We stopped at Adams County for fuel (thanks for the tip, Kent!)
You're welcome! That's a nice little field, isn't it?
I really enjoyed the weekend!
I had quite the ordeal to even make it - I was trying to get home the entire freakin' week, and still ended up in Iowa on Thursday night instead of at home. But, after driving from Oxford to Cedar Rapids to Sparta to Madison and getting a family member to deliver some stuff to me at the airport, I managed to go from being in the truck to being in the airplane in about 15-20 minutes; Pete and I got up there well before moonset and set up our tents.
There was plenty of flying to be done this weekend. I got three rides - First was my first helicopter ride, which was interesting. I'd like to get an intro flight and try flying one myself. Second was my 2nd flight in Dr. Bruce's Seneca, in which I realized that I'm still afraid to touch the throttle quadrant on such a fine bird because I don't want to overboost it.
Third was on Sunday, when Ed flew me down to LNL on his fuel run and let me fly his beautiful PA24-250 almost the whole way, including the landing. Man, that's a sweet bird! Now, I need to go get a subscription to Spike's Airplane Finding Service.
I also gave a few rides. First was to a lady who apparently has been trying to get an airplane ride for a couple of years now. She had never been in an airplane of any sort, so I gave her the full ground-pounder briefing which includes an explanation of how and why airplanes turn. (I do this because I had one first-time pax who was afraid she was going to fall out of the airplane when I banked.) She really enjoyed it, but said "it feels like we're going so slow!" She didn't seem to mind the turbulence down low at all, and so I asked "Do you like roller coasters?" She gave an enthusiastic yes, so I said I could show her how fast we were going with a runway inspection pass, which she had seen a few of already but not from inside the airplane. After explaining what was involved and what it would feel like and leaving the decision of whether to do it up to her, we ended up doing it and she loved it! After the flight she had a big grin and thanked me profusely. She was a great passenger.
Second, I gave a ride to a kid who is 13 years old and seems to be in love with airplanes. He really "gets it" and I would be surprised if he doesn't become a pilot. I let him fly for a little bit, and mentioned that he can solo a glider at 14... Hopefully he finds his way to a flight school sooner rather than later. We did a low pass and he really enjoyed the extra G's in the pull-up, so I pushed it over to near zero G at the top. After the flight, he told at least a dozen people how much he liked that maneuver. I wish I could remember what he called it, he gave it a name!
Finally, the helicopter pilot's wife, Julie, told me how much she enjoyed watching those low passes. I still didn't have the aviating itch completely scratched for the day, so I offered her a ride too. We took off with the sun low in the western sky and flew around enjoying the smooth air and the scenery bathed in the orange of the setting sun. I did one more deer-clearing approach and then managed my best touchdown of the night. Unfortunately the particular speed and spot I touched down resulted in being somewhat out of phase with the bumps on the runway - I got launched by the first one just far enough to hit the upslope on the second one which bounced me into the upslope on the third one, etc... But I just kept the nose pointed high in the air and held the nosewheel off until it couldn't stay up any more, which was well after the bumps. I didn't need to use the brakes at all, though, and it would have been a near-perfect landing on a near-flat runway so I was quite happy with that for my last landing of the day.
Julie had lots of fun too - So much so, in fact, that her husband Don who hasn't been in a fixed-wing in 10 years asked if he could have a ride the next morning.
Unfortunately, they left before we were done with breakfast, so I'll have to give that ride another time.
The rest of the weekend... Well, I'll get to that later.
