Adventures of a first time airplane buyer



Adventures of a first time airplane buyer

Chapter 3 – Departing Florida for Georgia in VoloCindy

What is “VoloCindy”? It is the name of my airplane, N3372V, a 1975 C150M. And here’s how it came about. From the start I knew I was going to give the airplane a name. Cindy and I (mostly I) like to name our stuff after aviation people or things. I’ve heard it said that it’s nonsense to name inanimate objects, but we think it’s kind of fun and totally harmless, so why not do it?

Cindy loves cats. I love cats too but mostly I love flying. So wherever we live has always been named "The Flying Cats Ranch". This was a compromise name we both came up with. Even though it's never been a real honest to goodness ranch that name has always been what we call home. Our email address has always been flyingcats@--- since we first got email many years ago.

We name our vehicles too, but not for aviation. Instead we try to describe the vehicle itself. Our 1987 Chevy Biscayne we called “Biscuit”. Cindy’s car is a 1997 Avalon that we call “Avie”. It has special significance because her late mother’s name was Avalone. My current vehicle, a 2003 gold Highlander, is named “Goldie”. An old riding lawn mower we had was orange in color, so we named her Blossom, as in Orange Blossom Special. My John Deere rider is simply Johnnie.

And then there are our cats, and we’ve had a lot of them the past 35 years. For most we have followed the aviation theme. Some of the best ones included Sally, Lindy, Boeing, Bomber, Aerial, Amy and Orville. But our favorite cat of all time is named Clyde, after Mr. Cessna of course. As I’m writing this Clyde is lying here on the desk in front of me, snoring.

When I knew that N3372V was the airplane I would buy, I began thinking of a good name for her. Of course, the name had to be female and I wanted it to begin with “V” for obvious reasons. When Wayne and Rita Reynolds owned N3372V she was named “Victoria”. But that name held no special significance for me, other than it matched the tail number.

What I really wanted to do was come up with an aircraft name that honored either my late mother, Mabel Irene, my late big sister Erdith Lynn, or my first and only wife Cindy Marie.

But there are no “V” letters in any of those. So I started perusing the dictionary for words that started with “V” and that also somehow related to aviation and to my mom, sister or spouse. I knew the name had to be unique or else I didn’t want it.

When I stumbled upon the word Velocity I realized that the last 2 letters could be changed from “ty” to “ndy” which would make it Velocindy. Not bad I thought. I mentioned it to my friend and fellow hang glider pilot Bill Finn, who is a pretty good wordsmith. He immediately said “Why don’t you change the prefix from “Velo” to “Volo”, because Volo in Latin means “To fly”.

So that settled it. I capitalized Cindy’s name and there it was – VoloCindy – pronounced just like Velocity except “Cindy” instead of “City”. That would be the name of my airplane. I followed up by coming up with a logo, the rough draft of which is shown below. I am having an artist and web designer friend, Dean Funk, print up some decals and vinyl stickers which I’ll apply to the exterior and interior of VoloCindy.

[pic]

VoloCindy

I toyed with the idea of prefixing VoloCindy with the words “Low”, “No” or “Slow”, which would better describe the Cessna 150 cruise speed, or more accurately, the lack thereof. But those words seemed too negative and just didn’t fit, so I left it as simply VoloCindy.

My plan for flying VoloCindy home on Saturday Nov 14 was to have the course plotted and all the waypoints entered into the Lowrance GPS before I went to bed Friday night. As it turned out I didn’t get them entered into the GPS until right before I departed Eustis.

I had planned a little sight seeing into the trip by making Jumbolair-Greystone (17FL) one of my waypoints. This is the home and airfield of John Travolta and his B707. I wouldn’t stop there but just wanted to fly over and get a few pictures. It was very close to being directly on the route home and I thought it would be fun.

Friday night Wayne helped me print out the 15 or so waypoints we had plotted. We used the AOPA web site and printed each one in kneeboard format. I carefully folded each sheet in half so it would fit on the yoke mounted clipboard. I planned to use Wayne’s method of having them all in order on the clipboard, the first waypoint on the top of the stack and the last waypoint on the bottom. Then as the flight progressed and I passed each one, I would pull it off and put it in the flight bag, keeping them in order, and revealing the next waypoint. And so on.

I planned for each leg to be from 1.5 to 2.5 hours long and initially thought that 2 or maybe 3 fuel stops would be sufficient for the 412nm flight. Departing from Eustis I would not have full tanks so I planned on a first fuel stop in Ocala which was about 35 miles away.

I didn’t think that much about the headwind I would have. Maybe it was the promising Weather Channel forecast Friday evening that seemed to indicate the NW winds would be greatly diminished by Saturday. And maybe I was excited because they were forecasting clear skies all the way home. The winds were a lot less Saturday than they were on the previous 2 days, but they were still more than I had anticipated. Plus, they were right on the nose for most of the trip. Not good.

Wayne and I had come to a financial agreement Thursday on his Lowrance 2000c portable GPS and all of his spare and used parts, none of which were in our original deal. After I arrived on Wednesday he decided to go ahead and let them go with the airplane because he wouldn’t need them anymore. The spares were numerous and he agreed to let me take them and the GPS for a ridiculously low price. This was icing on the cake. Or as my friend Steve “Crash” Corbin would say “It’s all gravy on the ice cream”. I was thrilled.

We thought it best to weigh everything before packing all that stuff in the plane. So after the annual on Friday and after we closed the plane back up we out got his scales and weighed each and every little thing that was going back home with me.

|Item |Weight |

|Airplane (empty) |1118.0 |

|Fuel |135.0 |

|Bob |175.0 |

|Suitcase |21.0 |

|Flight bag | 18.0 |

|Documentation bag #1 |9.0 |

|Documentation bag #2 |15.0 |

|Lowrance GPS |4.0 |

|Cleaning supplies tub |10.5 |

|The Claw tie down bag |9.0 |

|Rudder gust locks (two) |3.0 |

|Nice tow bar (for show) |3.2 |

|Old tow bar (for hangar) |1.8 |

|Cowl plugs |1.0 |

|Knee boards and Ram mounts |4.8 |

|Spare parts in shoebox |13.0 |

|Additives tub (TCP, MMO, etc) |18.0 |

|Used parts (post office box) |13.0 |

|Used parts (paper box) |13.0 |

|Six plastic trays of hardware |16.0 |

|Window sun shades |3.0 |

|Total fly away weight |1604.3 |

I wanted to get as early a start as possible so I could make it back home before dark. I knew I was not going to be doing any night flying with these old eyes and having zero night time since the late 1960’s. No sir, none of that for me thank you very much. That was a sound decision but one of the few good ones I made during the entire trip.

My first mistake was not being very diligent about understanding the navigation systems in the airplane and how long it would take to plug in all the waypoints in the GPS. VoloCindy is IFR certified but I am not, so flying VFR all the way was in order. Ideally, I had wanted to do some VOR and ADF work with Wayne before I left. But by the time Saturday morning’s departure time rolled around I didn’t have time for that.

Looking back it was stupid to rely solely on the GPS for navigation on the entire trip, but that’s what I ended up doing. I was in too much of a hurry to get home and thought I would not need to use anything but the GPS. It’s pretty easy to call up waypoints and keep the little airplane on the red line and keep the red line pointing straight up the GPS panel, right? I did not consider what might happen if the GPS failed for some reason along the way. Fortunately, I didn’t have to deal with any navigation instrument failures. The key words in that statement are “navigation instrument” and you will see why later.

I didn’t sleep well Friday night because I was excited about the trip and my brain was on overload. It seemed I just tossed and turned all night. I didn’t get to bed too late, but just didn’t sleep like I wanted. I’ve had such problems in the past and it didn’t seem like a big deal when morning rolled around and I felt something less than fully rested.

We all left the house about 8:30 Saturday morning and went to McDonalds for breakfast. Now, I’m not a big fan of any fast food place and generally avoid them like the plague. In fact, that was the first time in about 15 years that I had been to Micky D’s. I have an old saying about McDonalds: “If you can find a McDonalds there is usually good food nearby”. But I’m not a health nut either, probably because I’ve been blessed with fairly good health all my life and didn’t seem to need a straight and narrow diet philosophy. I can consume coffee and peanut M&M’s like there’s no tomorrow. I try to limit my coffee intake to mornings only because it messes with my sleep.

Although the Reynolds family made coffee every morning and I drank a cup or two, they were small cups. I did not bring my 20oz insulated mug and I wasn’t getting my usual large dose of 30 to 40 ounces of coffee daily while in Florida. The result was a very slight, dull headache by Friday evening. Not a bad one, but it was still there. Maybe that was why I didn’t sleep very well.

After breakfast at the Golden Arches, we went to the hangar to do the post annual test flight. Wayne took it around the patch solo. He said “Why risk 2 lives after maintenance has been done when you only need to risk one”. That sounded weird but was ok with me. When he got back he switched to the right seat, I got in the left seat, and we went around the patch again. Everything seemed fine except the EGT gauge was registering only cylinders 2 and 3. But we knew that from the post annual run up.

Ok, I’ll buy it.

Off to the bank we went to close the deal. When I walked in we were greeted by the SunTrust person. I pointed to Wayne and said “He wants to open an account and I’m going to put a bunch of money in it”. He thought that was pretty funny and asked if I would do the same for him. I politely declined. 30 minutes later Wayne had a SunTrust account with my money in it (which was now his money) to cover the plane and spare parts.

We went back to the hangar, took a couple of “new owner” photos and packed up the plane. I put the suitcase in the copilot seat with the seat belt holding it in place. It became my in flight table for holding charts and the pilot bag. We then started loading the rest of the stuff. The heaviest items went in the copilot floor followed by the lighter items in the baggage area. The heaviest items in back ones went right behind the seats and the rest further aft or lying on top. With the plane fully loaded the baggage area was filled up to the bottom of the windows, with the window shades lying on top of everything. It looked like a lot to me but Wayne said it was nothing compared to what he had seen at the Clinton Fly In.

I figured that the taxi and run up on my departures would burn a half gallon or so which would put me right at gross weight for take offs with full fuel. I would be departing Eustis with about 1/2 fuel which was more than enough to make Ocala with reserve. So far it was looking good and no rules had been broken. It was about 11:30am and I knew the sun was setting about 6pm. I might still be able to make it home before dark.

And then I taxied out for take off and all that changed.

(End of Chapter 3)

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