The above photos tell the end of the Oshkosh 2005 trip story but here is the rest. Since N91KS still has oil and coolant temps up near limits, I decided to tag along with Don Herzsein in N82V. We took off very early on Friday July 22. We had a great flight with beautiful clear skys after getting out of the LA basin. We had oxigen and cruised at 11,500 at about 160 KTAS and only about 8.5 gph. Don wanted to get as far as we could which got us to Delhart, TX. There we had lunch and filled the tanks. It was very hot and the DA was up around 8700' (IIRCC). We had a right rudder control cable come loose while preflighting but got that fixed in short order. Then flew on to Billiard airport near Topeaka, KS. There we spent the night. The next morning the weather north was a bit iffy with thunder storm bands. We waited for a while until it looked like there was a route if we went to the west and then a little north of Osh. That worked pretty well. Don's GPS/moving maps was just God awful but my Avmap did just great. We always knew exactly where we were. The FSS was so busy with people trying to get help into Osh that we could not get thru. We headed as indicated in our weather brief and it went very well up to Nodine, WI. At that point it was time to turn East but it didn't look too good with a couple of thunder cells in that direction. We finally got a hold of a ground control guy at one of the near by airports who was a big help. He was able to look at some radar maps and direct us between the cells. There was only about 10 min. where the weather look ominous (always VFR) and then it broke out to pretty good weather near Osh. We flew the high performance GA arrival starting at Fisk and then over Rippon. It was not too bad. The adventure at Osh definately had it's highs and lows. It rained that first night. We had put the tarp under the tent to keep water from soaking in but we made one little mistake. We left the tarp sticking out around the tent so the rain ran off the tent onto the tarp and flooded the bottom of the tent. After we fixed that, it did pretty well. Not too much got wet. The next day was stiffling hot! Then on Monday night it started pouring! It started blowing. There was tunder and lighning all around the field. We ran back to the tent from the Presidents Reception but were already soaked. The tent stayed dry for a while but when the winds kicked up to 40 mph or so and the rain came down in buckets, there was no way. I decided to go hide in the showers while Don tried to mop up. After about an hour I went back since there was no place to lay down in the shower trailer. The bags were sopping wet, our cloths were soaked. But we had no choice, so we tried to sleep in wet bags and did for a while. By morning the storm had past. We put clothes lines all over the airplane and were able to get the bags dry by that night. The rest of the Osh stay was as expected, lots of friends, exhibits, shows and just hanging out at our tent talking aiplane to passersby.
The trip home went just great as far as Liberal, KS. That was about 4 hrs and a good fuel stop. We had lunch and taxied out. We did our run up and started a slow taxi to the runway. All of a sudden the airplane shook like a blowout at 80 on the freway. Don pulled the throttle right away and shut it down. I proved that it is possible for the right passenger to exit the plane quickly, as I was out of that plane before Don even started to get out. To my amasment 2/3 of one prop blade was GONE!. We found the missing peice about 200 ft off in a grassy field. Even though the winglet and ground blocked the path in those directions, the blade must have exited upward and cleared every thing. There was no sign of impact damage on the blade. Just two mating ends filled with splitters like a thousand toothpicks. Our trip ended with a flight home commercial. |
