I haven't posted in ages, and I appreciate everyone following us in Hungary on the team blog.  Someday I will have time to post more of that trip - but today I remember my friend and teammate.  Please keep his family in your prayers.

 Blue skies good friend

We've already had a little bit of 'contest drama' from the other teams directed at the US - the guys got the planes here on Monday and because few teams were here there were open practice slots.  They flew in the box, as did members of other teams that were here.  The contest bulletins clearly said box times wouldn't be duplicated until everyone had a chance to fly, but didn't say there was a prohibition on flying more than one practice in the box (nothing in the CIVA rules says that).  Then yesterday they were told that there had been a complaint that since not everyone was able to fly in the box more than once the "US team shouldn't get to", in spite of the fact that all of our original practice slots were for today, and that if we did an official protest would be submitted - we'd win the protest, but not win friends.  So, the guys that had previously flown in the box decided to sit out today even though their previous flights weren't as focused as they'd have been if they'd known it was their only one.  It was a good call and we hope the other teams, judges and officials will give us credit for cooperation.  So, only Jessy and I flew in the box today since we hadn't flown before.  The box here is very well laid out and visible - second only to the one at US Nationals in Dennison Tx.  I flew pretty decent, though about half of my snaps were sloppy.  I was mostly focusing on getting the sight picture for the box rather than figure quality, but those judges are certainly there and watching and forming opinions so I wish I'd nailed those a little better.

Tomorrow is the opening briefing and drawing lots for flight order - It technically shouldn't matter, but it does....I sure hope for the last third, or at least the middle third.  Now off to get some sleep - it may be difficult tonight!

A panorama of Prague cityline from the national castle - Sharon stayed in a hotel that was attached to the national castle.  Click the link for larger version.

Sharon stayed in Prague while I rented a car and drove down to Hosin (about 2 hr drive) where the team is practicing.  After beautiful weather all week for the team, the clouds and rain showed up with me.  But, we all got one flight in today (Saturday).  Hopefully the weather will clear for the last day and a half training camp before departing for the contest site in Hungary on Monday.  We each get only one 15 min familiarization flight in the contest box before the contest begins on Thursday so this is it - an entire spring of practicing, planning, stressing, is here!

The people have been very welcoming, but very little English speaking in the CZ countryside.  And I don't think they've ever seen a cow - pigs are the main course here - pig sausage at breakfast, pig stew at lunch, pork steak at dinner.  yeesh, I don't think I'll eat pork again for a while....

Jody posted a nice update mid-week at www.teamusaero.com so keep an eye out on that page as I'm probably going to be "logging off" to focus on flying in a day or two.

now for the REAL bonus!  who knew???  Nik entertains during a weather delay.

www.TeamUSAero.com

Went to the Jackson Michigan contest last weekend.  Last year I was running late getting there and went over Lake Michigan to make it before dark - the whole way over I was thinking what a long swim that would be if I lost power!  So, in spite of it adding about 40% more time, I chose to go around the lake both ways this time!  3 hr flight rather than 2 hrs, so not really that big of a deal.

Like the rest of the country, the contest was blistering hot on Saturday - really oppressive.  Not much camera work because I was also judging several categories.  So much so that all the time in the sun really got to me Saturday and I was ill feeling all the way through Sunday afternoon.

I was first in the Known, though like Seward I felt pretty good about it but actually scored below my average.  My Free scored the highest I've scored in a Free at 2700 (88%).  The Unknown was a good design - inverted entry, cross-box spin and an outside 60 deg roller.  Lot's of headwork.  I felt prepared going into the flight and had a pretty comfortable lead - not enough to overcome a zero, but enough I just needed to fly solidly.  So what do I do?  I started out really nicely, flew the highest K figure well, worked the box just like I wanted, nailed the spin....and then snapped out of the outside roller.  Just had too much rudder still in when I added the G in the pull.  Blasted.  First zero in competition in over a year.  Turns out I still wound up in 1st (just barely), but I just can't zero anything in Europe.  Hopefully I got THAT out of my system!

MI contest results

See ya', and thanks for following my blog this spring and summer!  I'll be back after WAAC.

Craig.

Seward contest results

Picture of my plane next to Doug Roth's Staudacher.  Doug's is the Ratsrepus (superstar backward) that John Staudacher built for himself - I think #3 of that design - and is the start of the line of the Staudacher wing.

A few more pictures from the contest:

I think we have a reasonable plan for reassembly (and then disassembly) in Europe, but there are a few things we'll need to get there to make the job easier and hopefully we have a reasonable place to put it together - at least flat pavement (I don't think we'll have a nice shady hangar like we had in North Carolina this weekend.

Kelly's airplane goes in a box this weekend and on a boat Monday for the trip to Hungary - things are starting to get serious!

Panzl is still down - motor is disassembled at the shop.  With luck next week the motor will get reassembled. Then to get it back on the airplane in time for maybe a couple weeks of final touchup practice.

Cool pic huh?  Link to a pass through the Q flight showing all my facial contortions!  I think I'll try just flying with a straight face - maybe it'll help!

And, Marty's son Jody came out and filmed quite a bit of our flights.  Plan is for him to go to Europe with us and film in Europe - that's cool because now we'll have some video from the ground.  The link to the right is to Jody's Youtube page with my flight, and he also has some of the other team pilots in Grenada.

Jessy (teammate) flew down to MS with me, and flew the Viking while I ferried the Staudacher from/to TN.

And it's a good thing his airplane is back operational....because on the ferry flight bringing the Panzl back from Florida my plane sprung an oil leak and I had to leave it in Iowa.   Gary and I went down Wed, pulled the motor and transported it back to Minneapolis.  Turns out to have been loose throughbolts/case fretting.  Repairable but I don't know the timeframe.

The last weekend of April I headed down to Florida for the last official team training camp.  The team is flying Sebring this weekend but I was not able to attend.  Next weekend is Grenada MS, then the airplanes go in boxes for their sea journey to Europe!

Camp weekend was tough!  Nick put us through unknowns until we were worn out.  Day 2 had a 14 figure 415k unknown - and all of these involve just 30 minutes or so of prep time before going to fly.  Great practice. I put up a video of one of the Unknowns from the weekend. 

Oh, and yes, flying the Eagle - as fun as it really is - definitely hosed up my feel and timing.  Took the first day of camp to get back used to the Panzl.  At least I kept up my G tolerance.

When you go to my youtube channel, check out my "camera departure" video also - watch the whole thing - quite a different camera viewpoint than I've used before!  and you'll see why I haven't video'd recently....

just fooling around - I'm not much of an airshow pilot

ever heard of "planking"?  me neither, but this one could be the team picture I think!

No video of the flight today because.....I've lost my n-flightcam!  I guess it's gone to join the several ipods, binoculars, phones, etc I've lost - good grief.

The last weekend of Feb I went back to Florida for training camp.  First day Kelly's airplane had a problem - a few know the details, not necessary to expand, but the plane is down until early May.  So, that camp was cut short for me.  I returned to MN to lousy weather for well over a week, so no flying.  Then mid-March I flew the Panzl down to Florida for 2 days of practice with Mark (teammate) and 3 days of training camp.  By the end of the camp my flying was finally getting back up to proficient - my free in the Sunday "pretend contest" flight was the best I've flown.  I left the Panzl in Florida for Kelly and I to use down there until the Staudacher is back operational.  Unfortunately work travel prevented me from attending the Keystone contest (my teammates finished 1-4 and 7 in Advanced in the contest) - and 2, 3 and 4 were CLOSE, separated by only 23pts (of roughly 7,500) - nice flying guys.

So, for now I'll be flying the Eagle in MN and the Panzl in Florida until May.  Look for future videos in April to be shot from the Eagle - it's so happy it gets to fly again I can hear it giggling in the hangar!

By the way, before I took the Panzl to Florida I did a little more oil leak chasing and found the principal leak and fixed it - finally have a clean engine.  That project took way too many hours.

Finally, some new sequences:  to the right is the free program I'm settling in on.  The old one just didn't work well with Nik's spin technique - plus I've found my new favorite, a snap and a half on top of a half-loop down and wanted to work that in as well as get rid of that outside half-loop up (no fun to keep practicing).

Finally, to cap off this post, Aaron and I have a bottle of scotch somewhere this summer on a contest in Sportsman flying a 3-figure free.  I really like this one and can't wait!

Mark's Giles and the Panzl between practice flights

My new Advanced Free

the world's best Sportsman Free - flyable in a biplane or monoplane, minimal altitude loss.

Met a fellow Ch 78 member at Litchfield for acro practice Sunday.  Though the sun was out, it was still a bit chilly so we critiqued from inside the airport building.  Forrest came up with an interesting approach to critiquing line lengths before and after rolls using a dry-erase marker on the window tracing my lines - pretty cool!

New video this week is my free program at Litchfield, using the camera position that shows rudder and stick movements.  This was my first turn in the box and I wasn't flying very well.  My second flight, after the line length exercise, I flew the Known and flew it pretty smoothly - but of course didn't bother to turn the camera on (sure, I know, big fish story).  I still like this free, but will probably change the half loop up before the spin to some sort of vertical line so that I can use Nik's spin entry easier.

check out the head movement at 0:41 in the video - and I thought my neck soreness was from motorcycling!

Links to the right of pics from the weekend (I need to buy a new camera, that one seems to have problems!) and an interesting video camera position showing throttle, stick and rudder movements during one of the practice unknowns (this will be thoroughly boring to all but the most hardcore acro nut).  The sequence is the 2012 compulsory figures, but in a jumbled order as a training tool.  Interesting because I'd have bet money I used two hands during snaps - looks like I think about it but get my hand back to throttle before the snap even starts.

Panzl is down for annual - hope to have it back together to fly some this weekend.

I believe the one I was mostly looking for was the oil filter adapter mounting surface to the accessory case.  I trued up that surface and reinstalled with a new gasket.  But in the process I determined there were several other minor leaks, mostly from all the push rod tube seals.  So, I replaced them too!  Got it all back together mid-week, but no flyable weather since then.  Looking out at an 800 ft OC today (Sunday).  Not likely I'll get to fly until next weekend.

Had the IAC Ch 78 winter gathering at my house last night.  Usual suspects showed up to partake of a fine bottle of locally distilled Irish whiskey, some bbq, airplane talk and a few youtube videos.  Fun time.

Here's another pic of the Eagle from Nationals - this is after my pre-contest practice flight.

Still trying to pinpoint and resolve an oil leak, with the airplane back apart at the moment.  Should have it back together by the weekend - hoping for another flyable weekend. 

I posted some video of flying earlier in January on my youtube page.  A couple cold flights!  Click the link to the right for one, and check out the rest of my youtube sight for others.

also, here's a pic of the Eagle from Nationals - I love that airplane.

On the plus side, I got to fly Kelly's airplane for the first time and the good news is it flys very similarly to mine and is a great airplane.  We had a spark plug die on Saturday, but fortunately Mark had good condition used plugs in the hangar so we borrowed one and got the issue sorted pretty quickly.

Next camp is three weekends from now.  At the very least I WILL have the spin technique down by then.

I'll update after the team camp weekend in a couple weeks!

On the plus side, I got installed a "whistlestop" that Tom made for me to put in the breather line in case the back port freezes over during really cold weather flights.

the breather port inserted in the breather hose

Thanks to Aaron for transporting me down to TX to get the Panzl in his family Skylane RG.  It was a great trip and I really enjoyed his company.  We did one critiquing flight in Pocahontas - I have a lot to learn about the Panzl!

Kelly's Staudacher