It was a wise decision to wait until today to come home. The sun was out, the winds were normal breezy not terrible breezy, the skies were clear, and it was a much better day to go home. We still had a pretty stiff headwind, and it took us over 3 hours to get to Terre Haute. We stopped there to drop off Kathy and a T-6 tow bar, and we ran to get lunch, and then JP and I flew back to Kokomo from there. All in all we had like 13 hours of Twin Beech flying over the weekend. Eight formation flights, two three-hour legs down and back, one hour back to Kokomo. It was a fair amount of flying! Good experience all around.
There were at least 50 pilots there. They maxed out that clinic. Most of the guys were brand new formation pilots, so the T-6s didn't do more than two ship formations, and I didn't know them, either. I did have one guy who asked if I was Laura Stants and he recognized me because he'd worked with Jerry Long on the PT-26 gear legs, and knew I was in the Twin Beech of the Indiana Wing. Another guy recognized me from Instagram and introduced himself. Most everyone else there was a stranger except who I went with, Jordan and JP. The rest of them looked right through me, too, assuming I was a wife or a "fan" who just came along. Any time Jordan or JP would say something about me being a T-6 pilot or instructor, or Twin Beech pilot or instructor, the looks on their faces as they actually looked at me for the first time was really very funny. Out of the 50 or more pilots there, I was the only woman pilot, and of all the volunteers, there was a woman named Heather who registered everyone and checked our temps every day, and another woman who drove around on the golf cart and handed out lunch/dinner to everyone. And me. So I couldn't blame them for assuming and blowing me off most of the time. The warbird world is still vastly more testosterone than even the regular aviation world. Some of them did hear me on the radios making the formation calls, and I have a decent radio voice apparently, so I won a few people over by the end there, too. ;) The Twin Beech group was kind of the life of the party. Because the T-6s only did two-ships, we were loud, there was four of us, we gave rides to ramp guys and other folks, we'd fly over the field and do passes with every flight, we tore up the pattern and made a lot of noise and just made it pretty cool out there. They loved having us, which was great because they'd been nervous about having us. There isn't protocol for heavier twin formation stuff in the CAF or FAA. They didn't have instructors for it, they didn't have anything for it, they didn't know if we'd be cowboys or unsafe or what. So they were delighted with us, and that was FUN. We're all basically writing the manual on heavier twin warbird formation flying for the CAF. We've figured out our sight picture and points to look at to get on the proper lines, radio procedures, all of it. And then got pretty decent at it by the end. It's a lot easier with two pilots up front. I didn't fly, to save money (which didn't help the perception of me there but a person has to let it go, you can't walk around and say "Hey, I'm good at this too, I have a formation card, and I was the instructor/check pilot of the guy you're all fawning over right now!"), but I would do the radios, do all the fuel management (lots of tank switching in ours), do the engine management (you have to monitor and adjust oil shutters for temps relatively often with rapidly changing power settings), keep an eye on the folks on the right side of the formation where the left seat pilot can't see very well, help with navigation and keeping us within the appropriate chunk of airspace, and general situational awareness. So much easier with one guy flying and one guy (gal) assisting. We got a lot accomplished over the weekend, and other than feeling twinges because I wasn't flying, I had a great time. You don't know how cool it is to see four C-45s all formed up and maneuvering around until you're there. It's pretty wild. What an experience. We can't even think of the last time we saw that many of them together in the air. It was pretty special to all of us.
You know it's a good time when you're a little melancholy that it's over. :)
I think in good part it just felt good to get out and go do something fun.
Dulcie is still here. She's bony and not eating and I don't know how she's still here, but she's still content to be around us, sit on our laps, walks around the house slowly a couple times a day, shows no distress. I wonder if the vet makes house calls. I doubt it. *sigh*
Kaylee is trying to finish up all her school work before Thanksgiving Break which will be the end of her semester. She's struggling with it, but trying to plug it out one bit at a time. She came over while I was gone and talked to Steve for awhile, hung out with Dulcie, made pancakes, and had a nice visit. She said that she had a date that night, with a young man that she had gone and done things with in a group before, and that he was a nice guy, who didn't just text her, but went out of the way to ask her in person to go on a Real date, and did it in a sweet fashion, so she said yes, because she was impressed with how he went about it. She says she usually says no thanks to guys who ask her out via text, she likes the old school stuff. He held the door open for her and took her to an interesting restaurant with an interesting view and they had a nice time, she said. I love that she appreciates that stuff. I vividly remember telling her that "girl power" is great, but she should always let a gentleman be a gentleman and she should graciously accept those overtures. Some women these days get so mad if a guy holds a door open, like "I can do it MYSELF!" Well I would hope so, but c'mon. Anyway. So that's what she's been up to.
I have like 163 photos. I've downloaded them all, and looked at them all, but now I need to figure out what to post. I dunno. So here's the video of one of our passes overhead. I liked this video. Me and JP are in the lead airplane on this one. And lots of photos. :)
(I just had to edit this to fix "hangar" to "hanger", the one time in forever you need to use that spelling.)
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