Rec.Aviation NorthEast Mini Fly-in

The weather was perfect for the Rec.Aviation Northeast Mini Fly-in
this morning. Rick and I left KPOU at 10:40am and landed at Skyacres
44N just before 11:00am. Several planes were leaving so we were able
to tie down just outside of the Windsock Cafe. I went inside the
restaurant and immediately recognized Tom (from the Rogues Gallery's
pictures). Tom introduced us to his cousin (?) Joe who was not a pilot
but certainly an aviation enthusiast. Few minutes later, Robert
Chambers found our table after checking out two other groups. Tom was
wondering whether Morris would arrive by plane or car when his Arrow
taxied to the lower parking lot. Probably due the late morning hour,
the service was much quicker than when I visited them last time. Lonni
and Morris just barely had a bite of my homemade cranberry-orange
muffins when their orders arrived.

We enjoyed hearing about Tom's attempted trip to the AOPA's fly-in.
We had thought that filing IFR was the way to go but would think twice
about doing so at fly-in events. Robert thrilled us with his "across
the pond" flying story. Morris and Lonni enticed us with their Angel
Flight missions and especially the coast-to-coast trip. These are the
trips which we would love to do soon now that we have obtained our
instrument ratings. Being aviation newbies, we don't have many
exciting trips to report except telling the group the reason for our
decision to get instrument training. On our last long cross-country
trip from northern Minnesota back to New York, we were forced to
abandon the sunny sky to go beneath the overcast layer. Flying at 1200'
AGL over the beautiful Dells in Wisconsin was interesting but somewhat
nerve-racking having to check the GPS for obstructions. The landscapes
were just dotted with cell towers!

Tom and Joe had to live early. Robert stayed a bit longer. We did not
get a chance to go outside to take pictures of the planes which they
arrived in. I believe Tom flew a Debonair from his flying club and
Robert flew a Grumman Traveller from his.

Morris, Lonni and us were in no hurry so we took our time doing more
hangar flying both inside the Cafe and outside in the brilliant Spring
morning.

Rick drooled over the nice avionics Morris had in his Arrow:
Stormscope, Garmin 430 etc. Morris told us that his bird needs new
glass and paints but he probably changed his mind after seeing a truly
needy case, ours!

We should have a larger Northeast Rec Aviation fly-in next time.
Block Island sounds like a great place to me. We have never been there
but would love to visit it soon.

Here is the link to the snapshots I took this morning

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...r&x=0&y=6f481t

Note to Robert: Please send me an email. My photo invitation to your
email address (without nospam) bounced back.

Tom, Joe, Morris and Robert: I also have some video clips. If you
have broadband and an email address with large storage space (yahoo now
offers free 1gb email account), I can send it to you. The pics which I
uploaded to kodakgallery are reduced web versions. If you want any
original pics for better printing, let me know. It was great fun
meeting you all. We will have to do it again.

Hai Longworth
N30703

Thanks for the detailed write-up, I had a good time, it was a great day
to fly and it was lots of fun putting names with faces.

My trip home was amusing, I flew over a co-workers house who has been
out on disability and took some pictures of his house and some video and
sent those on to him when I got home.

Interesting arrival at Bridgeport, the Corsairs were still doing their
demo flights so the airspace was closed to arrivals. I chose to hang
out near the Sikorsky helicopter factory but above their airspace until
it opened up. I took the opportunity to burn the 10 minute wait with
MCA turns with full flaps. After they started letting us come in for
landing I cleaned up the plane and scooted over towards the coast and
called in for a 5 mile final for R24. They had us stacked up pretty
deep so I did my best airline approach to the runway and slowed down
about 1/2 mile from the threshold.

All in all a good flying day!

Robert

Robert,

How fast did you fly your airline approach? The most fun I had in my
instrument training was doing the ILS approach at 120kts at Schenectady
airport.

I'd bet that your coworker would appreciate seeing the aerial picture
and video of his home. Speaking of coworker, on the way home today I
was the unwitting witness of an automobile accident which totaled the
brand new big truck of a friend. It just happened that John, my friend
had done me a great favor by jump starting my car right after work. I
had left the lights on all day! He was behind my car for most the
way home. I did not know whether he just happened to drive home the
same roads or just wanted to make sure that my car would not have
stalled. On a narrow country road, the car in front of me slowing down
to make a right turn. From the corner of my eyes, I noticed a truck
speeding by from the opposite direction. Then I no longer saw John's
truck behind me. I thought that he had made a turn. An hour later, I
got a call from John telling me that the fast truck had skidded off his
lane and totaled his, hitting the driver's side. He got banged up a
bit but did not require hospitalization. I shuddered to think that it
could have been my car that got hit. My low profile Honda Accord would
not have provided the protection as well as John's tall and huge truck.
I could have been hurt badly or even killed.
There have been quite a few debates at rec.aviation on whether
flying is safer or more dangerous than driving. Our family and friends
keep telling us to be careful when we go flying. I feel a whole lot
safer flying than driving since I have more control of my own safety in
my own plane.

Hai

120kts to 1/2 mile, the Grumman takes a bit to slow down, slippery
little suckers. Helpful if you are going into a class C or bigger
airport. If you tell them as you are approaching you can give them 120
to the fence you can get yourself sequenced in a little quicker than
they might otherwise give you while they make a huge space for your 80kt
approach.

Funny about how people perceieve the dangers of small planes versus
cars. I tell them if all the drivers on the roads had to go through the
same amount of training we do to fly, along with recurrent training,
special training and testing for bad weather flying, etc. That we'd all
be allowed to go 100mph on the roads and you wouldn't see that many
other drivers on the roads. I think most places if you can find your
way to the DMV and have a heartbeat you can get a license.

Sorry to hear about your friend and his truck, no good deed goes
unpunished I guess.

Robert

wrote:

Robert,

How fast did you fly your airline approach? The most fun I had in my
instrument training was doing the ILS approach at 120kts at Schenectady
airport.

I'd bet that your coworker would appreciate seeing the aerial picture
and video of his home. Speaking of coworker, on the way home today I
was the unwitting witness of an automobile accident which totaled the
brand new big truck of a friend. It just happened that John, my friend
had done me a great favor by jump starting my car right after work. I
had left the lights on all day! He was behind my car for most the
way home. I did not know whether he just happened to drive home the
same roads or just wanted to make sure that my car would not have
stalled. On a narrow country road, the car in front of me slowing down
to make a right turn. From the corner of my eyes, I noticed a truck
speeding by from the opposite direction. Then I no longer saw John's
truck behind me. I thought that he had made a turn. An hour later, I
got a call from John telling me that the fast truck had skidded off his
lane and totaled his, hitting the driver's side. He got banged up a
bit but did not require hospitalization. I shuddered to think that it
could have been my car that got hit. My low profile Honda Accord would
not have provided the protection as well as John's tall and huge truck.
I could have been hurt badly or even killed.
There have been quite a few debates at rec.aviation on whether
flying is safer or more dangerous than driving. Our family and friends
keep telling us to be careful when we go flying. I feel a whole lot
safer flying than driving since I have more control of my own safety in
my own plane.

Hai

Here is the link to the snapshots I took this morning

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...r&x=0&y=6f481t


Great pix from a great looking event, Hai! Thanks for sharing them...

Nice looking Cardinal, BTW!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Hi Jay,
Thank you for checking out the pictures. The digital cam is a
convenient event recorder.
Our Cardinal only looks good from a distance ;-) It badly needs new
glass and paint. We had planned to do it early this year but decide to
go for the instrument ratings first.
We finally got a quote for the camera window from LP $560/window for
1/4" or $340 for 1/8" thickness. We will most likely go with the
thicker glass for the pilot windows and 1/8" glass for the rear window
and back panel. The total cost will be something like $1K. Not sure
what our A&P will charge for an owner-assisted glass replacement.
The paint quotes from several shops in the NE range from $10K-$12K.
It may be cheaper for us to fly our Cardinal down to one of the
Arkansas paint shop then take commerical flight back. We will check
them out once the glasses are replaced.
Someone wrote that flying is a bottomless pit of education and
experience. That bottomless pit has been sucking our money as well ;-)

Hai Longworth

In article .com, wrote:

[nice write-up snipped]

We should have a larger Northeast Rec Aviation fly-in next time.
Block Island sounds like a great place to me. We have never been there
but would love to visit it soon.

Sounds (no pun intended) like a plan. Let's set a date and time for
next month.



Morris
--
www.compilerguru.com/aviation