AOPA Expo

Well, I decided to head down to Philadelphia Thursday. My wife knows the city
pretty well, so I've always counted on here for directions when we drive down.
Wednesday night, I started trying to pick her brains for the best way to get
there. After a half hour of futile exercise in that direction, I decided to fly.

Left the house about 8:30 and got in the air a bit before 10:00. It was already
clear that I'd miss the first seminar I wanted to attend. I reported over
Robinsville, just like the AOPA procedure sheet recommended, and PNE told me to
report over the Turnpike bridge. Well, I found the river, but wasn't real sure
which bridge was correct. PNE gave me vectors for that. I ran right base for
33, just like they wanted, and got set up on final. About 300' AGL, some cretin
took a fuel truck across the airport, and I was told to go around. Another pilot
later told me that the ground controller reamed the truck driver royally.

Then somebody stepped on the tower transmission while they were telling me what
to do next, so I'm left drifting out over the Philly suburbs while three planes
conduct business with the tower. Finally got turned around and down. I got the
last parking spot at Atlantic Aviation. The controllers were surprizingly cool
for such a hectic day.

Caught the bus to the convention center. Got there just as "my" first seminar
was adjourning. I then took in part of a spiel by JPI, decided to skip the next
seminar, and headed for the exhibits.

It's a pretty good deal. Unlike Osh and Sun'n Fun, everything is slanted towards
those of us who fly certificated aircraft. Even Lancair wasn't touting kits.
Almost every exhibitor had something to do with aircraft, too, although there
was one cookware vendor and another guy selling ladders.

Diamond had their four seat aircraft on display, and it's beautiful. One neat
design trick they've copied from cars is to use rear seats that fold completely
forward and a folding rear bulkhead that produces a huge cargo compartment.

Honda had their new engine there. It appears to be about the same size as my
O-320 but puts out 225 hp. Geared, injected, with FADEC. You do have to figure
out someplace to put the radiator, though. The rep said they haven't decided to
produce it yet, but the earliest deliver date would be 2005 if they do.

A Thielert 125 hp diesel was also on display. It reminds me of the slant six;
the whole engine is mounted at about a 45 degree angle, with the prop drive on
the side (which puts it on top).

Maule Air had a small booth in the last row, and I spoke with Rautgunde for a
while. She said that Ray was around someplace, so I made a note to come back
later.

The Mitre people had a very interesting exhibit. They're a research group, and
they were demonstrating a TFR alert item they're working on. They expect the
eventual implementation to result in a unit about 3" square with a built-in GPS
receiver that receives TFR coordinates over the GPS link or from the ground in
real time. They had two possible displays in mind; one of them had three lights,
two arrows, and two bars. Basically, if you get too close to a TFR, the green
light goes amber and an arrow lights up indicating which way to turn to avoid.
The other display idea was a primative moving map.

Seminar time. I caught the tail end of the one on future gasolines and then went
to "Destinations in the East". One that sounds interesting is a private strip
40 miles north of Atlanta which they claimed is the highest airport in Georgia.
Run by a former airline pilot, it has rental cabins and other nice features.
Then on to Machado, who was excellent as usual. The serious thread of his talk
on flying safely was the idea that pilots can minimize risk by deciding what to
do in various situations well before they come up. For example, when the weather
deteriorates to 600' and a mile is *not* the time to start figuring out whether
to make a precautionary off-airport landing or not. By the time you consider the
ramifications, you might be into a granite cloud.

Took one last run through the exhibits and spoke with Ray Maule for a while,
then hit the shuttle for the airport. Wow, am I glad I didn't drive! What was
about a 15 minute drive in the morning took about an hour for the return!
Judging by the packages, Lightspeed did a booming business.

Since I haven't flown at night in some time, my preflight was a bit slower than
usual, but the takeoff was uneventful. For me at least; as I began my roll, I
heard another pilot requesting permission to do a T&G. The tower asked if he'd
heard the ATIS, and he said "No, we're about to do that." Tower denied the T&G,
so he asked if he could do a full stop. "No, you can't do anything. We have a
lot of planes here for AOPA, and we're pretty busy."

Old Bridge has a "smart" radio that reports wind (not an AWOS, though). The
lights were on, but I clicked the mic to keep them up, and the radio reported
calm winds and (uhoh!) a "chance of fog." Any thoughts I had about bouncing the
plane a few times for night currency evaporated. The landing was uneventful, but
the tailplane was covered in dew by the time I got her tied down.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a day.

George Patterson
You can dress a hog in a tuxedo, but he still wants to roll in the mud.