(okay, technically not an UL)...We flew to an airport near my house where I met my brother who brought the old prop bolts. On the flight back to Hollister I got 3 min flying a piper! Very cool (~140mph). I attached my new prop and took it for a quick test flight. All good.
Finally we got underway.
About 11:30am - it was overcast and cloudy...not much wind though. We were a group consisting of the Piper, a single seat Challenger, a 2-seat Challenger, and my Weedhopper. We had planned to have a Tundra along also - but it had an "accident" just before we left: it lost a wheel on the runway while shooting test landings.
Nobody hurt, but it could not be fixed in time.
The first leg from Hollister East to Los Banos took about an hour.
I do not have a GPS yet, so I had to rely on visual contact with the challengers to figure out where I was going (not very smart now that I think about it). We had agreed to fly as a group with the faster birds flying in a high 360 every so often to stay "in formation" (back with me). It worked pretty well....but I was a little nervous now and then when I lost visual contact. When we got to Los Banos our ground crew
(yep, we had a ground crew - cool huh?) met us with my gas can and premix.....I was close to empty and am very glad we decided to stop a this 1/2way point.
The second leg from Los Banos North to Turlock took only half an hour.
It was easy to find the airport because there were so many UL's in the sky. I had expected to see several UL's at this fly in - there were ~100! I was the only Weedhopper although several people claimed to have at least part of one in the garage ;) For how many different UL's were there I was amazed at how much interest there was in my Hopper.
There were many smiles and shared memories about old B models with square Chotia engines.
We were only there for ~45 min when the look of the clouds above started to make us nervous. It looked like impending rain....or at least stronger winds. So, I had some water
(flying my weedhopper is very thirsty business!) and we headed back to Los Banos.
As I was getting gas in Los Banos a very nice (4-seat Cessna maybe?) came in and made a landing with _NO_ landing gear. The whole time I kept thinking it was just buzzing the strip to show off or something....but it touched down and skidded down the center of the runway! There was no radio call warning of failed landing gear so I guess the guy just forgot to put his gear down? Again, nobody was hurt but this one would not fly again for a while. And it was sitting in the middle of the runway we needed to use to get home. The cool thing about flying an UL is that you _CAN_ take off from a taxi-way! No problem.
It felt good to be home after all of that. ;)
b.
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