unaccustomed virtue. Set the landing attitude with idle power, and she pretty much has to land. Eventually. Flaps up to put the weight back on the wheels, cowl flaps open as the windstream dies down, IFF standby and ask Ground Control for clearance back to the line.
I’m no longer climbing out in max grunt with the VSI pegged and a half a g unload to level off by 6000 feet without blowing through the altitude restriction. I don’t have a moving map between my legs driven by a GPS-aided INS. Can’t take potshots at passing airliner traffic in sim mode and watch the air-to-air missle time-to-go counter tic down.
But I went flying today, and that’s not nothing.
Which I’ll be reminded of when the bill comes due.
Sounds like a better than average day, all told.
Thanks for taking us along for the ride. Nice writing, as usual.
And for what it’s worth (probably about two cents, considering the source), I was reminded that that when a man is removed from the Service, the water DOES rush back in to fill the void. But it appears the ripples reverberate via those he touched.
This manifold pressure you speak of, could I ask for a bit more enlightenment?
For you see, I’m a motorhead from days gone by, when manifold pressure meant a supercharger of some sort, and manifold vacuum meant carbs and all the attendant suckage a piston-powered plant could make against the flaps in the carb.
I only mention it because my sister, God bless her little soul, is even now training for her commercial pilot license. And hence she calls Big Brother when she has a slipping of the old mental clutch.
Which, she was discovering how to operate an aircraft with a variable prop, and she claimed the motor was to be set at a certain RPM and then manifold pressure was the guide to prop pitch.
At which point I asked her if the manifold pressure was positive or negative with relation to gauge pressure.
You know that communication problem that siblings often have? I’d just created it.
I tried helping her out. Really! But at the end of 40 minutes on the cell phone I’d pretty much given up any hope of knowing if the motor was carb’d or supercharged, I’d given up all hope of a normal cell phone bill that month, and we’d finally agreed that perhaps she ought to go back to another flight instructor who might spend some quality time in a desk chair teaching her how the flippin’ prop pitch and manifold pressure and engine RPM related to each other so she could make those all-important pilot-in-command decisions without blind confidence in a checklist or a manufacturers recommendation.
I liked it better when she called me about absolute altitude vs. density altitude. It was far easier to explain than how a Lycoming and variable prop works.
Some day she is going to take me flying. At some level that terrifies me, for I know how much I’ve helped her, and I know how little I know about keeping things airborne.
– Max
In a fixed pitch propeller driven aircraft, the RPM gauge is used to determine power output, since response to the throttle is more or less linear (the propeller also gains and loses RPMs due to the effects of the air mass moving past it) – but a fixed pitch prop will have to be a compromise between a best climb angle of attack (for the propeller blades) and and an optimum cruise setting; drag on the propeller disk increases with the typically higher airspeeds in cruise flight.
On a machine with a constant speed propeller, prop RPM is set by a governor that tunes the prop to either a high pitch/low RPM or low pitch/high RPM setting (or any most efficient setting between the two – think of gearing changes in your car) so manifold pressure is used to assess engine delivered power in terms of torque and HP.
Manifold pressure is measured in inches of mercury, and reflects the pressure in the fuel/air induction system. Naturally, the more fuel and air we can pump into the cylinders (up to its rated limits), the more power we’re making.
In a normally aspirated piston engine, MP drops as density altitude increases since the ambient air pressure drops in a climb (or on a high/hot day). Turbochargers are used on some aircraft to ramp ambient air pressure up to sea level values prior to induction for best climb performance – unlike a surpercharger you might find on granddad’s hot rot, there’s a turbine driven by engine exhaust gasses that in turn drives a compressor on a shared shaft which increases air pressure at the induction manifold and there’s a wastegate or bypass line that vents excess pressure to keep the engine from over-boosting or detonating.
I’ll leave off for now discussion of engine fuel/air leaning techniques, especially any discussion of rich-of-peak/lean-of-peak operations since it’d likely foment a brawl
Never mind….
Another good discussion here.
And another question (thanks to Max for asking about ‘manifold pressure’ as that is something that I should have asked some time ago, too): Inertial Navigation System. With GPS, why is INS important? How does it differ from GPS in accuracy and all that?
GPS tells you where you are pretty well, but won’t tell you where you’re headed or which way is up. INS does both real well. INS however, unaided by GPS, tends to “drift” over time (i.e., the inertial location is not your actual location. Typical Ring Laser Gyro INS drift might be a half a mile or so over a two hour flight.) GPS keeps it tight. -ras
Thanks for the eyewitness, Lex. Nice to read nice things about nice people.
Back in the day, ’twas Lady Chilly who introduced me to the wonders of using french phonetics when shopping mega-stores to make one feel better about lack of funds for Rodeo Drive. I don’t think I have ever said Target properly since.
Remember, tar-zhay is just a step up from wally’s world. And if you want last year’s fashions rejects, “Off Rodeo Drive” outlet stores in a ‘Mills mall still has overpriced apparel you wouldn’t be caught dead in…..
Lex, you bring along a pen just in case someone wanted your autograph?
Sounds like a great time, and good that you spent the coin to honor a friend. The bill? Money well spent, I think.
I swear I saw SECNAV Mabus wearing a similar suit on Friday.
Him being another gentleman of the south and all…
If you’re obligated to wear a suit on a hot day, the seersucker is hard to beat. You’ve just got to be willing to play through all of the “Matlock” references.
Lex/
Besides the seersucker (which is practically de rigeur for New Orleans) in N.O. we sell a lot of light cotton tan and olive kaki suits also. And then there is the traditional “All-white” southern suit–but I don’t think your ready to go that route yet.
Dunno… Connotes to this Yankee either Southern Democrat in a thousand Herblock cartoons, pretentious prick based on a few years in DC, or insurance salesman. Nothing wrong with insurance salesmen, I suppose.
Being from the South, I grew up wearing seersucker and light cotton tan and olive khaki suits. No offense sir, but you need some help with the tie, and you need to lose the pen.
Just kidding about the pen.
Zane/
Or a white-suited clone of fellow writer and “dandy” Thomas Wolfe.
BTW, I look positively SMASHING in white!!
Lex, you sweet old devil, you just get better looking all the time. Enjoy it as long as you can. Eventually, we all decline into seniorship. Which can be helped along if you get, as my husband did, one of those custom fitted straw boaters with black hatband, which are dearly loved here in the south. Strangers stop him on the street and ask him where he got that great hat.
AS he says, a little kind attention is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Marianne
Marianne/
Lex looks positively rosy-cheeked in that photo. M’thinks that reunion had the salutary effect of transporting “old” Lex back to his “youth.” All he needs now is to hit the “Just for Men” hair color route and he can re-enlist!
Negative VX! Grey hair on a man is – not unwelcomed.
Easy Kris, far be it from “let it gray, but let it stay” Virgil to depreciate the “distinguished gentleman” look. I was only suggesting a possible route to a rejuvenated, mint-new re-entry Ensign status for our man Lex. The USN just might look askanse at a “fresh” new recruit covered in gray/grey! Hence my “helpful hint.”
Lex,
There used to be a VFR corridor that went north and south at 5000 feet right over the top of LAX. VFR traffic could transit from airports like Catalina, Torrance, Hawthorne and Long Beach to airports north of LAX like Burbank and Van Nuys at VFR altitudes within the corridor squawking 1200 and not have to talk to ATC. Last time I flew it was 1983….I live in S. Florida these days and just wondered if that corridor still exists…hard to believe it would after 9-11.
There are several VFR corridors, and one the Special Flight Rules corridor that allows VFR traffic to transit over LAX. Just squak 1201 and fly either 4500′ northbound or 3500′ southbound while self announcing on the air-to-air freq (drawing a blank on it right now). Great asset, I used it on my first solo XC flight.
Nothing like plodding along in a 172 while watching airliners taking off below.
Chilly was a good friend and my next door neighbor back in Japan, and our wives got along swimmingly as well. I hope he and Joyce have a good time down in Tampa.
Reduce only 1 inch MP per minute? I wouldn’t think that was necessary in a Cardinal. When I got my high performance endorsement, it was mentioned, but really depends on the engine. I got hi-power endorsement in a Cessna 206, which had no restrictions. If it has a turbo, absolutely! Prevents cracking the turbo casing from over cooling, engine stresses being second. I’ve heard of the 1 inch/minute in Bonanzas and Barons. Anyone know differently than I do?
Chilly is a great guy… met him on my JO tour when he was doing his DH in the ‘Winders… simply an amazing pilot rivaled only by his amazing personality and friendliness…
Went flying right seat recently with a private pilot friend. First time back in a cockpit in 15 years.
As a former NFO I was immediately drawn to the NAV/RADAR package. I was amazed.
Great advances from GPS I could believe. “But you mean a small aircraft like this has radar? No, its just a repeater. Satellite link provides GPS AND weather radar display!”