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Local fly-in

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Dana

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Apr 3, 2007
Messages
12,666
Location
CT, USA
Yesterday was a pretty good day, if with obstacles along the way.

Every spring, the owner of a local private strip has a big party at the field. This year seven of us from my home field planned to fly in for the event. The weather forecast was kind of gloppy, IFR improving to marginal VFR during the day with low ceilings, but it's only a 12 mile flight over relatively flat country. When I got to the airport the ceiling was still at 600', and Woody was busy trying to get his Kitfox back together after the annual. We all puttered around waiting for the weather to improve. By 2pm it was up to 1100' and forecast to continue improving so we all decided to go. Woody couldn't get it together so he would drive over later. Other than that there were student pilot Stan in his C-170, two Cubs (a Legend and a J-3), another Cessna, a Navion, and my Hatz.

Next obstacle was a dead battery in the Hatz. Yeah, I had forgotten to turn off the master last time I flew and it was dead as a doornail. Woody hadn't left yet, so he jumped in the cockpit to hold the brakes while I hand propped it. The battery still wasn't charging (totally dead, no field current) but with no tower who needs an electrical system anyway?

Once aloft, the clouds I could see the fog rolling in off the ocean, about a half mile from the airport, which is just over a mile from the coast. Class G airspace so one mile viz and clear of clouds (barely) was OK as I circled to land:

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The field itself was clear. Mind the cell tower on short final, though! Well, I'll stay a little while.

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Parked the plane by the river and headed across the field to the tent where I grabbed a bowl of excellent clam chowder (this is New England, after all) that was cooking in a barrel big enough to need a canoe paddle to stir it. That's when Stan showed up, without his plane... he took off but didn't like the looks of the weather and as a student he's not signed off for solo in less than full VFR, so he landed and drove over in his car.

It was getting darker towards the coast so with rain forecast for the next day and no hangar space, the rest of us decided to fly out while we still could. I wolfed down the chowder and headed back to the plane. I still had a dead battery so Stan propped me and I took off just after the Cubs left. It was a quick low 180 right after takeoff to stay out of the clouds, but the flight back to our home field farther inland was no problem.

By the time I put my plane away everybody else had landed, and we all drove back to the party which was still going strong, and now with the planes back in the hangar the 8 hour bottle to throttle rule no longer applied. :cool: All in all a good day.
 
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