Finally Successful Fishing

Sunday March 4th, we flew the longest leg of this journey: from Alta Floresta to Ribeirao Preto. This is the leg for which the reserve tank was most needed. There are alternate airstrips between these two places, but in Bob´s vocabulary stopping for fuel or going to the bathroom are verboten!

Tony helped us install the plugs and showed me his `calibrated´ torque for the plugs (about the same way I do mine on the Honda, except the Lycoming engine has bigger spark plugs and a flat copper washer so a little more torque is required.) While Bob filed the flight plan, he told me to go with Tony who would take me to a place where I could catch some fish. I asked Bob `how long´ and he answered `half an hour´.

Now, in the first place, Tony had forgotten how to get to the fishing place and in the second place it was further away than he remembered, so it was more than a half hour later before we were ready to begin fishing!

Well, it turned out that this wasn´t a wild fishing place; it was a fish farm -- like Sunnybrook there south of Renton. The owner had to show us his brood stock and his rearing ponds before taking us to the place where the fish were to be had. The photo at right shows me holding two of the biggest ones -- I also got five smaller ones for a total of 16.5 kg of fish! With ice added to keep them fresh until we got to Ribeirao Preto, the total weight to be added to our already overloaded Mooney was 20.5 kg. What would Bob say?

Also, it was now going on two hours since we had left and I knew that it was a long flight ahead.

When we got to the airplane, Bob was `patiently´waiting. When I showed him the foam box of fish with ice and the weight, he merely said, `I think it will fit there on top of the luggage´ (about three feet behind the aircraft CG -- treading on interesting territory, here!)

We took off at about 1000 into fairly calm air with a planned cruising altitude of 13.5. I noticed no unusual characteristics with the peculiarly-loaded Mooney. Lots of building cumulous clouds lay ahead with some big hammerheads, indicating thunder storms here and there -- none on our heading though!

As we were clearing 12.5, ground traffic control came on the radio asking us to confirm our altitude. Bob answered, `going through 12.5´. GTC responded curtly, `immediately descend to 9.5 for your flight to Ribeirao Preto´. I suggested that Bob request permission to maintain our climb to 13.5 as I could see that the scattered cumulous were topping 12,000 and their bottoms were about 8,000; if we obeyed their command we would be either dodging around clouds in rough air or flying through clouds in rough air for the next 5 or 6 hours! Not a pleasant thought.

Bob explained to me that their command was as a result of their reaction to the recent collision between a Boeing 737 and a two-engine Embraer executive aircraft that was being ferried to the US for some customer. The 737 and 150 people on board was demolished and the Embraer airplane landed safely with both American pilots under investigation for wrong-doing.Bob said it would be futile to request any exception; the ground controllers were simply following the published rules -- ancient and ridiculous though they be.

So, we trimmed the airplane back to a slightly higher airspeed which would give us a slow -- very slow -- descent. Of course, while we were at 12.5, we were into and around the tops of cumulous clouds. Proper procedure for encountering turbulence is to pull slightly back on the column to slow the airplane down to minimize the bumpiness -- just like in a car when you encounter a speed bump: you slow down.

In an airplane, when you slow down by pulling back on the column instead of throttling back the engine, you gain altitude. Thus, without changing the trim which was set to enable descent, we eventually wound up at 13.5 -- no word was heard from ground traffic control and we flew into relatively calm airspace, clear of clouds and other airplanes. With a slight tail wind we would be in Ribeirao Preto short of the normally estimated seven-plus hours.

The reason our `descent´trim resulted in stable flight at this new altitude was a combination of two things: 1.) we had burned off over two hours worth of fuel so the lighter airplane would fly at this altitude with this faster trim speed, and, 2.) our aft-loaded c.g. made our aerodynamics more efficient. (This latter characteristic Bob and I intend to experiment with on our return flight, to see if we can gain a little airspeed without encountering undesirable flying characteristics!)

Beginning letdown from about 100 miles out, we naturally encountered the broken cumulous clouds. Because of the increasing possibility of other aircraft as we neared Ribeirao Preto, I maneuvered around and between clouds; it was like playing hide-and-seek in the sky. Once in awhile I had to revert to instruments to get through a short interval of cloud when I got trapped in a corner. In the meantime, I had to estimate an average track through all this so we didn´t divert too far one way or the other from our `shortest´path. This was the most fun flying I had had since Aviation Cadet days in the Stearman!!

I landed at Ribeirao Preto at 1645, making the most perfect touchdown since I flew the Yellow Peril in Corpus Christi. Bob was impressed.