Arty's Ultimate Ultralight Adventure

Monday, April 27, 2009

Mea Culpa, mea culpa. I have been thinking “east, east, east” for so long that I completely got my directions mixed up. Those of you who were able to translate know that I meant west. Norm would probably point out that I also don’t know my right from my left. When we were taking square dance lessons, the caller would frequently sing out “Your other left, Arty, your other left!”

It’s hard to believe that we’re on our way home. Right now I’m sitting in real comfort at Sam Briseno’s kitchen table, after having had a wonderful meal at the Macaroni Grill. We had stayed with Sam on our way to Lakeland, and it seemed natural to accept his invitation to stay with him again on our flight home. And he’s got a washing machine and dryer!

Yesterday Randy and I were getting desperate for clean clothes. How desperate became obvious to me as I found myself on the back of a scooter, hurtling down a highway at 60 kph. Oh wait – that’s kilometers per hour, not MPH. It still felt really fast. Randy was practically born on a motorcycle; he owns 17 of them and races motocross. I just hung on and forced negative vibes out of my mind.

Yesterday was the last day of Sun n Fun – and I was surprised at how few people were at the Fly-In. More than half the ultralights and ultralight-type E-LSAs left in the morning, and the rest left in the afternoon. Randy and I and 2 other tenters were alone on the field. It was blessedly quiet at night, since the generators powering the security lights had been shut down. None of the “civilians” (non-pilots) came over to our end of the field, so we could relax. The final airshow was wonderful, and I had a great time watching it from under my wing. If you go to the album and look at this picture enlarged, you can see not only the smoke trail but also the aerobatic plane itself.

I had the wonderful opportunity yesterday to meet John Moody, who is considered to be the Father of Ultralighting. John was the first inductee in the Ultralight Hall of Fame. He brought two antique ultralights to Sun n Fun, and flew them every morning and many evenings. Here he is with his Easy Riser:

And here he is with his American Aerolite Eagle.

Yesterday was a day of good-byes, hugs, and promises to stay in touch. Today was our day of actually leaving. We had hoped to find some non-ethanol fuel for our planes, but there was none at the local gas stations and when the gas truck came to our planes, it had only 100LL. We refueled and packed up.

So as not to break with the tradition we established, instead of leaving early to take advantage of the calm air, we waited until the sky was full of white puffy cumulus clouds and took off at 1:40 P.M. It was a pretty rough two hour flight to Sam’s airstrip (the Flying Ten outside Gainesville, FL.) Very, very beautiful – no haze, blue sky, those white puffy clouds – but very bumpy. I remembered why most folks like to fly in the morning!

Today was the first time using the Anywhere Travel Companion GPS, which the company provided me to see how someone flying slowly in an open cockpit ultralight-type E-LSA would like it. I rubber-banded it onto my left thigh. Since I’m not familiar with it, I also rubber-banded my old GPS onto my left forearm – just in case. (My sectional is rubber banded on my right thigh.) I needn’t have bothered – the ATC was amazing. As someone who has always used a hiking GPS, which requires you to enter all your own coordinates and has just an arrow pointing out your way – well, the ATC was a real eye opener! I understand why flying instructors warn their students to keep their head out of the cockpit and fly the plane. Even though I was getting bumped around, I found it hard to resist all the data available to me on that 4.3” full color screen.

I flew most of the time at 800’-1000’ MSL and it was a really lovely 2+ hour flight. I had packed my camera away since I wanted to focus on the ATC, but tomorrow I’ll be taking pictures again. And I promised Norm I’d get finalize our route home – so will need to get up early to do that. I can hear some of you saying, “Yeah…right!” We’ll see.