Yes, I know I’m a bit late with some aviation article links. September is really a busy month around here and frankly for quite a while I wasn’t finding any articles I was willing to pass along.
I did finally get back into the air with the Swift, though. I tried about a month ago, but ended up with a maintenance delay instead. When I got to the hangar I found that the tailwheel was flat. Hmm. I must have worked for 20 minutes trying to get the air hose from the compressor onto the filler for the tailwheel tube. There isn’t a whole lot of room where the filler neck comes out of the wheel half. It’s always been a chore, but this time it just wouldn’t work.
So, I took the tailwheel off the plane and tried it again – this time the filler neck just fell off of the tailwheel – it completely separated from the tube. Guess that’s why it wasn’t holding air anymore. A 3/8″ hole in the tube will do that…
I ordered a new tire and tube – I figured that the tire was probably half way through its life and I may as well replace them both. The Swift has an 8″ Scott 2600 pneumatic tailwheel – steerable. Nice. The larger wheel, though providing a bit more drag, gets the nose down just a little more on the ground and gives a bit more taxi visibility. The parts order arrived 3 days later and on the fourth day I installed it.
I had work to do the following two days, but then flew down to Minden for breakfast – a two-ship formation with a friend who built an RV-6A. It was a nice day – though a bit hot on the way back to Stead. For our route south to Minden we took a westerly track – past Truckee (KTRK) and then around the eastern shore of Tahoe to Spooners Summit – a pass to the NW of Minden. We were surprised as we went through the pass by opposite direction traffic – a powered parachute at 9000’ MSL.
The next week I flew to Westover, CA (KJAQ) for the West Coast Swift Fly-in. I’ll cover that later.
Here are some articles that you may have missed this week:
Boeing retiree dreams of flying his ‘bathtub’ plane
This is from the Seattle Times. Ed has built a replica of a 1924 Dormoy Bathtub – powered by a converted motorcycle engine. He hopes to fly it soon – all he needs is a FAA sign-off. Sounds like an interesting use of “re-purposed” parts…
Restored B-17 draws out those ‘warbirds’ that kept them flying
This is from MySuburbanLife dot com in Lisle, IL. The EAA B-17 visited the Downer’s Grove, IL airport recently and provides some WWII veterans with a trip back into their memory banks. Some interesting comments from the veterans…
The Birth of the Flying Boat
This is from The-Leader dot com in Corning, NY. The article was written as the Curtiss Museum is preparing to fly their 1913 flying boat. It discusses the happenings at the Curtiss Factory in Hammondsport, NY in 1911 that led to the development of the flying boat…
Richard Taylor Memoirs, Chapter 17
This is another installment from the AvWeb archives. In this chapter Richard talks about flying the Fairchild C-123 – something that he and I have in common, though all my time was flown in Southeast Asia.
Rare Russian WWII tank killer to fly in Everett
This is from the News Tribune in Bellingham, WA. What’s believed to be the only flying Ilyushin II-2 Shturmovik was scheduled to have its first flight since restoration a couple of weeks ago. It is one of the aircraft in the Flying Heritage Collection.
Alaska Living Legend of Aviation: Al Wright
This is from the Alaska Dispatch. It is an interesting article about Al Wright and some if his aviation exploits flying in and around Alaska.