Just got back from OSH. Camped out on the grass. Hot showers were nice, but never used the new fangled flush toilets in my shower house. The porta-potty habit is still in place; no big deal. What was a big deal was to meet Willie all the way from South Africa. Willie said he sure wished he had one of those new fangled mixture meters in his Cessna 150. That would have saved him an engine rebuild because of his running aggressive leaning and not really knowing what the mixture was. I suppose you could get 337 approval for your certificated Cessna if you also had an auto fuel STC. Don't need any such approval for your experimental. There were 20 people in the audience at the Mixture Meter forum on Thursday morning. I am not sure if they were there to hear what I had to say or just getting out of the pouring rain. No fan mail pouring in yet, but Mark Forss did ask me to do it again next year. I volunteered at the Composites Workshop for five sessions. At 34 persons per session, that's 170 people that may have learned a little something about wet lay-ups, decided to build a composite aircraft or not, put up a fiberglass canopy frame for an RV-something, or even maybe build a KR. You can never accurately predict where that little bit of knowledge and inspiration will lead. I also got to build an emergency replacement fairing for a retract landing gear. The pilot was concerned that the gear may jam in the up position without a viable fairing in place. His alternative would have been to fly home with the gear extended at gear extension speed and resultant fuel burn. No 337 there either. I got to talk shop for about two hours with the avionics engineer on a gee-whiz all glass LSA. He had not a clue on human factors engineering. I listened to Mike Melville, the featured speaker at the Home Builders dinner on Thursday, as he recounted his adventures as a test pilot for Burt Rutan. The Airbus A380 was impressive outside, underneath and inside. You only got to go underneath the A380 if you stood in the long line to go inside. That was a real aluminum overcast. The A380 on display was a flight test bird and had 25 tons of instrumentation onboard. Yeah! Bring it on! To say I had a great time and lots of satisfaction attending AirVenture 09 would be quite an understatement. My assessment on AirVenture: Just like life, to get something out of it, you have to put something into it.
Sid Wood Tri-gear KR-2 N6242 Mechanicsville, MD, USA smw...@md.metrocast.net > Volunteering....that's what makes these events possible. I am one of > the selfish ones who volunteers at all of these. Selfish because it gives > me a great feeling that I am contributing to something constructive and it > also gives me a sense of ownership in something that is giving back to me. > Those hundreds of people you see working at AirVenture selling tickets, > working security, directing traffic, clerking at the Wearhouse, working > the flightline or the camping locator booth are volunteers and most are > also paying for their own ticket and camping. Try volunteering! You may > be surprised at how much more you will enjoy and take ownership of an > event.....or maybe not. Rich Hartwig Waunakee WI
