Second Flight.. Yeah

Got my second flight of the year in on 4/18.

I took off a bit early, just as marty was arriving.  When I got up the air was a bit bumby, and I decided to land a few minutes later.

After about 20 minutes on the gound talking with Ryan, Moury, and Marty.  I was talking to ryan about sled rides (flying without a motor on hills on windy days).  He is letting me use his harness to see how it fits.  His harness comes off his motor with no problems, mine on the other hand has the J bars and would not be good for that type of flying.    I is a low hooking verses a high hooking, but should still do the job.  Im courious to see how weight shift would affect my wing.

Marty and Moury already leaped into the air, so it was my turn.

While testing the motor, before flight I adjusted the Hi/Lo mixtures. When I went to kill the engine, it didn’t stop, so I pushed harder on the button thinking it wouldn’t make contact.   SNAP, the button broke.  I pushed the button a couple times, thinking Oh Shit, how am I going to turn this off?  I carefully reached for the on/off switch and turned it off, it turned off.. shwoo.  that could have been a problem.

I walked over and asked Master PPG Pilot Ryan “Got any fixes for a kill switch malfunction”?  He said not really.  Do I have a fuel line cut off?  Nope, Just an on/off switch.  He suggested what I thought, kill the engine with the switch while far enought up in the air to land safely.   I was a little worried by this, but knew I could turn off with the switch.  So with the motor running, I carefully reached back around my reserve and hit the switch.  The location is very difficult to get to, and my arm wouldn’t bend to get into the prop.  After testing this, it was time to take off..

Once in the air, I headed towards 83 with the rest of them, but then decided to go off and fly north towards Lew’s house.  Something I had done many times before, and was comfortable with.  Belivie it or not, even 1000 feet into the air, there is allot of turbulence from the traffic on 83. (83 is an interstate where people easily do 80mph)

I flew with my trimmers out most of the time, I went from 25mph, to 32 mpg.  This was both into and with the wind.

I did not have any radio communication, nor did I care to hook it up. Why?

Well using FRS radios (those cheap radios from wal-mart) everyone has one, and being up 1000ft you can see for miles, well, it also easy to pickup for miles.

Before I land, I know I have to turn this motor off a different way, so I did 2 fly-by’s practicing how I was going to land.  The 3rd time I killed the engine, and landed.  I came in fast and actually had to run a little bit.

Did you catch what I missed on landing????? I forgot to put my trimmers back in to slow the wing down.  This was the first time I actually had to run on landing.

After landing I could see the other 3 pilots coming in from the west.   They all landed without any problems. Moury was high and killed his motor way up there, it was neat to see him come in so quite.