On Saturday we decided that the combination of Christopher's three short flights and a surprise visit from our curmudgeon-in-chief, Bill Kolb, justified a party. While the grill was warming up, Evan practiced takeoffs and landings in an outstandingly beautiful classic airplane, and the peanut gallery at the end of Runway 23 rated his performance. Despite somewhat gusty conditions, he scored well.
The cold front swept through Saturday night, and Sunday was a much nicer day. Tony, Bill, Thomas, Tim, Nancy, Jason, and Steve all had good soaring flights. Cloudbase was around 5000 feet at Post Mills, and over 7000 feet over Mount Washington, where Tony (7H) made his turn at about 1:40pm. That was when the shadows moved in and the lift quit. Tony glided all the way from the summit to a landing at Franconia.
Meanwhile, Thomas (ZP), having made it to Twin Mountain airport, was trying to sneak back to Post Mills under the overcast. He had barely enough altitude to make it home from Black Mountain, but decided not to chance it. While Tony was landing at Franconia, Thomas flopped onto the ground at Dean Memorial.
With two landouts, we needed two crews. In fact we had three. Doug took the towplane to Franconia to get Tony, and Christopher headed to Dean with Thomas's trailer. By sheer coincidence, Andy and Bill were out flying in a fairly nice old airplane and happened to spot both gliders on the ground. They landed at Franconia in time for Andy to run 7H's wing, and landed at Dean in time to help maneuver ZP into the trailer. Now that's service!
3 comments:
Have to admit, this was a clever way to obtain not one but two "crew meals" for Bill and I. Of course had we been flying a Cub we would have arrived too late and missed the whole thing.
Oh and by-the-way, we didn't just happen in to this, we were tipped off by Tim.
We're going to have to figure out some way to force Thomas to submit his flights to OLC.
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