My homebuilt airplane makes me awesome!

So usually I'm a mechanic, that means I get to fix things that others break. I'm a pilot too so sometimes, on rare occasions, I get to break things before I fix them. The last few weeks have been grand, and in this story nothing gets broken.

I have a commercial multi checkride on June 18th. This requires training, so I've spent some time getting acquainted with Duchess 3724H.

On Thursday we departed Reid Hillview at around 6:00pm for Tracy. It's been a long week for Warno, so on the way there I gave a pretty laughable performance of a Vmc demo, two power off stalls, two power on stalls, some halfway decent steep turns, and a pretty damn good in flight shutdown and restart.

Upon reaching Tracy I did a couple passable normal landings, even though it was bumpy as hell, and was coming around on one engine for a single engine landing on 30 when all of a sudden "Cool Name flight of Four RV-7's" called up "5 southeast of the airport on upwind 30."

What?

If you're 5 southeast of the airport you couldn't possibly be on upwind for 30.

So after a few exchanges we finally discern that they are on a 5 mile initial for an overhead break to 30. Why the hell didn't they just say that in the first place? This, as it turns out, is just the beginning.

Meanwhile we're on final, it's bumpy as hell, and this isn't going well, so around we go. I announce upwind, and the "Cool Name Flight of four RV-7's" announces "over the numbers in a left overhead break to downwind 30."

And it begins... Flight lead begins pouring his heart out to anyone on CTAF for miles around about where he is, what his flight is called, how many RV-7's he has and what they're gonna do next. His position reports last so long that by the time he's done with one it's time for the next one... and he gives them on upwind, turning crosswind, on crosswind, turning downwind, on downwind, on downwind midfield, on downwind abeam the numbers, turning base, on base, turning final, on final, short final on the runway and on the go... lather, rinse, repeat.

I can't get "Tracy traffic 24H left downwind 30 Tracy" in edgewise... and I'm not the only one with that problem. On my next touch and go, there's enough break in the chatter for me to hear "YellowCitabriaupwind30Tracy," before the next life story issues forth!

Shit... where did he come from?

We see and avoid, and he saw us too because he offset to the side to let us pass. I'm not even mad at him because I couldn't get any of my position reports in either. "He done good," as they say.

Is it over? Oh no, now that we've done overhead breaks to 30 as a flight of four, we're going to split up into two flights of two and do overhead breaks to the runway in use by everyone else, AND the crossing runway AT THE SAME TIME.

Sean and I decide discretion is the better part of valor and retreat is the better part of discretion, and go do approaches into Livermore instead.

I can only assume that there's a smoking hole at the runway intersection in Tracy that used to be Cool Name Flight of four RV-7's... Hopefully the guy in the Citabria made it out OK!


~~Warno