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[May 30, 2015]


For the past two years, Jim Thill has hosted a RV gathering at his own grass strip in West Virginia, right next to the Summit Point raceway, and about 1 nm NE of 61VA (High View). A lot of my local RV friends were going, so why not join in on the fun? It was an easy 30 RV minutes away.


On the way to the airport, it appears as if we had an interesting airship in the pattern. As I pulled into the airport, my good friend Jack Savage was parked on the ramp in his beautiful TR6 sports car watching the blimp do takeoff and landings. I quickly solicited him to be my passenger to Jim Thill's gathering as he knew many of the attendees.


Once airborne, we ran across the DirecTV blimp from a better vantage point.


Jim's runway is grass and very smooth. Once we were there, we were entertained by some formation flyovers from Claw, Jolly and Condor.






Condor Rolling


Jolly Rolling


And Claw taxiing to park.




Jim's airpark was buzzing with activity other than fixed wing.


Quot the lineup of RV's - 9 I think was the count?


I was parked in the corner...maybe one day when I splash paint on her she will be respected.






Storms were approaching quickly from the west, but a Russian storm landed before they did.


It was a friendly Russian...my good friend Vlad.


Once Vlad showed up, 6 of us decided to depart immediately.


On the way home I noticed a few strange readouts on my EFIS. The first was it appeared a sudden cold front came through with this oncoming storm. It didn't feel like - 50 degrees F?


True Airspeed (TAS) was also looking suspicious. Typically it is higher than my Indicated Airspeed (IAS)???


Finally, the tailwind appeared to be higher than it really was. Why was my groundspeed only 160 kts with a 30 kts tailwind??


The easy explanation was my Outside Air Temperature (OAT) sensor was on the fritz. When I landed, I went through some simple debugging by checking the connectors, but no joy.

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Last Modified: August 13, 2023