A few days in the Hatz life, and my oldest passenger

[Dana]

Motivation for Hatz builders?

Every year, my brother in law Mike hosts a midweek fly-in and barbecue at his private airstrip near Utica in central NY, but weather or other commitments always prevented me from attending, so although I’d visited by car numerous times I’d never flown in. This year, it looked good, and the plan was to leave after lunch on Wednesday, stay overnight, and return home on Thursday morning, so I’d only have to take Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning off from work… until I retire in a few years I need to ration my vacation time. But by Wednesday morning, Thursday morning’s forecast was looking like IFR at home due to a coastal front, maybe improving by late afternoon. Oh well, I told my boss, “I’m going to try to get back for Thursday afternoon, but there’s a good chance I might not get back until Friday, and maybe not even then.” Friday’s forecast was good everywhere, but if I couldn’t get home Thursday, no point in flying home Friday morning just to work Friday afternoon and then leave for the weekend, right? Fortunately, my job lets me be flexible. My weekend plan was to drive to our cabin in southern upstate NY.

The Wednesday afternoon flight was beautiful. There’s no airspace requiring talking to anybody anywhere along the route, so I just puttered along at around 1500’ AGL. From Chester Airport in south central CT, I made a fuel stop in South Albany, NY before proceeding to Mike’s strip. Along the way, I saw an R/C field with several people and models on the ground, so naturally I had to do some impromptu acro for them before proceeding on my way. There are a lot of private airports along the way.

Mike has two runways, both best as one way strips. The shorter (900’) is uphill to land, downhill to take off regardless of wind (if not favorable you use the other strip), with no obstructions on the downhill side, while the longer (1200’) strip, while more level, has tall trees on one end. I landed on the short strip and was stopped before the halfway point. I had 10kt tailwinds the whole way, so I made good time and arrived early.

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Around 5:30 the others started arriving, mostly Cub variants ranging from a J-3 to a Carbon Cub, one nosewheel (!) Kitfox, my Hatz, and Mike’s RV-8 for a total of 10 planes and an equal number who drove in. It was such a beautiful evening I just had to go up again to do some flip flops before getting my burgers. One of the other pilots said the acro in the Hatz looked “graceful”. Good food, good people, and a good visit with Mike and my sister afterwards.

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By Thursday morning, it seemed unlikely that the weather back home would clear by sunset when my Hatz turns into a pumpkin, but it was good all the way down to Warwick, NY near the cabin, so I decided to go there. After all, I’d told my boss that I might not be able to get back on Friday. Mike filled me up with ethanol free mogas from his own tank, and it was another nice flight (tailwinds again!), I doglegged west and picked up fuel in Sidney, NY, where I spent some time talking to a guy about his Starduster before proceeding. The southern Catskills I then flew over aren’t huge as mountains go, but sufficiently remote to be awfully inhospitable in the event of a forced landing, and it was a relief to get over the farmland between the mountains and Warwick, where my wife was waiting for me.

Friday and Saturday contained nothing aviation related, other than [needlessly, as it turned out] worrying about my plane getting rained on tied down on the grass and the cockpit filling up with water. Before returning home on Sunday, though, I had the great pleasure of taking one of my oldest friends—actually he IS my oldest friend at 91 years old and the oldest passenger I’ve ever flown—for a ride in the Hatz. I’ve been trying to get him for a flight ever since I bought the Hatz but something always came up.

Skip started learning to fly with the USAF flying T-6’s in 1950, soloing but washing out later, eventually getting his Private in 1979 flying C-150s with the base aero club. I don’t know how long it’d been since he’d flown but it was a long time, 30 years at least. As spry as he is (he’s still climbing on roofs when neighbors need help fixing them until his wife yells at him to get back down) it was still a struggle squeezing his old bones into the front cockpit, as anybody who’s ever been in the front pit of a Hatz will understand. Of course he flew the plane for awhile and was 30 years rusty (and 91 years old!) with no experience with the sight picture of an open cockpit biplane, but he had fun and kept the greasy side down. A Hatz on a hot humid day with a heavy passenger is not a high performance airplane! A circle over the lake where our cabins are, a wave at friends on the dock, and it was back to the beautiful grass runway at Warwick to get Skip back home. My only regret is that I forgot to take pictures.

Once I finally managed to connect to Flight Service online (marginal cell service at the cabin), I couldn’t make sense of the forecast; airports along the way were forecasting VFR with good ceilings and visibility despite rain, but the whole area had an airmet sierra for IFR conditions. A call to a human briefer cleared things up, the weather was shaping up better than forecast and despite scattered rain I had a good chance of making it home, so my son in law drove me back to the airport and I was off. This flight, around 80NM, requires threading through the NYC class B and several class Ds. To the south along the coast it looked pretty icky (that’s a technical meteorological term), but I had good visibility to the north and plenty of fuel, so I had outs. I flew through several rain showers but was able to dodge others (no, you don’t get wet flying through rain in an open cockpit plane but it cleaned a lot of the accumulated bugs off the leading edges). I was worried about the rain taking the varnish off the wood prop but it held up pretty good. At one point there was a nice rainbow but the picture didn’t come out. One thing that gave confidence was using Avia Weather, an Android app, to look at the latest METARs from airports along the way.

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The landing back home was routine other than the wet runway, and a cold one from the hangar fridge went down real nice.

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[mmarien]

Nice story Dana, and great pictures even though the rainbow picture didn't turn out. Rats eh! My Hatz is a couple springs away from flying so I console myself with flying my Luscombe. It's my tail wheel trainer for when my Hatz is ready. I open my windows and pretend I'm open cockpit.

We had a flyout to a small town about 90 minutes away for me last Saturday. The C182's left later and arrived earlier but I did a T&G at a couple airports in between. Keep in mind it's my tail wheel trainer. T&G are mandatory on route or I'd have to do circuits

This small town was a treat for a couple of reasons. We were invited to see a bee keeping/honey making operation and the restaurant was walkable across the train tracks from the airstrip which is a rarity Saskatchewan. It's the white and red top building behind the railway station. And yes, the railway station exposes our destination - Eatonia (Elvie Smith) Municipal Airport. Elvie L. Smith was the former president and Chairman of Pratt and Whitney Canada although I'm not sure what his connection to Eatonia (pop 500) is.

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The C140 to the right of my Luscombe is a drop in. He heard us talking on the enroute frequency and just decided to join us. In Canada we broadcast position reports on the enroute frequency 126.7. Hearing a number of position reports for airplanes headed to Eatonia he couldn't resist.

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This flyout was an invite but since COVID happened and they couldn't advertise flyin's we've been doing flyouts. We pick a place, bring your chair and lunch, and we have an apron lunch. We try to keep it small but it snowballed last year and we had a couple dozen airplanes show up at one of our destinations.

So if you happen to be flying across Canada on your way to Alaska and hear a number of position reports on 126.7 headed for some small airport, join us for lunch.

[hatz215]

Great stories, I love strips like that. My oldest passenger was a 95 year old that was dying of bone cancer. No way to get him in the front so we lifted him and set him down in the back pit. I flew with no brakes, mixture, mag switch... I know, not smart but I wanted to do it for the old guy. I asked him if he wanted a calm ride or the works and he said "what do I care?" I told my son that I would land short and be slow enough at my hangar for him to walk along side and shut it down. It all went well and he loved his ride.

Steve

[Bitshifter]

Dana,
Thanks for the motivation, that's a nice read. I just hope that I'm not the 90 year old in my Hatz.
Also, thanks for the ride you gave me at the Golden Age Air Museum.

[Thayer Syme]

Great stories indeed guys, thanks for sharing.

Dana, my father flew up in Essex & Old Saybrook. He kept his sailboat at the Damar Marina yard in Hadam for many years, and just sold it on to its next caretaker. I always looked up when visiting him there, but never saw you go by. I live over in Danbury, and have a few parts for #680 in the garage, but too much other stuff to dig them out and make any progress. Every time I drop in here I think about a dumpster...

Thayer