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The alternating good-and-bad flying days continued last week, so one stayed ever-ready to launch into the blue when the opportunity presented. January is named for a two-faced Roman god, appropriately for its fickle weather.
Visitors flying in this week were Rick Blumhortz of Paola in his Piper TriPacer, Mark and Donna Otter from Warrensburg in their Cessna Skylane, and Jeff Hargis from Bishops Landing in his 1948 Stinson Voyager. Also in were a Piper Archer trainer and a Beech V-tail Bonanza.
Local pilots out included Jeremie Platt in his Grumman Tiger, Samantha Bruns solo in a Cessna 150, Randy Miller in the Cessna Skyhawk, and Gerald Bauer in a nifty 150. Your faithful scribe was up in the Aeronca Champion twice.
One of the most common questions I get asked is “what’s the best age at which to start learning to fly?” as if it makes a difference to a flight instructor. I usually tell them “the age you’re at right now” to encourage them to get started, but it truly makes no difference. The young folks are disgustingly adept at acquiring new skills, but older people pay better attention. Each person is his or her self, so some older ones still act like a kid and some youngsters are old souls beyond their time. I always regret training a retiree who tells me “I always wanted to do this,” because they have only a limited number of years to enjoy the fruits of their labors. How much better it would have been to scrape up the shekels in their youth and to have been flying all these wasted years.
Case in point; I knew a man who waited until the kids were out of the house and he could take retirement, then he learned to fly and bought a plane. In two years’ time his hearing began to fail and he was unable to pass a flight physical so the airplane had to be sold. He has some good memories of the brief times he enjoyed his fulfilled dream, but not as long as he’d hoped.
One presumes this coming Saturday, the 28th, is the appointed time for the Fliars Club’s breakfast fly-out, so those interested should assemble at 7:30 or so on the Butler airport ramp and ascertain the rightness of their action. Shore does stay dark a long time, this time of year.
Our week’s question was about the viscosity of a multi-grade aviation oil’s base stock, as in “what does 20W50 oil start out as?” Engine man Rodney Rom correct says it’s 20-weight oil, with additives to thicken it up as it warms. Remember the old days of seasonal oil changes? For next time, what is the distance portrayed by the minute tick marks on a sectional aeronautical chart’s lines of longitude; the scale is 1:500,000. You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
