I'm lying down almost horizontal in my chair now, pooped. I got up at 7 a.m. and went out to the hangar, moved planes around and took off for Ohio. When I got there I did a three-ship formation flight practice before coming in to land. They topped us off with gas, we briefed another flight, a 4th guy was there for part of one flight, and he joined us for several passes down the runway before heading out. We flew for an hour total, and then landed again, got lunch, got gas, and went up for round three, just the three of us again. After we'd flown for awhile, we went our own ways and I headed back to Kokomo. I landed at 6:20 or so. Made for a long day. A good one, but long. It was hot and muggy out there, so I was super sweaty every time I got out of the plane. There was an event going on over at Delaware, OH today, and the airport paid for my gas to get there and for all the flying I did there, which was helpful. There were tons of kids around there, and they'd climb up on (with permission of course) the various planes and check them out. I had several folks ask me questions about flying, and two guys who asked if they could go in the plane with me on our next formation flight. I said no to both, but one was a definite no--a young man who had never even been in a small airplane before. He convinced one of the other guys to take him up, who was a friend of his dad's. When we went flying, we do this thing you may remember me talking about before called "Extended Trail". The airplanes all get spaced out about 500' apart, all in a line, and then start maneuvering, and #2 has to stay within 500' and a "cone" on #1, and #3 has to stay the same from #2, and #4 from #3, and no power adjustments allowed. Well, some of these guys go nuts here, and the guy who had a kid in his back seat is one of them. He'd go straight up vertical, then pull it over the top, he did aggressive, high-G maneuvers, over and over. The kid puked. Luckily he puked in a bag, but still, it was really unnecessary to take a kid up for his first airplane ride ever and make it in a formation flight with rough aerobatics. Poor kid. He'd been talking about going to flight school some day--I hope he's not chased off for good.
What's kind of funny about extended trail, is two of them were doing these big aggressive aerobatic maneuvers, and all I'd do is watch while they went up, wait and see which way they were going, and I'd crank around and dive/climb to cut them off, without doing loops, rolls, or vertical anything, and I stayed right where I was supposed to be, 500' and within the cone. Only once did one of them get me. When he went (pretty much) vertical, he started to roll over as normal, but instead he inverted and came right back at where I was aimed to cut him off, and we were head on to each other. I broke hard right with my body twisted around so I could keep an eye on him, but by then I'd blown the "cone". Lead got on the radio and said "Three, do you have everyone in sight?" I did, and we got back lined up and did it again. Later the other fellow in the flight reminded the first guy that when there are a bunch of airplanes all together up there you gotta watch out not to maneuver backwards right into their path. This is one of the reasons that's not my favorite maneuver. NATA doesn't do that one, but Red Star, that's their "fun" time in formation. Two of the guys were actual former fighter pilots, including the one with the kid in his back seat, and I think it's kind of the same thing. He assumes the kid will be fine doing all this, and he assumes the "student" formation pilot will react appropriately too. I did fine, but honestly, how did he know I would be able to maneuver to avoid him? We're close, they're deliberately randomly and aggressively maneuvering to try to "get" each other to lose the "cone", and most folks out there aren't Air Force and Navy trained fighter pilots. There are plenty of fighter pilot wannabes though. lol It is a fun exercise...
A guy at the airport there wanted to interview me about the four planes and what we were doing, and I sent him over to Ryan, who is more of a social and friendly and chatty fellow. Today we had a T-6, a Yak-52 and an RV, and for awhile another Yak. That was a bit of a motley crew, let me tell you. And I just spelled "motley crew" the wrong way the first time I typed it. There's a blast from the past.
Anyway, Steve, Kaylee and I went out to eat dinner, came home and tomorrow, tomorrow I rest. I sleep in, and I sleep hard, and I rest. The end!
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