September 30, 2006 - Virginia EAA Fly-In
I flew over the western end of the Bay Bridge where a friend was supposed to be in his boat. I circled over quite a few boats there but it turns out his was not one of them.
The pattern at Dinwiddie was crowded and I’m guessing half of the arrivals didn’t know there was a procedure. I worked my way southwest of the field. I found I-85 but could not find the town of Dinwiddie which was where the procedure had you start out. So much for procedure. I followed I-85 north and joined the downwind leg to runway 23, following a low-wing. Everything was fine until I was on final and I saw a high-wing turn base pointed directly at me. I rocked my wings and announced on Unicom that I was on final. He saw me and turned behind me. I flew down the runway and landed long. The line crew was very organized but they parked me as far as possible from the action. I arrived around 10:30, in time to catch the pancake breakfast.
My favorite-looking RV, the purple and white-tipped, bare-metal RV-7A was here. I saw this particular RV a year and a half ago at the Shenandoah Poker Run. The judges were checking it out and I bet it wins.
I'm seriously considering doing my RV-7 like this, only I'd use a different color than purple. Not that I don't like the purple, I'd just want something different.
There was an unpainted RV-7, built from quickbuild kits, for sale. It looked OK – nothing special – and they were asking $117,000! Hmmmmm.
Dynon had a little booth in the vendor area. I checked out the FlightDek 180 which is the combined EFIS/EIS I'll probably put in my RV-7. I checked out the enhanced brightness the FD-180 now has. It looks great. I had the salesman show me the HSI capability. Wow. It’s a virtual CDI. No need for me to buy a hard CDI. The FD-180 costs $3,200. The probes and fuel flow sensor are another $800. The salesman told me to wait until the last possible moment before ordering.
There were a number of light sport plane vendors present with their planes. They’re nice looking planes but I wonder if people are really buying them. Or is it just hype about the new hot sector, like Ultralights were 25 years ago. $100,000 is a lot of money for a plane that is limited in how fast it can go and what it can do.
All in all, there wasn’t that much to see and do other than the planes and vendors. They had some forums but none of the topics particular interested me. The flying action wasn't anything more than takeoff and landings. The few exceptions were a F4U Corsair low-pass and a Harmon Rocket takeoff. Early on, I gave consideration to leaving in the afternoon, instead of camping overnight. This idea became more compelling as the afternoon wore on.
After about four hours I had had enough. I took off around 2:30 and headed southeast towards Suffolk because I knew they sold Mogas. I was down to about ¼ a tank and figured I would fill up. Once I had it dialed into the GPS I was surprised to see that it was 60 miles away. More than I had expected. Still, I’d save significant money and get more flying time in to boot.
The arrow is pointing to the vendor and food area.
It was great being able to fill the Citabria up with $2.50 gas. Suffolk has an active skydiving operation. As I fuel up, some skydiver landed right into a chain-link fence. Later, as I took off, a bunch of skydivers were just coming down to the right of the runway.
From Suffolk I headed north. My plan was to cut over to the Eastern Shore as soon as possible.
That's Newport News -- where they build the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers -- on the left. Norfolk Naval Base is across the river at the top of the picture.
I crossed over the Eastern Shore and continued east to the Barrier Islands.
