Pursuit of flight posted a really nice RV-4 video

Back from the us trip. Put the airplane in a container in Miami and now have to wait for a month before the container gets to Europe. Nice trip and a lot to tell but I sold the rights to a brittish magazine so you’ll have to wait for the details…

Basically I got tired of waiting on the swedish EAA to approve my continuance on the Glasair build so I bought a flying RV-4 in the meantime.

It is located in Ca and as thing look right now i will go there before Sun and Fun and pick it up and then fly to Lakeland in it. Partly because shipping is cheaper, faster and safer from the east coast if shipping to europe. Also because it gives me the chance to visit some long not seen friend on the way over.

Accordning to preliminary flightplanning it is only 14 hours of flight between Ca and Fl but flying over the mountains in a pure VFR aircraft might require a lot of waiting for good weather. Also flying a taildragger that is new to me from concrete runways limits the crosswind component I want to handle. 

Well, the glastar found it’s new owner. He is from Sweden. Gotland to be precise. So the it will spend a lot of time over the sea in its future life. Really sad seeing it go, it is a really nice aircraft.

The buyer Mats had no tail wheel experiance whatsoever but flew acceptable within an hour(he got talent, we had a 15kt crosswind!) and he has the mindset of a really safe pilot. But his CFI wont sign him of (we are now into the second day anf a few hours later). Personally I think the CFI is just trying to earn more money…
I never fully understand why some CFI’s think it is their job to make their students perfect. Personally I settle for safe, the road to perfection takes practise and that a normal pupil does not need a CFI in the right seat to do.

As noted on the separate page the short field performance of the Glasair is somewhat under question. Most peaple in the US seems to think that anything below a 3000ft concrete runway is a no-no. Since most GA airports in Sweden is below 2000ft, and we have quite a few Swedes operating Glasairs from these airports, I knew they were not 100% correct saying it was impossible with smaller runways. I also know about a gentleman in austria that uses a 1600 ft concrete runway as Glasair III base but recently I got in touch with a guy flying his Glasair 1 RG from a 1400ft really bad uneven dirt strip, that has to be some sort of record with a RG.

Amazingly he lives very close to Kingman, AZ. The city I left less then three months ago! To bad I did not get a chance to a chat in person with the guy.

Ellipse is an interesting project from LH aviation
Compare it to Bede BD-5B! Basically they made a two man composite copy of the twenty year old design. Still a very interesting concept since in theory this is the way to build an aircraft with extremely low drag. That is why LH is quoting a 200kt cruise speed of an 80hp engine… It is going to be extremely interesting to see if the real cruise speed gets even close, as you might remember the BD-5 at the end got a much lower cruise speed then predicted. Well, if they get anywhere close it will be a really interesting design.

After what feels like forever the container arrived today. Customs and local trucking was no problem at all and as far as I could see there was no damage to the Glasair kit. But as always I am very impressed by the truckers, they got the container unloaded in a tiny space with no problems at all.

Was over in Copenhagen, Denmark at that tiny WWII strip usually closed to the public.

The event was enjoyable as usual but even more fun was the trip back. Flew in formation with a Tiger Moth and the weather was really bad with entbedded CB’s and all. But Copenhagen tower asked us to cross their airspace at 500ft.

And since their airspace includes part of the oeresund bridge (the bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark) we actually flew at a flightlevel below the pylons (600ft AGL) of the bridge. And in a part of the world where flying below 1500ft is basically forbidden that is fun. In moments like this I do miss the US flying over the desert at a very low level in a perfectly legal way..
Only downside of yesterday was that the combination of weather and formation flying disabled me from getting any good pictures.

But once again I do really appriciate the Glastar. I was the only “modern” aircraft at that airfield since the strip is so short. I flew formation with a sub 70kt airplane and then used my tiny 120Hp engine to get a TAS at almost twice that on the remaining leg after leaving the Moth… There are not many designs that could handle all that..

A lot happened lately but very little according to plans.. My wife broke her arm so I had to go back way ahead of schedule, so I had to leave Sheble and go back. I did arrange for the kit and its transportation so I loaded it into a container. Took two days since I had to do it on my own. Transporting a kit brought a few complications I did not expect that a majority of trucking companies would refuse to unload a container at residential adresses because of liability. The one I found at the end almost got stuck in the mud too..

Kent and his wife. He was the gentlemen working on the kit until a knee surgery ended his buildning plans.