Re: The weekend
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JMasal@...
WOW Dave... excellent write-up. Normally you'd have to be standing right next to a guy listening to him to be that informed
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Thanks for taking the time, its almost like having you there! j.
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From: Mike Dwyer <q2pilot@...> To: Q-LIST <Q-LIST@...> Sent: Tue, Sep 13, 2011 6:58 am Subject: RE: [Q-LIST] The weekend Wow, quite a flight report. Thanks for sharing. Mike Q200 Sent from my Windows Phone ________________________________ From: Dave Dugas Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 11:22 PM To: Q-LIST@... Subject: Re: [Q-LIST] The weeken Thanks Jim...I hate being thwarted. This was the first time that we had to throw in the towel. We got back home today at 5:30 pm after flying for a half hour from Canton OH through some lousy weather. When we got north of the junk we had a beautiful flight through upstate NY, over the Finger Lakes region. At 1:30 we landed at Penn Yann airport for fuel and took a loaner car into town for lunch. One of the most scenic areas for flying, especially the way the weather improved. My engine issue was a stuck exhaust valve on the #2 cyl. The Revmaster ran perfectly and when the valve hung up, it happened without warning. Only 12 hours on the cyl heads when it happened. About 5 miles east of BGM, at 4200', I contacted the tower and reported landing...engine still running fine. I reduced power and thought that the engine would either quit or shake off. I added carb heat to richen the mixture and tried to adjust the throttle to a power setting that would keep the thing running as smooth as possible without quitting. Tahts when the tower cleared me to land on rw 28.....straight in thankfully. I had plenty of altitude and a little more power available if needed, so I didn't declare an emergency. The engine quit on rollout, but I was able to restart it and taxi to the FBO where I was greeted by the Governer and the Natioal Guard (not really, but they were there due to the disasterous flooding in Binghampton NY). All roads closed into the area, no hotel rooms available due to the evacuations, machine shops underwater, and a FBO without any VW parts didn't stop us from still thinking we would make it to Illinois. A local VW racer had valve guides and the tools to replace the culprit and agreed to do the job. His normal 15 minute drive to the airport was about an hour each way, only because he knew a few roundabout roads that didn't happen to wash out. He arrived at the airport at 10:45 pm Friday night, with the repaired cyl head. This effort to help me out of a bind in spite of the disaster caused by the flood, is just one of many that I've seen or experienced personally throughout the aviation community. His name is Adam and he is a very generous person,, and must have really felt sorry for an old white haired guy. He did a quality repair. The FBO, Goodrich Aviation, was just as generous to Rod and I, virtually opening his shop and toolbox for 48 hours so that we could get going again. Doug Goodrich is this man's name and his website is www.GoodrichAviation.com. He also has a Facebook page where you might see a picture of a couple of zombies with their repaired airplanes. Check him out. Its now 11:00 pm and i decided to work on the engine after getting some rest. Notice I didn't say sleep, and I use the term rest loosely. We've now been 28 hours living on popcorn and coffee and spent Thursday night in a recliner. We watched the Gov's speech in the afternoon while waiting for the repair of the valve guide. He looked well fed and rested I thought as I tried to fall asleep in the cots we borrowed from the National Guard helicopter crew. We thought that cots would be better than the recliner, but this turned out to be our biggest and possibly only mistake of the trip. We got new cots, not the ones that the Guardsmen were using. I recognized the box material when the cots were removed from the boxes....the kind of cardboard that comes from China. These things were built to Chinese specs, just enough fabric to ensure that the metal edges touched bone no matter what position we were in. Ironic because our next planned stop was Canton (OH). Half asleep at 7:00 am saturday morning I began to reassemble N68DD with the hope of eating ribs with everyone later that day. Must have been the lack of food and sleep that caused these thoughts, but didn't realize it at the time. I finished the repair at 9:30, ran up the engine for about 15 minutes and put the cowling on. I asked the tower fo the longest runway and requested 2 low approaches and a full stop. All went well throughout the full range of power settings, and we were ready to go. We departed BGM at 11:00 am with full intentions of getting to the Field of Dreams. We were forced to land due to low ceilings and decided to scrub the mission. We landed at Port Meadville airport and borrowed the loaner car. We got a room and before even entering the room we went out for a real meal. Food was now driving our behavior and without a shower for 2 days we walked into a nice steak house, knowing that at 2:45 in the afternoon the risk of driving innocent customers out the door after getting a whiff of us was probably at the least. The steak and couple of beers that we enjoyed while isolated from the rest of the customers were the best we ever had, and had the effect of taking a triple dose of Ambian. We went to the hotel and slept from 5 pm to 9:30 pm (after showering). We managed to fully recover by Sunday morning and when aI woke up I called Sam to report our status. As I mentioned before, the remainder of the trip was fantastic. I'm glad everyone had a good time and most of all stayed safe.....we missed you guys. Dave Dugas and Rod Herzig. From: "JMasal@..." <JMasal@...> To: Q-LIST@... Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 10:50 AM Subject: Re: [Q-LIST] The weeken I get an ear to ear grin when I see Dave Dugas plane at our events cause he is one intrepid aviator bringing down rrom the far reaches of New England.I was delighted to know Dave and Rod intended to leap over the floods to get to Marion Only to be dead stopped by a valve guide ??? problem. Know Dave that we were sending out good Khara waves and hanging on every communication about your travails. I expect you will not be thwarted next time. You are a memorable guy and we want to renew that memory. j. -----Original Message----- From: Jerry Marstall <jnmarstall@...> To: Q-LIST <Q-LIST@...> Sent: Sun, Sep 11, 2011 5:39 pm Subject: Re: [Q-LIST] The weekend is here - Tandem Wing Fly-in Marion, IL Doug, we are so sorry you didn't make it to Marion. We were all looking forward to seeing the two of you. It certainly wasn't because of lack of effort. That is a lot of geography to cover without wx problems, let along unexpected mechanical ones. We will be looking forward to the next one and you being there. Jerry Marstall On 9/11/2011 12:01 AM, Sam Hoskins wrote: [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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