Saturday started out very early for me (6:30) since I had filed an IFR flight plan the night before for 7:30. While this didn't mean we had to call up at 7:30 on the dot we did have to be there pretty close to 7:30, not to mention we wanted to get to Shafter around 8:30 which is when the fly-in started. We got to the airport about 7:30 and we were quickly loaded and got airborne about 8:00. Our flight plan called for us to go to San Marcus VOR which is just to the north east of Santa Barbara and then more or less direct to Shafter airport, which is just to the north of Bakersfield. Santa Barbara Approach started us out with a vector to fly heading 140, which is just about the opposite of where we wanted to be flying. They had us follow this heading out all the way to the channel islands before having us turn around and head the right direction. While this might sound crazy and like a total waste of time, which in a way it is, there is a method to their madness. Since we were flying over the mountains to get to Shafter we had filed a fairly high altitude (9000 feet), this meant that we had to talk to LA center for air traffic control. LA center handles mostly high altitude traffic and airliners, as well as in areas that don't have a more local approach control. LA center can only pick people up on radar above a particular altitude (I believe it's 6000 ft) so what Santa Barbara did is send us out over the water until we were in LA center's airspace and then hand us off and send us on our way. Our little island sightseeing tour meant that 15 minutes into our flight we were just passing over downtown Santa Barbara. Our whole island adventure was made all the more uncomfortable since I had realized I had to pee just as we were taking off and any added flight time was going to be torturous for me. Once we were on course things went quickly and we were on the ground in Shafter about 40 minutes later.
Once we were on the ground in Shafter I taxied over to where I saw a number of the instantly recognizable Mooney tails. As I got closer I saw a number of people with parking batons sitting in golf-carts. I taxied up infront of then and began what felt like about an hour long staring contest. Usually when there are people around to direct you to parking they communicate with you via hand signals and I expected that to be the case here. I figured out that they wanted me to switch to a different frequency, once I did I was told, follow the guy in the cart in front of you and he'll direct you to parking (good thing they had a radio to give me those complex instructions). Once the stare-down was finished and the plane parked and chocked I sprinted off to find the nearest porta-potties.
Once we were all settled we set about meeting Mooney owners and drooling over other planes. There wasn't really an airshow, but there were planes doing low passes and flybys every few minutes. There were a number of old planes giving rides and there was almost always something flying by to take a look at. We met and talked with a lot of the other Mooney owners and generally had a good time. A surprising number of people walked by Mr. Mooney and stopped to take a look. When I was around I let a few kids it in the plane, and I answered quite a few questions that were asked. People generally seemed pretty interested in flying, and they were always surprised to hear that I was the pilot. While we were eating breakfast at the pancake breakfast we ran into a few people from our RC club who had driven up to check out the fly in. It was fun to be able to show them the other side of our flying hobby.
My dad had brought along a book and we had both brought chairs. I think we both expected to be spending quite a bit of time in them, but we sat in the chairs for all of 15 minutes and the book sat in the back of the plane the entire day. By about 2:00 things were starting to quiet down and we were about ready to head home. we pulled the plane out from its parking place and we soon had the engine fired out and we were quickly taxing out to the runway.
Our take-off was completely normal and things seemed to be running very smoothly. About 2-3 minutes into the flight and at about 3000 feet the engine started running very rough, I pushed and pulled a few things and almost immediately the rough running stopped and the engine calmed down. I circled the plane back towards the field and watched all the engine gauges like a hawk. Everything seemed totally normal and the engine was back to performing normally, after about 2 minutes of circling we decided to continue with the flight. I climbed up higher than I would have otherwise and continued to watch the gauges like a hawk. Everything continued to run normally and we made an uneventful landing back in Santa Barbara. Our current thinking is there might have been water in the fuel, but we're not really sure what caused the very brief patch of rough running. I'm going to be calling a mechanic in the next couple of days and I'll probably go and fly the plane around for a little while and see if anything abnormal happens again. Other than the brief patch of engine trouble we had a great day and we're looking forward to the next time we get together with the Mooney Ambassadors!
I put the pictures we took at the fly-in in a picasa album here and I'll attach a few pictures we took of Mr. Mooney recently as well.
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