NetHeads, Today I flew down to my father's grass strip, turning a grueling 4 hour drive that I used to hate (I don't do it any more) into a 1.5 hour excuse to fly somewhere. The landing was my best yet, because after bouncing three times yesterday on Moontown's grass strip, I was determined to "plant it" this time and during future landings. Apparently I've become lulled into three pointing it such that I don't need to "stick it" with forward stick, but that's something I really ought to do on every landing.
And the bonus is that my father is on the other end of that trip. He's 75 years old and still way sharper than I could ever hope to be. What a character. My mother's there too, and although she's physically in great shape (thanks to my father), she's basically about a year old mentally, thanks to Alzheimers. That's particulary sad for somebody with a PhD that ran the county school system for twenty five years. The funny thing about that is you never know if she's going to kiss you or bite you! We spent a few hours sitting around talking, driving around the farm looking at the cows, looking at all the cool stuff in the barn, driving the back roads, scoping out the irrigation pipe (potential KR fuel tanks), and just generally talking like we've rarely had the chance to do over the years. But now that I have my own personal time machine, it's pretty easy to do. And he gets a kick out of me using the 3600' long 80' wide grass runway that he built for me and my brother to come visit on. On the way back I had what was definitely the closest encounter I've ever had with another of the "aircraft" species. I was in some scattered clouds at 9,999' or so (any higher and I would've needed my transponder that's out being repaired) and admittedly not really looking hard for any other trafffic, since I rarely see anything up that high anyway, and I certainly wasn't looking west where the sun was frying me from. Something caught my eye to the west, and in about 2 seconds it went from a suspected bugsplat on the canopy to a KingAir or SomeOtherTwin that I was definitely going to hit. I never imagined how quickly something going 160 mph could converge on something going 250 mph from a right angle, but it happens so fast that it's futile to even consider watching out for. I was listening to the nearby Birmingham approach, and neither one of us was talking to him, although if I'd had my transponder working (it's on a workbench somewhere in the midwest), they'd have been watching out for me, at least. I'm not sure what the moral of this is, but it's the first (and hopefully the last) time I've thought to myself "if you don't haul back on the stick in the next half a second, you're going to hit that guy". I pulled up (I think I was supposed to dive) and then turned right to get a departing glimpse of him, but he was so far gone I never saw him again. I'm pretty sure he never even saw me. Just something else to contemplate on your next flight! I parked it with 294 hours on the clock, and opened another Amber Bock... Mark Langford, Harvest, AL see homebuilt airplane at http://www.N56ML.com email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
