I'm back too. I left the Gathering and flew 320 miles to Osceola, Iowa to drop off my old Air Force roomate Mark Chamberlain (I'm sure that everybody that talked to him is now somewhat "enriched"). In Iowa we landed in 24 mph winds with 30 mph gusts, and it was a pretty exciting landing. It's funny how I now just tell myself (and the passenger, in this case) "this is gonna look nasty, but it'll work out fine". On approach I'll bet I had a 45 degree crab going, and it was pretty wild. I definitely did two distinct landings, and the last one "took". I then flew back to my airport (570 miles) in 4:15 hours burning 17.2 gallons (33 mpg throttled back to 134 mph), with no FAA regulations violated.. Although it looked like I was going to make it non-stop, the winds changed on me on the way back, so I considered dropping into Metropolis (that would have been timely) to refuel, but decided to go to Houston County near Lake Barkley instead. I saw Mark Jones abort the takeoff too (I was about 100 yards behind Joe Horton on takeoff), but didn't know he was down at Metropolis until I got home. He'll get it figured out.
It was another great Gathering, with lots of information and experiences changing hands... Mark Langford, with 348 hours on the clock see homebuilt airplane at http://www.N56ML.com email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
