My buddy Mike invited me to go to Sun N Fun with him in his RV-7. Well, actually, it was my idea! We intended to go last year, but schedules didn’t work out. This year everything came together (except media passes, but thats another story). Weather forced us to go early, and we packed up bright and early on a Wednesday morning April 6th. The RV-7 holds a ton of gear. We decided sharing a tent was for paupers, so I brought a separate three man tent.

Plenty of room for Mike’s bimmer and my wife’s Mazda.

It was early, but we were bright eyed and bushy tailed.

The flight down was absolutely wonderful. The early morning air was silk smooth, and we had a slight tail wind for about a third of the journey. The visibility and scenery was quite spectacular.

Darlington Race Track below!

Mike has never been to South Carolina! one of the greatest state’s in the union, and home of my alma mater, The Citadel!

We stopped in Baxley Georgia for cheap ($3.00) fuel and free food. The folks at the FBO were extremely nice, and the FBO is well appointed. There are two bedrooms upstairs that are available on a first come first serve basis.

Here is one of the bedrooms. The other one had a queen or king size bed. Both had individual bathrooms! I’d definitely stay over night here if I was on a long haul.

I did have a scare at Baxley. I thought I had left my wallet in Maryland. Mike captured the epiphany well.

But, alas, I found it. It slipped out of my pocket. Thank heavens. I was not looking forward to being without my wallet.

We once again attempted to capture our arrival. This time, the failure was Mike’s fault. The GoPro footage was very cloudy, so we didn’t have much to show. Once on the ground we set up camp.

Here is Mike’s tent. Note that the boy scout put his rain fly on backwards. It rained the first night. Draw your own conclusions about his interior.

My tent, on the other hand, while cheap was assembled properly and stayed perfectly dry.

Plenty of room inside!

Time to get our drink on! First thing you’ll notice about Sun N Fun versus Oshkosh is that the food is far superior, and the alcohol is far more plentiful! Both big pluses for Sun N Fun!

We tooled around to all the exibits. Here is the now famous RV-8R with the Rotec radial engine. This is fantastic craftsmanship! I love the detail on the interior.

Mitch Lock’s RV-14 was also on display. Sorry folks, but I don’t get the RV-14. Its a huge price premium on an RV-7 for only a little more capability. Maybe its because I’m only 5’6″ and 135lbs, but I’d be perfectly fine with an RV-7.

Mike and Chad Jensen. Second time I’ve met Chad. Super nice guy, and he hooked us up with t-shirts and hats!

The Vertical Power booth had a school project in their booth. Say hello to a homebrewed MFD PFD using the Raspberry Pi! Here is the next revolution in experimental aviation. Role your own avionics. Its coming folks, and its going to be yet another revolution.

We stopped by GRT and Garmin. My two top contenders for avionics in my RV-8. I love the Garmin gear. Its well integrated, beautifully designed, and includes a ton of functionality. However, I came into the show wanting GRT. I was really impressed by GRT’s attitude and the time they took to talk with us. Garmin’s business practices make me a little off-put, but I can’t blame them. I would do exactly what they are doing were I in their shoes.

GRT is brewing a cheaper TSO compliant GPS. Tentatively available this winter. Combined with a NAV/COM radio, you’re looking at a 50% reduction from a Garmin 650. I’ll be watching this closely.

I recently graduated with my MBA from the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. One of my fellow classmates, Robert, owns the restaurant at Lakeland. He is also a former Florida State Wide Receiver. The food at Hallback’s Grill was phenomenal. I highly recommend stopping here for a bite to eat if you fly through the area.

I noticed that Patty Wagstaff was flying the Extra LX330. This is going to be the inspiration for my paint scheme, and I had to go check out the plane.

Our timing was perfect, as Patty Wagstaff happened to be walking by!

Mike is proud of his self appointed call sign of “half price.” You can’t have a call sign you like. Plus, this one is no longer accurate.

Getting around Sun N Fun is easy. Its smaller than Osh, but still plenty to see.

Without a doubt, the best part of Sun N Fun is the Homebuilt Camping set up by Mary Jane. She and her volunteers provide three meals a day, coolers full of beer, water, and sodas. Coffee and donuts in the morning, and all paid for by donations. On Friday night Mary Jane set up a Steak or Salmon dinner. I had the Salmon, and it was phenomenal.

We were able to kick back, drink some Yuengling, and enjoy the airshows.

We took off for the North on Saturday. I’m glad we split the return trip into two days. We were pretty tired from the event.

The trip from Lakeland to north of Atlanta had a strong headwind and a lot of turbulence. It wasn’t a fun trip. Here our the happy-turbulence faces.

On our way up back north, I snapped this photo. My wife is a horse-nut, and I wanted to show her how many tracks there are in the Ocala area. There are actually more tracks than arrows!

We stopped north of Atlanta to visit one of my classmate’s, and one of the best guys on the planet, Justin Katko. I hadn’t seen Justin since his wedding three years ago. It was great to reconnect, and Mike made a new friend for life!

Here’s Justin and I before we departed to the north the next day. 

Overall Sun N Fun was spectacular. For me, I much prefer this event over Oshkosh. Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoy Osh, but Sun N Fun is more my style. More laid back, great time of year, fantastic food, readily available alcohol, and less crowds. All things I love. All the main exhibitors are there, and the airshows are essentially the same. However, the number of experimentals is far smaller, and there is less of many things. Each are different, and awesome in their own right, but Sun N Fun is hard to beat!

In early January, I traveled to Santiago, Chile as part of a short term study abroad trip for my MBA program.

When I travel, I try to meet new people wherever I can. RV builders and pilots are an added bonus! Knowing the trip was coming, I contacted Fernando Abasolo via VAF to see if he’d be interested in grabbing a beer while I was in Santiago. Fernando did much better than that. I was able to bum a ride and go flying directly over Santiago!

Fernando was nice enough to pick me up at my hotel and drive me to his hangar where CC-PXG waited. The airport is Eulogio Sánchez Airport (ICAO: SCTB), also known as Tobalaba Airport. Interestingly the airport is owned by two flying clubs, with one being the Club Aéreo de Carabineros de Chile. Carabineros, a name derived from cavalry units, are the national police in Chile. The first thing I immediately noticed was a fantastic paint job! But Fernando’s attention to detail didn’t stop there. He has incorporated several unique modifications.

First among these modifications is his oil filler door. He has made a hidden latch inside the air intakes of the cowl. (Shown here)

Additionally, he has modified the inside of the door to prevent flex and opening in flight.

Also modified are his front and rear rudder pedals, unfortunately I don’t have pictures of these modifications just yet.

After a little plane clean up and hangar talk it was time to take to the air. I was very excited to see the landscape from the air. Fernando is a Captain with LAN Airlines flying the Airbus A320, and his proficiency and professionalism was immediately apparent in the air. Further, he has had quite the saga with his plane. There are now a handful of RV’s in Chile, but the path for experimental has been difficult. Fernando was the first to receive permission to fly aerobatics. Experimental aviation is impacting aviation worldwide, and in an industry besieged by rising costs and regulation it’s exciting to see breakthroughs like this. (Video of the flight is available here on Vimeo.)

Santiago is a big city with a third of the population of the country and with nearly 8 million people there is quite a lot of sprawl. The city is modern and has absolutely beautiful scenery. It sure beats Charm City!

Santiago is absolutely gorgeous, both on the ground and in the air. In this photo you can see the Gran Torre Skyscraper, which at 64 floors is the highest skyscraper in Latin America. Additionally at the base, you can see another large square building. This is a 6 story epically big shopping mall. In fact, its the biggest shopping mall in Latin America. My friends and I visited it, and it was quite a spectacle on its own.

During the school portion of our trip we stayed at the swank W Hotel Santiago, which you can see here. The rooftop pool has a spectacular view!

In addition to flying, I had a great time in Chile. Fernando took me out drinking one night, and my fellow students and I from Baltimore had a terrific time. We found Chilenos to be generous and friendly. I’ll have a soft spot for Chile in the next World Cup. Pictured here are the members of the Baltimore cohort from the Smith School of Business at The University of Maryland. Sarah, Myself, Brennan, Chuck, Elizabeth, Drew and Julia. A great group!

Fortunately my wife was able to join me towards the end of the school activities, and here we are at Kingston Family Vineyards. For the sommeliers who may be reading this post, the Kingston Family is from California and they operate a small vineyard near Santiago. They were the first vineyard to introduce Pinot Noir to Chile, and have some excellent examples that I highly recommend.

As if Chile wasn’t enough, my wife and I continued on to Lima Peru for a four day stay in Miraflores. The food lived up to the hype. We ate enough ceviche and fresh seafood to feed a village.

And finally, two more photos of my beautiful bride of seven years! Here she is at a brew pub in Lima. If you’re a fan of beer, I recommend you check out www.untappd.com and download their app from the App Store. Maria is drinking a Pisco Sour, the national drink of both Chile and Peru. (Be careful… both Chilenos and Peruvians think the other nation stole Pisco from them). Pisco is a distilled liquor made from grapes… and it sure is good!

A few weeks ago my buddy Mike emailed me asking if I had any interest in flying out to Oshkosh.  What a silly question!  Of course, I immediately took him up on his offer.  This would be an excellent opportunity to get ideas for my project and visit vendors on top of just being a darn good time. We decided to do homebuilt camping, and I’m glad we did.

The plan was to depart from Westminster (KDMW) early Wednesday morning and stay at Oshkosh through either Friday afternoon or Saturday morning.  From there we would visit Mike’s friends at their lake house in Wisconsin (5K6) and return to Westminster mid-day Sunday. We wound up leaving Oshkosh mid-day on Friday, and with the incoming weekend crowds it was the right decision.

We met at Westminster airport at 0600, and were quickly airborne.  We made only one stop in Gary, Indiana (KGYY). I had initially planned to capture a variety of excellent GoPro footage and overlay it with both cockpit audio and monologue; however, at Gary, our technical difficulties began.  Between the two of us, we had three GoPros, but only 2 memory cards. Then, my cockpit audio app stopped working and I had to use Apple Voice memos. But the difficulties didn’t stop there. Upon arrival in Oshkosh I promptly deleted all of the audio. Initially, I also thought the video had stopped during arrival, but upon later inspection I was relieved to find everything captured. I was severely disappointed with the difficulties as I had hoped to put together a rather complete video detailing the VFR arrival.  I am still working on a video, but it will be substantially shorter and more basic than my original intent. I will update this post with the video when complete.  ***Update September 14, 2014 – Oshkosh video is complete and available at the bottom of this page, on the media gallery, and via Vimeo***

Ohio’s landscape is as perfectly boring as one imagines Ohio to be…

We did have to dodge a little weather on the way out, but nothing to worry about or divert over.

After our stop in Gary, Indiana we flew the coastline past Chicago.  What a beautiful sky line!  The lake water looked brilliant.  I’ve always written Chicago off as a place not to visit, but seeing it from the air has forced me to reassess my position.

Arrival into Osh was certainly busy, but the controllers had done a fantastic job, and Mike did an excellent job flying.  I backed him up with the approach procedures.  I really can’t speak highly of the professionalism of the controllers working this event.  All told we logged a little over 4.5 hours of flying time! Not too shabby.

Airventure is big.  Really big.  There is no other way to describe it and until one goes, statistics and photos don’t convey the scope.  But I will provide both.  This year’s Osh saw 500,000+ visitors and over 10,000 aircraft!

On the first day we did a lot of vendor visits.  Near the beginning of the list was Van’s and Sonex.  Here I am pictured next to the JX-2 homebuilt jet prototype.

Here is our camping setup.  If you’ve been to Oshkosh, but not camped, its a great way to go.  We couldn’t have asked for a better parking spot.  We were right in the middle of all the action… as central as you can get.  More importantly we were close the Beerventure and the facilities!

Here are some more photos from our vendor visits.  The Angel from Heaven’s Landing was the owner’s daughter and aside from being very pretty she was a good salesperson.  Mike almost purchased a lot!

The Aircam.  Love it, and this isn’t the last photo…

Just a quick demonstration of the scope of Oshkosh.  Also, note the number of RV’s in attendance.  Every other airplane.  We are like cockroaches.

On the second day, Mike and I attended one of the hands on activities and tried TIG welding.

We spent lots of time at Beerventure.  Especially the first night.  I was so hungover after the first night, that the second day was kind of miserable for me.

On the final day we took a trip to the Sea Plane base where we found this beautiful Aircam on floats.  The Aircam is definitely on the top of my airplane list.

My buddy Wes swears his Hybrid Tahoe is economical. He gets 19.5mpg.  I shot the below photo to prove him wrong… at 180mph!

Our neighbor, Brian, a mathematics professor from Louisiana had a really interesting plane.  I don’t recall the name of it, but we enjoyed taking a look over it.

This is no lie!

Mike operates Rivetbangers.com, and as a result, he was able to score free media passes for us to the event.  Golfcarts were a big perk!  We checked out curtesy media golf carts twice. Here I am in the cart displaying my media credentials.  I’m still waiting on my paycheck from Rivetbangers.com though…

We used the golfcart to make the rounds and get ideas for my RV-8.  Below are some interesting designs.  The first RV-8 pictured had multiple modifications. First up auxiliary fuel tanks in the wings. Not something I would do, but an interesting mod.

He also had a storage compartment in the wingtips.

I did, however, love the clear plastic mats he had for entering and exiting the cockpit.  I prefer these to the black ones you commonly see.

We also came across this beautiful RV-8 with the showplanes fastback & tipover canopy modification.  Every detail has been meticulously attended to.  I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not do a fastback / tipover.  This airplane makes me want to.

I’m a big fan of this intake cover…

Some interesting work to cover the slide behind the canopy on an RV-8 slider.

Here is Mike’s RV-7 in the line.

After departing Oshkosh, we stopped to visit Mike’s friends who have a lakehouse nearby.  We spent two days on the pontoon boat.  Kara, Terry, Chris, and “Rose” were extremely welcoming and generous.  I had a blast!

Departing the lake house on Sunday, we flew back past Chicago.

And stopped for fuel in Warsaw, Indiana.  We took the courtesy car into town for some Mexican.  Sadly, the local Pho place was closed.

Oshkosh 2014 from Peter Barrett on Vimeo.