Time to fly!

[seneca2e]

Has anybody got the spring fever to get their Brantlys out and fly some? I flew a Colemill Conversion 310 today we'd been working on 4 years and that was pretty exciting. Talk about climbing like a home sick angel! Most people at the airport had never seen it fly lol.

Hopefully we'll get some Brantly flight reports drifting in here soon! I've got the Brantly B2B maintenance and parts manuals along with all the SI, SL, and SB coming so I can read up on these things even more. The ice cream cone look is truly unique. Has anyone actually seen one painted like a ice cream cone lol? Must have been someone, somewhere, at some time that did it .

[Al Owen]

Come on down to Sun-N-Fun.. It's only 4 weeks away... We'll spend some time with the boys from Tampa and look their B2B over!!

[seneca2e]

Al,
I'm planning on it and looking forward to it! Hope there's a lot of choppers in Choppertown this year!

[SunHelo Mark]

The ice cream cone look is truly unique. Has anyone actually seen one painted like a ice cream cone lol?

Wow! What a great idea! (light bulb goes on)

[Al Owen]

seneca2e

I'll be there all week.. I'll be camping and working (part time) as a volunteer in the tower (advisory service) for the helicopter pattern. Look me up if you get a chance and we can sit in the shade, sip on something cold and tell war stories..that is after we get tired of walking around looking at the flying machines...

My motorhome should be just past the briefing tent when you enter ChopperTown.. I plan on having the yellow V.H.P.A. logo hanging on the side of the coach.. ALL are welcome to stop by and visit.. We could also keep a list of visitors to see who's around...

Bill Meyer (choppertown boss) has been getting a lot of correspondence from helicopter guys, so I think we'll have a good turn out..

Beside our friends from SunHelo that have indicated they will be there, one interesting aircraft that is scheduled to come is John Spurlings RotorWay Exec with a C-18 turbine for power.. The pictures and videos look good, but I want to see it fly in person..

Looking forward to meeting all that attend...

[Ron Spiker]

Not Brantly related, but I got to give a BFR today in a beautifully restored OH-58. Wow.
Here we are after just landing at my place. Then put two of my boys in the back seat and headed back to the airport.

[Swedekap]

Hello folks,

I've been watching the site for a while but decided to post on this thread because the last one was Spring08. I'm the proud driver of N888CF and have been flying quite a bit lately. This cold air has made my helo very spritely (well...somewhat spritely anyway) . I have recently put some new gear in my helo, and thought we might share some "product review" information.

SPOT Tracker (Kind of an EPIRB thingy, but much cheaper and it takes Lithium (only) AA batteries. It has several functions using a satellite/GPS based system as opposed to cell phone towers.
-You can leave it in Tracker mode and it will broadcast your position every 10 minutes to your site on their website. Mine is: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/face ... rYy5Ptk2aW Their basic website is http://www.findmespot.com.
-You can broadcast an "I'm ok" signal to an e-mail or cell phone any time you want to.
-You can send a non-life threatening "help" message to an e-mail or phone.
-You can send a "911" type help message to their message center
All of these include lat/long from its internal GPS. I got mine from West Marine when they were having a special (free tracker service for a year and $30 West gift card). I think this thing is quite good and quite a good value. I struggled with buying a hard mounted 406 ELT, a personal EPIRB, or this, and I think I made the right choice. I know flylow has one also and likes it.

Garmin 327 transponder- Love it, wouldn't change a thing and I use the "count up" feature as a backup for fuel endurance.

Vertical card compass-Love it.

Not a product, but I've been wondering about the practicality of VFR flight plans, since I fly at low altitudes and wasn't sure I could get coverage from the nearest FSS remote antenna. I was able to raise the FSS starting at about 1500' near KCPK Chesapeake, VA with a little static and it got better above that. If you've thought it impractical it's worth a try anyway. I'm planning to use VFR flight plans more often because of this test.

While you are on the horn with FSS, how about giving them a quick PIREP. It's a useful, but underused weather product and I would love to see the Brantly community really step up the pireps. Although very hard to see the OAT in my Brantly while flying.

Swede