National Aeronca Association Bulletin Board

Thank God for wing covers, eh? The skis sure look like fun. 'Wish I had a set for my Chief.

Well, its 60 degrees and sunny here right now. Just finished the paperwork on the annual for the Sedan on the 24th and may start getting the bird buttoned back up tomorrow, been busy/sick the last few days.

You can enjoy the snow and ice all you want. For some silly reason the roads here in Arizona are full of cars with Canadian license plates, so hope you are not alone up there in the GWN!

That is so pretty to "LOOK AT" but, I can't say I would want to be there.

I did brave the cold today to do a little scud running. Took forever to remove the ice and snow to get the hanger open but, once I got up the air was incredible. Plane climbed like an F16 in the cold smooth air.

I got up today also Chris. Its was smooth as silk. Landed in the front yard of my old F/Sgt.'s house...(burmuda grass field)..thought he was going to stroke out laughing..said he never seen nothing like that...that ole champ with the 85 o200 conv. popped right up out of there and hung on the nose.(sounds a little more realistic than the F-16) Beautiful day for hoping from one grass strip to another and catch up on all the flight lies

I do have fun on skis on occasion but it's a real pain to get the Champ in and out by myself. I have a wheel setup that helps to move the plane around but not much help in the deep snow. I was thinking about putting skis on (1800 Federals and a tail ski) but we just got a lot of rain on top of our deep snow so it's heavy crusted and I don't have 'crust cutters' which is hard on the bungee cords. Of course, you never think about working on the skis until it's too cold in the hangar and taking the ##***## Good Year brakes apart to install the skis isn't a lot of fun either. On the other hand, once you're set up ski flying is about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on.

We have a real neat ski flyin at the Log Cabin airport usually around Feb 15th about 10 miles west of our airport. The owner is a old B17 belly gunner from WW2 and it usually draws a couple of dozen ski plane if the weather is decent for ski flying. I've always wanted to fly to Oshkosh for their ski fly in too but never got around to it.

Mike

joea wrote: You can enjoy the snow and ice all you want. For some silly reason the roads here in Arizona are full of cars with Canadian license plates, so hope you are not alone up there in the GWN!

Those are really old people that don't know how to have fun, you can have em

MikeB wrote:

and taking the ##***## Good Year brakes apart to install the skis isn't a lot of fun either. On the other hand, once you're set up ski flying is about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on.

Mike

Pretty bird Mike
Guess I'm glad I don't have those brakes, with mine you just slip a hose clamp over the shoes & slid the ski's on!
By the way those aren't Ski's they're Skates what are they about 4" wide?

Regarding the width, I'm not sure. The other Champs at our field have Federal 1500's and they're wider but shorter. They also have the shoe brakes . I suspect the foot print (ski print) isn't much different in the long run. The tail ski is another pain to install but does kind of keep the back end of the plane from dragging in the snow when taxing around. Although when the tail wheel is installed it does help to brake after landing by pulling the stick back and digging it in.

I'm guessing we're off to Texas for a month or so this winter so may not get the skis on unless I really suffer withdrawl symptoms. Supposed to go below zero here in the next few days.

Mike