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Fox Valley Flying ClubNewsletter, September 2002 |
FVFC Squadron to Grandpa's Farm
Story submitted by Evan WrightUnfortunately, Larry wasn't far from right, and when my alarm rang at 4:00 am (that's a not a typo) and I got out of bed to collect my flying gear, all my suspicions that I need my head examined were confirmed. After walking the dogs, who looked at me wondering what they had done to be kicked out of bed so early, I was off to Cushing Field.
After a long cold drive to Newark, spent bobbing up and down through a thing layer of ground found hovering above the corn fields on route 126, I pulled into the airport, just as the sun was coming up. Mike Benevelli was already gassed up and ready to fly to a Ham radio convention in Peotone. Shortly afterwards people began arriving and pulling their aircraft from the hangars, and it was clear the FVFC was going to have a pretty good contingent flying to Grandpa's
I can't remember if we made our (sadistically early) wheels-up time, but if we didn't, we didn't miss it by much. The final census included Bill Mills in his new Kit-Fox, Ted and Gunnar in their Phantoms, and Larry, John O'Niel, Al, and I in Quicksilvers. 7 ultralights, certainly a respectable swarm heading west at 50 miles per hour. With Al and John on the deck, and the rest of us in loose formation at 1000 ft., we flew past Sheridan, over a private strip south east of Earlville(probably Cody), to route 39. At this point, I pulled the sectional chart out of my jacket to double check the location of the airport against landmarks. The astute reader might ask, "Why were you keeping a sectional in your jacket?" Because I forgot to rubber-band it to my knee board, and it had almost gone through the prop on two occasions. Double checking our position wasn't necessary. A Piper heading North at pattern altitude gave away the location of the airport, and huge America flag just East of the field made a perfect wind sock.
The Piper was a wake up call to scan for traffic, and we didn't have to wait long. A flight of three AT-6 s boomed right by us on their downwind leg looking like they were on a ground attack mission. After Mick's close encounter with a B-25, I'm starting to thing ultralights should be renamed war-bird magnets!
With all the planes which where coming out of the wood work, we all threaded our way down through the GA traffiic. Line men directed us to the our parking spaces, and I decapitated several corn stalks with my left wing tip in a parking job which amused several onlookers.
On getting out of our ultralights, we were greeting by Richard Cosi, EAA member, owner of Clarion Airport (just west of Grandpa's), and the home builder who bought my Jenny project. Richard had prepared for our arrival by stockpiling 93 octane gasoline in several Jerry cans in the back of his pickup. Having that extra gas sure made the trip back a lot less stressful!
We proceeded to breakfast line, picked up our pancakes, Canadian bacon, and scrambled eggs, and found seats at the picnic tables next to Jerry and Linda Hamer. Linda is the former president of the International Aerobatics Committee, a Judge of aerobatic events at Oshkosh, and a flight instructor providing training for tail dragger endorsements.
After breakfast we milled around and admired the antique aircraft and warbirds, including the AT-6s which which had made our pattern entry a challenging before returning to Cushing. The most time consuming part of the return trip was arduous back taxi behind the endless stream of GA aircraft. It was a good Richard supplied us will all that fuel, because I think burned more stuck on the runway than I did during the flight back. The return flight to Cushing wasn't the en-masse afair the flight there had been, and ultralighters gradually filtered back to Clow and Cushing in ones and twos. I don't know what everyone did after that fly-in, but I went home and fell asleep. I hope I get go to Grandpa's Farm again next year, but I hope even more that I don't have to wake up at 4:00 am to get there.
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