Marion

Twas the annual Marion Fly-In/Cruise-In Pancake breakfast.  Spencer, Cameron and Morgan joined us this year to help with rides, Fryman sold them, Steve, AE, Nathan & Chuck hung out, and I did 7 rides. It got a little hot by the end of the day, but really it was a beautiful weather day, decent winds, clear skies, and it's hard to ask for a nicer day.  The biplane was there doing rides non stop like usual, even though I'm not his fan any more.  A Huey was there giving rides too, and buddy, he created some seriously dirty air coming across the runway all the time.  I saw a couple of planes hit his wake turbulence and have a lot of trouble, one on takeoff, one on landing.  Folks, don't fly in any helicopter's rotor wash, let alone a Huey's!  The 172 I saw got lucky, he came really close to closing down the airport with an accident.  I think he left, probably to go home and change his pants.  I gave it a wide berth and I'm heavier than they were...

A local aircraft sales guy bought a T-6 ride and did a random drawing down at his tent for a 'free ride'.  The person who won it gave it to his daughter, who is a 15 year old young lady who had never been on a plane before.  She was scared, but we ended up having a great time.  She bought a t-shirt, and had me sign it with a marker, and she wore the shirt around the event.  It was sweet. 

It started off slow, like it usually does, and after I gave the first ride, it picked up fast.  I hadn't had breakfast yet, so Steve went and got me some pancakes and sausages.  By the time I got to them, they were cold, but they were still good. He lost the fork he brought, so I put a little packet of spreadable butter in between the two pancakes and picked them up and ate them like a sandwich.  Finished up, and had more riders to go.  :)  Two were repeat customers, they had gone up flying with me last year too.  One guy bought *FOUR* warbird rides.  Two in the PT-26 for himself, two in the T-6, and he gave one of the T-6 rides away to someone else.  Our T-6 rides are $425 each and the PT is $200 each.  That's a lot of money to spend for one guy!

After the event was over, I flew home by myself because everyone had had separate cars, nobody came together.  I topped off the T-6, pulled out the Cheyenne, put away the T-6, put away the Cheyenne, connected all the oil stuff and pitot covers and so forth, closed up the hangar, and then everybody who drove showed up.  lol  I could have waited for help, but I didn't really need help, so hey... Steve was supposed to go with me this morning but his mom had a difficult morning and he couldn't get away in time, so he ended up driving too. 

I came home and did her dinner at 5:30, and then met AE, Chuck, Steve, Morgan, Kaylee, Cameron and Spencer at Pastarrific for dinner.  Came home and Steve passed out, Kaylee and I cuddled for awhile, I put Ann to bed because he was out cold, and a nice day was had by all.  :)

I didn't take photos today really.  Mostly I was flying, but I just didn't want to pull up my phone, without a cover on it, in case I dropped the thing and broke it.  I have an updated phone.  It's dark green, which I like. Not the newest model, but newer than what I had. My old one ran out of memory, I couldn't update my ForeFlight charts and maps any more, couldn't update to the latest IOS, so...a new phone with more memory was on order last week, and it came in two days ago, and I don't have a protective cover for it yet, so I'm being very careful.  lol

Me taxiing in with the first rider of the day

Josh (who bought the 'free' T-6 ride), Ray (who runs the event), Morgan to the left, me in the middle, Brady in the blue shirt in the back, who helped restore this T-6 15 years ago.

Spencer showing Morgan how to secure the T-6 after a rides event so I can fly home and not have flapping loose straps posing a hazard.