Karl, Dolly, Ancestors, Progeny and Activities
For two months I’ve been using spare time to code a Garmin G3X display instrument for the flight simulator community.
The G3X system is for both experimental and certified aircraft. It includes the GDU460, a ten inch touch screen multi page display shown above. Our plane (N50KB) has two on its instrument panel.
I have initially focused on coding the five engine instrument panels. Click on the image below to see a video of progress to date.
Today, Dolly packed a nice lunch for us to eat during our two hour kyack paddle on the Homosassa River. (Where’s the Advil???) I took a wrong turn and instead of going to the Springs went past several waterside restaurants. We decided our food would keep; paddled back to the rental dock; drove to a restaurant; and enjoyed “Chowda”, hush puppies, fried grouper and cokes. It was great!
Social distanced of course. The breeze was coming at us from the river.
Brunch Today
Dolly and I flew down to Sebring this morning and had brunch on the restaurant porch with the Old Farts Flying Club. The club is an informal organization run by Roger Brown who maintains an Email list and chooses an airport restaurant for lunch each winter season Thursday. He follows up with a newsletter including photos of participants and their planes.
Today’s weather – strong crosswinds – reduced the attendance. Before Covid I’ve seen fifty to seventy planes fly in. Today we social distanced and masked. Dolly and I arrived early and picked an upwind table. The food, omelet and pancakes was delicious.
He started on his aviation career around the beginning of the jet age and likes to explain that back then the Private Pilots Written Exam was only 50 True/False questions.
Karl has owned a 1964 Mooney Statesman, 1979 Cessna Skyhawk, and more recently a 1948 Temco-Globe Swift. He and wife Dolly together built their current airplane, a Vans RV7.
Karl holds FAA Commercial, Single Engine Land, Single Engine Sea, Multi Engine Land, and Glider certificates collected in 3,000+ flying. His Instrument Flight Instructor rating is lapsed. Several yeas ago the Federal Aviation Agency presented him with the Master Pilot Award. He is a member of the United Flying Octogenarians. He loves to tell hangar flying stories of how he has towed advertising banners at the New Jersey shore; flown night time charter around the Northeast; served as his son’s flight instructor; landed one night at Chicago O’Hare before it was commissioned; crossed the US at night following the old mountain top beacons; and more recently towed gliders for the Tampa Bay Soaring Society. Karl has piloted 47 different models of aircraft; 32 single and 15 multi-engine.
During the 2011-2013 summers Dolly and son Len with help from Karl, completed a studs out remodeling of an apartment that is now their summer home in Michigan. In 2014, contemplating how bored he’d be without some project, they came to the conclusion that aircraft building is age independent. He and Dolly together built their Vans RV7 that first flew in 2018. It was on display at the 2019 EAA Airventure flyin in Oshkosh, Michigan.
Dolly, who also is a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association, is enthusiastic about aviation and knitting. Click here to visit her knitting pages.
Photo: At the cockpit controls of Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose at the Evergreen Air Museum in McMinnville, Oregon
