Question Flying an Apache

Getting old is tough, especially when you can't fly for a month! But I finally got back in the left seat and here are some nice air shots of the Apache.

 

 

Triple Tree is a geat grass field fly-in not too far from us down in South Carolina. I'm always hoping to get to go! This year was super. The weather has been superb for the whole week and I had a guy from church that has been working on getting his Private Pilot that wanted to go along with my buddy and I. So the three of us made plans for Thursday and I "pre-positioned" Annie at a closer airport the night before, leaving my SUV in the hangar. Then I had my daughter pick me up for the (relatively) short ride home. On Thursday we all met at my house and one of them drove us to the closer airport, Monroe (EQY).  We loaded up and took off for the 42 minute flight to Triple Tree (SC00). We had no issues in getting in and got a great parking spot right on the flight line where all the action was at the end of the runway. 

 

A pic from the right side of the cockpit

 

I always love seeing the great planes at Triple Tree!

 

An attempt at an artistic shot of the Spartan Executive

 

Three buddies having fun

 

Putting the plane to bed after a great day.

 

Another "fun" project has been to make a GPS mount for my handheld GPS. I use a Garmin Aera 660 and find it very handy but sometimes a bit of a hassle to use in the cockpit. So I wanted a way to mount it up out of the way and be able to charge it at the same time. I had the mount Garmin sells for the control column but it felt pretty awkward. So we made a mount to put on the downtube and used the plate from the Garmin mount. In this way we can plug the GPS into the cigarette lighter plug and I can just clip the GPS in when I get in the plane.

I took Annie up for a quick test run and we are pretty happy with it. I think we will add one more mount to the downtube to reduce "wiggling" but otherwise this works great.

 

We attached a plate to the the downtube and plugged it into the lighter socket.

 

We used part of the mount Garmin included with the GPS.

 

Here you can see our mount without the GPS attached. It just clips into place so it's easy to take out to use or take home.

 

I felt this works much better than the mount attached to the control column and it's easy to take out if needed.

 

We finally re-installed the "glareshield" for the top of the instrument panel. I also cleaned the windscreen before this pic as it was pretty filthy!



 

Ken, I totally get it. As soon as we got the hangar we started putting "stuff" in it! But I'm a total amatuer compared to most of my hangar buddies at the airport. Some of them have pretty nice "man caves" and most have WAY more stored in their hangar than I do. I have so much to shoot for!