Steve Thomas/Part 103 Ultralight PPC flight across America

Update - March 2, 2005

Well, today was almost the straw that broke the camel's back. After yesterday's misadventures, I awoke with a renewed spirit and went to Phoenix Regional. I spoke with Richard at I'mFly'N and he had his son Brian help me with repairing the broken and cracked welds on the prop ring support tubes. He did an outstanding job of fitting the broken tubes with another tube slid inside and then wended in. He heliarc welded and post heated, then primed and painted it. You could barely tell it had ever been repaired.

I was feeling good about the Mini Me as I had checked over the rest of the tubes and found no other problems. I called Don at AFU and asked him about another problem that has come up, and that is that the engine bogs down by several hundred rpm when I apply full throttle. If I back off a little from full, it speeds up and runs fine. He has seen this before, but did not have a solution. The engine distributor believes it is related to the jetting, prop selection and different air than what it was setup at. If that is the case it should return to normal further east.

The wind was blowing and I took my time refueling at the self serve credit card pump, then walked the airport fields looking for a good one to use for the takeoff since the wind was 90 degrees cross to the runway. I selected the widest point that I could find where the grass had been cut fairly recently. There was a helicopter in the pattern doing repeated landing and takeoffs and I alerted him that I was taking off and waited for him to complete a landing, then I went for it.

The Mini Me once again struggled to get the wing up due to the lack of power and field holding back the machine so it could not roll easy and gain the precious speed necessary. I managed to coax the wing into the air and overhead, but it was swaying side to side pretty badly. I held full power, the natural thing to do, but I forgot about the engine bogging down at full throttle. That did not help a thing. The Mini Me hopped up then leveled off and descended right back onto the field. Then it did that again. By that time I was running out of field and turned and ended up with a quartering tail wind, which only made it worse. This time I let it stay on the ground and gain as much forward speed as it could. The tall grass was coming up fast, but I held steady and at the last second before the tall stuff I flared and was ready to shut off the engine if it came back down.

The Mini Me grabbed air on that last try and slowly gained altitude. I got up enough to clear the cactus and then above the power lines and then could turn more into the wind and got it to climb on up. Then I remembered about the throttle acting up and backed off and the plane climbed much better. That should have imprinted my mind pretty well for the next takeoff. Those 400 rpm or so are very much needed, especially since I am flying at absolutely max payload with all of my gear now.

OK, so now I am climbing nicely and have a good 1 hour and 7 minute flight that spans 32.4 miles. The Mini Me burned 2.25 gallons of fuel. When I landed at Coolidge and taxied up to the fuel pump, I of course did an inspection of the plane. Immediately I saw that the muffler was hanging crooked. Then a closer look, and I saw that the 1" support tube had broken almost in two. Had I flown any longer it would have come completely apart.

This time I actually thought about throwing in the towel and calling it quits. Three repairs to cracked tubes in as many days was almost too much to handle. When I was at I'mFly'N I checked that tube too, but did not detect anything wrong with it. I had been in contact with a local AFI, Larry Hinton from Marana, and I called him for help. I did not know what I was going to do, but I had to get somewhere to do it instead of at the Coolidge Airport.

Larry came up to the airport with his truck and we put the Mini Me in the bed and drove it to Marana. Larry has everything needed to repair the Mini Me here and is helping me replace the muffler support tube and reinforce it with a triangulating tube to the pylon. He also was kind enough to set me up in his motor home to stay in while I am here.

We got the Mini Me apart and have a start on the repair. Tomorrow we will complete it and I am going to do a finite inspection on the rest of the frame. From here the terrain gets hostile in case of a forced landing. It is very desolate and isolated country in the mountains between Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. I need to feel confident in the frame holding up to the little vibrating single cylinder engine. I have enough other stuff to contend with, without adding these kind of problems in every day.

My plan at this time is to make the repairs and inspection, then try swapping to a leaner main jet in the carb to get more power from the engine and maybe it will then take full throttle. I will need to make a few flights around here and check out everything also before I continue on the route across America. If all of this goes well, I should be ready to get back at it, weather permitting by Friday afternoon or Saturday. The winds in this part of Arizona normally are from the East in the morning and West in the afternoon, and I need the west wind to help me along.

Once again I am using a cell phone connection so I am only sending the track from the flight. When I get in a location with a land line connection again, I will send the photos from the past couple of days including the repairs, etc.

Have a good one!
Steve

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Steve Thomas/Part 103 Ultralight PPC flight across America

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