RV stick time!

Because of the time difference in wherever the WordPress server is and Illinois, this says it was posted on the 17th…all of this took place on Sunday the 16th…

The weather cooperated, and as planned, I went flying with Jack in his RV-7 this morning. Clear, but hazy skies greeted me this morning when I woke up to feed the dogs at 6:45am. Jack called at about 6:55 to tell me we’re goin’ flyin’! Sweet! Engine start at 7:45 he said. I finished getting ready, and made my way to the airport in the crisp 22 degree air. When I got to the hangar, Jack had the engine running already…it was cold, and the airplane was cold soaked from a month in an unheated hangar (he usually keeps the RV in his heated home/hangar, but he is re-doing his runways). He noticed I had arrived, and throttled back a bit for me to get in. Cold. We taxied out to the ramp to let the oil temp come up to a minimum 100 degrees. When there, a call to ground, and we were headed out to runway 11. Winds were 040 @7, and RWY 2 was the preferred runway for the tower, but that’s a two mile taxi to get there. With a 7 knot wind, RWY 11 was fine.

Throttle to the wall, and we were off! Beautiful morning! I snapped this picture about 25 seconds after liftoff…

Then I turned and snapped another off to the east in to the early morning sun…

The mission of the morning, other than to circulate the oil, was to run down to Jack’s house to take pictures of his new building and runway. Jack flew down, then handed the airplane to me so he could shoot some pics. I did a couple trips around his property, and then just messed around for a few minutes to get a few tenths of RV-7 time. That’ll be really important to the insurance company one of these days when mine is finished.

After some gentle yankin’ and bankin’, I handed the controls back to Jack, and we headed back to Bloomington for breakfast.

When we called the tower 8 miles to the south, the parade of airplanes for breakfast at the new CJ’s airport restuarant was just beginning to get started. Good timing…we were the first to land, and got a premium spot right up front.

22 airplanes landed behind us!!!

It was a great early morning flight, and breakfast was fantastic! All those airplanes…this is a great thing for my home airport!!

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