First I had to take the Conquest down to Jacksboro, TN and pick up Andy and family. It was a quick hour down there, a quick hour home. The weather was okay, it was IFR leaving and coming back into Frankfort, so I shot an approach in, no problem. The oxygen in the plane is almost down to zero, so I told them we need to get that fixed before I head to Colorado at 31,000’. The pressurization works, but if it fails for some reason I don’t have back-up oxygen as of today. That’s no good, I’d stay lower so I have more time of useful consciousness just in case, if we can’t get that fixed asap. But all in all, uneventful trip, which is good, and I made good money for being busy for less than 4 hours.
Kaylee was home, so we napped (well, SHE napped, I couldn’t) for an hour, then I got back up, finished packing, and headed out the door for Tennessee, and when I left the airport there, I headed for Kokomo where I was being picked up by my ride, Glenn, in his Bonanza.
He flew us down to Terre Haute, and we landed just in time for the rest of the Air Power History Tour folks to be heading to dinner. We checked into our hotel room, and went with them for pizza. It WAS good to see most of them. Sandy, who is another lady T-6 pilot, whom I met at Dubuque my first year there for the formation clinic. Her husband Andy was the Geico T-6 pilot who was killed in an accident in a T-6 two months after I met him. She got back in them and is still flying, which I think is something. She’s also an introvert, and we get along well and have a lot in common. She is there, and Curt, my metal-music-loving big guy friend who flies the T-6, the C-45, and the big bombers. He’s in a little bit of everything. Stan, the giant scary looking Swedish bald guy who looks like a mean muscle man—unless you look in his eyes, which are quite gentle. He’s a super nice guy. We had some very old veterans who came out with us, and a girl dressed as Rosie who had a very loud and piercing voice there to help them out. And Jeremy, the new WASP T-6 pilot instructor. He told me about a guy who wants to come flying with me, but the guy owns a T-6, and he flew with both Jeremy and Jon, the two WASP T-6 pilots who are instructors in the wing too, and he bothered them both. He has over a hundred hours in a T-6, but they say he’s inconsistent, does weird random things, and has a bad approach. They wanted to warm me ahead of time. I appreciate that. lol. How do you tell a guy who owns his own airplane that you don’t want him flying yours because he’s not great? I dunno, but they’re trying to find the way. And Glenn of course, whom I’ve known for many years now through the Bonanza formation clinic. There were more, but I don’t know them as well. So it was good to see everyone, and tomorrow we’re supposed to transition to Toledo, OH, where we’ll have a different crew for a lot of the airplanes. The weather doesn’t look great, so we may be stuck here for the day, but…we shall see.
Since I am here, I’m going to fly with JP in the Twin Beech, and see if we can get his instructor sign-off in it done. I sort of wish he’d have to do it with someone else, because I think there are things he needs to work on, but it’s hard to take it coming from me. I dunno. I hope he does really well and I don’t have to make this awkward.
I didn’t take any photos today, nothing too interesting to photograph. We’ll see about tomorrow, when it’ll mostly be warbirds, of course. ;)
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