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This year's trip to Tommy George's Airpark just north of Lake Sangchris was as good as it gets!

With a reasonably sensible departure time of 8:30 am from Clow I was able to get some sleep after the dinner-party-with-lots-of-wine that I was obliged to attend the night before. Me, Mick, Kevin, Bill, and Vance were the FVFC-E contingent. Paul and Donny represented FVFC-W. Ken Swassas joined us in the air. Matt, his wife, and Joe drove in.

We had no problem at our first stop, Pontiac, and got to ogle a whole bunch of Ag Cats. Some were monoplane winged and some were biplane winged. One didn't have any wings at all! A couple had radial engines and one was turbine powered. Ken Swassas had this to say after talking to the operator of the turbine crop-duster:

We pushed on to Logan, just skirting Bloomington's airspace (and realizing that in year's past we had navigated further to the West than we really had to to stay out of the 5-mile circle). Getting to Logan posed no problem. Being at Logan, however, was another matter.

Logan was crowded: the airport was heavily involved in giving rides to "young eagles." The 8 of us light fliers gathered around the pump, jockeying for our 5-10 gallons, didn't sit well with the GA guys, who started to get a little snippy. Then, Vance had to go and break his fuel system. Remember that Vance has a main tank in front of his cockpit, and a header tank between his upper wings. Fuel is drawn from the main tank, and then he manually opens a valve to let gravity feed the main tank from the header tank. Well, it seems that the valve in question had gotten stuck open. So, there was Vance, blithely filling the header tank -- well beyond its capacity -- while the fuel merrily overflowed the main tank, running into and flooding his cockpit. Kevin volunteered to strike a match inside the cockpit so that Vance could better see the extent of the damage.

We waited a L-O-N-G time for Vance's plane to dry out, and eventually departed for Tommy's. During my preflight, I discovered that my radio had stopped working (after -- of course -- bragging all the way down about how great it was). No amount of poking and prodding on my part could get the beast to work, so I just made sure that I was visible to one of my wingmen for the remainder of the trip. Actually, I discovered how refreshing it could be to fly without a lot of incessant chatter in my ears.

We got into Tommy's at about 1:00, just as they were starting a torpedo run contest. Kevin and Bill got into a snit while landing, each refusing to give way, and ultimately landing virtually next to each other. The rest of us ignored them, and pitched our tents in various locations.

The day was warm and sunny, and light aircraft were everywhere you looked. One fellow in a Kolb couldn't quite make it back to the field, and ended up picking beans. Bill smoked about 76543 cigars and bragged to Tommy that his 2SI had actually made it past 100 hours. All of us enjoyed a great spaghetti dinner, and then chipped-in afterwards to treat a cute little girl (nicknamed "Amelia Sputterspark Earhart" by Kevin) her first-ever flight:

The following day was just as fine. We were first in line for the farm breakfast they were offering, complete with eggs over easy, link sausage and mountains of toast. Kevin wisely waited to pack his gear until we were ALL done with breakfast. We departed at about 9:00, with me once again enjoying blissful silence.

Enroute, and without a radio, it became clear to me that the group was diverging. Kevin, Vance, Bill and Paul were headed to Logan. But Mick and Donny had the hammer down and were headed further East. Looking at my map, it was obvious that they were on their way straight to Pontiac, about 100 miles North. I decided to stick with them, and followed them as they eventually climbed above 3500, going over the top of Bloomington. Our ground speed was in the high 80s, and we got into Pontiac in 70 minutes. The Logan contingent apparently had decided to forgo the Pontiac stop, because we were soon all converging together for Clow. I stayed right behind Mick, using him as my shield given my inability to hear the radio traffic. I was told when I landed that I had been spared a good deal of aural abuse: 122.9 was full to the brim, with pilots constantly stepping on each other as the world homed-in on Clow.

Saturday:

Clow to Pontiac: 59 minutes. Leg mileage = 63.4 miles; total trip mileage = 63.4 miles.

Pontiac to Logan: 60 minutes. Leg mileage = 70 miles; total trip mileage = 133.4.

Fuel remaining on arrival: Approx. 9 gal. Added 6.25 gal. for $14.00. Now showing Approx. 15.25 gal.

Logan to Tommy's: 30 minutes. Leg mileage = 38.8 miles; total trip mileage: 172.2.

Total Airtime, Clow to Tommy's: 2:29

Average groundspeed, Clow to Tommy's: 69.34 mph

Sunday:

Tommy's to Pontiac: 70 minutes. Leg mileage = 104.4; total trip mileage = 276.6.

Pontiac to Clow: 50 minutes. Leg mileage = 63.5 miles; total trip mileage = 340.1

Airtime, Tommy's to Clow: 2 hours

Average groundspeed: 83.95 mph

Fuel consumption for trip: Left Clow with approx. 15.5 gal. Added 12.5 gal. enroute. Returned with approx. 13.5 gal. Total fuel burn: 14.5 gal. over 340 miles and 4 hours 30 minutes. 3.22 gph; 23.44 mpg