Movin' On, Into Wisconsin
Posted Saturday July 20, 2019
The alarm rang at 6:30 this morning, and I stumbled out of bed with not enough sleep. But the weather was good, and Bob texted shortly thereafter that he was preflighting the plane. It would be a biplane morning.
Bob's Starduster Too, N410SL, was built over the course of 15 years, and his attention to detail and quality of work is amazing. This was his first airplane build, which gives me a lot of encouragement that I might be able to produce a good quality plane as well. I was very impressed, to say the least.
He fired up the engine, and unlike Norbert, it roared to life. We taxied out to the end of the runway, and it occurred to me as he was going through his runup check that his plane produces nearly as much power just off idle as my plane does at full power. We took off, the thrust of 260 horsepower pushing me bodily back into the seat. Then we were off, and into the sky.
Bob took us up to about a thousand feet, and did a few turns, talking about the lessons he got in flying the plane -- imagine spending 15 years on a project, then having to take the ultimate leap of flinging the thing into the air with no idea if it will actually fly or not. He didn't do the initial flights himself, instead asking several friends with more experience, but he still needed instruction so his first flight wouldn't result in a crumpled ball of what was once an airplane on the first landing.
Then he turned the controls over to me, and I gingerly started feeling out the plane. The controls are much more responsive than on my plane. The roll rate is considerably higher, and if you really deflect the stick, the plane responds instantly. Compared to Norbert, it's an absolute hotrod. Compared to a real aerobatic plane like a Pitts or an Extra, Bob's Starduster is kind of slow to respond. This says nothing bad about Bob's plane, since its role is to be enjoyable to fly, not capable of the scariest razor's-edge aerobatics. I progressed to steeper turns, and tried slips and stalls. The power-on stall was clearly playing with a bit of fire, and Bob described how the plane would just hang on its prop at 80° to the horizon, since it has so much power. But once that stall breaks, it goes very quickly, and he was anxious that we didn't end up in an unrecoverable attitude, so he nudged me away from the break of the stall the very instant it happened.
Then he pointed me toward his house, and I did a fairly uninspired turn-around-a-point around the house, but good enough that we got a good look. Bob got a text from Sherri that we looked good against the morning sky.
Then he took the controls back and swooped us down close to the ground in a manner that simply can't be done where I live -- there are too many people around (legally you have to keep a certain distance from people or structures), and if you did find a sufficiently empty place to do it, chances are it's covered in trees, so any emergency, however slight, turns fatal quickly. In North Dakota, where the entire state is basically a flat field, you can land well enough to walk away with only a few seconds' notice.
After 40 minutes, we returned to the Maddock airport, and Bob set it down with a perfect double-chirp landing that any instructor would have been proud of.
Bob and I posed in front of our respective planes
After a breakfast at Harriman's (of course), we gathered my stuff from the Grand Prairie Inn and pulled both planes out for a staged glory shot in the low-slanting morning light. I thanked Bob for all his time and effort ferrying me around North Dakota, we shook hands, and I was off.
Norbert skipped off the runway as normal, and we climbed into the new sky.
My first stop for this leg was to be Staples, MN, for its claimed $3.99/gallon gas. Too good to ignore. The route took me just to the north of Fargo, where there's an airshow running all weekend, with the accompanying restricted airspace. I took some care to bend a little bit north of my path around Fargo, just in case. I didn't want an F-16 to the face.
There was a weather system sweeping through Minnesota and Wisconsin that was considerably stronger than I had realized. We had looked at the weather display looping on Bob's phone at breakfast, and it was impressive. I would discover later in the day that it was powerful enough to overturn semis and destroy trees. I'm glad it was far ahead of me.
The Red River winding south toward Fargo
I still had the hefty tailwind helping me, seeing 85-95 knots over the ground most of the time. The flight was fairly unremarkable, since the land is just flat, and the most visually interesting things happening are on the map with airspace and restricted areas. I listened to a lot of Critical Role, frustratedly tugging the connecting cable out of the tablet to pause the audio whenever ATC would interrupt. I've found myself really wanting to follow the whole story, and having the controller butt in calling all the various planes flying through Minnesota was becoming irksome.
I landed in Staples without incident. The gas was indeed $3.99 per gallon. A gent came up and said hello after I landed, and as he departed, he turned and asked why I'd chosen Staples to refuel. I pointed at the pump and said, "Low prices." He said that yeah, that was a very conscious choice to keep people coming in. I'm sure it works. I paused in Staples long enough to call the flight briefer and get an update on the exciting weather system to the southeast of me. It was still there, but moving at about 20 knots in the right direction, away from me. As I explained to the briefer, my plan was to launch and head southeast until it became obvious it would be a bad idea to continue, hoping the while that Norbert wouldn't be fast enough to catch up with the still-distant system.
My plan after Staples was to land at Wautoma, which is about 15 minutes' flight from the approach fix of Ripon. Ripon is the big entry point for the approach to Oshkosh, carefully described in the approach instructions. By landing at Wautoma, I would be well situated to launch in the early morning and be at Ripon exactly at 7 am when the tower opened and planes are allowed to approach. The instructions suggest that if you're flying a slow plane (and Norbert definitely qualifies), this early approach time is the best way to go.
Yours truly, somewhere over Minnesota
In any case, I made my way southeastward, noting that where North Dakota had been many many flat fields with crops growing in them, Minnesota was a lot of lakes and forests, much less friendly for the odd emergency landing site. Not to worry, though, I was at 7500 feet, with lots of gliding distance should the worst happen. Well, sort of.
As I got to about the Eau Claire airport, there was a layer of overcast that looked like I could fly under it pretty easily, so I dropped down to 5500 feet. As I got closer, I saw that I'd need to go lower, so I went to 3500 feet. Then it became obvious that wouldn't work, so it was down to 2500. Finally that started to look like I'd pass under, and I continued on, though I thought about just landing at Eau Claire, which was in clear air.
As I passed under the clouds, that nagging doubt about landing at Eau Claire continued, and came to be well justified: the clouds continued dropping, until I was skimming right under them at 1900 feet, only about 800 feet above the ground. This is a bad situation to be in, and I was torn whether I should turn around for the known higher skies behind me, or land at the next airport I came to. I realized as I scanned the map that it would be quicker and probably safer to land at the next airport I came to, which happened to be Neillsville, Wisconsin (VIQ).
I was nearly on top of the airport before I recognized it, though I'd been making position calls on the radio, since my GPS display made it pretty obvious how far I was from the field. I didn't figure anyone else was around, but it can't hurt to call out just in case. Fortunately the wind was calm at Neillsville, and I landed without any problem, rolling up to one of the empty tie-down spots and shutting down the motor. I landed almost exactly at 6 pm.
I was really hoping that the clouds would break up, and I could continue on to Wautoma as planned. However, they stayed resolutely thick, and I resigned myself to staying here. I decided to check the fuel level just in case, and discovered to my horror that I only had about 6 gallons left. That's about an hour's fuel, and is what I consider the limit of my flying -- by the time I have 1 hour's fuel left, I want to be on the ground, refueling. That extra hour should only be used for extraordinary situations. The frightening thing to me was that the flight to Wautoma will be about another hour beyond Niellsville, meaning I would have landed running on fumes, if the engine was running at all. Somewhere, my planning went badly off the rails. I had thought, mid-flight, that it seemed to be taking longer than I thought it should have, but foolishly trusted my earlier judgement.
Norbert on the ground at Niellsville, overcast clearly visible in the background
So, in that sense, it was fortunate that I was more or less forced down at Neillsville. In another sense it was very unfortunate, since Neillsville is unattended, and has no fuel. There's another airport 15 miles away that sells fuel, so it will be alright, but that was a much closer scrape than I like to make.
As I was pondering all this and getting my stuff into the pilots' lounge (a spacious room with lots of chairs and a few tables that smells strongly of mildew), I heard voices approaching, and had a flash of anxiety that I was about to meet some locals who hate airplane noise or something. Instead it was a couple of guys who had flown in earlier in the day and been pinned down by weather. They had actually been on the ground in Neillsville (their plane fortunately in a hangar) when the system rolled through. One of them showed me a picture he'd taken of a semi that had been rolled on its side by the fury of the storm just a few hours before I arrived.
Thus I met Gary and Dave, who have flown down from Vancouver BC in their Mooney. We conversed, and quickly determined that we're all computer professionals of various types. It turned out that they had arrived this morning, and when they got here, the local airport geezer had driven up and offered them hangar space against the approaching storm, then left them with a loaner truck to drive into town. We took a quick jaunt into Neillsville, and determined that the A&W restaurant doesn't have the Beyond Meat burgers Dave was looking for-- the woman behind the counter was genuinely puzzled, having never heard the name before -- and that the two grocery stores in town were both in the process of being sold to the highest bidder, piece by piece. We made for the Kwik Stop (literally its name), and grabbed a few more snacks for tomorrow. I was glad to have my emergency reserve dinner in tow, since I had initially thought I was going to be 100% alone this evening and didn't want to track down or pay for a taxi.
After more conversation, we discovered that Gary and I are both ham radio operators, and I heard numerous discourses on airliners and their design, French Canadian history, and a couple other topics delivered with the stern smugness of a dedicated lifelong mansplainer. Dave, on the other hand, is fairly soft-spoken and easy-going, and I find myself wondering that such different people would get along as well as they do.
And now it's nearly 11, and I've set my alarm for 4:45 again for a sunrise departure to get fuel so I can be at Ripon at 7 am exactly. Hopefully in 12 hours I will be on the ground at Oshkosh, and none the worse for wear for having staged at Neillsville instead of Wautoma. Time to go over the approach instructions for the hundredth time, and get myself to sleep.
Copyright © 2019 by Ian Johnston.