Oshkosh Trip Report

[kevin]

Hi folks,

I'm back from Oshkosh.

For anyone who is interested, we left Portland at 5AM PDT on Wednesday, stopped in Twin Falls, ID - Camp Guernsey, WY - Ankeney, IA and landed at OSH at 7:45 CDT. Keven K. had saved spots for Bob Cook and I (thanks Keven!) in the North 40 camping area, so we were together. Keven left Thursday night, leaving his spot open for Larry on Friday.

Anyway, I left OSH around noon on Sunday, had to wait for the field to get to VFR, because there were no IFR slots to be had. Started to go to the show again with Larry Bowdish (who came back on Sunday), but the weather started to improve rapidly, so I broke camp, packed the plane, and departed OSH in nice VFR about 11:30.

My original plan to was to head toward Duluth, MN, as there were nasty storms to the south and west of OSH. As I continued northwest, I decided to change my destination to Grand Rapids, MN, to make a little more distance before stopping. (Still not much distance, but I felt the need to look at a big radar picture before picking a route west.) Grand Rapids was reporting 100 overcast though, so I changed my destination again (at the controllers suggestion) to Big Fork, MN. Then I read up on that airport - may not be fuel there. So I changed *again* to Hibbing, MN. About 30 minutes out of Hibbing, my charging system problem returned. (It had not reared its ugly head all the way from Portland to Ankenky, IA on the way out, and then had been benign from Ankeny to Osh in that one alternator was not putting out juice, but the other was taking the load). Anyway, on the way into Hibbing, both alternators went to zero output, and I started running off the battery. Turning off one alternator, both, one then the other, and turning off the master and everything would not get it going for about five minutes. Then the rear started working again (with the front alt shut off), so I left it alone the rest of the way to Hibbing. More on this problem in another message.

I spent the afternoon waiting for and then working with a mechanic in Hibbing. More in another message, but bottom line, we fixed nothing, and it started to work again just as we were about to give up. It worked the rest of the way back to Portland.

By the time we were done messing with the airplane, it was 5:30 in the evening, and a line of storms was approaching Hibbing. I decided to spend the night.

The next morning I departed Hibbing intending to stop in Glendive, MT, but had to stop short in Dickinson, SD due to headwinds which dragged my groundspeed down to 130 kts. I then planned to stop in Lewiston, ID and then on to Hillsboro. That plan would have worked at 130 kts, but failed when my groundspeed out of Dickinson dropped to 115 kts. That was a 75 kt headwind COMPONENT at 16,000'. If I went down to 12,000, the wind dropped about the same amount as the aircraft performance decrease due to lower altitude, leaving me with the same glacial groundspeed.

So I stopped in Helena, MT, went to Beck's U-Pump, the increasingly famous entirely self-serve FBO. If you have never been there, check it out. There are courtesy cars you can sign out, first come first serve on a bedroom with four bunk beds, food in the refrigerator, weather service, everything you need, but no staff. You pump your own gas self-serve fashion (which is not the unusual part, it's the rest of the services being provided on the honor system that is unique, at least as far as I know).

From Helena, I hoped to fly to Portland, but even that didn't work due to winds, so the last stop was Pasco, WA, then home.

I departed Hibbing at 7:30 AM CDT, and landed in Hillsboro, OR at 7:30 PM PDT on Monday.

It was really great to camp with Bob, Keven, Larry, and Herb, and it was good to meet all of you that came to the hangar flying session in Pavillion 2 on Friday night. We heard presentations on composite and aluminum 3 blade props, as well as an announcement of diesel replacement engines for Skymasters from Mary Ann of Skyrocket LLC (aka Riley).

See you all again soon I hope...

Kevin