KR-Super 2
Took a break from the daily grind Monday and went over to my parent’s house to help dear old dad work on the airplane he’s building. “What daily grind Kerry? You don’t hardly work at all in the winter.” Anyway, Dad’s building a KR-Super 2, The KR Super2 is an air cooled Corvair engine powered, all composite, two seat experimental aircraft modeled after the Rand Robinson KR2S.
He’s been working on it for about three years and the finish line is in sight. OK, maybe it’s not in sight but at least it’s finally in the same time zone. We worked on the engine mount, trim tab wiring, and mounting the position lights. Notice I said “worked on” not finished. He’s getting ready to put the wings on and assemble the engine so hopefully we can get that thing in the air sometime this decade year. All three of us, me, Dad, and Connor, are really looking forward to getting the project done and putting a lot of hours in it but I don’t think anybody is looking forward to the plane getting done more than my mother because once the Super 2 is airworthy and sitting in a hanger, the garage, rec room, pool table, backyard, den, laundry room, and dining room will finally aircraft parts free, mostly.
Gravity Check
In the sprit of trying to make up for my six month hiatus from blogging I’m bringing back my practice of posting photos from my iphoto library. Flying, skydiving, hunting, skiing, and anything else I can find to try and entertain you guys without all the work of actually writing. Bread and circuses you know.
Just another day at the office
Show Of Hands
OK, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted? Oh yeah, our un-lucky aviator has survived a ditching at sea, managed to inflate and climb aboard his life raft and not lose (I’ll touch on the subject of not losing stuff later) the ELT, PLB, handheld aviation radio, and satellite phone. He’s also warm and toasty in his thick neoprene survival suit covering multiple layers of non-cotton underwear and clothes. Things are looking good! All you need to do is turn on the ELT or PLB to let everyone know where you are, contact a passing airliner on the handheld aviation radio and let them know what condition you’re in, then order a pizza on the Sat phone and wait for the rescue Uber. (If I were him I’d Opt for the Black Uber option) There’s only one problem. You’re wearing a thick Neoprene Survival suit with built-in gloves that only have two huge fingers and a fat thumb. Basically you’re wearing rubber oven mitts. Good luck doing anything that normally requires fingers. 
Now yes there are some survival suits that have removable gloves that you can take off but there are two things that I don’t like about them. First, both times I went through the open water survival course in Iceland I used a suit that had removable gloves and both times the only thing that got cold when I jumped into the ocean were my hands. The gloves don’t fit tight enough to keep water out and even though the water in the glove eventually got wormed up by my body heat my hands were still cold. (The cuffs around my wrists also let in a little bit of water but not very much) When you jump into the water in a suit with gloves that don’t come off your whole body stays DRY! Your hands are DRY! Did I make my point about liking to stay DRY while I’m floating around in the North Atlantic? And secondly, suits with integrated gloves are what you get when you rent suits in Goose Bay or Wick Scotland. You use what you get. (There are some newer/more expensive suits on the market and maybe someday I’ll buy one but that day ain’t today.)
This one has a face shield that might come in handy.
So step one, dig out the electronic devices you brought with you from the plane before it went down. How did you get them out of the plane without losing them? That’s a very important question because if you drop them or the raft getting out of the plane you’re screwed. The system I’ve developed over the years is to have my “MUST NOT LOSE!” items zipped inside my survival suit instead of in some kind of case or bag that I have to hang onto. That way I have my hands free to hang onto the raft and climb out of twisted, sinking, God damned door’s jammed, upside down pice of shit airplane…….at night.
I’ll cover exactly what I have in my “MUST NOT LOSE!” survival kit in another post but almost all the items have one thing in common, the are in individual Ziploc bags and if they’re important enough (like the electronics) they are double bagged. Because salt water = BAD. So to get at anything at all you’re going to have to open two heavy duty Ziploc storage bags for each item, ever try that wearing oven mitts? And even if you do manage to tear open the bags with your teeth you still have to turn on and operate the fancy do dad you brought with. Oh and be careful not to drop it because the bottom of the raft probably has six inches of sea water in it and if you drop something that’s not waterproof it’s now junk. I’ve practiced turning on the old ELTs’ while wearing the survival suit and even though you have to pull up on the toggle switch that activates the beacon before you can turn it on I was able to do it with the oven mitts on, sitting in my hotel room. The PLB was a little more difficult (had to use my teeth) but I still got it done, again in my hotel room, not, wet, cold, seasick, getting tossed around in a tiny raft……at night. So what’s our un-lucky aviator to do? ( I hate calling him that, I need to give this fictitious pilot a name. Hans? Roderick? Thorby? I have to be careful naming him because if I end up liking him I’ll have a hard time killing him in the end. Hmmm…..Charles? Yes, Charles it is. So Chuck, what ya gonna do? You already had to un-zip the front of your survival suit to get the “DO NOT LOSE!” kit out you might as well pull one of your arms out of the neoprene sleeve and use your bare hand to operate all the fancy toys you brought along. If I’m sitting in a covered raft that’s what I’d do. You won’t get your suit filled with sea water, it shouldn’t be THAT cold inside the raft so you shouldn’t lose too much body heat, and once you’re done doing what you need to do you can zip up again. Of course getting your arm out of the sticky rubber suit might be difficult if your arms, or shoulders, or back, or hips were injured in the crash, best not to think about such things. Oh, and it’s also best not to think about what you’d do if you lost the raft and are just bobbing in the ocean in your survival suit. Crap, now I have to tell Charles what to do in that case.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everybody! I know, I know, Christmas was last week and my New Year’s hangover is but a distant unpleasant memory, but if you look at my past history of posting, a holiday post that’s only five or six days late is something of a miracle. A Christmas miracle……get it? OK, it’s not turning water into wine, which would be pretty damn handy I must admit, but hey, it’s all I got.
Our Thanksgiving was pretty quite because Super Girl decided that she’d rather go skiing in Vail and have Thanksgiving dinner with 20 of her friends than fly home to see the people that actually brought her into this world. A good call in my opinion. And because the Army in its infinite wisdom has decreed that thou shalt have turkey and all the fixings in the mess hall and then back to class. Also a good call. So to avoid the same empty nest this Christmas we forced the stars to align, cashed in our frequent flyer miles and got the band back together. Connor was the first one home from Fort Eustis Virginia where he is one month into the four month long UH-60 Blackhawk Crew Chief school. Connor’s faithful sidekick Koda gave him the kind of homecoming you see from most good dogs when their master comes home from a long time away in the military
Connor told us that he’d been feeling a little home sick and was really looking forward to being home for the holidays. He also didn’t want to miss out any Christmas traditions and wanted to be there when we picked out and decorated the tree. (We always make a big night out of it.) No problem we said, We can wait until December 21st to get our tree this year. Unfortunately when we went to the tree lot it was closed for the season and all that was left were a few scraggly bushes in a pile in the corner of the parking lot. With no other option it was time for dad to come to the rescue and make a tree. How do you make a tree you ask? Well, you dig out part of an old fake tree from the attic and prop it up on a plastic cooler, plop a couple of ferns in front to make it appear bigger, and cram two bigger house plants on each side for……I don’t know, effect? Either way I got the job done and Christmas was saved! And I didn’t even have to water it.
Claire, AKA Super Girl, managed to tear herself away from the glamours life of wind tunnel junkie and got home Christmas day. After seeing Connor get a new holster for his 357 revolver she asked if she could get a pistol. Apparently all her girlfriends in Denver carry one and seeing that she comes home from work very late almost every night and lives in a pretty shady part of town I heartedly agreed. So the next morning it was out to our cabin to see if she could hit the broad side of a barn. I need’t have worried because I’d taught her how the shoot years ago and she was still a dead shot, even if her form needs a little work.
All in all it was a great Christmas but it was over too soon and before we knew it both kids were gone leaving us with an empty nest once again. Oh well.
Have a great year everybody!
Find Me
Sorry for the interruption in my survival seminar but I get all misty and sentimental this time of year and like any proud parent I have a tendency to go on and on about my kids. I’ll try and not let that happen again but no promises.
So when we last left our unhappy ferry pilot he’d managed to get into his raft wearing a good quality survival suit and a thick layer of warm clothes that wick moisture away from the body underneath. With those two things going for him it’s unlikely that he will die immediately, even if he went down in the north atlantic or bearing straight in the middle of winter. But the clock is ticking. How much time does he have? Well that depends on a lot of factors, mostly what the air and water temperature is. There are countless stories of pilots and sailors lasting for months at sea when they happen to be lucky enough to be castaway in the tropics. But Leonardo DiCaprio only lasted long enough to over act a few lines before turning into a human Popsicle after jumping from the Titanic. And while I’m on that subject, why the hell didn’t what’s her name just move over and let him on? I mean seriously, there was plenty of room on that hatch cover or what ever it was. I’m just saying. Anyway, so if you’re sitting in a raft in the middle of the north atlantic in the middle of winter your first priority is to…….GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!!!!!!!! Seriously, besides being in an ISIS summer camp for girls, that is the last place in the world you want to be. Now once you’re in a raft in the north atlantic the only way out is outside rescue. There is no way you are going to get the oars and row to Iceland or use a sea anchor to manage your drift and try to navigate your little ship. Nope, not gonna happen, the only out is for someone to come and get your dumb ass. Actually that might be numb ass. So step one is to let everyone know where you are. Now hopefully as soon as it looked like you might even possibly have a problem you screamed like a girl and made a mayday call on every radio you had onboard. You should have called oceanic control, any airliners you could reach on guard, the Coast Guard, and your high school guidance counselor, (it’s his fault you’re not a doctor) and told them you position. Remember the faster you call someone who cares the faster they get you out of the ocean and into a hot tub. Because like I said the clock is ticking.
So you’ve lost your engine, (it’s always in the last place you look) you managed to get someone to answer your pitiful call for help, not what? Well, besides trying to fix your broken airplane, you need to decide where to go because if you were flying at any kind of reasonable altitude you might be able to glide for fifty miles or more. So which way? Keep going on your original heading? Turn back? Pick a random heading and ditch miles off course? Probably not a good idea but easy to do if you’re not paying attention while you work on other issues. Go back and ditch in front of the big cargo ship you passed a while ago? You did mark it as a waypoint in your GPS didn’t you? Whatever you decide don’t forget to send out to the most accurate Lat Long position of your ditching position you can because the ocean is big and being off by just a few miles can be fatal.
Let’s assume you managed to contact a passing airliner who remained in contact with you all the way down and got an exact fix on your position. You’re all set, just sit back and wait for the cavalry right? Wrong. Like a said the ocean is big and if you’re out of helicopter range (and you will be) you are going to have to wait for someone in a boat to come for you and guess what? Boats are slow. Sure the nearest country might be able to send a fixed wing rescue plane like a C-130 to you’re position and they might find you in relatively short order. But all they can do is mark your position and maybe drop you a bigger raft. You’re still going to have to wait for a boat and, depending on where you are, that’s going to take a long time.
When I’m ferry flying the part of the world that bothers me most is the North Atlantic. Not only because of the horrible weather and long legs over bone chilling ocean but because of he lack of rescue resources and the long distances they would have to cover to reach you. Imagine if you had to ditch Just off the southern tip of Greenland, halfway between Canada and Iceland. Your little raft is now bobbing in the water over 600 miles from the nearest Coast Guard station and It’s going to take them almost 2 DAYS to reach your position!
After 2 days at sea your little orange life raft isn’t going to be in the same location as it was when you gave your last position report. The wind and currents will have pushed you a long way from your ditching point so we move on to our next essential items in the quest to survive. Emergency transmitters. When I started ferry flying we all carried old aircraft Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELT). They were big, the batteries were never new, and they were definitely NOT waterproof, kind of a problem when you end up in the ocean. These days the best thing to have with you is a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) which sends out a constant signal to overhead satellites with your exact GPS position, a huge improvement over the ELT. They’re small, waterproff, the batteries last forever, and they not only send out an accurate GPS position but also broadcast on the emergency frequency (121.5) that rescuers can home in on. I also carry a small handheld aviation radio that allowes me to communicate with passing airliners and search aircraft. It would deffinatly come in handy if I could see them but they couldn’t see me. The last thing that would be really handy if you were sitting in a life raft would be a satelite phone. The ability to talk directly to the search and rescue center would be invaluable. You could also use it to call your wife to let her know you’re OK and to not sell your motorcycle just yet.
PFC McCauley
Yesterday’s theme was all about Super Girl and her adventures in the big city. Today I’ll bring you all up to speed on what Number One Son, who is actually number two child, but the first and oldest son, only son, so why bother numbering him? I’ll just call him Connor, because that’s his name. Anyhoo, I told you all about his great summer of skydiving and how he was having so much fun jumping out of airplanes and hanging out with all his friends. But all good things must come to an end, especially when you’ve promised Uncle Sam a bit of your time. So in mid September Cathy an I drove our little boy down to the airport and put him on a plane so mean men in funny hats could make a man out of him. But apparently I’d already done a pretty good job of that myself because Connor blew the doors off basic training! He told me in his first few letters home that he was disappointed that the training wasn’t harder than it was. He’d grown up listening to his old man talk about how tough it was back when he went through basic training in 1979 and was looking forward to a similar challenge. You know, marching in waist deep snow to the obstacle course, up hill, both ways. About how the drill sergeants were still allowed to hit you back then and that we ran in brand new (stiff) black leather combat boots, not the fancy cross trainers they use today. It was also one of the hottest summers on record in good old Fort Lenard Wood Mo. Nope, Connor was disappointed at how easy it was. That was until the weather changed and weeks of cold rain produced a 1000 year flood and state of emergency smack dab over his training base in Fort Jackson South Carolina, maybe you heard about that in the news. Be careful what you wish for. Besides training in the cold rain every day the other thing that bothered Connor a lot was the double standard there was when it came to the females. While the Drill Sergeants were still quick to yell and scream at the men in Connor’s platoon they almost never raised their voices at the females and gave them special treatment constantly. The best example was when the trainees were first issued their weapons. In a rare form of common sense the Army started issuing each soldier a magazine for their rifle loaded with two blank cartridges in order to teach them how to handle a loaded weapon. Freaking brilliant if you ask me. The Drill Sergeants then warned the trainees that if anyone had a ND (negligent discharge, or oops) their would be hell to pay. They promised that the offender would receive an article 15 (mini-court marshal) $700 fine, loss in rank if they had any, and most likely have to start basic training all over again. You know, wrath of God kind of stuff. They had been hearing these warnings for weeks before ever being issued the blanks so they were all terrified of screwing up. And rightly so because having an ND is a good way to kill someone. So of course it wasn’t 20 minutes after receiving the blanks when, BANG! Everyone froze, one of the females had shot off a blank. Oh shit! She was going to get it now. Only she didn’t. Just one Drill Sergeant went over to the offending female and all he did was to ask her if she was OK and to tell her to be more careful. Connor and his buddies were beside themselves. All those threats were BS. Then a male trainee did the same thing, only this time the reaction was slightly different. 5 Drill Sergeants descended on the poor guy and screamed at him until he cried. He was given an article 15, $700 fine and instead of having to re start basic he was given 20 hours of extra duty. But don’t worry, the female trainee was OK.
Despite the hardships Connor continued to shine. He consistently placed in the top 5% in PT. Qualified “expert” in rifle and grenade, and shot high score in the company, we’re not going to count the guy who cheated by grabbing an extra 10 rounds. During his company’s field training exercise (camping) Connor’s fighting position (fox hole) was selected by the company commander as a almost perfect example and a reward he was allowed to man his fighting position for 8 hours in the rain, along with everyone else, and was told to keep a sharp eye out for enemy infiltrators. While standing in ankle deep cold water for hours Connor observed someone low crawling towards the lie 300 meters out. Connor could see it was his Drill Sergeant trying to sneak up on his platoon and called out “HALT, WHO GOES THERE?” The Drill Sergeant froze and then after pounding the ground in anger jump up, fire a few blanks at the platoon line and run off back into the woods. A few minutes later he came storming back to the platoon super pissed off and demanding to know just who the fuck had seen him? When Connor raised his hand the Sergeant screamed “God damn it McCauley! It took me two hours of low crawling to get that close! how the hell did you see me?” “Never try to sneak up on a deer hunter Drill sergeant!” Connor yelled back. He was made squad leader and then acting platoon Sergeant and was also on of only 4 troops in his company to be promoted for merit and outstanding performance. I think we’ve got a soldier on our hands.
Graduation day with the companies marching out of out of the smoke. Pretty cool
Ready to take on the world.
Super Girl In A Tube
Sorry to interrupt my ramblings on the subject of survival but tis the season for thankfulness and I really can’t relate to you all how blessed I am this year until I bring you all up to speed on what’s been happening in the McCauley family for the last 6 months or so. This would’ve been easier if I hadn’t taken a 6 month break in posting huh?
Super girl left college in Minnesota and moved out west to go to a school that had a better program but seeing that the price for out of state tuition is a little expensive she’s decided to work for a year to establish residency. So why is this even remotely interesting? Because to support herself she got a job at the local wind tunnel. Now I know most of you have no clue what the hell that is so I’ll try and explain. A wind tunnel is where skydivers go to practice their free fall skills in a controlled environment without the worry of getting by a planet. The great thing about a wind tunnel is that you can fly for minutes at a time instead of seconds and that makes for faster learning and LOTS OF FUN! (sorry, but I get excited) And why, you still might ask, is this interesting? Because dear reader she get’s to fly in the wind tunnel for free and develop skills in mere months that normally would’ve taken years. And not only that, her family get’s to fly in the tunnel for free as well! (not that I care about such things)
Fast forward to early this month and Cathy and I make the big trip out west to see how our first born is handling living in the big city all alone. We did all the normal stuff parents do when visiting their daughter. Cathy spent three days cleaning SG’s apartment while I spent the same amount of time getting her Land Rover back into some sort of safe driving condition. Did you know that you have to take the grill off to change the turn signal bulbs? Yah, me neither. But the trip wasn’t just helping SG with the little things she’d neglected we did manage to make two trips to see where she works and try out the wind tunnel. I was up first and despite the fact that I’ve been jumping for 30 years and have over 15,000 skydives I still stunk. Indoor skydiving is WAY different than the real thing. In my defense the instructors said that I did better than most skydivers in the wind tunnel for the first time because it’s not the same thing as free fall. Still, I’d hoped I would’ve been a little better than that. But the big story of the day was the show my wife put on. Because despite owning a drop zone, and being married to one of the most amazing skydivers in the the world, (that would be me) she has never jumper out of a perfectly good airplane, or even one of ours. Cathy started out like any other first timer in the wind tunnel but she was doing so good the instructor let go of her and she killed it! No wobbling about, no smashing into the walls, nothing, rock steady. You typically do 2 minutes at a time and by the end of her second round she was doing complete turns and moving back and forth like an expert. SG and I were astonished. Oh and speaking of Super Girl, she’s amazing in the tunnel. I knew her skydiving and dance background would translate perfectly into flying in the tunnel but I had no idea just how good she’d gotten. And yes, this is hard to say, she is better than me in the tunnel, WAY better! Of course she works at the tunnel and gets to fly everyday, but still. Super proud of my girls I am.
Where’s Cathy? Someone has to take pictures.
If you don’t know what indoor skydiving looks like here’s a little taste. I’m almost as good as these guys. And by almost I mean not at all.
Gumby Suits
When we last left our super unlucky ferry pilot he’d managed to successfully ditch his stricken aircraft, exit with his life raft, inflate it, and climb inside. This is the absolute minimum a pilot needs to do to survive when he makes a full stop landing on something other than solid surface, i.e. water. Of course where in the world that patch of water is makes all the difference in the…..well….all the difference in the world. there are many stories of pilots ditching in warm waters surviving for weeks with nothing but their underwear and a smile. If, on the other hand, our unlucky pilot finds himself in a somewhat chillier location, say, halfway between Canada and Iceland, in January, he might want his winter wooly’s on. And that’s where the survival suit comes in. Survival suits are full body suits made out of 1/4 inch neoprene and do a REALLY good job of keeping you warm in cold water. Unfortunately they also do a REALLY good job of keeping a pilot hot and sweaty in the cockpit of a small plane. And if you wear a survival suit for 8 hours or so it also has the interesting side effect of making your clothes smell exactly like a combination of wet dog and hockey bag. So to make himself more comfortable, and to allow him to get a few more days out of that pair of jeans he’s wearing, a ferry pilot has a few options.
1. Fly with the suit fully on but un-zipped. Not too risky because all you have to do is zip it up before ditching. This is the method of rookie ferry pilots and really fat guys who can barely get the suit on while standing on the ramp because it’s still hot and uncomfortable and it’s also really difficult to fly an airplane that way. Ever tried to change radio frequencies while wearing oven mitts?
2. Wear the suit pulled down to your waist. Slightly more risky because in the event of a sudden emergency a pilot might have his hands full controlling the plane while simultaneously getting his suit pulled up over his shoulders at the same time but for most pilots it’s doable.
3. Have the suit un-rolled on the pilot’s seat and just sit on it. This is pretty risky because performing the cockpit yoga required to squeeze yourself into a tight rubber suit in a tiny cockpit while getting everything you need to get done in a ditching situation, controlling the airplane, fixing your position, screaming for help on the radio, panicking, (don’t forget panicking) can be difficult. But not impossible, especially if you have enough time. And by time I mean altitude. Whenever I fly over the ocean at altitudes higher than 10,000 feet the first thing I do is strip off that damn rubber suit and sit on it because even if the engine stops making noise I’ve got over 20 minutes before splash down and it only takes me 2 seconds to get it back on. How do I know it only takes me 2 seconds you ask? Because the engine skipped a couple of beats while I was smack dab over the middle of the Atlantic ocean on only my second ferry flight ever. I don’t actually remember putting the suit on. All I know is that one second I was flying along fat dumb and happy and the next I was fully encased in orange neoprene, staring at the engine gauges and praying. Panic does have its uses.
4. Leave the suit in the back seat. Really risky because of all the reasons I listed in option 3 plus you have to reach behind you, dig out the bag the suit comes in, take the suit out of said bag, unroll the suit get on the seat under you, and then try to do the yoga trick of getting a rubber suit on over your clothes in a tiny cockpit. Although it would seem that only a moron would leave the suit in the bag and in the back seat, and I have seen such morons, I sometimes do it myself but only if I’m flying a cabin class aircraft that I can stand up in like a King Air or a Grand Caravan and even then only if I have a co-pilot to fly the plane while I get ready to ditch.
The nest thing to think about is what you’re going to wear under the survival suit. Most pilots I talk to don’t think about this at all. their thinking is that because the suit makes them hot in the cockpit it should do just fine in the water or life raft. That thinking is true to some extent. If you’re only in the water for a short time you should be fine, even in vary cold water. But what if you have to wait for hours or days for rescue? When I did my training in the cold water off Iceland we were in the water for only 30-45 minutes and I was already getting cold, especially my feet. When I fly over cold water I wear a good quality base layer of long underwear in addition to the rest of my cold weather gear and always at least have a second pair of good socks to put on before climbing into the suit. This extra layer would also come in handy if you’re forced down on land in the winter and a post crash fire prevents you from grabbing additional clothing to help keep you from freezing to death. Something to consider when flying over northern Canada or Greenland’s ice cap in January.
OK, so there you are, safe and sound in your 10 man life raft and snug as a bug in your gumby suit. Guess what? you’re not out of the woods yet.
Ocean survival course in Iceland.
No need for a life jacket if you’re wearing a Gumby suit.
I’m Gumby, Dammit!
