The show went fine. Much better than Monday. Everybody was smoother, tighter, and in line. I felt really good about how I did on it for the most part too. The landing, the winds were gusting up a little, and the other T-6s in front of me were stirring up a lot of dirty air. The funny thing is, you’re so busy landing only 1500’ behind the plane in front of you, coming down at a high angle, tight and in, that you don’t have time to worry about your actual landing. You pull a 60 degree bank turn, crank around, drop your gear, try not to run over the guy in front of you, drop all flaps, hold your altitude, slow down, drop down 1/2 way down the runway, watch the guy in front of you, touch down, add power, keep your tail up, drive it to the end of the runway, pull power, drop the tail carefully, taxi off, and THEN you can breathe and think about whether or not you might have goofed up your landing in front of the Oshkosh world, your friends, and every photographer around. ;) Fortunately I did not. I was pretty pleased with the day and how my debut at Oshkosh went. I don’t know if I’ll do it again or not. I don’t know if I’ll incur the cost to go back to Dubuque and Oshkosh again or not. But you know the main thing? I could, if I wanted to. I’ve done it. I have my NATA FAST card, and I have flown in the warbird show at Oshkosh twice, and I gained the respect of at least a few of the old timers. From there on out, it doesn’t really matter what I do. And that’s good enough for now.
After the show, I was invited to “Swampfest”, which is a party in warbird camping. I didn’t want to go, but I’d been invited, so I did it. I was able to talk to Greg M, the photographer, I ran into Doug and Kim, talked to Eric S for a long time, and then David O blocked me when I was trying to leave, so I talked to him and the head CAF guys, Hank C. for awhile. The Wisconsin wing T-6 guy hugged me and I didn’t recognize him at first, he has kind eyes and I wish I could remember people better. Finally after a couple of hours I ran out of people skills, and I started hiking home from warbirds in the dark. At 9 pm we decided to do a photo shoot with the T-6, and Doug in the PBY, meeting at 6 am if the weather was good.
At 5am I wake up, and the weather is good. I get ready, and arrive at the warbird briefing area at 6. I send the guys on to get the plane ready. They text me in the middle of the briefing that I didn’t get gassed up last night. We put the fuel ticket on it after the airshow yesterday at 4:30 pm. They never did it. I didn’t have the gas to do it. “Thanks for showing up guys, and getting up at the buttcrack of dawn, sorry I can’t go.” NOT COOL. Fortunately there was another guy there with a T-6 who was able to take over so the mission could go on as planned. That was embarrassing, and not cool. And embarrassing. It’s one thing to be embarrassed in front of two guys I didn’t know, but it added a layer of embarrassing when it was Doug, too. Ugh. Fail. But…nothing I can do about it now. So I moved on with my day.
We got a weather alert that we’re going to get slammed with a bad storm this evening. Anytime from 4-11 pm depending on who you ask. This storm was calling for up to baseball sized hail, tornadoes, hurricane force winds, and flooding rainfall. Well….that’s no good. We took all the radios out of the T-6 overnight, and this morning I decided to fly the T-6 home and get it out of the target range. So we put the radios back in, got fuel, tested the radios to make sure they weren’t fried, and then I waited in a conga line for 40 minutes of people trying to take off out of Oshkosh after hearing the weather forecast. Finally I was up and away, and I flew home in the heat and the bumps and the murky sky, over the Chicago shoreline, over the water here and there too because of airspace. I landed at Kokomo, and put the airplane away, and then John R took off work to come over and run me back up to Fon du Lac. We arrived, Nathan and Steve picked me up, and here I am back at Oshkosh.
We have some visitors, we have Cameron’s parents, and Moon the fighter pilot who brought his 12 year old daughter, and lots of others. I’ve run into Ethan from Frankfort and his family, and lots of folks from Sheridan, and a guy I did T-6 training with, and…lots of folks. I was walking home in the dark last night and someone in a tram yelled “Hey Laura!” and waved at me. No idea who it was. Kind of fun, isn’t it? :)
Well, now I’m having a margarita, there are 20 of us sitting around the campsite talking, waiting to see if this monster storm develops or not. I’m sad to have the T-6 gone because that means I’m done flying it, no morning Dawn Patrols. No photo missions, no options. I’m not sad to have the T-6 gone because now I don’t have to worry about these storms, or taking care of the airplane multiple times a day every day. It’s safe and at home. I put a lot of hours on it these last 4-5 days. I got to feeling pretty proficient at it, in certain parameters too. It’s been a good week. I am…pleased. I have a few photos, not a bunch, we’ll see what other people got, when I get home.
Gloomy
This was just lovely!
Steve T fixing breakfast at dawn
I do miss those breakfasts even if my waistline doesn't
Getting ready to fire up
These are formation pics of Tuesday. I am posting some of the less perfect ones too, because in none of them am *I* the person who is out of position. I'm in the group of planes off the left wing of the lead group, and I'm the last one, in the "slot", or #4.
This one looks messy
Us crossing with another formation group
This is how you hold the stick when you're waiting on the ground for 45 minutes to get out. lol
Me by the runway at Oshkosh waiting to go
Another formation overhead
This is the definition of desolation to me. A sailboat out there in the middle of Lake Michigan with not a thing around.
I'm taking the T-6 home to get it out of the weather. Here's Chicago
And me.
And I was not the only one to bug out of there. Green is people leaving. Blue is people arriving. White is just traffic going other places having nothing to do with OSH.
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