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Weekend in Charleston

YellowJacket RV9

Well Known Member
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This past weekend my wife and I celebrated our first anniversary and also her 30th birthday, which is a lot for a husband to get right. She has always wanted to visit Charleston SC, and I hadn't been since a somewhat inebriated fraternity formal back in college. Being able to make trips like this are one reason she has been so supportive of the RV project, and I'm up for any excuse to fly.

We took off Friday afternoon before the typical FL thunderstorms started popping up, and headed up towards Jacksonville before following the coast up to Charleston.

I had just finished installing my main gear pants, and was excited to see how much faster I had gotten. If for some reason I found my ball way off-center I had already decided I would land and just take them off. As it turned out, she still flies with the ball dead-center, and about 8 knots faster.

While picking up flight following I'm pretty sure I got a shout-out from another RV heading to Dunnellon (Jesse, that you?). We leveled out at 9,500', and I started playing with the red knob and admiring the MPGs (peaked at 23nm/gal). Cracking the throttle yields a pretty good fuel distribution, and some carb heat helps, but I still can't quite get LOP. Still, at 60% I was making 145KTAS getting far better mileage than my Tahoe. I still haven't done my lower intersection fairings or the forward upper intersection fairing. I think I still have a few more knots to gain.

IMG_20160826_164038021.jpg


My wife tends to get sleepy at altitude, which I'll take as a compliment. I was busy thinking about how amazing it was to be doing all this in a plane I built in my garage. Thanks, Van.



We passed JAX and started heading up the coast. ADS-B showed some storm activity just south of KSAV but we didn't see any signs of it. Pretty soon we were approaching KLRO (Mt Pleasant), where Stephanie got some nice shots of downtown and also the Mt Pleasant area.



We landed and were immediately waved into a spot to tie-down. And they didn't even hide my ugly duckling way back in a corner. She's beautiful to me, and as Vlad knows, it's more fun to put money into the fuel tank vs a paint shop.



Within 15 minutes we had an Uber car at the FBO to take us downtown where we had a hotel for the weekend, which was right across the street from Emanuel AME Church, site of the tragic shooting a while back.



Without a car, we walked everywhere, which was really a non-issue. Weekend activities consisted of meals at Rarebit, High Cotton, 82 Queen, and drinks at a few other spots. You really can't go wrong eating or drinking in Charleston. It's all really, ridiculously good. We ended Saturday night with a Ghost tour, also highly recommended.

Wanting to get back to FL in time to pick up our dog from the kennel, we Uber'ed back to the airport and took off today around noon, and did a quick orbit over Ft Sumter, sharing the view with a tour helicopter, and then headed southwest, with a nice tailwind.



We also kept pace with a Mooney that had departed right before us heading the same direction. I watched him neck and neck with us on ADS-B all the way to Jacksonville, where we both climbed to 12,500' to stay above most of the clouds. We were able to pick our way around a few of the larger buildups, and then ducked down to 4500 near Ocala for the rest of the flight to ZPH.

Approaching the pattern and getting slowed down, I pulled carb heat and the cable popped back a bit too easily, and too far. I was pretty sure the cable had either snapped or the connection to the carb heat door had failed. Either way, I knew it wasn't an immediate concern, and we landed in an 8 knot crosswind ("not your best" Stephanie said...) and taxied to the hangar. I pulled the cowl and found that the VA-122 carb heat arm had actually failed at the bend.

I had thought this may happen as I had had to bend that piece in the opposite direction in order to use it. The new Van's heat muff and crossover exhaust position things such that the carb heat arm needed to be installed on the left, instead of right side of the FAB, meaning I had to reverse the orientation of the lever. It will be an easy fix with a new piece of steel that I will fab up, but will require removing the FAB and probably also removing the top plate from the fiberglass box. Oh well. All in all 5 more hours on the hobbs and a happy wife.

Chris
 
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Sounds like a great trip, Chris. I always recommend to people that they try some trips like that specifically for the wife so they will continue to be onboard with the airplane.

It was me you heard.

Come visit sometime. If you think yours is ugly, you should see N399DC.
 
Sounds like a great trip, Chris. I always recommend to people that they try some trips like that specifically for the wife so they will continue to be onboard with the airplane.

It was me you heard.

Come visit sometime. If you think yours is ugly, you should see N399DC.

Thanks Jesse,

I am going to plan a trip up to see you and get my prop balanced sometime soon!

Chris
 
Brings good memories Chris thanks. Did you buzz the old girl Yorktown she likes that. :D
 
Hey, Chris,
Saw your plane at Mt. Pleasant on Saturday. (Actually, thought it was Vlad's)
An RV-8 landed 2 minutes before me, so when I started reading this I thought it was you.
Right, you can't go wrong with Charleston restaurants.
Yuri
 
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Nice write up Chris, sounds like a good trip.
We do Charleston quite a bit due to having a grandson there.
We use KJZI and find it a very convenient location to downtown and they have rental cars on site which is important to us.
For us Savannah is another great weekend trip.
 
Great write up. Hope to take the wife up that way soon.

If you think your 9 is ugly come up and see mine. We pertly much identical. If you come up we can go up to Jesse's. His should make you feel better.
 
Jesse, Never said your RV was ugly! Just said yours makes me feel better. Of course every time I stop by your hanger there's any number of RVs around that puts mine to shame.
 
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