Obviously

I have been hopping so much I haven't had time to write.  Finally here I am when I don't have to get up at 6 am tomorrow, and I'm home before 11 pm, so...I finally have a chance to catch up or at least say I'm still alive.

But man, where to start.

Okay.  So I left off Thursday.  Friday morning it was a little rainy first thing in the morning, but then it cleared up, and we were off and running.  I attended the airshow briefing at 11 am, and we had Spencer be a spotter with Glenn in the C-45, as Glenn was Lead for our three-ship during the airshow.  Glenn was Lead in BOB, I was #2, Rick Sig. was #3.  I haven't flown formation since (I just looked it up) 7/31/22 coming back from Oshkosh, at least that I listed as such.  That's 10 months.  So the flight on Thursday was my first one, and my next one was going to be in front of the crowd, photogs, other warbird pilots I know, and one of the things they planned for us to do is a "pitch out and rejoin" in front of the crowd.  I hadn't practiced those Thursday, so I hadn't done them in almost a year, and now I'm doing the first one, one of the tricker parts of formation, in front of everyone.  We were one of the first acts of the show.  My #3 was a former head of Warbirds of America. A famous and well-known T-6 and airshow pilot.  I asked in the brief if he wanted the standard NATA (wider/looser) 45 degree formation, or the tighter, more acute 30 degree formation. He scoffed and said he wanted the acute, and that I should go in tighter and do what I can and he'll match me. A little condescendingly, to be honest.  So I By George decided to be as tight and close as I could get, and I did.  And for the entire flight, he was out of position back there.  He had com issues and kept messing with the radio and stayed back, and mostly I was just glad it wasn't me out of position.  Saturday we had another airshow and flight.  It went better, but again...I was the one in place more often.  Afterwards he barked at me. He pointed at me and said "YOU slowed way down on final. Stacked us up back there. Had to be 4000' of space between you and Lead."  He was right, I always default to landing with too much spacing on formation flights because the thought of landing RIGHT behind another airplane that is already down and slow while I am still doing 100 mph, always still makes me nervous on whether I'll get it right, or end up running up their backside.  But he could have said it as a point of learning, and instead his voice made it sound like he was yelling at me, and sneer-ish.  I really don't react well to that, so I don't know that I handled the critique as well as I should have to start with. But I ended up saying "you're right, sorry about that", because he was right in the critique, just the tone sucked. And then I saw some photos of our formation, and on both days, he was the one who was out of position more often than not.  Sometimes grossly. So my guess? He was frustrated and bothered by his own performance and he lashed out at me for my one error to try to save face himself.  He told me in a fairly condescending manner to go in to 'wherever I was comfortable' and he'd match me, and he was unable.  So...I find some satisfaction in that.  Not a ton, because I'm no formation guru and he was.  And I have embarrassed myself several times.  But this time. This event. This set up...I was pretty tight and in place, it was his job to match me, not mine to match him, and he flubbed, and the only reason I feel a little satisfaction from it is two fold. I feel like I did a decent job after being out of it for a LONG time, and under pressure, and I feel like he was too smug and condescending to me to then do the kind of job he did on it himself.  It's the same guy who didn't want to give me a challenge coin after my first mass formation flight at Oshkosh because he assumed I was a back-seater and not a pilot. I gave him a break because to be fair, as far as I know, I'm the first woman to do it there. Then on this trip, he came up to me after Saturday's airshow, where I had Morgan be the spotter with Glenn in the C-45, and he asked me if she was actually a pilot, or basically was she just a lookie-loo up there.  I said yes, she's an Instrument rated Private Pilot taking her Commercial Pilot checkride in two days, and a tailwheel pilot, and she's pretty good.  He said "Oh good, I figured, but I wanted to ask after the fact and not make a problem ahead of time just in case."  Funny--he didn't ask if Spencer was actually a pilot when Spencer, who is about the same age as Morgan, was the spotter the day before.  Steve says the guy respects me...I don't feel that vibe off of him, but regardless he has enough things he's now said and done around me or to me that I'm pretty sure we're not going to ever be as good of buds as would probably be "politically" expedient of me to be.  On the other hand, like a couple of the other old-timers who were a problem, he is going to age out of relevancy soon enough too, and guess what? I'll outlast him too if I have to.

Now, on to other things.  I have a couple of super fans.  ;)  One is named Michael, he goes to a lot of the events and dresses up as a reenactor.  He follows me on Facebook and sends me clips and stuff now and then. Always comes up and talks to me when we're at the same show.  Well, this time he hung around a LOT.  But Friday was chilly, and windy.  Lots of gusty crosswind, up around 20 knots, and it was overcast, so it was damp and cold with that wind.  I was just wearing a t-shirt for most of the day, because I was doing T-6 rides, and I was hot enough in the cockpit. But as the sun went down it got colder, and he came up to me and said "You're only in a t-shirt. Why don't you borrow this?" and he had an extra leather jacket with him.  I WAS getting cold and I'd left my sweatshirt in the hotel. I did have a flightsuit I could have put on, but I hate wearing them. I had a light jacket, but I'd given it to Morgan because she was freezing.  So I took his jacket and I wore it all day, kept it overnight, and gave it back to him the next afternoon. It was nice of him, and having a fan helped me out too, even if he did spend a lot of time coming around and talking.  ;)  My other fan is a young lady named Vicky.  I flew with her for the first time last year, and she promptly stalked me (her words) on social media and the internet.  She saved up her money and went for another flight this year.  She had her photo taken with me, had me sign a certificate and her logbook (that just had last flight and this one in it), and said I was basically her favorite person in the whole world.  So...two people out there think I'm cool.  ;)

We brought along our new instructor, Shelbe, and Morgan, Spencer, Jon, me, Steve T., and Glenn.  It was really kind of fun, and our group did a good job.  I coordinated with the event, did rides during the airshow (that was tricky and took too long to get in and out to be worth it, but it's a cool view).  The ramp crew was bad, so I ended up using my own crew for it after they marshalled me into a bad position twice, risking the plane. This was supposed to be an Oshkosh Warbird ground crew, but man, I'm guessing they were the crew who just waved batons around and told people to keep moving, not the crew who marshalled warbirds into tight spaces.  So I quit looking at them, and I followed Spencer, Jon, or Steve T, all three of whom I trust with myself and my plane.  I had to have a tug move me from one place they marshalled me into.  It was bad.   Anyway, our crew had fun. We watched the night airshow, we loaded rides, we ate food at the performer's hangar, we enjoyed our time there.

I could have stayed by myself and done more rides, though selling them without the crew would have been hard.  I had more people wanting rides, but I was ready to come home Saturday with the rest of my crew instead, and Sunday I needed to do C-45 transition training with Dave R. first thing.  So we packed up. I put Shelbe with me, since she'd worked really hard in the hangar selling rides, getting riders to the planes and back, printing certificates, etc. and she'd never been in the plane, of course, so she went with me and everyone else went in BOB. We took off and went home mostly together, after I caught up to them because they were heavy and gear down for awhile there.  We went in formation, and she says that was the coolest flying she's done to date.  We got home after sunset but it was still light enough to not be pitch black. I put my gear down a little early so I could verify the pins were in and the gear was locked (no gear down lights in this one), and I did end up flaring a little high and thunking my first landing of the weekend, but if I'm going to thunk one, at least it was at home in the dark and not in front of all the cameras out there.  :D 

Every takeoff and landing there was a line-up of photographers and attendees watching, videoing, etc. There was a 20 knot 60-70 degree crosswind the first day and a 15-17 knot one the second day.  Nothing like having everybody watch, especially when you have a reputation and people are watching you, some to critique, some to cheer, but everyone is watching.  I was so glad I didn't have anything exciting to give them. I just landed, pretty nicely, and was done. Last year they had over 10,000 people there and it rained. This year the weather was nice, so we'll see what they had, I guess!

Sunday I did C-45 training with Dave. We flew 1.7 and he did much better than the first time. He's going to be a rides pilot for the Air Power History Tour on BOB.

BOB is having a bunch of maintenance issues. It was supposed to leave today, but instead isn't leaving until tomorrow, we HOPE.  It still has a lot of work that needs to be done on it, but we're out of time, so getting the big ticket items and sending it on down. Today fixing a leak in a generator seal required a new generator which had to be ordered and overnighted.

All our planes have issues. The Aerostar, the Cheyenne, the 340, BOB, two 172s, now maybe the RG. Ethan's three planes are all down for maintenance.  Whatever is in the water, it's not good!  Make it stop!

Today I had a huge round of flights that took from 7:40 am until 5:30 pm.  I flew the Aerostar from Kokomo to Frankfort, picked up Nick, took him to Greencastle, waited there for 2 hours, ate a great breakfast at a nearby place that I walked home from. It was only .7 mile, and they were going to come get me, but I walked it. It was a pretty morning.  Anyway, from Greencastle went back to Frankfort and Nick and I picked up Ethan.  Flew from Frankfort to Mansfield, Ohio, and left Nick there. The line guy who came out and chocked my plane remembered me and the plane and said I came there to drop my daughter off for camp. You know how many years ago that was??  What a memory!  Apparently me and Gumby were memorable.  :o  I left Mansfield and flew Ethan to Williams County Airport and dropped him off so he could pick up his Cherokee with a brake problem.  Flew back to Mansfield and picked up Nick.  Flew Nick back to Frankfort. Flew myself back to Kokomo.  Eight legs of flights, about 6 hours of flight time, and about 10 hours start to finish including ground time.  Busy day!

I'll post some photos from the weekend, that are all of course out of order, and then go to bed for a full day of flying tomorrow.

Me & BOB

Tim G is Lead, then me, at sunset

Steve T took this on the way home

Me with a line of people waiting to climb on the plane and check it out. I'm wearing the leather jacket I borrowed

Shelbe took this of the back of my head

Me with a little girl in the plane

Sunset shot of BOB and Checkertail

Stillshot from a video of our takeoff.

Getting ready to launch for the airshow. TBM on final, BOB is lead.

Checkertail at Sunset before the night show

Cold Shelbe & Morgan in my flight suit.  lol

Morgan doing a "Be Real" right then

Jon & Spencer on BOB watching the night show

Wall of fire in front of the TBMs

I'm #2. R is #3, and farther back.

Jon & Spencer on the T_6

Selfie with me and Shelbe on the way home

I'm giving a big thumbs-up to the crowd/photogs

Glenn #1, Me #2, R #3, and Mike #4. Mike is a whole other story. Maybe for tomorrow. This is a cool shot, though. But Mike wasn't supposed to be up there, if he really was where it looks like he is.

Jon took this out the window on the way home.

Checkertail and BOB during the show

The one photo I saved from the formation flights that didn't look good.  I'm the one to the left of BOB. Mr. Sir is the one pretty far back. And Mike is "tail end Charlie" back there.