Sport Pilot Talk

Yesterday had a nice Fly-In and Chili Cook-Off at Blairsville, GA, sponsored by my EAA chapter.

Took forever for the fog to burn off at Copperhill...



...but when it did, an absolutely perfect flying day.

Karen and I arriving in the Sky Arrow:



And Andy (MrMorden) arriving in his CTSW:



FINALLY we get to meet:



Several of us taking off for a spot landing contest, which I thought I was a shoo-in for:



Looking at this, it looks like I did a helluva job...



But I was instinctively and stubbornly unable to land fast, and floated hundreds of feet past the line.

Won by a relatively newly minted pilot, Caleb Gessman, in a 172.

There was a moment of quite some consternation (read: PANIC!) when a Cub kinda blew an approach and landing.

Not exactly a stabilized approach:



And then things got interesting:





And, after what I think was about 180º of a ground loop, a takeoff from the grass facing the opposite direction:



Barely clearing those trees to hear some tell it. The fellow departed and was not seen again. Probably looking for a laundromat!

If it was an intentional "drunken Cub" routine, well done! But no one thinks it was.

At one point it was headed right towards a group of onlookers (including Andy), and there was the real potential for a tragedy.

Whew!

Anyway, this is all second hand reporting by me - Andy may be able to provide more details.

In spite of that, great weather, great company and great chili!

Til next year...

Oh, and credit goes to Mark Carr, for some of those action photos - he's our unofficial event photographer.

Yep, the cub driver screwed the pooch. He got way behind the power curve, plopped it in heading for the left side of the runway and the crowd on one wheel, scraped the left wingtip, then 180 ground looped acros the runway scraping the other wingtip, off into the grass parallel to the runway heading the opposite direction from his landing. Then about 200 feet of roll and back in the air, clearing a stand of trees by about 10-15 feet. He NEVER came off full power the entire time; if he has just chopped the throttle I think the airplane might have just settled and stopped pretty quickly, but he was over-determined to "save" the landing. It was a hot mess.

No damage to persons or property, so all good, but damn that boy needs a little more training.

Delete

Sounds like you folks had a good time...and a bit of unanticipated entertainment.

If Blairsville is within a comfortable flying range for you, you might want to stay abreast of the occasional Georgia weekend events that the RAF will be doing this 'flying season'. The RAF's state liaison, Eric Davis, is working with a local CFI to offer a series of half-day/full-day fly-in events around the state, part 'clinic' but placed in interesting destinations. The first was at Peach State GA2 south of Atlanta and the second - a full weekend event - was the one we just co-hosted out at Jekyll Is. So he'll probably start placing some of them up in the northern part of the state. The CFI - Toby is broadly experienced, flies one of his planes part-time out of Bozeman, MT - is volunteering his time and Eric's goal is for these to be free events which scratch an itch but also offer a little learning activity, as well. (Perhaps you could bring the Cub pilot... <g>)

If you're interested and want to get the announcements, the easy way to do that is join the RAF. That will get you the occasional GA-oriented email and very little else re: email traffic. We invite donations but encourage folks to join as non-donors. That way you learn over time what we're doing and will consider donating out of desire to support vs. just feeling obligated. Go to www.theraf.org and click on the 'Join Team RAF' in the left pane if you'd like to hear more.

Jack Tyler wrote:, the easy way to do that is join the RAF.

Wow, that was a shameless plug, Jack. But, who am I to talk?

Great PIREP & Pics!

MrMorden wrote:Yep, the cub driver screwed the pooch. He got way behind the power curve, plopped it in heading for the left side of the runway and the crowd on one wheel, scraped the left wingtip, then 180 ground looped acros the runway scraping the other wingtip, off into the grass parallel to the runway heading the opposite direction from his landing. Then about 200 feet of roll and back in the air, clearing a stand of trees by about 10-15 feet. He NEVER came off full power the entire time; if he has just chopped the throttle I think the airplane might have just settled and stopped pretty quickly, but he was over-determined to "save" the landing. It was a hot mess.

No damage to persons or property, so all good, but damn that boy needs a little more training.

Just curious - what were the winds doing at the time this happened?

Flocker wrote:

MrMorden wrote:Yep, the cub driver screwed the pooch. He got way behind the power curve, plopped it in heading for the left side of the runway and the crowd on one wheel, scraped the left wingtip, then 180 ground looped acros the runway scraping the other wingtip, off into the grass parallel to the runway heading the opposite direction from his landing. Then about 200 feet of roll and back in the air, clearing a stand of trees by about 10-15 feet. He NEVER came off full power the entire time; if he has just chopped the throttle I think the airplane might have just settled and stopped pretty quickly, but he was over-determined to "save" the landing. It was a hot mess.

No damage to persons or property, so all good, but damn that boy needs a little more training.

Just curious - what were the winds doing at the time this happened?

3-6 knots straight down the runway.

I just threw together a little 3 minute video of my (pathetic) attempts at spot landing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWH46K3QvQI

Best viewed in HD.