Two Pilots & an LSW: Quick Trip

The days have moved fast enough and been full enough that I haven't had a chance to catch up.

Tuesday I got up early and drove out to Glenndale to pick up the Champ. I opened the hangar door, and a *giant* wolf spider came running at me. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I could visibly see the hair on that thing's body. I jumped backwards and made squealy whimpery 3-year-old-girl noises and watched it scurry across the floor. Huge. I grabbed a can of Prist, the only thing I could find, and sprayed it at it, and it ran away from me and under a bench. I had a hard time turning my back on it to pull the stupid plane out of the hangar.

The Champ is hand prop and the grass is wet, and I didn't see any good chocks, so I used a block of wood in front of the tire, fired it off, took off and took it over to Kokomo to line it up with the other Flying Squirrels airplanes. I ended up putting all the kids I flew with in the back seat instead of the front, because we were at busier Kokomo, and I don't have a push to talk switch in the back seat. Can't make radio calls, and they can't figure out how to adjust the rigged-up radio and intercom along with squelch and volume on both. So I had them fly from the back seat, which isn't ideal. Plus I had to have someone else come over and hand prop us too, since I couldn't leave them in there alone on concrete with other people and planes nearby to do it myself. All in all, that's too big of a pain in the butt. So I made a judgement call that I won't be using that Champ any more. I'll just use the 172. I'd rather be in a taildragger, but not that taildragger.

We broke for lunch and the airport manager, Sean, came over to talk to the kids about what his job entails. We had burgers and cupcakes and fruit and chips and good stuff, and hung out for awhile. I had one more student I flew with, and then I took the Champ back over to Glenndale and put it away for one of the last times I'll probably fly it (it had other things wrong with it too). I didn't see the spider. I hope it died from whatever dose of Prist I got onto it.

I drove from there back to Kokomo, where Greg the Warbird Digest photographer was waiting, and the T-6 was pulled out, and so was the C-45. I did a leak check run on BOB, and it went fine. Greg and I loaded up the T-6, and took off and headed for Michigan, to do a photo shoot with the Yankee AF B-25. The PIC for the B-25 was a woman, Delane I believe is her name. I thought that was sort of wild, that the pilot for the B-25 was a woman being photographed by another woman warbird pilot who lead the flight. The two men involved were the non-pilot photographer and the co-pilot of the B-25. That's unusual in this industry.

The briefing took a long time and went well, but Greg had a feeling, because neither had formation cards. I defended that with "neither did I for a long time, maybe they're okay". They tried, but it didn't go great. They didn't know how to hold position, couldn't get close enough, kept blowing underneath and in front of me where I couldn't see them, would be so far back that the 200 mm lens had to be used to get photos. It's a good thing Greg switched out his lens before we left or he wouldn't have gotten any photos. As it is, he thinks he got a few out of the several hundred, the lighting was great, the surroundings were great, but they just couldn't get and stay close enough for positioning. He was bemoaning the fact that if they'd had a solid formation pilot available, they could have gotten some killer photos. I was running at almost full power, sucking a ton of gas, and ended up calling off the shoot after an hour, to give me an hour to get home, plus an hour reserve, and that was pushing it because of how rich I'd been running on the shoot. I touched down back at Kokomo as the sun dipped below the horizon, and it was pretty. Tiring, but pretty.

It was about 9:30 when I opened the hangar door, pulled out the 340, pulled out the Cheyenne, tugged in the T-6, tugged back in the Cheyenne, tugged back in the 340, and closed the door. Greg was impressed because I hit all those airplanes right on the lines/chocks. He said if I ever gave up the flying gig, I could get hired as a tug operator ;) I've done it a time or two, so there's that.

By now it was after 10 pm, and I headed home and went to bed. I was the usual dehydrated, hadn't eaten a lot, and when I went to bed, I had a bit of a headache. I kept waking up, and at 2:30 am I realized the lights were still on in the living room and shining in my eyes which was what kept waking me up. Steve was in bed. So I got up and turned them off, and ended up taking some meds for the headache that wasn't getting better, because I didn't have time to mess with it. I was awake from 2:30-3:30 or later, and my alarm went off at 6 am. I struggled with that one.

I got out to Kokomo around 7:15 this morning, pulled out the Cheyenne, and we loaded it up with Kevin and his wife and daughter, me, Nathan and Jamie. It was uneventful down there, and we landed at Kissimmee and took a crew car into town to eat some brunch. I had turtle stuffed french toast. Pecans, caramel, chocolate stuffed french toast. Yes ma'am. When I went to get the crew car, the lady said "it's only for pilots" and I snapped "I AM the pilot", which I didn't mean to do, but I do get annoyed as often as I've heard that. She apologized, I felt sort of bad, sort of not bad, and we enjoyed brunch.

The trip home had a little more weather, but it was just me, Nathan and Jamie. We just skirted around a few things that hadn't built up into the uglies yet, and that was it. Nice trip, uneventful, good to get back into practice on the plane. Jamie got to get away for a day, so did Nathan. It worked out.

Back at Kokomo, I took our new airport courtesy car over to Mark's, to get the rear window and the AC fixed. It's in terrible shape, and was out of gas, so I stopped at the gas station and topped it off first. It took over 19 gallons, so I don't know what the tank is, but it apparently ran dry. Good thing I stopped. I next tried to go through a car wash, but they were closed, so I gave up, went to Hydration Station and got a frosted hot chocolate, then dropped it off at Mark's and picked up the Buick. It too was super dusty after sitting outside on gravel for a week, so I ran it through the car wash, and stopped at Panera for soup and salad for Ann.

Came home and took the trash out for trash day tomorrow, went next door a couple times, and contacted a bunch of people about our upcoming weekend event. The event which I'm now concerned about after having watched the weather forecast. Come on, we've pre-sold 16 PT rides, 12 T-6 rides, and like 15 C-45 riders (3-4 loads). That's before the day even starts! We need the weather to hold out so people will come, so airplanes will come. Pleeeeease.

At 6:30 I had a zoom meeting to get Glenn into the C-45. That went uneventfully too. On to paperwork, laundry, emails, texts, phone calls, and doing a bunch of "stuff", and now my lack of sleep the night before has caught up, and I'm wiped out and going to bed.

Tomorrow I have people scheduled from 9 am to 6:30 pm all day long with NO breaks in the action. Yep. 9-11, 11-2, 2-4, 4-6:30. No lunch break, nothin'. Seems uncool, people...