California Zodiac Flies to Oshkosh AirVenture

California Zodiac Flies to Oshkosh AirVenture, 2001

On 7/21/01 I took off from Corona CA's municipal airport for a 2-day flight to AirVenture in my 601 HDS, Rotax 912-powered Zodiac. I was flying in caravan, sort of, with a friend in his Beech Skipper. Our route of flight was:

Eastbound 7/21/04,
AJO, Corona CA, to E25, Wickenburg AZ 3.0 hours, a fuel stop
E25, Wickenburg AZ to E80, Belem NM 3.7 hours and an overnight stay

7/22/04
E80, Belem NM to KBGD, Borger TX 3.5 hours, a fuel stop
KBGD, Borger TX, to K78, Abilene TX 3.4 hours, a fuel stop
K78, Abilene TX, to EVU, Marysville MO 1.6 hours and an overnight stay

7/23/04
EVU, Marysville MO to LNR, Tricounty WI 3.5 hours in intermittent rain
LNR, Tricounty WI to OSH, Oshkosh WI 1.8 hours
20.5 flight hours E-bound

Westbound 7/28/04
OSH, Oshkosh WI to LNR, Tricounty WI 1.5 hours, a fuel stop
LNR, Tricounty WI to TNU, Newton IA 2.1 hours, a fuel stop
TNU, Newton IA to Abilene KS 3.5 hours, a fuel stop
Abilene KS to Perryton TX 3.3 hours and an overnight stay

7/29/04
Perryton TX to KBGD, Borger TX 1.5 hours, a fuel stop
KBGD, Borger TX to Tucumcari NM 1.5 hours, a fuel stop
Tucumcari NM to Alexander NM 2.7 hours, a fuel stop
Alexander NM to TYL, Taylor AZ 2.6 hours and an overnight stay

7/30/04
TYL, Taylor AZ to E25, Wickenburg AZ 2.4 hours, a fuel stop
E25, Wickenburg AZ to BLH, Blythe CA 1.5 hours, a fuel stop
BLH, Blythe CA to AJO, Corona CA 2.1 hours
24.7 hours W-bound

In order to more or less keep the slower Skipper in sight, something that's a lot harder to do than it sounds, I had to either fly at about 4,800 rpm (engine) or do S-turns. 1,700 miles of S-turns is very wearying. Maybe an HD could have flown at 5,000 rpm, but I couldn't. I'm sure some of you have tried to fly "in loose echelon" with a slower airplane; it's quite a chore! He caught up to me when we stopped for fuel. I burned 100LL on this trip because none of the non-tower airports we flew into had 92 octane mogas. Around my home field I always use with 92 octane mogas from a transfer tank I carry in the back of my pickup. The 100LL works OK in a Rotax 912, but it produces a heavy layer of brownish lead deposits on the bellyskin under the cockpit. This deposit is quite corrosive to 6061 T6 if it gets wet. So, if you fly in rain, you can expect some attack of your bellyskins for a distance of about 2 feet abaft the twin exhausts.

My Zodiac
Some background about my Zodiac is important. I built my tri-gear 601 HDS in my garage in Manhattan Beach CA; I could "integrate" one wing at a time. It took me 18 months from the time I rolled a very large crate up the driveway until the time I made the first flight in 1995. I chose the Rotax 912 because it's an airplane engine, not an auto-conversion engine. The pages of the builders' websites are filled with daily stories about auto-conversion problems. The 914 was still fairly new at that time and I didn't want to put more money into it than I had to. The VW is still an auto-conversion. The new 912S might be an attractive upgrade at some point.

I built the airplane as closely as I could to the 2nd version of Zenith's specifications; I made mods afterwards, so there are some empty rivet-holes in my bird. Most of you know that those hand-drawn "specifications" weren't very specific in many details! I'm told the 3rd set of "specifications" is better, which is certainly a good thing. None of us Zodiac builders have received anything like the uniformity and accuracy an RV-7 or
RV-8 builder receives, with all holes CNC-prepunched, of course. Having said that, after some study and asking of questions, the Zodiac is a very simple design with reasonable clarity of what the designer had in mind. My Mother imbued in me a sense that life was an on-going intelligence test; building a Zodiac fits right into that!

I'm an engineer, BSChE; I've done a lot of mechanical, metallurgical and electrical engineering over a 45-year career that has involved both silicon semiconductor device fabrication and spaceflight hardware. Seeing this airplane come together and then fly, almost effortlessly, most of the time, is as rewarding as any patent I ever got or any technical magic trick I performed where I was paid for my skills! The first flight was a delight: it flew like I hoped it would, responsively. It's very hard to get in a general aviation plane now: they're heavy, sluggish and no fun to fly.

I have a detailed record of every phone call I made to Nicholas, our primary technical support person in Mexico MO: I have not added up those long-distance charges! The cost of those calls is not important; the understanding I gained from him was critical.

I've made a long list of modifications to Chris's design to suit both eye and mind. I put a Rotax radiator inside my lower cowl below the 912 early on, after my eye was offended by having the heavy Zenith copper automotive radiator mounted below the cockpit like a dragging diaper! I made my own steps and my own wingtips. I converted the seat divider into a toolbox with a padded top to rest my flying, right arm, on. I've made 5 sets of wheel-pants, so far, and I don't like my latest nosewheel fairing shape. It would be great to have a friend with an English Wheel and take the time to learn how to bend aluminum skins!

I designed and built my own forward-opening canopy when I got tired of worrying about how the side-to-side design looked and worked. I didn't know Zenith was working on their version at the same time; Nicholas got to see it at the 2000 Copperstate Fly In.

I laid-up a canopy-to-top-skin epoxy-glass fairing, with extension arms to pivot the canopy forward; the fairing uses Zenith's inner canopy frame and hardware, but I beefed some of it up. My acrylic canopy is both bonded to the fairing with 3M urethane and mechanically fastened. I used the Gougeon Brothers W.E.S.T. system for the fairing as well as for several mods to the cowls, the various wheel fairing versions and the wingtips.

The "WEST SystemR" is a really good 2-component epoxy system for making permanent 3-dimensional shapes. Other suppliers only wish they had a system that provides all the features that WEST's component materials do. I bought a big wood lathe and made a male plug for a spinner because I wanted a certain shape; my spinner is made of WEST glass epoxy laid-up on the plug. I've played with some carbon fiber cloth, but it doesn't drape as nicely as glass.

The Oshkosh Flight

Other than having to keep track of a slower airplane that couldn't get to 10,000 feet MSL on a bet, (my companion's Beech Skipper) the flight had all the usual issues, challenges and problems:

• Will the motel operator really come to the airport and take us to the motel?
• Will there be anyone to sell us gas at the airport when we land?
• Will there be any restaurant open when we get into the motel?
o Can we walk to it?
• Will the Skipper be able to get over the ridge just east of Belem NM?
o How many S-turns will he have to make to do it?
o How long will that take him?
• If we land at Taylor AZ, 5,800' MSL, can he get airborne with half fuel?
(At Wickenburg, he went behind a cactus on takeoff and spent 15 minutes down in an arroyo looking for some kind of lift! I climbed way above him to stay clear.)
• Will we be able to see the radio towers in this rain?
• Will I be able to squeeze between the cloud bottoms and the tower tops?
• Will we be able to find the railroad tracks in Ripon?

We flew in steady rain on the portion of the flight from Marysville MO to Tricounty Municipal airport in WI, something I said I'd never do. At times, the sound of the rain on the canopy was so loud I couldn't talk to my fellow pilot of the towers hidden in the mist! (I did worry about hail!)

The 912-powered Zodiac, drawing engine-heated air for the 2 Bing Carbs, never faltered, regardless of how much rain came in the front of the cowl! At times I was blind in front from rain on the canopy: I flew on my gages and occasional glimpses of green below the cloud bottoms. I'm spoiled flying in Southern CA: we have 3 mountains that are above 12,000' MSL but I can easily get over them because I don't have to fly in cloudy weather. I've been to 13,200' MSL twice. There's no such thing as non-cloudy weather in the Mid-west! Towers are hard to see, even if you have a GPS such as a Lowrence Airmap that has a tower or obstructions database.

Flying in rain is bad for lots of reasons. If you think you might ever do such a dumb thing, be certain to buy Warp Drive's nickel leading-edge inserts for your prop or you will erode the outer 4" or 5" of each epoxy blade! Boy does that look ugly! I used some hardware store epoxy and sandpaper at OSH in an attempt to smooth out the blades for the return trip, but they were still rough and ugly. I now have 2 sets of nickel-protected blades.

I added a blinking LED to remind me to keep track of the fuel transfer from wing locker tanks to the header tank when I was distracted by things. Leaving a fuel slick through the air over the canopy impairs forward vision, smells bad, wastes fuel and is probably dangerous!

Joining the line of aircraft in the sky over Ripon, WI, was a tremendous feeling of accomplishment for me. Landing at OSH on the "slow" runway was a thrill cut short by having to figure out how the ground handlers wanted me to taxi to "homebuilt parking".

I'd rented a car from Hertz at OSH; we stayed in one of the college dorms in Ripon. That was a good deal not so much because it included breakfast, but it allowed us to get away from the airplanes for both morning and evening.

I was interviewed and taped by elementary school-age girls from a local WI school for their local TV station. I flew in the "Homebuilt Showcase" for about 20 minutes; that was a good thing to do. Both left me feeling good about being there. When we left, I took off in-echelon with some much faster airplane on the fast runway in cloudy conditions. I'd never shared the runway with another airplane before, or since.

Summary

Everybody ought to fly their own plane to OSH once; it's a real spectacle. I particularly enjoyed the fact that we didn't talk to anyone the whole way, flying only to non-towered airports, mostly municipal airports. That we have the freedom to do this, and most other countries do not, says a lot about our culture; that's why so many foreign air-carriers send their student pilots over here to train. The sight of a single-engine Piper of some kind, with Lufthansa livery, making touch-and-goes at Buckeye AZ was a real surprise! Buckeye has a single short runway and a credit-card operated fuel tank where the fuel's at least 105° F when you pump it into your tanks in summer. I thought I was going to hit a coyote who stood his ground on the runway until I was 50 feet from him, on takeoff.

My Zodiac out-performs several certified aircraft in every respect: it's faster; it climbs better; it has better visibility; it has less than half the fuel-burn and is a lot more fun! All my mods work even if Chris Heintz has never seen them. I've made some parts several times to get them to work like I want. We homebuilders have the freedom to do this. Someday I may modify the turtleback to reduce the drag the canopy produces. Someday, I may redo the instrument panel in sections to make it easier to work on the electronics. Someday, I may redesign the wheelbarrow tires to allow smaller wheel fairings. Someday, I may put in cowl-scoops and ducts to lead cold outside air to the Bing carbs, but I want to be able to close them if I'm ever dumb enough to fly in heavy rain again!

Free Advice

Some free advice about flying in small planes:

1. Get some time in something that's aerobatic, where you don a parachute before you get in or "put on" the plane. Emergency maneuvers training should be taught as part of the Private Pilot training. You really ought to be comfortable in a spin at altitude. Knowing how and being able to do a spin-recovery might save your life. It will make you a better pilot to have been inverted and have to recover the aircraft. I blundered into a spin in my Zodiac showing a young pilot wannabe what steep turns felt like; recovery was no big deal.

2. Practice short approaches instead of "stabilized approaches"; in an emergency engine-out or fire, you'll want to get down and out of the airplane quickly.

3. Don't worry about landing "on the numbers" unless you're working a short strip. There's no extra charge for using all of a 3,000 ft strip in an airplane with no flaps or dive-brakes; the Zodiac is known to have weak brakes.

4. Practice landings and takeoffs in crosswinds up to 15 knots, more than you'd ever want to fly in, you might need those skills one day.

5. When I make a mod, I try to be sure it's non-structural. I fly it and watch it for several flights to be sure there's no issue with it.

6. Do post-flight, as well as pre-flight inspections.

7. Do your Annual Condition Inspections with as much rigor as you can muster: it's your responsibility and probably your life!

George Pinneo, N444PZ, 467 hours, so far!

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