Two Pilots & an LSW: Wandering

Wednesday night’s airshow was canceled because of the storms. We did get hit, but not until about 10:30 pm. Originally it looked like a big nothing burger, and then suddenly it looked pretty darned serious. Hail, tornado warnings, all that jazz. As I watched the cell move towards us on my phone, I was very grateful to not have the airplane there. Other people were wrapping their planes in cardboard and bubble wrap and carpeting and tarps in an attempt to protect them from hail, including Mustangs out in Fighter Town. A BUNCH of others did what I did and just left and took the plane out of there. EAA took shuttle busses and moved anyone who wanted out of the campground and into buildings like the museum, for protection. Of course the museum has one all glass wall, so I found that interesting too. People hunkered down. Sitting in our trailer, with our people in tents joining some of us in trailers, the lightning show was fantastic, the thunder was impressive, the rain dumped pretty hard, but the deadly winds they were talking about didn’t happen in our area, thankfully. Not one plane damaged that I heard of, no people hurt either. Nearby, just barely to our south and west, they did get hit harder, with damage to trees, houses, etc. Oshkosh got lucky. If something big moves right over the top of this campground…I’m pretty sure no insurance company was sleeping that night until they got word that all was okay.

Thursday morning I got up and went to the annual T-6 forum. Walked in and Tim G said “Good morning Laura!” Vic said hi, Todd said hi, I slipped into my seat behind JP and Eric S., with Jodie from Indy a row up. We had an Indiana contingency. The forum was about maintenance issues, things to look out for, things that should be on our radar, and a few tricks you can do. For example, if you get gear down but no pins showing it’s locked, or one showing it’s not locked, and you do the emergency gear extension and it still doesn’t show locked, he said… activate hydraulics just before you touch down. The 1000-1300 psi pressure will keep the wheel down for a short time, you can land safely, shut it down, and minimize any damage. I was like…dang. I hadn’t ever heard that before. So that was worthwhile for attending right there. Then how the front seat fuel selector has a lot of moving parts and can break or break off in between tanks, but the back seater has a direct shot with their fuel selector to a tank, and can still move it over to a real tank and save the day vs an engine out landing. There’s a good reason to often take a back-seater. ;) The one I was less sure of, he says you can tell the pins go in when you lower the gear by pushing the gear handle down past into the emergency extension arena, with light pressure on the handle, and you’ll fell it bump the pins out of the way. My problem with that is, if you push the emergency gear extension down too far, you will shove those pins out into the way before the gear is all the way down, and you’ll be unable to get the gear to come fully down and lock. Playing with that seems like a really bad idea to me. I’m probably missing something, but I’m not gonna do that one. I can look on the wing and make sure it’s down.

After the forum, I went up to the group of T-6 guys who were getting together to do another formation mission, with a C-47 too I think. I pouted a little that my plane was gone. I told them thank you for a great experience this last week, and they said “Come on back!” Then Steve met up with me and we walked all over. We walked down to Vintage and said hi to Ray J., we went up to warbirds and talked to Tim and Job S., we stopped at the forums and talked to Stan H., we ran into Rodney L-5, and Bill F Birddog, and had lunch with Greg M photog, and just walked, talked, socialized, did the Oshkosh networking say hi to friends thing.

That was pretty tiring, so I laid down for awhile in the trailer and listened to the airshow, then we all went to Wendt’s for dinner. I had grilled salmon for the first time there; a little under cooked in the middle, but otherwise good. Then we packed up, came back to the trailer, and hiked down to the flight line for the night airshow that had been moved from Wed to Thurs because of the weather. We were up close and personal this year, had seats right up by the front. This year they had a couple of smaller nuclear looking bombs go off along with the wall of fire vs. one giant freaky one. I still like the fire the best. ;)

Walking back, the crowd wasn’t as bad as years past. Maybe because it was moved from Wed to Thurs. We sat around the camp fire until almost 1 am, and just had a nice evening.

I’m right now enjoying one of our big Oshkosh breakfasts. We’ve had pancakes, biscuits and gravy, bacon, sausage, eggs with ham, hash browns, french toast, just all manner of goodies. But we’re lacking on coffee. I could really use coffee this morning…

One kind of neat thing. My Facebook memories from the other day showed that it had been one year ago to the day since I got my Formation Card in Terre Haute, and got checked out in BOB. Almost to the day one year later I’m flying formation in Oshkosh with a NATA Formation card so newly issued I don’t even have it in hand yet. It’s going to be hard to top that next year, I think. ;)

I'm missing a few, but when I got back to OKK, I pulled this all out of the map compartment of the T-6. Most of the formation flights I took over the last few days.