It was nice of those windmills to blow those cloulds away. Kevin1
--- In [email protected], "bbartsey" <bbart...@...> wrote: > > Nothing wrong with flying extended cross countries in the winter. I agree > with Ed's comments in a previous post about winter flying. > I flew my Ercoupe from Iowa to Texas in February a couple of years > ago and the temperatures were hovering in the teens when I started the trip. > And the cabin heat wasn't working. > I was dressed like I was going goose hunting but I was still cold. > Fortunately, I had purchased several > chemical hand warmers and foot warmers at Bass Pro Shops. These things are > like oversize tea bags and activate as soon as you take them out of the > wrapper. They last for about 5 hours. The foot warmers have adhesive and > you stick them to the toes of your socks and the hand warmers are great in a > coat pocket so you can periodically warm your fingers. My biggest problem > was the canopy halves slowly moving apart inflight and allowing really cold > air into the cockpit. I found a small furniture clamp in a side pocket, put > there for a reason by the previos owner, to keep the halves > together and the problem was solved. Another surprise was the difficulty of > using pilotage to fix your position enroute. It had snowed the day before I > left and a lot of landmarks were covered with snow, as in, "Where's that > road? > Where's that river? Is that a town?" Everything was uniformly white and > usually obvious topographic features blended in with each other. > Enter the Garmin 396 and the pucker factor went to zero. > One big surprise I had was when, well, not really scud running, but staying > just barely VMC over the Flint Hills in Kansas, I was at about 600 feet over > totally uninhabited terrain and was about to execute the most difficult > maneuver in aviation, a 180 degree turn, because the ceiling appeared to be > getting just a bit lower. Just then, the clouds disappeared and I was in > bright sunshine. Directly ahead of me was a sight that would take anyones > breath away---------Windmills. Lots of white windmills, maybe 20 of them, > line abreast and they were not small. They looked like those Star Wars > warriors dressed in brilliant white plastic. I later found that they go up > to > 300 feet from the base to the tip of the most vertical blade and from a > couple of miles away they look like they are at a co-altitude if you are at > about 600 feet. So, if you ever do some "serious" scud running, factor in > the windmills because they are popping up everywhere and are a new in-flight > hazard. > Also, purring along behind a trusy Continental 4-banger in that nice crisp, > cold air with lots of power available and > crystal clear skies all around is some of the best flying you can do. > Keep your stick on the ice. > Bart >
