Warbird Weekend

Here it is November, and we are enjoying some of the most beautiful weather you could ask for. I wore a t-shirt all day...in November. I went out to Kokomo by 9 this morning, and Chuck and I hung out while Jim Z. went over Mustang cockpit familiarization.

While we were there, one of our club members came up with a 12-year-old boy and his dad; he was giving the boy a Young Eagle flight towards the Aviation Merit Badge for Boy Scouts. The boy got to have Chuck show him through and sit in the T-6, Jim showed him around and had him sit in the Mustang, and I showed him through and had him sit in the Cheyenne. He had a blast. The thing that most impressed him about the Cheyenne? The potty seat. ;) He asked some very good questions about the engines, the positions of the tailwheel vs. nosegear airplanes and where the weight was, the props and how many blades they had and why, engine sizes, all sorts of stuff. He had a great time, and probably has the best aviation badge ever earned by a Boy Scout. Sitting in a Mustang, T-6 and Cheyenne in one day? He has no idea. :)

Chuck and Jim got the T-6 pulled out, and then Nathan and the kids and Steve and Kaylee made it out later that morning. I made a lunch run to Subway while Nathan and Jim flew the Mustang with Jim up front. After we ate, Jim went up for his first solo ever in a Mustang. And what an accomplishment that is! How many pilots get to do that? There's nothing normal or usual about it. It is quite an honor...

Nathan and I went up in the T-6 while Jim was in the air solo in the Mustang, and after we flew to Lafayette to look at something, we hooked back up over Kokomo and did a little formation flying so I could take some photos of Jim in the Mustang in the air. It got a little chilly in there with my canopy wide open at 6,000'. :) In the back of the T-6, there aren't any storage areas, so I was sitting back there with my little Canon camera so I could take a video clip, my big Canon digital camera so I could take my own photos, Jim's very big Canon film camera so I could take photos of him with his own camera, and a little fanny pack full of film rolls so I could not run out of film during the photo shoot. I had things wrapped around my wrist so I wouldn't drop them down into the belly of the plane, stuff on my lap, straps wrapped around a knob or two back there that I knew he wouldn't move for awhile, and it was very crowded back there! :) We had fun though. I took two 36 frame rolls of film with Jim's camera and about 20 shots with my camera, and hopefully some of them turn out well for him. That's the rub with film...you get what you get and you have no idea what you got until you get them back. :) We did one pass low down Kokomo's runway, and I was twisted around in my seat taking photos of Jim in the Mustang behind me, when we got to the end of the runway and Nathan cranked the T-6 around into a steep climbing bank. I was looking through the viewfinder of the camera when the world tilted-he got me. :)

We came down, well, most of us came down-I think Jim might still be up there. lol. But we came down, refueled, and then Jim took up his first passenger in the Mustang--a flight instructor

friend of ours, Ty. We've given Ty the worst time about the fact he'd never been in the Mustang and the rest of us had, so after making him wear Kaylee's pink Princess bike helmet and stand in front of the Mustang in it for a photo op, we hooked him up for real and he got almost an hour and a half flight time in the Mustang, with him doing most of the flying from the back. I think he enjoyed himself, and I know the rest of us enjoyed it. I got to see two people have an 'experience of a lifetime' day, and that's pretty hard to top. This photo is of Ty in the back and Jim in the front of the Mustang. My job was to be the helmet-holder while Jim buckled in, and Steve and Nathan wandered over to finish off the photo op. :)

When Ty and Jim got back, we put away all the planes, closed up the hangars, and went to Outback for a celebratory dinner of a celebratory kind of day. And may I add, those crab legs were quite tasty!

Kaylee spent the day playing on a giant rock pile by the hangar with Jamie & Gwenie. The kids are dirty and tired, walking in at sunset, which seems like the perfect ending to a good day to me... You can see most of the photos I took today HERE. :)