Arty's Ultimate Ultralight Adventure

With two cycle engines like my Rotax 503 (approx. 55 hp) there is a maintenance schedule that I adhere to fairly carefully. I took the engine in a few weeks ago and after having it fine-tuned (new gaskets, decarboned pistons, cleaning carbuerators,) a friend here at Sandy River Airport re-installed it for me. It was ready to try out on Saturday, but the weather wasn't very cooperative and so I only got to do a couple of crow hops and one time around the patch. (Translation for non-pilots: A crow hop is taking off at one end of the runway, staying fairly low, and landing at the other end. You never leave the runway. Going "around the patch" means taking off, and then circling the airport and landing again.)

It was such a wonderful sound to hear the engine start right up the first time - sometimes after an engine's been taken apart and put back together they don't always do that and you have to baby them a bit to get them going. To me, the sound of an aircraft engine is a thrilling sound - and even more thrilling when it's mine and working perfectly.

Yesterday the weather was better, and I went out early to fly since it was supposed to start snowing/raining again. It was cold - in the high 30's - so I was pretty bundled up. Another pilot was just coming back in from a flight and he said the flying was great - really calm air. That's what I love about winter flying - calm, smooth air. I could hardly wait to take off, and Wolf (yes that's his name) said he'd refuel and fly with me.

As I took off, I was listening hard to the engine. I couldn't believe how good it sounded and how wonderful it was to be up in the sky again. Grey and overcast, but the ceiling was at 3500' and I was flying at 2000-2500', so I had plenty of room. I felt really light without any of my camping gear and I was burning only 3 gal/hr.

As we flew south down the Willamette Valley, I became aware that I was tense. My feet were pressing hard against the rudder pedals and my breathing was coming in shallow breaths. I realized that for me, any time I "test" an engine that has been worked on, there's a little bit of anxiety that something will fail. I have absolute trust in both the mechanic who worked on it and the fellow pilot who re-installed it - but there are so many little things that can go wrong. I try to fly as though my engine will quit at any time - always thinking "If it dies now, where will I land?" Yet when I fly in super-familiar territory that question isn't always in my mind. Yesterday it was. I was scanning every field as though I'd never seen it before.

John had installed new sensors for my CHT and my dual EGT (engine monitoring instruments) and the CHT wasn't working, nor was one of the EGTs. Darn, we'll have to pull the nose pod off and figure out what's going on. But flying without those instruments is certainly possible, so I didn't let that shorten my flight. The cold did that - after about 45 minutes, even with two chemical handwarmers in each mitten and thermal long johns, jeans, ski pants, turtle neck, wool sweater, ski jacket and flight suit, I was getting really cold. My lips were so stiff I had difficulty talking into my radio mic to let Wolf know I was turning around and heading back.

The other pilots tease me about when I'm going to get rid of the Drifter and get a fully-enclosed plane. But there's something about flying out in the open, feeling the wind beat against my face, with no plexiglass to look through or tubing to look around, that makes me feel free as a bird. I retort that when I'm an old lady I'll get an enclosed plane. So far no one has dared to say that by some people's standards I'm already an old lady.