For the front part of this year I had been quite lazy and hadn't been doing anything aviation related. I drained the oil last October, and didn't get around to finishing my annual until June. Shameful.
Since then, I've been pretty busy. I did the Firecracker 100 in Marysville, OH and have been getting things up to snuff, with an overstuffed to-do list for the plane.
Eric Whyte heads up the AVC staff, with his usual expertise and good humour. My wife thinks Eric sounds like Johnny Depp.
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| Eric claims that the briefings should take longer than the race itself, but sometimes I wonder. |
This year's AVC was located in Mt. Vernon, IL, just a 20 minute flight from my home base. That was kind of a nice change from having to fly 500+ miles to get to the starting line, as in previous races. The Course went from Mt. Vernon, to Dixon Illinois, west of Rockford, to Wisconsin Rapids, north of Wisconsin Dells, to the finish line at Waupaca, WI, northwest of Oshkosh. My Garmin GPS says I flew 483 miles.
Not exactly sure how many planes flew the race, the initial list was 55 aircraft, but there were some scratches. We had five entered in the Sprint class.
- Sam Hoskins - Q-200
- Dave Adams - Long Eze
- John Keich - Midget Mustang
- Jerry Peck - Long Eze
- Leif Johnson - Vari Eze
We had headwinds, so the only strategy was to fly low. I generally flew about 1,000 AGL. I guess I could have been lower to get a little more out of the winds, but I didn't push it. One fun part was flying over a wind farm in southern Wisconsin. It was directly on the course and I got a pretty good look at the spinning blades. I heard things on the race frequency like "Q. What is the brand name of the wind turbine? A. Suzlon". "Okay - what's the model number?" "For extra points, what is the serial number?"
I got to pass a few people, which is always fun, but shortly after flying over the Dixon airport I got passed by someone flying a bit lower and off to the right of me. The old phrase "He passed me like I was tied to a stump" came to mind.
I had a persistant problem with cylinder #2 overheating. I have seen this before, but having this long run at full power allowed me to dig in a little deeper. Most of my cylinder temps were around 375F, but #2 wanted to slide to to 425+. I was able to keep it cooler by increasing the fuel mixture. At on point, I tried switching from my primary injectors to the single throttle body mounted back-up injector. This instantly cooled all the cylinders. I'm pretty sure the #2 injector is running lean. I will swap that injector with one of the other cylinders and see how that pans out.
Edit: I swapped injectors #2 & #4 and flight tested it. The overheating stayed with cylinder #2. Probably a baffling issue, but I can manage it.
I had a persistant problem with cylinder #2 overheating. I have seen this before, but having this long run at full power allowed me to dig in a little deeper. Most of my cylinder temps were around 375F, but #2 wanted to slide to to 425+. I was able to keep it cooler by increasing the fuel mixture. At on point, I tried switching from my primary injectors to the single throttle body mounted back-up injector. This instantly cooled all the cylinders. I'm pretty sure the #2 injector is running lean. I will swap that injector with one of the other cylinders and see how that pans out.
Edit: I swapped injectors #2 & #4 and flight tested it. The overheating stayed with cylinder #2. Probably a baffling issue, but I can manage it.
The last leg was only 35 miles, but we had a neat tailwind for it. At one point I was seeing 230 mph ground speed, but my GPS record says, somewhere along the line, I hit 244 mph!
Waupaca was shockingly cold. The racers were lightly dressed, fortunately I had a light jacket in the plane. As we were standing, waiting our turn at the fuel pump, some kind soul brought out hot pizza!
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| Lee Behl taxis out in his beautiful GP-5. You should hear the music of that engine! Lee turned over 324 mph! Click on the photo to get a better look. |
2013 AirVenture Cup race results
All together, another great race.
The arrival at Oshkosh was fairly non-eventful. The Fisk controllers called me a Vari-Eze, AGAIN, but I'm used to being mis-identified.
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| Stumbled cross my ol' buddy, fellow skydiver and roommate, Mike Starck. It's great who you come across at Oshkosh. |
One of my great Oshkosh pleasures is to hang around the Quickie and see who shows up. We get old friends, people whose names I should know but I can't remember, people who purchased a kit and never finished it, and other people who have a big look on their face and say something like "What the hell is that?!"
For additional entertainment, I came out of Pyro retirement to hang with Rich & Dee Gibson of Rich's Incredible Pyro fame. I did my first pyro show with Rich somewhere around 1981-82. Rich and Dee are retiring out of the airshow business, so I just had to hang around with them and the crew one last time.
Here is a great article, and some spectacular photos, about the airshow and the Pyro.
For additional entertainment, I came out of Pyro retirement to hang with Rich & Dee Gibson of Rich's Incredible Pyro fame. I did my first pyro show with Rich somewhere around 1981-82. Rich and Dee are retiring out of the airshow business, so I just had to hang around with them and the crew one last time.
Here is a great article, and some spectacular photos, about the airshow and the Pyro.
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| The guys preparing the det cord charges. We call this phase the Det Cord Party. |
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| Lots of goodies, ready to go. This stuff is powerful. |
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| Storing the bombs and other charges for later. |
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| Filling fuel containers which will be used in the Wall of Fire. Each container has five gallons of gasoline and a powerful explosive "launcher". |
So, another great year.
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| Plastic Explosive, with the race planes, a couple of hours before I headed for home. |
