I finally got the plane ready enough for the Big Race, or so I hoped. There are so many parts of it all, it's hard to relate. Even though the plane might not be 100% race ready, I thought it should be close enough. I guess I had three main goals; participate in the race, finish it safely, and get my Q-200 to Oshkosh for the 20th time. It had missed the last two years and I sorely missed its presence there.
Amongst all the other troubleshooting and preparations, I finally decided to go with my old Catto prop. It's a 60x70 and has served well. C-Rod helped me dynamically balance it, so at least that part was good to go. Don Bartlett had welded up the cracks in the oil sump and added a bit of a brace. Just to be sure, I wrapped a nylon strap around the sump, to make sure it couldn't depart the engine. My plan was to fly each leg, then pull the cowl to inspect for cracks; and, just for good measure, I brought along my old composite sump. I'm pretty sure I was the only racer carrying a spare oil sump. I wish I had been able to figure out how to fit an oil cooler in my particular installation.
Got to Mitchell, SD and made an arrival pass down the runway, which was pretty fun. The townspeople were very interested in the race and we had over 2,000 spectators come out. Kids carried the event programs around and had the pilots sign autographs. Fun stuff.
I had gotten a hangar reservation ($25.) for Friday night and had the Quickie safely tucked away to guard against the forecasted storms. Man, did it hit hard. 70 mph winds! Hail was forecast, but fortunately it avoided us. Only about 5 planes were stranded outside and by all reports they did just fine.
Had a dinner and race briefing on Saturday night, then I settled into the hotel.
Race day is always different. The racers are all focused and a bit more subdued as we gather our thoughts and mentally prepare. Several handshakes are exchanged with the wish "good luck, be safe." Here is a morning-of photo.
They always launch the fastest planes first, and I was in the third group to go. The procedure is to take off and hold it down till you hit the departure end of the runway, that way we can build up speed a bit before they start the clock. I followed Bob Vasey in his RV-3 and I was off. My big concern has been the oil temperature. I figured if the ambient air temp stayed below 60 degrees or so that I would be able to fly WOT. Above 60 and I would probably have to throttle back.
The engine was smooth and I climbed to 7,500' msl. High pressure dominated the area and it seemed that there wasn't any help with tail winds, so 7,500' seemed as good a place as any. I climbed rather quickly, for a race profile, at 500' per minute.
Once leveled off, the engine wound up to 3,100 RPM and I accelerated to around 208 mph indicated true air speed. So far, so good.
The outside air was about 62F and after a half hour or so, the oil temp steadily crept up to my red line. I have my Dynon D180 connected to my radio, so the Dynon gives a visual alert and there is a loud beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppp through my headset. You have to hit a button on the Dynon to silence it, but it keeps coming back. I was really sorry and pissed to hear that first alert. The ambient air had dropped to 60F and I was hoping that would be enough, but it was not.
Only one solution at this point - raise the red line alarm point on the Dynon. I forget what it was originally set at, but I raised it to 255F and most of the racket and screen alarms went away.
It's kind of funny. I was at 7,500; and didn't see anyone. We have a common race frequency and state our position, something like "Race 22 at 7,500' 322 miles out (from the finish line)." There were guys below me that I knew I was passing, but I never saw them. Never saw anyone until the finish line.
Things seemed to be going okay, but I hated the oil temps. Passed over Rochester, MN, and most of Minnesota, but when I got to Lacrosse, WI the price of poker went up.
I smelled something funny and not funny haha. I looked at the carbon monoxide indicator pasted to the instrument panel and it had almost turned black. Hmm, never did that before. Not a good sign. Crapola. What to do now? Land at Lacrosse? Press on? Pass out from CO poisoning? Realize the seriousness of the indicator? Don't be such a big baby? This is the stuff that makes air racing interesting.
I looked around the cockpit for something that might help get me some fresh air. I have kind of a gap between the canopy and the fuselage, on the left side where air always enters. I tried to fold my sectional chart to direct some clean air toward my face. That didn't work very well, and a piece of my chart wound up getting sucked out of the plane.
I had a roll of paper shop towels and tried that. I found if I held it just so, I could channel some air through the center of the roll, toward my face. My GPS said I would hit (probably a bad choice of words) the finish line in about 32 minutes so I continued on. Here is a photo re-creation:
Naturally, as I'm screwing around with charts and paper towels, I wound up drifting 30 degrees off course and that doesn't exactly get me to the finish in the fastest time.
About 70 miles from Snow Crest Ranch airport I started descending at 250 feet per minute. Of course I do not back off the throttle.
The little airport came into sight and it was pretty easy to distinguish. You usually hear a lot of position reports getting close to the finish line, but the funny thing was it was quiet. I looked at my radio and I was no longer on freq! Turns out I had bumped the radio when I was messing around with the improvised breathing apparatus. I got the radio set up right and called out "Race 22 - 10 miles" "Race 22 - 5 miles," etc.
When I finally hit the finish line I was indicating about 222 mph TAS.
Once past the finish line, it's time to pull up, cool down and calm down. I throttled back to a leisurely 2,600 RPM and set the GPS for Fon duLac.
Fon du Lac seemed to have more planes than Oshkosh. All the spam cans had been denied landing at OSH because of the extremely wet grounds and they were jammed everywhere. Turns out the race planes weren't going anywhere right now either. The regular race plane parking at Oshkosh was too wet, so they loaded everyone into a bus for transport to Whitman Field.
The next day, there was a sudden rush to get the planes from Fon du Lac to Oshkosh. I was still a little unsure and decided to take a pass for the moment. Later in the day, and after most of the race planes had arrived, my buddy Jeff gave me a ride to Fon du Lac with the intention of coming in after the airshow ended. Once I got there, I took another look at my little wheels and decided agianst it. I didn't want them sinking into the mud. I took the bus back up to OSH.
Here we are, almost all alone, at Fon du Lac.
Tuesday was going to be decision day. I had to head home, so would I either take the bus to Fon du Lac and head south, or would I throw caution to the wind and fly to Oshkosh, even if for just a few hours.
When I woke up in my tent, the decision was made. After all, I have flown my Quickie to the EAA convention for 19 years and damn it, I wasn't going to postpone the 20th visit another dad- gummed year.
The Fisk arrival procedure was messed up as usual. The FAA controllers always seem to forget they have a fast lane set up above the 100 mph C-172s and Cherokees. I can't drive 55 and they expect me to follow Cessnas and the like.
It is just about impossible for me to fly the arrival at 100 mph. Then, to boot, when I got to Fisk a controller called for "the Hiperbipe to continue for the downwind to runway two seven." Click
here to see what a Hiperbipe looks like. How should I know she was talking to me?
Then, when I'm on the downwind, she says "Experimental - turn right base now!" Experimental? At Oshkosh? Who the heck does she mean?
Anyway, I took matters into my own hands and got it on the runway safely. After the long taxi in, Race 22 finally got back with the rest of my race plane buddies, back where we both belong.
Finally arrived. 20th visit for the Quickie to Oshkosh and our 8th AirVenture Cup race!
I was only going to be here about four hours, so I had to quickly collect my prop tag, commemorative mug, and my perseverance award for restoring/rebuilding my plane.
Note that a new AirVenture Cup speed record was set in the Turbine Class at over 400 mph! Yow!
Terry Crouch stopped by and we pulled the cowling for a quick oil tank and exhaust gasket leak inspection. All seemed well. After thumping away on my electronic fuel injection sensor bracket, and deeming it inadequate, we re-cowled it.
Now, back to that CO indicator turning black. How did the fumes get in? The engine compartment seemed pretty good, no apparent trouble there and the exhaust gaskets looked fine.
We turned to the tail cone. In previous years, I had sealed the tail cone removal joint with silicone. You can see the joint in the photo at the top of this blog. The split is just aft of the rear wing. Out of laziness, when I rebuilt the plane, I neglected the sealant.
It turns out, when I go fast, or at least when the engine spins fast, the exhaust travels along the belly and up into the fuselage split. We proved this out by filling the joint with RTV, then taping it over. Once I got back up in the air, all I could smell was RTV and no fumes. One more problem solved.
Just as I was getting it ready to push out of the spectator area, I heard a voice with a funny accent cry out "Sam Hoskins!" There was a gent reading the prop tag and he saw my name. It was John Cartledge, an Australian who was kind enough to give me a ride in his Q-200 during our visit down under, about 10 years ago. I had received an e-mail from John saying he was coming, but I had pretty much dismissed getting hold of him. Now that he was here, I barely had time to say hi and take a photo or two, then it was time to be off before they closed the airport for the airshow.
So all in all, it was a very successful event. I ran the race safely with an overall speed of 202.15 mph and came in second place in my class. I was just happy to finish the damn thing.
Now it's time to take a deep breath and make things a little more permanent. I need to reexamine the oil tank, oil cooling and those related matters. I would also really like to fly it more and work on it less.
But, it's all fun - kind of.
