A Champ for Poplar Grove
Knoxville, TN to Poplar Grove, IL 11/25-11/28/07 by Scott Ross

Dennis Blunt called me up one day in October and said he thought he'd found his Champ. Dennis had sold his beautiful PT23 a few weeks earlier and had been hot on the trail of a Champ ever since. Specifically he wanted a L16, either the A or B model with a gross weight of 1300 pounds in order to qualify as Sport Pilot.

Dennis Blunts PT-23

The "new" L-16A in Rudy Frasca's hangar, Frasca Field.

Wow! Let's go get her was my first thought. Then Dennis mentioned the plane was in Pigeon Forge, TN. Right at the base of the Smoky Mountains.

Driving into Pigeon Forge, TN. That dark thing on the horizon isn't a cloud. It's the Smoky Mountains. Note the clouds on top, the minimum enroute altitude there is 7,000 feet.

Now at the time Dennis was going down to have a look at his airplane we were in the middle of the October harvest weather pattern. Dry, clear blue skies, light winds and upper 60's thru the 70's. Chuck Jansen and I talked it over and Chuck volunteered to give us a ride down there in his Arrow. I'm thinking part of one day to get down there and a day to get back. Champ's cruise about 90 mph right? Heck Dip Davis's Cessna 120 does 105mph with the same engine fitted, and this L-16 has two fuel tanks. Piece of cake!

Well, as always the devil's in the details, and what with insurance and various forms of paperwork and what not our October trip to pick up the little beauty got pushed back one week after another. Now it's the last week in November and well, seems the weather has started to change from that nice harvest pattern to the pre-winter rains.

We sweated the weather reports and the time schedules of everyone involved. Lee Hilbert volunteered to go fetch her and Dip Davis suggested we could use his 120 to go down there with if Chuck was tied up. Lee ended up with scheduling conflicts during our "weather window" and the Sunday after Thanksgiving found Chuck and Holly Jansen, Dennis and me loading up Chuck's plane for the trip south. The weather was...sorta ok.

On the ramp at C77 loading up for the trip south.	Dennis and Holly navigators for the trip down.
Captain Chuck Jansen setting up the panel.	Just a bit of haze Sunday morning off Joliet, IL.

We headed to BMG cruising at 5,000 feet in the haze. Chuck had called up flight following and the Arrow purred along at around 130 knots or so ground speed with a slight headwind. Cook Aviation is the FBO at Bloomington, Indiana airport and they really rolled out the red carpet. We walked into the door to the smell of fresh baked, piping hot cookies, three different flavors no less! We got reasonably priced fuel, a tasty snack and a potty break in no time at all and were on our way.

Short final to 17 at BMG.	Cook Aviation at BMG, well worth the stop. Real nice folks there.
Just prior to filing IFR into Crossville, TN.	We checked the weather before launching for the Knoxville area and it looked like the cloud decks were dropping down that way. Chuck Jansen decided a stop in Crossville was in order once the clouds started pushing us down. So we filed IFR into Crossville with the intention of topping up the tanks and getting another look at the weather. Chuck requested the ILS into the airport only to discover halfway thru the procedure that he couldn't tune in the ILS on his radio. The young lady who filled up the tanks for us there wasn't real sure what an ILS was so she didn't know if it was out or not. Anyway Chuck performed the VOR Alpha flawlessly and seeing the airport pop up right where it was supposed to was a wonder.
In between layers about a hundred miles north of Crossville.	Yep, it's really soupy in the clouds...
The weather in the Knoxville area was very cloudy with rain and there's all that cumuli-granite all thru there to contend with to boot. Off to the west and south heavier rain was moving in with icing conditions threatening to develop on the route back to Poplar Grove. Dennis and I elected to rent a car in order to give Chuck and Holly a head start back home and we all went our separate ways. All of our problems were just beginning though. Chuck and Holly got back into BMG with the icing levels dropping just above them. They ended up staying until 1030 Monday morning with Chuck not getting into work at all...and a customer meeting scheduled for first thing in the morning...<s> Dennis and I hot footed it to Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge and after a long thoughtful look Dennis inked the deal on his new plane. Well, now we had a ride home except for the minor detail of the weather. Seems Mother Nature had some other ideas...	Crossville, TN, home of Trade-A-Plane.

The Knoxville area is somewhat low ground surrounded by mountains to the southeast and northwest. We, by the way, needed to head northwest. In fact, in every direction it's higher terrain. Also, to the southwest extending to the northeast was the weather system busy giving Chuck and Holly fits up in Indiana.
That heavy wet air blowing up from the south was piling up on the foothills of the Smoky Mountains and turning into low clouds, all the way down to the ground in the higher elevations, and lots of rain. Monday Morning found us with low ceilings, rain and wind.

The view out the motel room Monday morning. Yuck!

With time to spare we ran the Crossville rental back and then proceeded to do some fuel system checks and get ready for Tuesday's flight back. It became apparent that neither fuel tank had a functional fuel gauge so we calibrated a stick with the help of the lineman, Cliff. 25 gal of fuel on board takes the worry out of long distance flights....assuming the top tank drains to the main. Anyway by the end of the day it had cleared up enough for a first flight and the fuel system had checked out to our satisfaction.

Dennis and Cliff checking out the fuel tank.

Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge Airport

Tuesday morning and it's still cloudy enough we take our time getting to the airport, but about 0830 and were on our way.

Knoxville off to the hazy northwest.	Northeast of Pigeon Forge on climb out Tuesday morning.
Note the cross on I75 30 mi north of Knoxville. Yep, we're IFR!	First small hills on our way north. We're at 3200' and just below the bottoms.

If you follow the map north of Knoxville a ways you come to Jacksboro, the airport is Campbell County but the locals call it Jacksboro. Just north of there the interstate heads off to the northeast and we had to give up our evil IFR ways and start going cross country. It's most defiantly cross country with no where to land for the next thirty miles...YIKES!

We headed thru the mountains just north west of Jacksboro.	This is the pass we took. Looked like I could see daylight thru to the other side so off we went.
The best way to do this is just keep thinking happy thoughts at your engine...no negative vibes!	There's no where to land down there!
First sign of civilization, and a place to land after about 25 long minutes.	Wayne County Airport, Monticello, KY

That first sight of a level place to land an airplane was a most welcome sight, no question about it. We headed over to Wayne County Airport in Monticello, KY for fuel and a cup of coffee. We got a bit more than we wanted though. The tail wheel had been shimmying on landing and coming down on 21 we got a bad shimmy with a right crosswind. The right tailwheel spring departed the assembly and off we went.

We just missed a landing light with the plane pulling hard to the right and down hill we headed right towards a line fence. Dennis Blunt was either cool as a cucumber or he had stopped breathing cause I never heard a peep out of him in the back! The plane wanted to turn right so I finally let her go and we spun a 180 with a wing dip in a classic ground loop. There might of been a few unprintable technical terms uttered by yours truly as well. Sheez, less excitement please!

Anyway we didn't touch anything, no damage to the plane so we taxied up to the fuel island with the backend feeling mighty loose. Sure enough, no spring on the right side so we walked out to the runway where the spring could be found about 50 feet from the numbers right on the runway centerline. We reattached the spring and took a link out of the chain on both sides and never touched a paved runway again on the way back.

Looking north at the Ohio river.

Just south of the Ohio.

The next leg was a long flight to Seymour, IN, just north of Louisville where we got fuel after landing on 23 Right "the grass" with the wind about 260, 13 gusting to 19 according to the AWOS. Nice little FBO there with self serve 24/7 fuel and we were in and out in 20 minutes.

We still had at least three hours of daylight left and the GPS said Frasca Field was 150 miles out. Now everyone knows Rudy Frasca and I couldn't think of a better place to end the day. We pointed our nose towards Urbana after a 200 foot ground roll and headed that way. The wind was mostly on the nose so our ground speed went down to the high sixties to low seventies.

We were in the pattern for Frasca Field about 1530 and Rudy himself met us at the plane. Before I knew it it was old home week with picture taking, Mr. Frasca insisting on putting Dennis's plane in a hangar, the tanks full at $3.50/gal (AvGas!), and the nickel tour of the Air Museum there. They gave us a car to use and a discount coupon for a really nice hotel to boot. Right across the street was a Cracker Barrel so we had a great dinner as well. Things were really looking up. Whenever you get a chance stop at Frasca Field where they sure know how to treat!

Right along the Illinois/Indiana border. Note all the landing sites!	Frasca Field, good folks and hospitality.
Rudy Frasca in the middle with Scott on the left and Dennis on the right.	Dennis Blunt and Scott Ross, next stop Poplar Grove.

Wednesday morning we headed out early with threatening weather to the north and the winds howling out of the south. The entire trip so far had been with ground speeds in the low to mid seventies for the most part. I've teased Lee Hilbert more than once about logging a long cross country if you have a Champ and you are going to JVL for breakfast. All the way from Pigeon Forge I kept thinking of that...

Wednesday's south winds gave us a peak ground speed of 147.1 mph according to the GPS. Most of the time we were showing in the 120's. By the time we got to DeKalb the wind had backed to the west at 3500' and we were flying almost due west with the ground track showing almost due north. We slid by the DeKalb airport about five miles east of the field, pointed due west with a ground speed in the low forties and never seemed to get close to the airport.

Finally we dropped down to 2,000' and saw more south out of the wind and finished the trip off. What an adventure! 601 miles enroute according to the GPS flight log. 7 hours and 20 minutes flying time with a overall average speed of 74.7 mph.

The airplane performed flawlessly other than the tailwheel issues. The engine ran like a top smoothly purring along. We burned around 5.5 gph and used just less than a quart of oil in 8 hours. Not bad at all and Dennis has a real nice plane he can fly in the winter. She even has a heater!

So Lee Hilbert is right, you can fly cross country in a Champ. We might want to consider doing so in the summer next time though...unless Dennis gets some skis...

Those section lines are north/south. We're flying due north in this picture.

A Champ for Poplar Grove.