I departed Fort Worth Wednesday morning with sketchy weather on the direct path to Covington M04 (first stop). Going East past Tyler, then going North before getting to Longview kept the system to the West. I briefly popped through some rain showers and was glad I'd laid some 4 mil plastic under the instrument cover on top of the radio stack to keep any rain that might penetrate the covers from getting into the avionics. I skirted controlled airspace and the MOAs. Rounding the airspace near Memphis, rain showers were indicated on the radar and visibility was hazy at lower altitudes.
Arriving at Covington, I crossed midfield for Rwy 19. Seemed like I had a little shimmy after landing but attributed it to the runway surface and low engine idle speed. Ryzard Zadow and Dan Fuerst were near the pumps as I taxied up. What a great sight to pull up with nothing but canards on the ramp! Ryzard invited me to join them when they left for RR but I needed to get fuel, take a break and had the opportunity to chat with Robert Harris for a bit. Robert looked over my Cozy and congratulated me on having a nice flying machine. He was coming over to Rough River in a couple of days so we'd have a chance to chat again. I got enough fuel to have at least 1/2 tanks at 2i3 (Rough River). Took off and climbed above the clouds to 9500. Ground speed was showing 192 knots, 172 KTAS, 7.8 GPH & ~2560 RPM. I heard Ryzard making radio calls from the Speed Canard when I was about 20 miles out. I lined up for Rwy 02 but did a go around because a mower passed the end of the runway when I was 1/4 mile final. I had a bit of a tailwind but was landing up hill and as expected needed to brake a fair amount.
Wednesday PM, we had a 2.5 hour formation flying ground school at the terminal with a dozen or so folks. We'd planned on doing several sorties the next morning. Jim Springer was my instructor in the Cozy. Curtis was lead in a LongEZ, Ryzard was instructing in the Speed Canard . We did fingertip, echelon and route formations. Crossing under, rejoins, pitch out breaks. We flew about 120 KIAS. I was all over the place but not terrible. Jim was my inner voice. The second sortie we did two ship with Doug as our lead and I felt I was only 1/2 as bad as the first flight. We flew at a higher indicated speed of about 130 KIAS. The two ship formation seemed to work better for us newbies. Another clinic in Houston is being planned.
Friday morning, Aerocanard builder Brad Smith (I think he's 6'2" or more) needed a ride to validate the endeavor to complete the project he'd bought from Jamie Hicks. I pulled 50 lbs. of ballast out of the nose, loaded up and took off with less than 1/2 tanks. Immediately after taking off on 20 (down hill), Brad had the controls. Brad had non-stop questions and I was drawing blanks on some of the answers. Brad kicked full rudder and found it took 10 degrees of bank to fly straight. We checked stall speed and was close to 62 KIAS. We flew for about an hour and went to Ohio County (5K' runway) for some practice. Brad did two low approaches, then two touch and goes and then full stop landing. Added about 20 gallons of fuel, waited for two canards to taxi to the pumps. We took off and did some more maneuvering and inadvertently got close to one of the FF sorties. When traffic was clear at RR we entered the pattern for 02, landing up hill.
Saturday morning, Mike Fleming (Cozy builder with the same IO370) got some stick time and was anxious to look at baffling when I pulled the cowl off later.
I gave two rides to a friend of Greg Garree's (Fritz) and to future builder Dan Carnahan. Russ had given Dan's wife a nice ride. Bittner, Anunson, Les and maybe others also gave Cozy rides. I couldn't keep track, but there were a lot of smiles. It would be nice to plan a day at a 5K' runway next year so we could accommodate some of the heavier loads and take a couple people at a time.
Bill James interviewed the girlfriend of a builder that got to ride/fly in Dave Adams LongEZ and it's just priceless. Hope you can watch it here: https://www.facebook.com/100006057308917/videos/635045968806517/
Adrew Anunson's friend Chuck Morris posted some lengthy videos on the Cozy Builder FB page. I can't find a link for non-FB'ers to watch them.
A bunch of us pulled cowls and covers off so builders and others could ask questions, offer advice and mostly complements. It was nice to look at the other aircraft, chat with a lot of folks we only see at OSH and maybe some local gatherings. Some of the resort staff had been offered rides so I scrambled to get covers back on while Russ and Andy gave some Cozy rides and I was able to give one of the builders a ride. It had been mostly sunny with some clouds and most of us were toasted by the end of Saturday. A couple of us missed Ryzard's meeting and I apologized later for missing it. They presented a nice photo of an RAFE formation flight to the Lodge that will probably be displayed prominently. Russ counted 20 Cozies, 20 Longs plus Redmon, Carter, Manvel, Bill James, Izzie etc. I think there were about 40 canards. I slept good that night.
A prospective builder found out that I had another project setting in my hangar and was interested in buying it so I told him I'd inventory the parts and shoot him a price when I got back. I'd been waffling on whether I'd finish it or not and am leaning towards restoring my grandfather's 37 Chevy pickup instead.
Sunday wasn't the typical mass exodus I'd seen in the past. Scott Fish was probably the first one out, needing to beat a weather system that was covering Arkansas. Russ and others were going to a nearby airport for a BBQ lunch. I was going to need to beat weather as well, so planned on punching West towards Tulsa and then South to get on the West side of the weather. We had breakfast and Jim dropped me at the airport with my bags. I pulled the cover off, loaded up said goodbyes. The weather going West was layered and 8500 was above the scud on the ground. Some airports were reporting VFR, MVFR and some even IFR depending weather they were under a break in the clouds or haze. About 2 hours in, I was ready for a break though I had enough fuel for about another hour. A couple of the smaller airports I considered didn't have working remote weather reporting and had low ceilings. There seemed to be a valley in the clouds near Bull Shoals so headed for BPK and landed there giving way to a King Air on a 5 mile final. Probably would have been happier with FLP with cheaper gas and the absence of high rollers aircraft. BPK's self service is non-existent (but coming soon) and it took awhile for the lineman to fuel the King Air.
There was a nice break in the clouds overhead at BPK when I took off and climbed to 8500'. I decided to climb to 10500 to get a better view of the distant clouds and compare with what was showing on ADS-B radar. During the climb, a package of chips in the bag next to me popped. I heard and kind of felt the pop and thought possibly it was the landing brake, turbulence or something....all the readings were normal. Then I dug an apple out of the grocery bag and found chips leaking out of the bag. Mixed blessing. However, further south something smucked the canopy and left a bit of a mess. I could occasionally see small yellow/brownish birds fold their wings and dive straight down as I got within a few hundred feet of them. Some of the airports I passed over had gone IFR while others not far away were VFR. I switched the AP from NAV to Heading to avoid tall formations. Interpolating the radar with actual was interesting. Some much higher cumulous clouds would look more ominous on the radar, yet there's other clouds that weren't showing. ADS-B would occasionally pick up other traffic, some of which was in the clouds below me.
As I got near DFW and not wanting to chat with busy ATC, headed towards Decatur and started descending. Soon there was numerous ADS-B targets. It was warm and significantly turbulent. Radio traffic at T67 revealed the wind changed, using Rwy 14. I had to pull the throttle back quite a bit because of turbulence. The student in the pattern did a full stop so I opted to do a straight in. Not surprisingly, on final a gust and shear tossed me around some. It was pretty hot and the hangar's thermometer was showing 108. Storm warnings were issued later.
The plane was inspected and found where one of the critters impacted the nose gear cover door and another was on the bottom edge of the nose, leaving about a foot long streak. There was a small streak of blood on the top cowl. There was a new chip in the paint on the prop. Wonder if a bird's bone or possibly it had been banded or maybe a rock at BPK did it.
The main squawk was that the ARINC429 module had been intermittent and gone off line during take off. I pulled the covers and reseated the connectors. Seems like one wasn't firmly seated. The EFIS data was uploaded showing that the IAS was affecting the CHT deltas and which was hottest/coldest. Also suspect the little plate in front of the nosewheel may be diverting air. It had gotten tweaked a little so I'll straighten it out and monitor. The temps are fine and the delta is usually 20-30 F.
Two other squawks noted with Brad's help were that the brakes depending what side you were on, seemed weak or strong. The pilot side left brake seemed weak. The copilot's right brake seemed weak. This is probably because of pedal/rudder geometry limits how far the pedal can be pressed on either side and the bolt holes through the torque tubes have wallowed out a bit. I'll follow the path of others before me and install taper pins. Another item Brad noted is that my Vx and Vy on the airspeed band were reversed so I corrected that.
There's a bunch of photos and videos on the Facebook Group and Russ created a Photo Album. Mike Beasley took quite a few photos as well so expect they'll be in the next COBA issue.
