Van's RV-9A in Aurora

The Big Picture

The Big Picture
Flying! 8/28/2011

Monday, January 16, 2012

Here's a couple of pictures of the completed project. Well, complete for now.
These were taken on December 27.



Sunday, January 15, 2012

Jan 14, finally got hold of Vance Henize and gave him and Cori a ride in the plane. Cori was nervous, she's afraid of commercial flights. But she seemed to enjoy the flight.

Jan 7
Flew up to McGregor, south of Waco to attend the EAA Chapter 59 pancake breakfast.
I met Seth, and we sat at the table inside where the Falcon Flight formation team was briefing their air show act. Many of the well know RV'ers where there, some who I had met just the previous week at Hicks. I got there late and there was no more sausage, but the pancakes were good.


After breakfast I was about to depart, but Falcon Flight was doing their show practice. I watched for a while, then tried to time my departure. I annonunced departure, but Stu asked me to wait, they were about to do a bomb burst. I held, and then lit the candles. About that time the bomb burst turned back and I was now a hazard. I apologized to Stu and turn out to the west low and early, staying well under the height of the formation. I should have paid more attention to the briefing!


Back at home, Wayne is getting his wings on, helped here by John Reinschmidt. Wayne had a much easier time with the bolts, the secret being to clean out the holes in the spar and carry through box so that there is no crud getting in the way.

On December 28, I flew up to Hicks (T67) and became a Friend of the RV-1. The RV-1 is the plane that started Van's RV series. It is currently being rebuilt in Jay Pratt's shop.





Jay's "Borrowed Horse"

While there I met many of the Van's Airforce regulars, and Cav had a front row seat along with many famous aircraft.
While on the ground at Hicks I visited Avery Tools, and saw a few more airplanes that flash past on my monitor at work.


Paul Dye and Louise Hose


Danny King's "Beautiful Doll", and Walt Arranow's RV-7A.


The gang, working as only pilots can!
Also on December 18, Lynne and I went down to the park at Mansfield Dam to go hike on Sometimes Island. This is small bit of land that appears in Lake Travis when the water goes down a little. Except that the water is down A LOT, and it is now Sometimes Peninsula! The normal level of the lake is about 684 feet above sea level, it's at about 627 in these pictures.




These large blocks of concrete are normally in 20 feet of water. But when the lake is down a little, they're lurking just below the surface, waiting to ruin someone's day!


It's a long walk out to this point.


The Austin Aquatics Open Water Swim was in this cove. Water level was a bit higher than the camera's postion in this shot.
December 18, 2011
Lynne got a new car!

On November 5th, we flew to the coast for the second time.
We stopped at Calhoun County again, this time with no crowd. Our destination was a private airport on the barrier islands very close to KPKV. It was an old naval air base and was very cool in a post-apocolyptic way.



A few quick posts to fill in some pictures.
Here is Halloween. Katrin drives the carriages in downtown Austin. She gets lots of attention!