To Oshkosh in a Long-EZ – Part 1

Oshkosh

Oshkosh, that Mecca of aviation. That pilgrimage that every pilot should take (regularly). A place where acts of aviation are committed almost constantly for a whole week! Believe it or not an airplane geek like myself had never been there! Having lived in Miami, FL and Seattle, WA Oshkosh WI wasn’t really a place that I ever even knew about. I also wasn’t introduced into aviation until college and so I had only known about Oshkosh for a few years. It always remained as something I wanted to do but hadn’t put any serious thought into until Joey brought it up two years into the four year Glasair build. Keep in mind that Joey is from Chicago and Oshkosh was something he grew up with. Seeing as how taking your homebuilt to Oshkosh is part of “finishing” the aircraft and at that point we were very invested in the Glasair build I took the position that “I’m gonna fly to Oshkosh in the Glasair when it’s done!”.

Fast forward to July 18, 2014; that incredibly proud day when the Glasair flew for the first time!!! Four years of hard work coming to fruition! Unfortunately the hard reality that Oshkosh started on July 27th (in 11 days), the airplane had 0.8 hours of 40 flight test hours required to make it, and we were sure to find squawks along the flight test program, made me and Joey realize that we were not going to make Oshkosh in the Glasair. We had already put money down for a rental house for a week and we had no transportation to get there. At that point me and Joey looked at each other, turned around, and looked at the OTHER airplane in the hangar.

The Airworthiness Scramble

In that same hangar where the Glasair was living there was an airplane that was in several different pieces; it was partway through an annual and had its wings off. That airplane happened to be a Rutan Long-EZ named Missadventure. I also happened to be the owner of that airplane. I had started the annual a couple of weeks before but getting the Glasair in the air had kind of derailed that effort. From where we were sitting this airplane was now our best chance to get to Oshkosh the “right way”, by small airplane. This is what it looked like at the time:

Missadventure at the time we realized this was the only way to get to Oshkosh

Needless to say this led to a flurry of activity to get the rest of the annual completed and the aircraft re-assembled. I could write a whole blog post on this but the highlights are this:

• The airplane rolls left during cruise so I wanted to change the incidence angle of the wings to remove it (we managed to reduce it but did not succeed in removing it). Changing the incidence angle involved changing the washer stack-up in the wing-to-fuselage attachment. This changing stack-up caused the bolt lengths to have to be altered which caused three different trips to Spencer Aircraft (two by air in Wichita tin and one by ground in German aluminum). Those bolts had also not been replaced in probably 10 years so getting new ones was a good investment in peace of mind.
• The back seat has this little panel that has the headset jacks and a GPS for the person in the back to have. The issue is that this panel KILLS YOUR LEG ROOM!!! It sits right where the back-seater’s knees go and so it becomes a very uncomfortable proposition. Our buddy CJ removed the panel and created a miniature headset-jack panel. Before I couldn’t comfortably sit in the back of the airplane. Now I actually can last a couple of hours back there.
• The carburetor bowl was cracked. The incredibly nice people at Ace Aviation gave me a good deal on a used one from a C-150 that was serviceable. On the plus side this one had an accelerator pump which has made cold-weather starting a breeze!

I had to take a couple of days off from work to work on the airplane full-time but we managed to get everything put back together and perform a maintenance check-flight on July 24th, the day before we were scheduled to leave to Oshkosh. I have experience doing maintenance check flights but this one was a little nerve-wracking because we had removed and re-installed primary structure, removed and re-installed flight control surfaces, replaced the carburetor, and removed and re-installed the propeller. Not only that but it wasn’t done by an A&P, it was done by me and Joey! We have confidence in our skills but we are decidedly NOT professionals so I was a little nervous when I pushed up the power and rotated for liftoff straight into Lake Washington. Fortunately, we didn’t mess up and the flight was flawless! Time to pack!

Packing

While Long-EZs are known for their efficiency (and this one is at 130-135 KTAS on 7 US Gal/hr) they are definitely NOT known for their capaciousness. I learned this on my very first trip on the airplane when I bought it and flew it back from its former home near Austin, TX. I brought a small carry-on bag and I had to ship the carry-on bag itself and half the stuff in it back to Seattle because it wouldn’t fit in the airplane. Coming from that experience I knew packing enough stuff for two people for a week was going to be a challenge.

Missadventure has three”cargo” areas. One in each strake and one behind the copilot. The two strakes are on the left and right side of the pilot and copilot. They are about 8″ tall, maybe 12″ deep, and they are about 5′ long. They run the length from the passenger to the pilot. The third areas is called the “hell-hole” and is basically the hollow inside of the Long-EZ’s box spar. There is an opening behind the copilot’s seat that gives you access to this area. THe whoel area is maybe 10′ long but only about 5″ by 5″ so only small items could fit inside. This area is decidedly NOT accessible in flight. The picture below gives you an idea.

The strake baggage area is the area on this picture under the blue tube. As you can (kind of) see there are two openings, one by the pilot and one by the copilot. There is one on each side of the airplane. The hell-hole is the oval opening in the back of the fuselage that you can see the top half of. (Image courtesy of Garaggio)

As you can see there are three problems: 1) there is not a lot of room to begin with, 2) the form factor of the strakes is not very practical, and 3) the location of items is important as there are several areas that are not accessible in flight.. This meant that me and Joey had to be very critical of what we were bringing. Things like underwear, clothes, and toiletries were essential but there are many extras like iPads (for EFB use), cameras, chargers, laptops, etc that also needed to come with us. I’m not a heavy packer by any means but I found myself arguing if I *really* needed that second pair of shoes for the week at Oshkosh.

The way that we were able to get everything in was to “packetize” the cargo. Almost everything went into small plastic grocery bags. They have a good form factor for fitting into the strakes when full. We call this “hobo packing” since when you unpack the airplane you find yourself carrying all your belongings in plastic grocery bags…ala hobo. We pack the clothing that we won’t need during the airplane trip in the hell-hole all rolled up and in bags. We will only pull that stuff out when we get to Oshkosh.

We each packed a small RON kit (remain-over-night) grocery bag that has toiletries and a change of clothes so that we didn’t have to unpack a lot of stuff but simply grabbed our grocery bag and went to the hotel. These we put in the center of the strakes where we can’t access in flight since we won’t need these either. The front and rear of the strakes contain the in-flight use items since those are the only ones we can reach in flight from our seats.

Even these in-flight items tend to be small so as to minimize volume. We bought a bunch of 8oz water bottles so that we could get rid of them as we drank them at our fuel stops instead of having to carry around empty bottles occupying valuable volume! Our in-flight snacks include pre-made bagel sandwiches, Milano cookies (never make a long cross-country without them!), and some Cliff bars. The flight-critical items included each of our iPads, my SPOT locator, Joey’s ADS-B IN Stratus module (I can’t say enough things about how helpful this particular piece of equipment is on long cross-countries), big floppy hats and sunglasses to help keep the sun off of us with the bubble canopy, sweaters and jackets for when we climb up to altitude and it’s freezing (the EZ has no cabin heat), a GoPro camera to film the action, and each of our 7,000 mAh external battery packs to re-charge all of those electronics.

This was also the first trip we ever used supplemental oxygen. We figured it was a good idea since we were going to be crossing the Rockies. The question is, where do you put a giant metal cylinder filled with nothing that you have to be able to access in flight in an airplane that has no extra room? The answer, unfortunately for Joey, is right between his legs. We put the Aerox bottle between his legs where he could get at the regulator to meter the oxygen for both of us. If I was ever to do solo cross-countries I would have to find a good place in the strake to put it but Joey did a great job of managing things. An improvement for next time will be to build an actual mount so that we can mount it to the back of the pilot’s seat to make it more comfortable for the backseater.

And so, we are, FINALLY, ready to depart for Oshkosh! The leg over there will be the subject of Part 2 of this post since this guy grew to almost 2,00o words 🙂