The Great Zenith Gravel Gaggle

There are a number of people in the Northwest who have built Zeniths and I have been fortunate to know and meet a number of them. They are a great community up here and many of them enjoy the type of flying that only the Pacific Northwest can deliver. The backcountry grass strips, the island airstrips, and especially our local sand and gravel bars.

Curt was one of those who had built his CH-701 from scratch and has spent countless hours flying it since. His airplane is well known and loved as the “Clownfish plane”. His color scheme looks like Nemo, from that Pixar movie. Scratch building takes a lot of commitment, and since he had added lots of cool gadgets and updated his panel.

Curt had moved away across the mountains for a while and recently at our EAA Chapter 84 meeting he mentioned his airplane was back. He also mentioned that he had never landed on a gravel bar before, but would like to try it. This started a discussion that eventually went online and last week John, Walt and I got Curt on a messenger group thread and decided Saturday looked good and would be the day we would introduce him to the fun of landing gravel bars.

Doing any sort of off-airport activity requires skill and lots of hours to develop. Dealing with managing the wind, rotors, tight corners, and low altitude, all while being under the power curve in slow flight takes time to practice and you have to know your airplane well. Curt definitely knew his airplane and had experience exploring the local rivers at lower altitudes, it was just time to put the wheels down in a safe place.

I have a number of rules when landing off-airport. The location must be legal. The landing zone must be somewhere safe to operate and be legal. You either need permission from the landowner, or it must be public land without rules limiting access. I also must be able to scout the location and ensure there is a suitable area flat enough to land and roll on, and without major obstacles. This means often scouting low. The FAA allows you to overfly people or property below 500′ AGL for takeoff and landing, but not otherwise. If I know I am landing, or have the intent to land then it is legal to fly over a farmhouse or cars on approach to the gravel bar.

An Anonymous Skagit Gravel Bar

For me, it is not just about being legal. I also don’t ever want to be a bother to anyone, scare anyone, or be a nuisance. So I will only land in places where I had a free path in and out of the area without flying close enough to people, buildings or vehicles to be a bother.

There are a few really good gravel bars within a short flight from Anacortes or Arlington that have large, clear spots with clear approaches and departures that would have made a good spot for Curt’s first gravel bar landing.

John’s Seven-oh-fun Max

The four of us met up at Curt’s hangar at KAWO and fired up our cameras and airplanes for what would be an epic adventure. We taxied down to the end of 16 and warmed up the planes and when we were all ready I called “Arlington Traffic, Zenith 19JF, flight of four taking off on runway 6 for a north downwind departure”. The four of us rolled out onto the runway and when we were all pointed straight we powered up and quickly lifted off in formation and climbed to pattern altitude.

Lining up to go

We headed north to the bend in the river with a large gravel bar called “Dog Leg”. While the approach to it is a tight river with tall trees on either side, with several turns, the gravel bar is flat with plenty of space to park all four airplanes off the “runway”.

Flight of four lifting off.

I landed first and got out the drone to capture the rest of the crew landing. Walt, John, and then Curt came in one at a time and we got great video and photos and some great shots of all our planes and the pilots parked on the gravel bar.

Enjoying “Dogleg” on the North Fork Stillaguamish River

After doing a few more videos of planes taking off and landing and doing passes over the river and enjoying some conversation we all took off and headed to the Skagit River to land at an anonymous gravel bar a few miles east on I5. It is a beautiful approach and I was able to get 360 video of the river as well as lots of drone shots of the 701’s having fun.

Four guys who built their airplanes and love to fly them

This was the same gravel bar I had landed the previous week and when I had the drone up I saw the spot where I rolled about 80′ on takeoff into the wind and two feet shy of a 3-4′ gully my airplane was airborne. Even if I had not been wheels up I would have sailed right over it anyway, but I was bracing for the hop and it never came.

The four friends airplanes and last week’s tracks

When we were all done John and Curt headed back to KAWO and Walk and I headed to Center Island to have a snack and relax on the deck for a while. Walt had never been there and I had never had a fly-in guest before so it was a treat for both of us.

I got some great 360 camera footage from my new rig (covered in a different blog post) and it was spectacular! It worked perfectly thru all stages of flight without any visible artifacts from vibration.

It was a really fun time not only sharing the flight and gravel bars with friends and their Zeniths but also sharing the time we had with all the other Zenith owners online. It is something I will have to do again, maybe we will invite even more pilots next time!

Afterthought: John was joking about who got in the air quicker, so I made a video to see..

Insta 360 Camera mount V2

Three years back I built an expensive, heavy, overly complicated mount for my Insta360 camera and was not too thrilled with the results. The mount was based on a commercial strut mount with Zorbathane and had lots of links, and the post itself was a telescoping monopod and the whole thing vibrated at a frequency that made the video wobble around like crazy. The stills were OK, but the video was worthless at least to the quality I expect.

Here is a link to the V 1.0 version post from 2019.

Now I have the next-gen version of the Insta360 and while having great success using GoPro8 & 9 under the wings, I wanted to be able to frame the airplane “chase plane” style again.

The plan was to get a 6′ carbon fiber tube and replace the telescoping one, but I still did not like the original strut mount either. The thought came to me that if I used GoPro style mounts near the leading edge and spar of the wing, and have two mounting points a few feet wide, I could get the 4+ feet out in front of the wing, and have enough leverage to mount it all with the glue-on go-pro mounts.

This would allow the whole thing to clip in and out in seconds and would provide rigid mounting and a long period oscillation that the in-camera stabilization could easily eliminate. I should get great video quality from such a mount and it would be trivial to install and removed so it would not stay sitting in the toolbox like the old mount that was a pain to install or removed when I used it and ugly as sin.

On Friday I assembled the mount and installed it on the plane for the gravel bar run I was making with friends in the morning. It installed just as I hoped it would, and the results of the videos I got from it were better than I expected.

So this is the parts list I used. This is not complete instructions, there are serious ramifications in adding a camera mount to a certified airplane or any airplane so don’t consider this a “how to”, this is just how I built my setup.

Stuff I used to build this mount

GoPro glue mounts. (2x) (there are flat and curved ones, I used ones that matched the profile where I mounted it)

Go Pro extensions (not flipping) (2x)

GoPro tube mount (2x) modified to remove the nut and the third finger so it can act as camera side instead of mount side.

6′ Carbon fiber tube 5/8 in Inside Dia, 3/4 in Outside Dia from Granger. Specs in the link

https://www.grainger.com/product/497Z39

Threaded camera mount from Amazon (Metal not plastic)

AN3 bolt about 1cm or so longer than tube diameter to cover two washers and nut.

I drilled a hole in the end of the tube exactly in the middle and just the right height and the thread mount will fit in ALL THE WAY into the tube, with the tension ring at the furthest back. This will trap the round based inside the tube and the AN3 bolt will go thru the holes in the base and trap it on the end of the tube.

I then mounted the carbon fiber rod using the tube mounts on the rod, and the clip in moutns on the adhesive mounts on the airplanes skin. From a forward and mid-mount on the wing skin with GoPro mounts and kept level with the extensions.

I get accused of “black magic” when I show pictures or videos made on this mount, so I am doing this to explain how it works. I built the airplane as well so I know what I am doing and I am fully responsible for my own version of this.

Do your own investigation and make sure what you do is FAA legal and safe. I am not providing a how-to guide, just showing you some of what I did on my EXPERIMENTAL airplane.