Viking Flight

After a short flight with Chris Bartels in the Cardinal on Friday night, we discovered a small oil leak that has to be checked out. Chris is home for one day before heading back to Atlanta for the start of his first real job in the right seat of a Delta Canadair RJ. The passengers will never know that the co-pilot hasn't ever flown a jet before Monday morning's flight.

Later on Friday, Mort asked me to go out for some formation and aerobatics on Saturday in the Nanchang / Yakalov CJ-6. Since I don't have another plane available at the moment, this is worth getting up early for.

We depart N14 for Ocean City, New Jersey where we will meet Marty and Phil, two other CJ owners. The air is really still and clear above the New Jersey Pine Barrens at this hour. You can see Philadelphia, Manhattan and Atlantic City from this amazing glass canopy in the CJ.

The CJ is a place that clears your mind like nothing else. Every flight starts with the same drill about use of the parachute. "Open the canopy; unlatch the harness; stand up; headset off; jump toward the center of the wing; pull the D ring." I am pretty sure that this is all for show, as I have momentarily lost consciousness in this plane three times now, and always at the exact moment that I would need to jump.



I flew down at 900' MSL to stay below the Atlantic City Class C airspace. Mort landed, since I don't have a tailwheel endorsement, and I can't see too well from the rear seat either. The CJ is a beast to land compared to the 177RG. During the approach to Ocean City, I cracked the canopy for some air, but I didn't know that Mort was about to put the smoke machine on to let Marty know that we had arrived as we made a low pass over his house. The cockpit filled with smoke, but quickly cleared.



After some breakfast, we flew about 45 minutes of close formation along the Southern NJ coast between Atlantic City and Cape May. It was early still, and the beach crowds had not become too large yet on this next to last weekend of summer. I am always glad to be making this trip by plane instead of a car and beach chair.



Marty let us know that the ceiling had come down below 3,500' as we headed back toward the Flying W, so there was not enough vertical space for any real aerial combat practice. We ran into some rain squalls forming ahead of a front pushing up from the DelMarVa peninsula. This was really good news to me, as my breakfast was not very well secured and I had no desire to be decorating the canopy with eggs and coffee. The protocol calls for puking into your own flight suit on such an occasion, so that no one has to clean the nooks and crannies after you fall out on the tarmac.

Damn-Yankee Naval Operation

Ginny:

Belated congratulations on your new granddaughter, Sophia.

Beth and I made an impromptu lunch visit to Bo & Terri at their Leesburg, Virginia home last Sunday by plane. They look well and seem to be enjoying their retirement.

I was telling a story about your father while there. A few weeks ago, while searching for something in my attic, I discovered a box of old letters that my mother saved when I moved away to college, forever. At the very bottom of the box, I found a letter from your father, with a postscript from your mother.


Dyess Hartley Letter

Uncle Dyess had a framed print of Washington Crossing the Delaware in his office for as long as I can remember. When I visited your family a few years ago, I could not find anyone who remembered that print, but I did remember that it was important to him for some reason. One summer evening, he asked me "Does that river really get ice like that?" Noticing the confused look on my face, he advised that it was the Delaware River in the painting. 'Still no response from me, he explained that it was right near my house in New Jersey.

Later that year, hopefully not on a day that I should have been in high school, I must have been driving near the Delaware River at Washington Crossing and took a photograph, showing no ice as I recall. I must have sent him a letter, and he responded with some interest (this does appear to be a big, damn-Yankee Naval operation of some sort).


Washington Crossing the Delaware

Attached is a copy of the letter I found, along with a copy of the painting. I won't ruin the surprise, but if you are ever in Manhattan, please visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where there is a room dedicated to the display of this painting. You will see why your father admired it.

PS: I drive along the Delaware River daily to my office in Princeton, and I have never seen the river frozen. However, there have been several occasions when the upper river freezes and becomes covered with several feet of snow. When the pressure builds behind the ice dams, the ice and snow break loose and flow down-river in pieces, creating the exact conditions depicted in the painting.

'Hope you are all well.

Regards,

Paul A. King

DogFight

Today I was supposed to be studying, but Mort asked me if I wanted to do some aerial combat with a group of CJ6 pilots. The weather was mild for February, and the sky clear blue. I'll study when it snows.

There were six CJ's, but they flew in two groups of three today for safety reasons. I guess it is more difficult to coordinate the actions of six pilots versus three when flying wing to wing. I spent an hour glueing the battery door back onto my Nikon while I listened to Rob, Marty and Mort brief the hand signals, radio frequencies, call signs and airspace limits for the flight. I rode back seat in Mort's plane. The CJ is certificated as an experimental aircraft since it is of foreign manufacture. That, and the aerobatic nature of the flights, requires the full time use of a parachute. That is subject for another post...


Formation Flight

We flew some tight formation flight for about 30 or 40 minutes at 4,000' MSL, and then Rob's plane departed the formation so Mort and Marty could have a dogfight. Marty is an ex-Marine fighter pilot, and since there is no such thing as an ex-Marine, this was a real dogfight. I have been flying aerobatic training flights with Mort for some time now, but nothing could have prepared me for the 5 minute dogfight that followed. After the first 30 seconds, I realized I was not going to be able to shoot photos, as I almost lost consciousness in the first engagement.


Pre-Combat

I was trying to look through the viewfinder of my camera when I realized that I was having some vestibular irregularity. I put the camera away, but it was too late. I was just a few seconds and one maneuver from decorating the canopy with some porkroll and omelet. As my very good luck would have it, Marty's son puked up his breakfast and they called the match "guns off". We pulled Rob back into formation and headed for home.

Encounter with Ice

Today I took my Australian friend Gary Cullen on a flight to New Hampshire. Gary has been here for a week-long knowledge sharing workshop at our firm's New York office. We left NYC and got underway from N14 airport mid-day on Friday. "I've never seen ICE on top of a lake like this before..." Alton Bay iceport is a seaplane base in fair seasons. I have always wanted to land on ice, but there is no way you would ever tell a passenger that this was the destination. Today was the day. Gary was a good sport about it. When I told him where we were going, which was on final approach to Alton Bay, he didn't seem too shocked. I later found out that he had never seen a frozen lake, snow or any kind of atmospheric ice. I don't think he knew we landed on a lake until he saw a little water gurgling though the cracks in the ice while we chocked the wheels. I poked my key in the crack and asked Gary what he thought about the ice thickness. He replied "I've never seen ice on top of a lake like this before". Having been reassured with that expert opinion, I decided to head for cover from the 5 degree temperatures by walking to a shoreline store for some homemade turkey soup. nICE Landing Arriving at the Alton Bay Iceport a few weeks early or late in the season could certainly earn you a Darwin Award, but we were already down, chocked, and parked in a spot that had been cleared by a snowplow (possibly a Darwin Snowplow Award nominee). Alton Bay Iceport In the shadow of the Presidential Range, Alton Bay Iceport on Lake Winnipesauke was the ultimate place to practice my soft field technique. The fact is, ICE is the smoothest runway I have ever encountered.