But I'm ahead of myself. First we had to get to Anderson. Naturally Nathan took the Mustang and I took the T-6. Kaylee
expressed an interest in, and asked Nathan if she could ride with him, and he said yes. So Miss Kaylee rode to Anderson in style, in the back of a P-51, a chance of a lifetime. I'm not sure how long it will take her to fully understand how rare and unusual it is for her to be able to ride in the T-6, and how amazing it is that she now has about an hour's time in a Mustang. So was she scared of all the earsplitting noise on takeoff, the speed, the forces, flying right next to another airplane close enough to see nose hairs sometimes? Oh no. She thought it was great, and has decided it's her favorite airplane. So...she likes to go fast. What a shock. ;)Our one adventure for the day (don't read this paragraph Ann) occurred on our way to Anderson. Steve turned his seat around and was taking photos out of the back of the plane. GREAT view back there, seriously. Anyway, I was just flying along, and all of a sudden the plane jerked down and to the right, kind of a wing dip, as if I'd run through somebody's wake turbulence. In fact, it was almost exactly like when the Mustang blew past me and Di yesterday and we got hit with some prop wash and rocked sharply to the side. I kind of laughed, got the plane back into position, and in a fraction of a second realized the Mustang was behind me, not in front of me, and that couldn't have been it. I didn't have time to think "Huh!" before the plane suddenly pulled fairly hard right and down, and I grabbed hold of the stick with both hands and tried to wrestle us back level--and I couldn't. That'll get the ole heart rate up. I kept the wing up as best I could with rudder and yelled out a "HEY!!" (very articulate, that), Steve said "What??" (he was irritated that I was messing around), and I said something like "I think your stick is pinned!" Twas a cord that was too long, had wrapped around down below and pulled on the stick back there. He got it taken care of asap and we were back in business. Actually, that was a good time to learn that lesson, because we were planning on leaving that particular headset with that setup in the back of the Six, as it works well. Now we know to take off an adapter which adds too much length to the cord, which can cause a problem. I'd much rather have found that out now, with him back there able to not freak out and know what to do on his end to fix it than some day in the future at perhaps a more inopportune moment with someone who wouldn't have a clue what was happening or what to do about it. I'd call that a fortuitous timing learning experience, actually...
THEN it was time for pancakes! We did decide those are the best fly-in pancakes we've ever had, and we've sampled more than a few! It was really hot, but we kept fairly cool as long as we stayed in the big hangar. We ran into several people that it was good to say hi to, and Chuck was there in the mighty Citabria, too. In fact, his Citabria beat us there. :) It looked like a pretty good turnout, well represented by airplanes. Vlado was there with his Mustang too, which was neat. (He's a Fighter test pilot for FAST cards, has over 3000 hours of Mustang time alone, does the Heritage Flights at air shows, and seems to be a genuine, nice man on top of it.) They hadn't really thought out their fueling plan, and both coming in and going out my ground marshallers kind of goofed up, but all in all it looked like they had a nice event going. No event will go perfectly, that's for sure, and nobody knows that better than we do. :)
Time to go, Kaylee got back in the Mustang, and away we went for home. At one point Steve started laughing and said "He's so close under our tail I can't even see him!" He'd come RIGHT up on us. Me, I didn't look, I figured I'd better focus on flying straight and level very smoothly. ;) Kaylee later said "We were looking at the T-6's butt!" She didn't get a picture of it, unfortunately, but Steve did take about 150 photos today, several in which you can clearly see that it's Kaylee back there, so that's a pretty special memory to have for all of us. Some day I think she's going to cherish those photos. Around Tipton Nathan broke off, dove down at a rate of speed of...250 knots, no more, of course, and Steve and I watched him mess around down there and smiled on our way home. You can spot that plane very easily, as polished up as it is. The sun shines off of that thing like a laser. Beautiful.
The airplanes had hit a lot of bugs today, so I wiped down the T-6 and cleaned it
up, and Kaylee followed tradition by wiping bugs off the Mustang. It's kind of a rule...you fly in it, you clean it up. Clean it while the bugs are fresh and they come off a whole lot easier than if you wait a week, by which time the cement that must reside in bugs' veins will have time to set in, and you'll require a heavy duty cleaner instead of just a wet rag. Besides, who can stand seeing those beautiful airplanes put away all nasty? Anyway, she did her job without complaint.There was an IAC (aerobatic chapter) meeting out there this afternoon, so we stayed
to make sure they were going to get there okay, then went over to Nathan's to go swimming. Well, Kaylee and the kids went swimming, we hung out under the awning, or I read a book while the guys worked in the garage for awhile. It was a perfect day to be a kid in a pool, and they all made the most of it. I don't know how many hours the kids swam--six? seven? Something like that, before we all came inside and had a delicious, huge dinner, and pigged out.Kaylee had a blast, she had a wonderful day, got a lot of exercise, got some sun, and is currently sleeping like a log. Summer is awesome. ;)
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