Day 5 – Three states a day

This was one exciting day, even more so for one of us. But let me start from the beginning.

In the morning we did what almost has become a routine: check the internet and email, post the travelog and prepare the flight. As most of you know, cockpit management is an important skill when you fly IFR in complex aircraft. Let me tell you something you probably know also: it is even more important when you fly VFR in open cockpit aircraft. Why? Because (a) you are solely responsible for your own navigation, you have to stay clear of everything you´re supposed to avoid, you can´t switch on an autopilot to fly the plane while you do something else. But most importantly, you can´t even break out a map or else the wind will just tear it to shreds. So open cockpit pilots have to anticipate every possible navigational situation and be creative in preparing for it in a way that works when 80 mph winds are blowing in your face.

The way Robert and I do it is that we first plan the route with Jeppesen´s FliteMap running on a tiny little laptop (the one I try hard at the moment not to hit two keys with one finger when typing this). Then we print out the map with our “Route de Jour” on a tiny little printer we brought along. Since we are flying quite a distance each day, this is usually something like 7 pages, which we then fold in half and slide into a booklet of empty plastic covers, which in turn goes onto our knee boards. This works great as long as you´re not forced to divert to some place off the edge of your little print out maps.

Here is Robert and I in the morning preparing for our flight(by the way, the reason Robert wears sunglasses at 6 am in the hotel room is simply that he forgot is regular glasses in the gyro).

Our first leg was going to take us from Jamestown, NY to Concord NY for a quick fuel stop. We flew through the Eerie TRSA to see if having only one transponder in the lead plane while flying in formation – Robert always about ¼ mile in trail and at the same altitude – would work. And it did! The controller was very interested and wanted to know how we got the gyros over to the US and where we would be flying them. When I called him up I declared our type of aircraft to be “HXA”, the generic type designator reserved for experimentals cruising slower than 100 knots. I guess we have to be experimentals, although strictly speaking we´re not.

When we landed, the runway looked broken up and the airport generally had a rusty and neglected appearance. But two senior gentlemen awaited us at the fuel pump. It turned out that the price of Avgas was 5,50 U$ and payment had to be in cash. Since we didn´t have enough gas left to fly somewhere else, we had to accept the offer. It turned out the owner was away and both of them were just regulars at the airport. They promised not to split the overcharge among themselves and we succumbed and filled our tanks with 14.5 gallons of the precious fluid.

Concord is at the edge of the 30 mile TMZ zone with several very busy airports in between and the usual structure of a class B airspace. But if you fly below 1800 feet and about 2 miles off the shore, you can stay in “clear air” and remain free of the class B as well as assorted control zones of the other airports. To mark the points between which we had to be below 1800 feet, I had entered two waypoints in the GPS.

So we were all set and departed Concord for our next destination, Wood County, OH, near Bowling Green. After buzzing the airport for a little display of our gyros´ abilities I climbed to 2500 feet and got on course toward the shore en route to our first waypoint. I couldn´t see Robert because he was behind me. Over the radio I told Robert to switch to Cleveland Approach, and I did my initial call up: “Cleveland Approach, experimental DMRCA, flight of two, just departed 2G1 at 2000, VFR to 1G0, on course along the shoreline. We´ll remain below your airspace but would appreciate traffic advisories.” He assigned me a squawk and everything went as planned...or so I thought. The first indication that something was not going as planned was when I could hear Robert´s voice on the approach frequency saying “Chris, slow down!” Since we only have one radio, there was no other way for him to contact me. So I slowed down from our usual 140 km/h cruise to 100km/h. I craned my neck to check if Robert was behind me, but couldn´t see him. There were several things I tried, including returning to Concord, but I couldn´t find him nor raise him on the radio. I figured that since I didn´t see him in Concord that maybe he was ahead of me and proceeded to fly our course.

Out on the lake I saw an interesting buoy that looked like somebody might actually living on it.

Here is the Cleveland skyline from two miles off shore at 1500 feet:

It was a very active atmosphere even over the lake, with wind gusts and thermals that made taking pictures while holding altitude so as not to bust some airspace difficult. Further along I saw some evidence of the financial crisis:

There were thousands of cars packed tightly; this must be a car manufacturing plant backed up with too many cars.

As I left Cleveland behind me, I saw evidence of some really nice and affluent neighborhoods, where each house has not only a garage but also a dock for the family boat.

But it´s not just each house it´s dock, apparently when there´s no dock, each house has to have at least a pond:

And so it transpired that after a nice flight of about 2.5 hours I landed at Wood County Airport in Bowling Green, Ohio. Of course Robert wasn´t there. I had already figured as much since I heard no indication of him on any of the frequencies along the way. Before landing I switched to 121.5 MHz to see if his ELT had gone off and he was in some kind of trouble. But fortunately everything was quiet on that frequency.

After landing I whipped out my cell phone, checked my messages, and indeed, there was one waiting from Robert: “Am back in Concord. Where are you?” So I called him up and got him on the phone. I was greatly relieved that nothing had happened to him. We both felt a bit silly that we had lost each other and decided that Robert should fly on his own to Wood County. Gyrocopters have a low radar profile and Robert would fly slow and give any significant airspace a wide birth. We felt sure that he´d make it to Wood County by himself.

Wood County is an exceptionally hospitable and nice airport. After I answered all the questions about my flying machine, I was offered a crew car and drove to town to get something to eat. I was a bit worried if Robert was going to be alright, so I called his mobile every 15 minutes, hoping he would not pick up. This I took as a sign that he was still up flying and not taken in by an Apache attack helicopter for busting some airspace. With some relief I saw him on final to runway 18 just as the allotted 2.5 hours ran out. There was a lot the both of us learned from this incident which taught us that formation flying needed an extra bit of pre-flight and contingency planning.

It was now close to 7 pm and we decided to spend the night in Bowling Green. Upon leaving the airport, we met two gentlemen, Nate and Mike who showed some interest in our gyros. We got to talk and decided to go for a beer or two to tell our respective stories. Mike was driving a beautiful Corvette which Robert couldn´t take his eyes off.

So he drove with Mike and I got a ride from Nate. What looked like a “normal” car from the outside was this sleek hybrid Lexus with two electric motor-generators and a V6 combustion engine. Being a physicist and gadget freak myself, I got big eyes driving in it while Nate explained all the features. It is strange seeing a big car like this move without making a sound.

At the bar, we told our stories and learned that Mike was an industrial sales man and Nate had flown for American Airlines. When we mentioned that Robert and I were also on a quest to collect some Buffalo sperm or bull semen, Mike interrupted and said that he could help us with that. Now, I have felt the hand of fate a couple of times in my life, and this might just be one of those. Tomorrow we will try to arrange for the bull sperm which can apparently be had at Fort Wayne, which isn´t even a significant detour off our route!

We still didn´t get to making ourselves tarps to cover the gyros. But since the weather is nice, that´s not a problem. We hope to reach Mentone on Thursday and set aside the time to make a tarp there. Hopefully there´s a hanger where we can lay it out since outside on the tarmac it can be challenging when there is a breeze blowing.

– Robert & Chris.