Well…

I am glad I made it up even if only for Friday evening, all day Saturday and heading out Sunday. It was good to be here, even if briefly.  It felt like…when you’re a kid and you go visit your grandparents or cousins that have been living in the same house for 25 years?  Familiar, nostalgic, a little excited? It’s nice.

But things didn’t really go they way they needed to on multiple levels.

First thing Saturday morning I started getting the texts, emails, private messages, etc.  A T-6 had crashed into the Lake at Oshkosh that morning.  Girl pilot.  There aren’t a whole lot of us. Obviously it wasn’t me, but people were concerned. Pretty soon I found out who it was. Her name is Devyn, and she is super young, newly married, and has an absolute passion for flying and warbirds. She’s the one I joked with on Facebook about how she comes away from flying a T-6 looking like a model and I look like the wicked witch of the west. She just soloed the T-6 within the last month or so.  Shortcutting this, witnesses saw her spin it into the lake. She was “maneuvering”, whatever that specifically means, and then she lost it and spun in with a passenger on board.  I was texted this morning that the warbird guys are trying to find out who checked her out in the T-6, and that people who know her and her husband’s flying were concerned about their T-6 flying, but more her husband than her. On the other hand, people often default towards that when something goes wrong with someone else. From what I could see, and I watched her fly the BT-13 in person in Sweetwater, TX, while I was giving rides in the WASP T-6, she was a competent pilot in some gusty crosswinds, anyway.  Just got her formation card too.  I don’t know why she lost it, if the back seater was flying or if she was just messing around and stall/spun it, T-6s aren’t forgiving, but I have felt icky ever since.  Even Kaylee saw it on the news and texted me, but by then they had put the name out there so she knew it wasn’t me. But she said knowing it’s a lady flying the same kind of plane I do bothered her. I said I know, I’m a lot more experienced than she was, but I know…

So then that evening we go to the night fireworks airshow.  And they messed it all up. The airshow went off okay, but the fireworks wouldn’t go. They had to keep shutting it down and starting over. The fireballs and the wall of fire and the fireworks all dudded.  It was sort of funny because they had us singing “Sweet Caroline” every time it would stop again, and said “Welcome to EAA Karaoke night!” But we walked a long way to not get to see the cool fireworks display.  lol. 

I spent a lot of the rest of the day trying to arrange to get the WASP T-6 out of the exhibit area. I thought I just needed a tow out. I needed to leave by 11 so I could get it to Terre Haute so I could get back to Kokomo by 6 so I could take a MBros flight to Indy at 6:30 so I could get back late so I could drive to Frankfort early in the morning and take the 340 to Ohio so I could pick up the Conquest so I could fly it to Florida for 2 days to be repaired.  And then they told me no airplanes are moved until 3 pm.  That’s 4 pm Kokomo time.  I can’t get back in time for the corporate flight, and I walked across creation in the hot sun back and forth trying to get people to help me get that changed or fixed or figured out.  To no avail. So I had to tell MBros I wasn’t going to make their flight, which was not cool. 

Then I couldn’t sleep, because of the accident (there were two, a gyrocopter and an ultralight had a midair and two were killed and two more hospitalized there, too, but that one is easier to not lose sleep over when you don’t know the people), and because I didn’t know how I was going to get out tomorrow.  I started making phone calls this morning and after an hour I finally got someone who said “Just flag down a tug operator after 3 pm and they will tow you to boeing plaza where you can get fuel and then go.” So I’m going to be in competition with all the exhibitors to get out of there right at 3 pm.  Yay…

Anyway, that’s the short version. Steve is driving home with Nathan, I am flying home with Morgan and Cameron is coming to get us in the RG at HUF.  And then the rest of the next few days should be back on track. If I can get out of here in a timely manner.

Steve drove with Nathan, we’re all cleaning up the trailers and such, hanging out for another hour and a half until it’s time to go into the square and try to hunt down a tow person to move me…