November 22, 2009 Move to Chaska

But the move of house and home happened, for the most part smoothly, by and large with the help of our wonderful church friends at La Crescent Free Church. The associate pastor, Kyle, even drove the moving truck and marshaled a crew to unload everything.
Kyle was especially helpful when, about three weeks later, he towed the trailer with the remains of the JetWing up and we drove up to Crystal Airport and stored it in the hangar where John’s Cessna 172 is being stored. Neither John nor I had not been at the airport since 2008 when we tried to get it flying again, so my recollection of the codes to get past the electric fence was sketchy and the combination code of the hanger padlock was also very unclear in my mind. It took some time; Kyle tried all combination of numbers that we thought it might be, and finally after trying all combinations, found the one that worked, and the fence opened.
At this point, I am just happy everything is done. As I said earlier, trying to decide what to do about the Jetwing is the furtherest thing from my mind. I have to get acclimated with my new office surroundings, need to learn to cope with full-time working from a wheelchair, and being able to live life effectively while disabled. I can empathize with others who are disabled, even my own wife, who now is providing the caretaking duties. But in spite if it all, we are able to cope, and we know that we belong here. However, the longer we’re here the less we are impressed with the apartment we moved into. Some of that is apartment life in general, and some is the poor quality of the apartment relative to the amount we’re paying for rent.

September 26, 2009 – A Day that Changed my Life

Plane crash under investigation
Posted: Sep 28, 2009 4:51 AM CDT
Caledonia, MN (WXOW) - The Houston County sheriff's department is investigation an accident involving an ultra-light aircraft at the Caledonia airport. The accident happened Saturday afternoon. Authorities say the pilot was trapped in the plane and sustained injures. The pilots name is being with held pending an investigation by the F-A-A.

Saturday, September 26th, seemed to work out as a good day to go taxi the JetWIng again. I called Steve and his schedule was clear, so I picked him up and we headed out to the Caledonia airport.
The previous week, I had made contact with a machine shop and had a new kingpin made according to my specifications. I was anxious to see if this pin would work. I had used the attachment hole in the king post as the guide, but as we assembled the wing at the airport, the pin turned out to be too thick to attach the wing. We went back to using the safety tie from the trailer to attach the wing.
I wanted to practice taxiing the JetWing on the hard surfaced runway. We were able to get the engine to start consistently. It ran very smooth and I was encouraged by that. I started taxiing with the wing in a negative angle-of-attack position. I was able to taxi at a relatively high speed under control, maybe up to 30-35 MPH according to the Hall's airspeed indicator. I don’t know how many times I taxied up and down the runway.
There was a guy at the airport practicing T&G landings from the right seat in a C-150. Before he took to the airplane, he stopped and talked with us for awhile. After talking with him, he explained that he had gotten his CFI recently and wanted to practice by himself, so we agreed to watch for each other and I would vacate the runway when he was setting up to land. There wasn’t any real conflict. I just taxied up and down, would stop and rest and talk with Steve between runs.
The last run was memorable. It was getting late and darkness was coming soon, but I was invigorated and decided to taxi one more run, and taxied out heading eastbound onto the runway. I got the JetWing up to a high speed, keeping the controls at neutral or negative angle of attack. But suddenly and with a “whoosh” of wind gust, the Jetwing smoothly took off and started to climb unexpectedly. It got to 30-40 feet of altitude, and since I had not anticipated leaving the ground at all, I had not anticipated what to do in this circumstance. I instinctively backed off the throttle, exactly the wrong reaction. After thinking about this after the fact, I realize that I should have given it full power to keep from an immediate stall, which is exactly what the JetWing did. After rising above ground effect it stalled and it flipped over on its right side. I saw the runway come up at me with dizzying speed. With a sickening crashing sound, I smashed onto the hard surface on my right side, the JetWing on top of me. My first thought was that I had suffered a spinal cord injury, but after flexing my fingers I saw things were moving. However, I saw the my right wrist was twisted grotesquely, and my right ankle was in great pain and contorted in an unnatural position.
Although I did not lose consciousness, things did seem to become a little distorted as I probably entered shock. My ankle was twisted around in a strange position, and I pulled it around so it looked a little like an ankle rather than a alien appendage. It was hard to breathe; the tubing of the JetWing was pressing against my chest and cutting off my airways. Steve abndthe otherpilot came running down to where I was, about half-way down the runway. They saw what was happening and held the JetWing up so I was able to breathe. Afterwards, Steve said they had called 911 and told me that the paramedics were on the way. It took them about 20 minutes to arrive, although I wasn’t keeping track of the time.
When they arrived they started to process of extricating me from the wreckage. They used the jaw-of-life (apparently) and cut much of the tubing to free me. Afterwards when I looked at the remains, I saw that they were especially ambitious and cut almost everything. I was loaded into an ambulance and carted to Gundersen Lutheran Hospital. There they started immediately to repair the damage. They immediately sent me to surgery to explore where things were or weren’t, and I lost track of the time. Afterwards they reported that the right ankle was very seriously broken and that saving it was not assured. The right wrist was broken in three places, but none of the breaks looked particularly severe, certainly not as severe as the ankle.
After three more surgeries to the right ankle and one for the wrist and three weeks in the hospital, I was able to go home, only to hear that our house had just sold and we had to move in 10 days. It was good news, but I felt bad because being wheel-chair bound, and a wrist that was in a cast and was not to be used, I couldn’t help with packing for the move at all. The furthersest thing from my mind was the JetWing.

Labor Day, 2009 – First Time Out

Today is the day. It will be my first time out with the JetWing. I had just gotten the carriage back from the mechanic who had tuned the engine up and said that it was in good working order. Time to put it to the test.
I picked up my friend, Steve Gund, at about noon and we proceeded to Caledonia Airport, actually the Houston County Airport not located in Houston. It was a beautiful day, warmish in the high 70’s and got hotter as the afternoon progressed. We were alone at the airport. We parked the Escort at the end of the parking area adjoining a large grassy area. That was good to protect the fabric of the wing. I got the instruction book out, hauled the wing bag to the grassy area, and opened it up. We took the wing out of the bag and assembled the triangular control bar and proceeded from there. Spread the wing, inserted the battens, top and bottom, and the end bars, and tensioned it. It took about an hour to do this, since it was the first time.
Once the wing was assembled, it was time to attach it to the carriage, which was still on the trailer. We unstrapped the carriage and lifted it to the ground. The wing was on its nose and in position to be attached to the carriage. After drawing the carriage with the main post still down to the attach point of the wing, we started to look for the attachment pin. This is what I call the “kingpin” because the entire weight and force of the wing attaches to the carriage and is suspended by this pin. It was nowhere to be found. Since this was the first time assembling the aircraft, we were not even sure what we were looking for. But somewhere either in Tennessee or here, this pin was lost. What to do!
Since my objective for this day was to assemble the aircraft and hopefully taxi it, the absence of the kingpin wasn’t the end of the world. Steve noticed that the safety pin from the trailer hitch would be a poor substitute, but would allow us to attach the wing for now. So we did that.
The wing on (sort of), we turned our attention to getting the engine to start. The battery had not been charged since it came back from the mechanic (should have done that, but hadn’t), so I didn’t know how much “poop” there was in the battery. We chocked and primed the engine and set the throttle to halfway, and started to crank and crank. The kill switch was in what I thought was the “on” position, but the engine did not fire at all. We both were holding the carriage so if the engine did start, it wouldn’t start to run out of control, and possible chop us up in the propeller in the process. But with the engine not starting, we relaxed our grip. Steve looked around to see if something was not set right, and in the process, moved the kill switch to the other position. Immediately the engine started wildly, and we almost lost our grip, but managed to regain control.
After throttling back to idle, I got the helmet on, stripped myself in, and tentatively started to taxi on the grassy strip paralleling the runway. It was rough and hard to control, but I was able to master it, increasing and decreasing the speed. I want the entire way down the taxiway and back. It was fun and encouraging.
After returning, I pulled up and shut off the engine. Steve had taken some pictures, both still and video (he’ll never make a living in photography!), and we rested and talked about our accomplishment. I decided to do another taxi run on the hard surface, so we tried again to start the engine. It would not start, and eventually the battery went dead.
But regardless, it was a satisfying accomplishment for the first time out. I’m pleased with the effort. Now I need to find the kingpin that was missing and figure out how to start the engine consistently.
We returned home. I was physically exhausted, but energized by the experience.

Sunday, August 9, 2009 – Check out the Trike

I filled the gas tank, negotiated the interstate tanglement, and headed down I-64 toward Lexington, where I transitioned from I-64 to I-75 and headed toward Tennessee. I combined the next gas stop with breakfast at Lake City, TN, a McDonalds gut-bomb. There, I counted up the money I had to make sure I had the cash to cover the purchase.

It was very hot and humid, normal in this part of the country at this time of the year. I arrived in the Dayton area about mid-day, a little behind my schedule, but had still made very good time, considering. I called Larry and he gave me directions to the airport near him where the trike was located. I had to call a second time to find the turn-off to the airport, but finally got there.

Larry Ramsey was a nice older man. He was a retired teacher at the local community college and had been flying about as long as I have. He showed me the trike and started the engine, which seemed to run very well. Everything checked out fine, so I paid him and we loaded the UL onto the trailer. We strapped it down and eventually I took off down I-75 to Chattanooga and then I-24 northwest, heading for Franklin,TN, where I intended to meet with Nolan Rhem, a coworker based in Franklin. It took me until about 7PM to get there. I called Nolan on the cell phone and he told me where he had made a hotel reservation for that night, and I found my way there. So far the trike was riding well on the trailer. All along the way I had periodically checked it to make sure it was still tightly attached to the trailer. I cinched it up several times, and found that it towed very well.

After taking a much-needed shower, and changing clothes, I met with Nolan and we had a good meeting discussing business and Quinnian Health-related stuff. I was exhausted and went to bed early. The next day I got up early and headed out for home. I got onto I-65 and continued down the road a ways about in the Nashville area when the car suddenly stopped; the engine just quit. After determining that I wasn’t going anywhere, I called 911 and a tow truck finally got to my location alongside the freeway and towed the car and trailer to his repair shop. Some four hours and $400 later, the car was fixed and I was on the road again. The timing belt had shredded, a frustrating and delaying thing, but the car seemed to run fine again.

On and on I went. The road seemed endless. On I-65 and after watching Nashville disappear in my rearview mirror, it was I-24 to Carbondale, IL, then I-57 to Mahomet, IL, with a stop for gas and McDonalds, I-74 and I-39 to Rockford, IL, than finally I-90 to La Crescent. I drove straight through and was mentally fatigued after arriving. I lost my way a couple of times, once in Bloomington, IL, trying to transition from I-74 to I-39 via I-55. It was a complicated transition, at least in my degraded and fatigued mental capacity, dusk had just arrived, and I had to ask help from a couple of good-ole boys to find the way. I think they were mostly “in the bag”, and having a much too good time, but did direct me where I wanted to go. Then in Madison, WI, I pulled off the road because it seemed the trike was loose on the trailer. By this time, it was about 2AM. It seemed like a simple transition off and on the freeway, but I found the off-ramp didn’t return directly to the freeway. Trying to find my way back was difficult and a waste of time. I ended up winding through town looking for some kind of way back to I-90. With the help of a couple of kids who shouldn’t have been out that time of night, I found my way back. Finally I arrived at Tomah, WI, tantalizingly close to home. It was surreal. I told myself the last five miles or so that I didn’t want to mistakenly take the cutoff from I-90 that went to I-94. There is a single-lane left exit from I-90 to stay on I-90 toward La Crosse, so it is easy to miss. But knowing this, and, in spite of all the mental gymnastics, I succeeded in missing the split from I-90 toward La Crosse, and ended up on I-94 toward Eau Claire. Finding the way back took time and was exceedingly frustrating. It was after 4AM and my brain was barely functioning. But eventually I made it home, arriving about 5:30AM. Daybreak was soon to come, but bed was the only thing I was interested in.

The next day, in the daylight and a wonderfully warming sun, I looked over my prize. I backed the trailer alongside the garage, put a tarp over it, and tried to decide when I would be able to take it out for a look-over.

In the meantime, and after some research and inquiries to some guys who in the EAA Ultralight Chapter 92 club, which is based in Glencoe, MN, I determined that the Flight Design Trike was also known by it’s more-correct name, a JetWing Weight-Shift Control (WSC) ultralight, manufactured by Flight Designs Corp in Sunnyvale, CA. Unfortunately the company is now out of business, which could cause problems getting parts, etc. It was originally manufactured in 1982 or thereabouts, and although at that time there was no FAR Part 103, it conforms to that specification, which had been my goal all along.

Saturday, August 8, 2009 – Go Get the TRIKE

On impulse, which is how I do everything, at about 7PM I attached the empty trailer to the old Ford Escort, kissed Sandra good-bye and headed out for Tennessee. I had called Larry Ramsey and told him I would be there Sunday afternoon, without thinking much about the distance involved. I stopped off at Farm & Fleet in La Crosse to get some cinch straps, rope, a tarp, and some bungees. It was nearly 8PM when I started down I-90 toward Chicago and ultimately down the road toward Tennessee.

Going through Chicago, I somehow mistakenly got off of I-90 and onto I-94. I needed to consult the map to see how to get back onto I-90, so I pulled off the interstate, checked the map, and saw that the intersection with I-65 was easy and there would not be a considerable delay. I located I-65, entered the freeway taking the sign that pointed me in the general southerly direction toward Indiana, and headed toward Indianapolis, feeling very tired and rummy. After passing several rest areas, I finally pulled off somewhere south of Indianapolis and took a short nap. It was very refreshing, and enabled me to continue relatively rested. After one more rest area nap, I arrived in New Albany, KY, the northern border of Kentucky where there are at least four interstate highways that converge. I got there about 8AM.

Friday, August 7, 2009 Trike Goes on a Bargain Basement Sale

Larry Ramsey e-mailed that he would lower the price of the trike to $3,000. I said I was very interested and wanted to figure out how to go down there and check out the trike.

Summer, 2009

I decided that I wanted to own and/or fly an ultralight, but it finally occurred to me that I really didn’t want an MX or something configured like a conventional aircraft; I wanted something I could store and carry on the trailer, haul it out to my airport of preference that day or a nearby field, put it together and go flying. So as a result of my research, I began to look into weight-shift control trikes. It is not very mysterious why they are called “trikes”—they are 3-wheeled vehicles with a single overhead wing and, instead of having a rudder and elevator to control yaw and pitch, the single flexible wing provides those functions. So there are no rudder and elevator controls…it’s a different type of aircraft. Barnstormers had one; it was a Flight Design Trike, Kawasaki 440A engine, located in Dayton, TN, near Chattanooga. The owner’s name was Larry Ramsey. He was asking $3,600, which was $600 over my budget. I told him I was interested but needed to scare up the extra funds. He said that was OK, and to let him know how it was going.