Boulder Fly-in Camping

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Larry N.

Larry N.

Well-known member
Joined
May 26, 2010
Posts
11,101
Location
Westminster, Colorado
Well, here we are at the Boulder Municipal Airport, at a fly-in held by EAA* Chapter 1627. We're parked less than 100 feet from the east ramp, boondocking. We're the only motorhome here, and there's a teardrop trailer, a VW bus camper and a few tents. It's neat watching the gliders takeoff and land, the normal air traffic, and there were some nice display aircraft. They had pizza for us for supper last night (donations welcome), pancake breakfast this morning, and burgers and brats for lunch. Nice and relaxing, and fun as well.

* Experimental Aircraft Association
 
Reminds me of something that happened at the EAA convention, Oshkosh, WI in the ?90?s. I was working at the Emergency Aircraft Repair facility. Across the service road was the vintage aircraft camping area. Every year one pilot got the same spot. He flew in and someone hauled a trailer with the camping gear. He always parked the trailer with the tongue by the planes tail wheel.

A young female reporter was doing a live TV interview of the pilot for the evening news. After a few opening questions she asked how he got all that camping gear in his plane. Without missing a beat he said he just pulled that trailer behind the plane. She bought it hook line and sinker. Her crew was cracking up.
 
Without missing a beat he said he just pulled that trailer behind the plane.
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Well, towing is certainly possible. After all, I've towed gliders, and I also used to tow a
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banner on occasion.  ;D ;D 8) ::)
 
A friend kept trying to get me to tow banners with his Great Lakes biplane. Just didn't look like that much fun.
 
Heli_av8tor said:
A friend kept trying to get me to tow banners with his Great Lakes biplane. Just didn't look like that much fun.
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It was kind of interesting towing with a Stearman (and even with a C-180), for a while, and certainly it helped develop some skills, helped me learn a little more, but after the first few times the "new" wears off and it's a little more like work. Certainly all that drag back there takes away a lot of your maneuverability, but it's still kind of neat.

The Great Lakes is a great little machine, fun to fly, for a little while. By about 30 minutes or so I had to land, because the cockpit is so tiny and I'm not -- you're a bit closer to the right size, Tom. With no seat adjustment, no rudder pedal adjustment, and the size fit for a, maybe, 5'2" skinny pilot, and adding those heel brakes, it's awkward, though I loved the handling. That O-360 in it wanted to overheat after a while, so that might have been a problem towing with it, where you're a bit slower but with lots of power.
 
On a related note ...

A guy named Juan Brown has a series on YouTube where he used his light plane to do excellent reporting on the Oroville Dam spillway crisis and rebuilding.

His latest video was posted during the CA power blackout, and he was really proud of being able to use his "strategic petroleum reserve" (70 gallons of Avgas in his plane) to run his Honda EU2200 generator since all of the local gas stations were closed.

Then he told his Honda dealer what he was doing, and found out 100 octane Avgas burns hotter than normal gasoline and the dealer has seen several generators where the inverter overheated and burned out from the excessive engine heat.

Here's a link to the video:

https://youtu.be/7m1xcX_X0wc
 
Yes, we had overheating problems with the Great Lakes which were solved with an additional oil cooler and a dedicated air intake for it.

The Lakes gave me my first aerobatic and tailwheel training. Those big oleo struts were sure forgiving and there were times early on that I needed it.  ;)  It was a fun plane but an hour or so of open cockpit at a time was enough for me. It was a tight fit. Front to back measurement of the two holes was 6" less than my Acro Sport II.
 
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