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Breakfast Anyone?
It all started with a simple phone call one Sunday morning. My special lady friend and I were making our usual breakfast pilgrimage to the Airways Cafe at Frederick Municipal Airport, Frederick, MD (KFDK). Before leaving, I attempted to invite some friends to join us but they had company visiting from out of town. It was my next phone call that landed us this sweet Aircam opportunity…
Searching through my iPhone address book, I reach the contact known as, “Carlo FDK.” Carlo is an avid aviator and is currently building a Mustang II kit plane. He also is a 1/3 partner in a Lockwood Aircam. When Carlo answers the phone excited to hear from me, I mention the same story above, we’re one our way to FDK for breakfast and we’d love for him to join us if he’s around.
It’s at this moment that the plans for my entire Sunday afternoon change in one brilliant moment. You see, Carlo’s fiance is out in Iowa City for the 35th Annual Air Race Classic – a four day, 2,700 mile women’s aviation race. Because of this, Carlo say’s he’s a bachelor for the weekend and is spending some time with his Mustang II kit plane out at Martin State Airport, Baltimore, MD (KMTN). Due to his distance from FDK he can’t join us for breakfast. But he proposes an even better idea…
An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse
“Come out to Martin State and I’ll show you my Mustang II. We can even take the Aircam out for a ride.” Carlo says. I almost jump out of my own skin in excitement. Naturally intrigued by both the Mustang II AND the Aircam (I’ve never seen either in person before) we cordially agreed to make the hour drive out to Martin State for a friendly Sunday afternoon visit.
NOTE: We did enjoy our Airways Cafe breakfast before making the journey to MTN. If you ever get the chance to eat there, try the Eggs Chesapeake – a Maryland twist on eggs benedict with their special ingredient, Maryland crab cakes. Delicious! So much so that we’re willing to drive 60 miles round trip to eat this delightful meal.
Enough about my food obsession and back to the flying story. We arrived at MTN where Carlo greeted us as we headed into the hangar to see the progress of his kit plane love affair. The Mustang II is a single-engine, side by side, high performance aircraft. It can be found in both the tailwheel and tricycle gear configurations. Carlo’s is a tailwheel – a very nice choice. This project has been a dream of Carlo’s for many years now and only during the last four years has he really been able to dedicate gobs of time towards finishing this beauty.
In her current state she is seen in primer green and wingless. The fuselage is complete, main landing gear attached, and engine mounted. The interior is bare as you would expect at this state of the build process. Only a few avionics are installed in the panel at the moment but she’s looking real nice.
Carlo explains the different aerodynamic features of the airframe, how the canopy is designed to minimize parasitic drag and creates less turbulence over the tail because of a forward boundary layer effect. I won’t bore you with too much science, but suffice to say, the aircraft has been customized with many speed and drag reduction advantages.
Meeting Charlie Kilo
After oohing and ahhing over the Mustang II, we head across the airport to the hangar where Charlie Kilo is napping. N119CK is a Lockwood Aircam, an experimental, twin-engine, open cockpit, homebuilt airplane. It cruises around 100 mph burning under 5 gallons of avgas per hour, both engines COMBINED thanks to two 100-horsepower Rotax engines.
Take-off roll is right around 100 to 200 feet today with the fuel and passenger load which means our intersection departure leaves plenty of room for our twin-engine balanced field take-off requirements. After the engine run up we taxi out for departure. That’s when the real magic happens.
Charlie Kilo comes alive as the throttles are advanced full forward. In what seems like on a few feet, we are airborne. The Aircam engines generate gobs of excess thrust for an aircraft that weights around 1,600 pounds. That’s clearly evident in our steep pitch climb angle. At 1,500 feet per minute in the climb, this baby hauls! It climbs almost as good as the jet I fly at work, no joke.
What A View!
The view aloft is incredible from the open cockpit vantage point. Sadly, you won’t see much of it in the above video. Due to technical difficulties, camera recording issues, and various other interruptions I was only able to capture a few brief moments of flying video.
After some in-flight performance demonstrations and couple of runs around the traffic pattern, we come in for our full stop. A 7,000 foot runway is overkill for this airplane so we ask for a short approach with a long landing to minimize taxi time. Landing roll with max performance breaking came in around 400 feet. The Aircam truly meets its advertised performance capabilities.
I Can’t Stop Smiling
Taxiing up to the hanger my face is plastered with a grin from ear to ear. This certainly was worthy of the Sunday afternoon adventure it turned out to be.
Weather IN the Cockpit
If you’ve never been in an Aircam or an open cockpit aircraft, I highly recommend it! The wind blowing in your face adds a whole new dimension to the flying experience. Carlo joked at one point that with both the XM satellite weather on board and the light drizzle we flew through, we not only had weather in the cockpit, but we had weather IN the cockpit – haha. AWESOME!
Clear Skies & Calm Winds,
Len @ ThePilotReport.com
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