#578 Evening Flight at Vance Brand

What a nice Surprise.  Dawn and I were planning to go to the CSYC board meeting but after speaking with Bill I decided that it was not a necessity, saving us 2 hours on the road.  When I text ed Dawn the news she suggested that we go flying instead.  How nice...
So she came home early and we were at the airstrip by 5:30. The wind was brisk from the East which was a good thing.  Instead of launching at the East end where the weeds had been snagging my lines, I could move to the west side of the field where there was real grass.  I'd launched there before but it was rare.  I parked the truck on the North end and walked the wing out to the middle of the field giving me plenty of room to launch and clear the buildings and rotor on the East end.  Dawn and I did a radio check and she settled into the truck to get some  work done while I played.   Nice Lady ....

Nice air except for a ratty layer at 200 feet.  I flew over to the High school and doodled around for 30 minutes.  The wind was 15 mph from the East.  When I dropped down to 100 feet I was able to penetrate much better and made my way back to Vance Brand. 

Through the whole thing I hadn't been able to hear Dawn on the radio and was getting pretty frustrated.  We had done several radio checks which checked out fine.  Eventually I was getting her transmissions but weak.  I think the plug into the radio is the problem and will work on it.  Some kind of a guard that keeps the plug from being disturbed.

When the air started getting trashy I flew west of the field and practiced touch and gos adjacent to the runway.  On one of them I saw a GA lining up for final,  I stayed south of the runway and we came in together.  VERY COOL.