Flying Into the Washington DC SFRA (Special Flight Rules Airspace)

[@klkayaker]

I was still in high school when we moved to Gaithersburg in 1969. We lived in the newly opened Montgomery Village for about three years before I moved back to northern California.

[@Steve-kj9tx]

I'm three hours into my PPL journey training in Gaithersburg at KGAI, so SFRA is all I know. Definitely adds a bit of complexity, but if I can learn there, hopefully everything else will be easier!

[@justabill5780]

I'm out of KFME (Tipton/Fort Meade). Same here.

[@justabill5780]

I'm a student pilot based in the DC SFRA. Was told at the start of my training that if I can fly in this area, I can fly anywhere in the country due to the security protocols and airport/traffic congestion.

[@CanardBoulevard]

They're are definitely more congested areas, but yeah, you're getting good experience flying there!

[@billwilliams9527]

How cool is DC, lived in the area for 6 years, so much history.

[@stevendegiorgio3143]

I have never done it.But I am certified to fly thru the DCA VOR/DME SFRA.I also got certified for the New York Hudson/East river exclusion area SFRA

[@Lyle-In-NO]

Where is/was the F-16? Did I just miss it somewhere in the video? What F-16 you say? Oh, the obvious one prominently show in this video's thumbnail. Maybe I just didn't see it.

[@flyingGrandpa]

I used to do a lot of Pilots-N-Paws flights. That's when I started flying into the SFRA, and it was to GAI every time.

[@GeorgeAlexa]

In the 80s, I worked a few blocks from the Air & Space Museum. I can't tell you the hours I spent looking at everything. Just so you know, no tickets were necessary. I live about 40 minutes from DC and have taken my e-bike to the Mall and surrounding area.

[@CanardBoulevard]

Tickets are necessary right now - I was actually turned away. Because a fair amount of the museum is shut down for renovations, they are constantly at capacity, so they instituted a first-come-first-served ticket system. I showed up, saw the huge line, and was told that I needed a ticket (with a specific entry time) to go in, and that they were sold out of tickets for the entire weekend (and that was on a Friday).

[@sirtango1]

D that mark 4 is sounding good! I almost purchased a Long EZ many years ago. The deal was conditional on the seller buying another plane. His deal fell through and didn’t sell.

[@AirplaneMode-pi9oc]

This was fun!! Look forward to the next one! Come and see us in Tulsa Oklahoma

[@flysport_tedder]

CAS beep, rebooting avionics, map draw issues, headwind, what distractions! everything about this trip is a good case study for new pilots.. traffic, radio, weather, all the things. realized I've been to GAI when I was learning how to fly in the SFRA. amusingly DC people call it SFRA ("siffruh"), in Los Angeles they call it "special flight rules area". regionalisms.

[@CanardBoulevard]

Yes, lots of distractions - but you'll notice I fly the airplane first, get to a place where my workload is lower, THEN start troubleshooting and trying things. :) Lots of weather decision making on the outbound trip. I never thought about this video from that aspect - being a good example for new pilots, but thanks for pointing it out!

Glenn Curtiss was the main target of the Wrights’ patent suits in the U.S. Curtiss was one of the original members of the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), which the inventor Alexander Graham Bell had established on September 30, 1907. The group consisted of a group of aviation enthusiasts Bell had drawn together to build a practical airplane using the $20,000 that his wife Mabel contributed toward the effort. The Wrights respected Bell and felt he would see that their patent was not violated. So when an AEA member, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, wrote to the Wrights in January 1908 for information about aircraft construction, the Wrights answered promptly and also referred him to their patent and other publications for more details.

[@humbafalce]

Thanks for sharing. Your vídeos are getting in Brazil…

[@paulstejskal]

This is a great video. I can tell you're not only a good, safe pilot but experienced. Question: how do you check radar on your iPad? I think I saw your cell phone too. Do you get cell reception that high, or are you using something like a Starlink?

[@CanardBoulevard]

My iPad is connected via Bluetooth to the GDL 39R ADS-B receiver inside the panel. This receives NEXRAD radar, TIS-B and FIS-B information from dedicated ground stations and displays it on my MFD and PFD. It also sends it over Bluetooth to my iPad. Occasionally I'll pick up a cell signal for a couple of minutes if I am flying over a built-up area, and when that happens it can also update then...but primarily it's FIS-B data coming from ground stations.

[@paulstejskal]

@@CanardBoulevard Ah neat. Thank you.

[@markguenin9114]

Re: rain and the canard -- my hangar-next-door-neighbor has a Cozy MKIV, and he has vortex generators on the upper surface of his canard. I asked him about it (before I saw your video) and he said it eliminated the rain-tuck (I don't know exactly what it's called, but you know what I mean). He only heard about it after his build, so he added them on. Said it was quite easy.

[@CanardBoulevard]

The only problem with this, is that VGs lower stall speed. The Canard MUST ALWAYS stall before the main wing. If you are lightly loaded up front, and have the VGs on your canard, what happens if you get so slow that your main wing exceeds its angle of attack and stalls before the canard does? Well, I can tell you what happens, your plane goes into an unrecoverable deep stall. That's why I am very wary about people who have VGs on their canard, unless they have put them on their main wing as well, and have done a LOT of testing (i.e. repeat Phase 1) to validate the stall behavior. Just sticking some VG's on the canard and saying "rain problem fixed" is asking for trouble.

[@markguenin9114]

I'm pretty sure he has them on the main wing, too. I can check this week.

[@joewalker2089]

Thanks for sharing your flight experiences and technical knowledge with us, much appreciated !!!

[@tsbrownie]

Nice plane. I don't know if it's just the camera, but the reflection from above the instrument cluster is distracting. I think most planes paint that flat black.... Question: can you safely slip a canard aircraft?

[@CanardBoulevard]

It's matching the interior of the plane, I don't want to paint it black as it is then going to heat up the expensive avionics right below it. And yes, you can (and I do) slip a canard!

[@paulstejskal]

Did you ever figure out why the Garmin didn't load? My thoughts (I work in IT) are 1) heat, maybe a failsafe to keep it from working too hard (similar to your iPhone dimming screen when super hot), 2) maybe storage problem (run Spinrite if HDD/SSD), 3) moisture makes sense too.

[@CanardBoulevard]

According to Garmin, it was the SD card - if I had ejected the SD card, it would have come right up. No idea why it fixed itself (I'm suspecting humidity from days of rain) but it hasn't happened since, and I'm still using the same SD card. The log files written to the SD card while it was having this problem support this diagnosis.

[@paulstejskal]

@@CanardBoulevard If you can get the SD card to come up in a computer from the BIOS, you might try to Spinrite it. 6.1 is out and it's a really good tool. I'd say do a level 1 to check for errors, and if nothing comes back do a level 3. If not, maybe replace it with a new one.

[@ThomasGrillo]

Thanks for sharing your adventure. Oh, you're so lucky you didn't have that verbal annunciator saying "...your door is ajar". LOL

[@larrynoe6162]

Your rain encounter made me think about the Dragonfly’s and they were really dangerous in rain. People started putting vortices generators and it cured the problem. Is this something anyone is doing with a Cozy?

[@CanardBoulevard]

It was a real problem with Long EZs using the original GU canard. It was fixed by moving to the Roncz canard, which is what is used on the Cozy. There is a little bit of loss of lift in rain, but definitely manageable as you saw.

[@pdutube]

It was interesting to see you using flight following and ATC being OK with maintaining an IFR altitude, 6000 ft, heading eastbound. I guess as long as they are monitoring, they sort of treat you as pseudo-IFR?

[@CanardBoulevard]

Right. They knew where I was, where I was going, and if they needed me to do something else for separation, they would have told me. I was also watching for traffic both visually and on ADS-B (only traffic I saw was airliners 30,000 feet above me).

[@alanbarnett6993]

I'm based at Tipton (KFME). If you fly into DC again, contact me. You might want to consider KFME instead of KGAI; lower price for fuel and overnight tiedown.

[@heyitsdavey]

Thank you for just saying your call-sign and altitude on initial contact… Hearing “with you” is my pet peeve.

[@garymarble9006]

It is a bit annoying to watch a video based on its thumbnail, only to find out the thumbnail footage is not part of the video. Feels like I got "click baited." Still, I appreciated the video even without the fighter jet. Thanks for hearing me out.

[@bradmarcum2927]

Great vid. Thanks for taking us along.

[@ominousfred]

i live on the base where the alert fighters r, and ive seen them take off and go to people i gotta say its pretty cool, but i cant imgaine what ppl feel like being intersecpted by f-16s.

[@CanardBoulevard]

Me either, thankfully!

[@Lyle-In-NO]

Hey, guys. What does sqawk or "sqawk code" mean? As a young kid, I use to hear my dad mention sqawk whenever he used his ham radio while we traveled. I though sqawk was unique to ham operators, but I guess not.

[@CanardBoulevard]

It's the transponder code that ATC gives you. You dial that code into your transponder (or "squawk box") and they can then identify which radar blip on their screen is you.

[@danielbickhart5683]

Just one comment, you put your oxygen cannula on wrong. It doesn't go over your head but goes on from the front. Next time you see a medical professional (doctor, nurse, emt) ask them about it.

[@danielbickhart5683]

The plus side of doing it right is that it's faster and easier than doing it wrong.

[@theLeftHandedDog]

I don't know who the knucklehead was who decided he knew better than the Wright brothers how an airplane ought to be designed, but the pilots dogfighting in WW1 could have saved themselves a lot of trouble with the challenge of how to fire a machine gun through their propellers if they'd just stuck with the original and correct way to build an aeroplane; the classic pusher type design like your Cozy. You won't have any of those issues if you decide to mount a machine gun on yours.

[@Verb130]

As a Cozy builder, conventional gear aerobatic general aviation pilot, and a former AF F-16 pilot, I can tell you there are performance problems, especially in the low speed (behind the power curve) of canard aircraft that tractor aircraft do not have when you are defensive trying to save your life, and can give you an advantage when you are trying that last bit of energy to get a gun track. It's in the margins of low energy performance (not high energy) that a tractor aircraft has the advantage over a pusher canard. The Army Air Forces in the early 1940s did try a canard. The Curtiss XP-55 prototype performed its first flight from the USAAF's Scott Field in Saint Louis, not far from the Curtiss plant, on 19 July 1943. It just could not perform and was dangerous in some flight regimes.

[@CanardBoulevard]

The last remaining XP-55 is at the Air Zoo in Michigan, I stumbled upon it there and talked about it a lot in my Air Zoo video. I was unaware that there were any left that hadn't crashed. The stall characteristics of the XP-55 were lethal.

Glenn Curtiss was that knucklehead. Wright and Curtiss merged in the 1920’s to form the Curtiss-Wright corporation

Tho I think most of those planes dogfighting in WWI were of French/Dutch/German origin. The Wright Brothers stopped aircraft development in the good old USA by filling lawsuits against anyone try to develop aircraft including Glenn Curtiss and Alexander Graham Bell. The military forced the Wrights to settle with Curtiss around 1918 so they could get “modern” aircraft and Bell got out of the business

Boeing started in 1916 and Beechcraft and Cessna came along in the 1920’s

[@Verb130]

Really nice content.

[@dtoften]

Concerning the G3X being stuck at DRAW, I have read that this can happen if you have user waypoints with the same name in both the G3X and your garmin GPS nav.

[@CanardBoulevard]

Not the case here, just odd that it "fixed" itself after awhile. It was fine going into the airport as well.

[@libertine5606]

I had a G-500 and would get red Xs. Once was software and the second time was the magnetometer. I am having the G3x and the GTN 750 put in. For back up I have two G-5s put it. That way if the G3x crashes I have a whole back up system. They tell me that the G3x is very dependable but this will be a commuter and I can't have a month long downtime.

[@bernardanderson3758]

It’s Great to get the rust off in flying into the SFRA

[@shiftW420]

Regarding flight plans being closed, you only need to close a SFRA flightplan for pattern work.

[@ExtremeRecluse]

it must have been some intense training for a guy who never flew an airliner to perform a return-to-target and level off 300 feet before hitting the pentagon without hitting any obstacles. 99% of fighter pilots couldn't do it.

[@waynebradish6344]

Next time you come down to Washington, fly in to Leesburg and you're close to the udvar hazy Air and space museum annex on Dulles airport property.

[@hellstormllc1277]

Wow i just was in dc for the week! Very cool

[@hydojenk]

Great video!

[@DaveWrightKB9MNM]

If I ever get my PPL/SPL, my daughter lives in Laurel. I have been practicing on XPlane and wondered where the best place to land. I’ll try GAI next simulated flight!

[@Chrismarquez7]

My home base KGAI ❤

[@kyledurch8824]

Have you checked the SD card in that Garmin unit?

[@CanardBoulevard]

Yes, the SD card is only used to load new chart data into the G3X. It will operate without the SD card in it.

[@LGEZ53S]

Rather than fly for 2 hrs with the canopy alert going off, I would have popped in/out of configuration mode on the PFD and either turned the alert volume off or disabled the canopy alert. Disabling just the canopy alert would have left all your other aural alerts available.

[@CanardBoulevard]

I actually thought about doing that, but figured "only another xx minutes, I'll just live with it and fix it on the ground"

[@jestingrabbit]

you mentioned the heat a lot, could that have been what messed with your avionics?

[@bernardanderson3758]

Top off at KCJR on your way back to your destination

[@CanardBoulevard]

I actually didn't refuel at all on this trip. Even with a half hour hold, I flew down and back with two hours fuel remaining.

[@HelenJason-q5i]

Ryan Center

[@richardbabin4393]

Let me know next time you're in the DC area. I'm based in the SFRA

[@keiraferrari7764]

I believe you have an oxygen concentrator, not a generator.

[@mauricester]

Canopy Alarm for over two Hours ..... Talk about your Medevil Water Torture test well done to Maintain your Sanity 🤪

[@idlewise]

@3:16 ATC having a party?

[@idlewise]

@0:36 your narration says "taking off" yet the radio call you gave @0:42 you say "departing"! WHY? At least you said "zero nine", rather than just "nine". ICAO tells you to say "niner", and I know in the US you do your own thing !!!

[@ron228rj]

SFRA is pronounced Suffer-ahhhhhhh! 😂

[@df0813]

Thanks for that clickbait.

[@MrLotsabits]

Electronics problems? You said the cabin was very hot before takeoff. I wonder hot it was at the circuit board. Electrons and heat sometimes don't play well together. Just a thought. Good video!

[@CanardBoulevard]

The cabin was very hot because it was very hot outside!

Glenn Curtiss was the main target of the Wrights’ patent suits in the U.S. Curtiss was one of the original members of the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), which the inventor Alexander Graham Bell had established on September 30, 1907. The group consisted of a group of aviation enthusiasts Bell had drawn together to build a practical airplane using the $20,000 that his wife Mabel contributed toward the effort. The Wrights respected Bell and felt he would see that their patent was not violated. So when an AEA member, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, wrote to the Wrights in January 1908 for information about aircraft construction, the Wrights answered promptly and also referred him to their patent and other publications for more details.