The Flight of the Feral Chihuahua: In Pursuit of the Round-Trip Transcontinental Speed Record

By Jeremiah D. Jackson

The Flight of the Feral Chihuahua is a true story about the effort, challenges, and fears behind setting a new round-trip transcontinental speed record in a small airplane. The author a long-time pilot and accomplished skydiver brings to the reader a vivid re-telling of modifying his home-built, experimental airplane, and then flying it 4,200 miles one winters day across the United States and back. Challenging him along the way were hours of fatigue, deep isolation, dangerous weather, and life-threatening equipment failures. But, off-setting these challenges were months of planning, state-of-art equipment, extensive training, and the love and prayers of friends and family. No matter what the readers background, this book will leave you with a sense of being there through realistic imagery and a detailed description of what the pilot saw, felt, and thought along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453574188

Jeremiah D. Jackson

A California native, Jeremiah (“Jerry”) Jackson is a skydiver and instrument-rated pilot with eight world, and one national-level, aviation records. A civil engineer by training and profession, he lives with his wife, Nina, by the beach in San Diego, California. Jerry currently lectures at John Paul the Great Catholic University, where he is a professor of business, and consults at Kleinfelder, where he is a senior principal engineer. His wife and he are currently writing “Wine Flights”, a book about wineries that are located near airports. His daughter, Julia, is a graduate creative writing student at Brooklyn College in New York. When not flying, Jerry surfs, back-packs, and writes. Along with long-time friend Andy Keech, he is currently building a four-passenger RV-10, and they plan to attempt a few more records. Jerry Jackson exiting a jump plane from 12,500 feet over the drop zone at Perris Valley, California.

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Jeremiah D. Jackson, PhD.

Library of Congress Control Number:  2010914081

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4535-7417-1

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4535-7416-4

ISBN: Ebook          978-1-4535-7418-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Chapters

About the Book

Note to Reader

Prologue

1.    Failure

2.    Disaster

3.    Feverish Test Flying

4.    Decisions

5.    Launch

6.    West to Abilene

7.    On to Jacksonville

8.    Fast Turn-around Back to Abilene

9.    Last Leg to Home

10.    Landing and Celebration

11.    Aftermath

12.    Lessons Learned

Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Photographs

Appendix

Dedication

This book and its effort are dedicated to my wonderful wife, Nina Jackson, for her complete support and trust in my flying; to my lifelong friend Andy Keech, for his loyalty and inspiration; and to my daughter, Julia Jackson, for her writer’s help and guidance.

To the best of my recollection, every bit of this story is true.

About the Book

The Flight of the Feral Chihuahua is a true story about the effort, challenges, and fears behind setting a new round-trip transcontinental speed record in a small airplane. The author—a long-time pilot and accomplished skydiver—brings to the reader a vivid re-telling of modifying his home-built, experimental airplane, and then flying it 4,200 miles one winter’s day across the United States and back. Challenging him along the way were hours of fatigue, deep isolation, dangerous weather, and life-threatening equipment failures. But, off-setting these challenges were months of planning, state-of-art equipment, extensive training, and the love and prayers of friends and family. No matter what the reader’s background, this book will leave you with a sense of being there through realistic imagery and a detailed description of what the pilot saw, felt, and thought along the way.

Here was shining adventure, beckoning with new experiences, added knowledge of flying, of peoples—of myself.

—Amelia Earhart, in Last Flight, 1937

Note to Reader

This book is the true story of an adventure involving flying a homebuilt airplane across the United States, and back, in record time. It was written by the plane’s pilot and builder, and is intended for a broad audience.

Even though this book is intended for general reading, the author included enough flight and aircraft details to appeal to his fellow pilots, and enough of the frustration, problems, and solutions that a performance flight requires to guide those who might wish to also seek an aviation record.

The author feels, however, that anyone would enjoy learning of the challenge and adventure told in these pages and hopes that nonaviators will not be hindered by the details. (A glossary of terms is thus included as an aid.)

Additionally, the book can be used by those readers seeking an example of how a challenging project may be successfully executed in large part from planning and lessons learned along the way.

No matter what your interest is in reading this book, the author hopes that you find it entertaining!

Prologue

My parachute logbook shows over 1,900 jumps. Approximately 160 of that total were in the pursuit of a skydiving world record of some sort. Eight of those were successful. What I learned in all those years of record attempts was that record endeavors are hard. They’re hard for the simple fact that many people before you have given their best to set the record you’re challenging. They’ve devoted training, talent, resources, and luck—usually in large portion—to push the standard higher, faster, further, and better than anyone before. To beat their record, you have to beat their effort. And that is always very, very difficult.

I got the idea to set a new round-trip, transcontinental speed record in my experimental airplane, the Feral Chihuahua, soon after I had sold my other plane (a Murphy Moose), which resulted in some extra cash in my pocket and time on my hands. It was over the Christmas holidays in 2008 that I gave a call to my longtime buddy Andy Keech, and we began to discuss what aviation records might we accomplish.

We first toyed with the idea of building an RV-10[1] (a four-passenger version of my Feral Chihuahua, which is an RV-6A) and perhaps going after some long-distance speed record. But after realizing the years and dollars that would require, we refocused on something a little less demanding. Why not simply modify my RV-6A, to make it go faster and farther, and try for a transcontinental speed record? We had both read about a plane that had done that a few years earlier, and maybe we could better its flight.

We both researched the National Aeronautic Association’s (NAA) Web site to confirm the existing record. The current record was indeed held by a plane (a Glasair) similar in size and power to my own, which had flown from San Diego, California, to Jacksonville, Florida, at an average speed of 194 mph. Better yet, the record back again to San Diego (held by a different, slower airplane) was a leisurely 131 mph.

I knew my plane could probably do 178 mph in still air, with its current 180-horsepower carbureted engine and stock cowling and fairings. What if I added more power, made it aerodynamically slicker, and flew high in the jet stream to catch its push? Surely the combined effect would equal more than the additional 16 mph that I’d need to beat the record? And coming back east to west, all I’d need would be to fly on a day that had average headwinds less than 47 mph. That should be easy! Energized by both the dawning of a new mission to sink my teeth into and the possibility that for once attaining a new record could actually be easy, I started to research airframe modifications and engine possibilities.

The Internet made short work of what I was looking for. It quickly became apparent that I could indeed squeeze a 200-horsepower fuel-injected engine into the Chihuahua’s small airframe without much difficulty. AeroSport Power, out of Kamloops, British Columbia, custom-manufactured just such an engine. Plus, they offered it with electronic ignition, a superior system to traditional aircraft engine magnetos. A call to Bart LeLonde at AeroSport confirmed that the electronic ignition would give me more power and less fuel consumption at the high altitudes I was contemplating for the record. That decided, I turned my attention to airframe modifications to complement the new power plant.

I reasoned that my biggest airspeed gains would be in finding ways to make my plane more aerodynamic, and not in increased power. (Aerospace engineers have known this fact since about the time of the Wright brothers.) Thus, I next looked at improved engine cowlings to take advantage of the new fuel-injected engine’s smaller profile. A father-son outfit out of Florida manufactured what looked like a futuristic cowling for RVs, with wonderful air intake rings that gave a fast appearance just sitting still.[2] A look at the father andson’s Web site showed that they also sold what looked to be superior wheel fairings and a ram-air intake system for the cowling.

A quick calculation using the various claims made by the vendors and expected increase in horsepower from the new engine showed that I might gain 15 to 20 mph from what I currently was flying. Wow, I thought, "that would give me a speed of 198 mph in still air." Any push from the jet stream would be icing on the cake. Excited, I called Andy to tell him the news and then, without hesitation, ordered the new engine and the other parts that I had just researched.

Andy suggested that I call NAA and request a sanction to reserve my record attempt. A sanction is a way to officially notify NAA your intentions, by nominating a route, record, and time period. It’s a simple form and costs a few hundred dollars to file, but gives you some peace of mind that you’ll be secure and alone in your attempt. (I admit freely that I’m not sure what happens if two people try for the same record at the same time.)

The best period to fly from San Diego to Jacksonville, from a tailwind standpoint, is a brief, two-week weather window from late January until early February. This is because as the Northern Hemisphere advances into winter, the jet stream migrates to the south and broadens to form a line of high-speed wind connecting the two opposite cities. During other times of the year, the jet stream is far to the north and more snakelike. It is one reason why Southern California gets its rain during the winter: the jet stream—dipping south—allows Pacific storms to migrate lower in latitude than typical.

Although I was a year from this two-week jet stream window, I wanted to advance my plan and make it real, so I next called the NAA to book my sanction for 2009.

Ah, yes, transcontinental flight speed record, the NAA official said on the other end of the line when I inquired about the sanction. Seems we just had a new claim come in just a few days ago.

What? I asked, feeling my heart sink.

Yes, here it is, he replied. It’s 292 mph west to east and 224 mph east to west. A Questair, he added. Do you still want to request a sanction for a try?

Uh, yes, okay, I answered, not yet fully appreciating how high the bar had just been set.

I hung up the phone and stared at the speeds that I had just recorded from the call. Even with all the modifications that I’d contemplated, I would need an average tailwind of almost 100 mph to beat the record while flying from San Diego to Jacksonville. And I’d need an impossible tailwind on the return leg to California of at least 26 mph. The Questair pilot, with 100 more horsepower than my soon-to-be newly engined Feral Chihuahua, had picked the perfect days to fly. As one would expect, he had just set the new record in late January, using the magic jet stream window. I admired and envied him for that.

Calling Andy once more with this new and deflating information, we sat in silence on the phone, mulling over its consequences.

Well, I offered, we could at least try for the west-to-east record. That’s doable under perfect jet stream conditions. Yeah, Andy replied, with a hint of disbelief.

Or, I said, getting an idea, "we could go after the round-trip record."

What do you mean? asked Andy, not sure what I was proposing.

The Questair waited on the ground for two days between legs for perfect winds. What if we just turn around immediately upon landing in Jacksonville and come back without waiting?

Yes! Andy answered.

Thus began our two-year odyssey to set a new round-trip transcontinental speed record. And true to past experience, it would not be easy.

1

Failure

2100 PST, February 3, 2009; 19,000 feet; approximately twenty-two hours to go. I was two hours into the flight, and things did not look good. I was tired. I was cold. But most disturbingly, I was losing my optimism that the flight would end well.

Here I was in a small aluminum container that I had built and rebuilt over the past dozen years, suspended almost four miles above the Arizona desert, at a frigid 4˚F, and all I had for spatial reference was blackness all around. My gauges said that I was traveling at 200 mph, that the plane was flying straight and level, and that I was proceeding on course to Jacksonville, Florida, from my base in San Diego, California. But due to the deep black sky above, and the deep black desert below, for all I knew, I was imagining it all, motionless in a cold, dimly lit capsule.

I had departed San Diego at 7:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, after lecturing for six hours at John Paul Catholic University, where I taught business and science courses. My plan was to travel across the United States in my homebuilt aircraft (nicknamed the Feral Chihuahua in a moment of ultimate underdog sarcasm[3]) during the night, at an altitude high enough to catch the jet stream and ride its energy to dawn and the Atlantic Coast; then—energized by sunlight—return home to California flying low enough to duck under the jet stream’s push that I had just capitalized on.

That was the plan, anyway. Go high and fast in the dark. Land, refuel, get awake with the sun, and fly home low and warm.

What I ignored were my age (59) and natural body rhythm, which dictated morning pursuits and not nighttime endurances.

Thus, I found myself—way too early even by my typically optimistic account—to be cold, fatigued, and experiencing borderline disorientation by my sphere of blackness. And this only after two hours into a twenty-four-hour flight!

Okay, Jer, I consoled myself. Calm down. Let’s take inventory of what you’ve got. I then ticked through in my mind the crucial elements of the flight:

Fuel: plenty, it seemed, most of which stored in a