Yeah, I can agree with that. I actually had a friend fly up here in his little Thorp S-18 to help me transition and we only intended to do a couple of runs to check the stability then go fly a circuit as we still had MVFR but as we were on our way onto the active runway, conditions dropped below minimum and we were unable to fly. It just got worse so he actually had to leave his own plane here and fly home on a commercial flight. Conditions had improved so he was scheduled to return tomorrow so we could get into the air, but now it's so bad that our country's PM showed up today for a photo op!
I felt I was done taxiing for now anyways as these tires don't wear well on pavement, so I'd like to get going onto grass soon.
This delay is quite disappointing, but not very far away there are families losing their homes to the forest fires, so I really don't have much to complain about.
But I did make use of this delay to make an un-modification to the oil system, but thats a topic for another post...
However my friend is very impressed by the stability of the RV9 with these big tires, but he's very used to the Thorp which apparently is quite snakey. The other thing he is very impressed with is the power and smoothness of the rotary. He's not the same guy who has previously helped me with test flying who has also come to admire the rotary, so another slow convert coming around.....
I had another old timer up at the airport who saw my project many years ago when the rotary was still on a stand as a bare block and he said "you're not going to put that little wankle on this thing are you?"
So last year when I was unable to get parking up there due to last years fires, I ran into him and he said "you put a real engine in there yet?"
This year again, "you got an airplane engine yet?"
So last week as I was doing a little tweaking on the oil system he comes over and takes a look and says "well it looks good, I'll give you that much"
So this week as I was just putting it together he wanders over just as I'm about to fire it up to check for leaks, he wanders over. I give him a heads up and fire it up, run it up to get full oil pressure, then back to an idle and climb out to check for leaks (it's tied down solid), while it's purring softly. I could see it pain him to say it, but he says "that actually sounds pretty good".
So as old timers are prone to do, he starts telling stories. During the next 40 minutes as we're standing beside the airplane it idles smoothly without a single cough, hiccup, or stumble and he repeats about a dozen times a variation of "damn, that sounds good!" and "sure is smooth".
I doubt I made a convert out of him, but I doubt he'll be asking me about real engines anymore.