Arty's Ultimate Ultralight Adventure

Thursday, April 16

I know, I know – I didn’t REALLY write this on April 16th, because it’s now almost midnight on the 17th. I was so tired last night after an absolutely fabulous day that I didn’t have any energy to post to this blog. So now I’ll make up for it!

Thursday deserves a citation because:
1. We actually were wheels up before noon – way before noon! That in spite of our usual late night carousing – aided and abetted by the folks I mentioned in Wednesday’s post: Rory and Harolyn Davis and Mike Shalbetter.
2. I had deep fried dill pickles for the first time in my life – and they are delicious!
3. I flew over more water than I’ve ever flown over – and have the pictures to prove it!

I was on a mission this morning – to get to Ronnie Smith’s airfield (South Mississippi Light Aircraft) and have him diagnose and fix my leaky engine. Even though the engine was running perfectly, the oil leak was getting worse. I did a straight GPS beeline for Ronnie’s and the weather gods were with me – headwind but no turbulence. Once I realized that I wasn’t going to make the 73 mile flight in “normal” flight time, I sat back and relaxed and enjoyed myself.

Ronnie’s airstrip is absolutely beautiful – green lush turf in the middle of green wheat fields.

Ronnie quickly diagnosed my problem – since I’d neglected (does that sound better than “forgotten”?) to torque the heads after an hour of flying, the head gaskets had gotten messed up (that’s technical jargon) and even though they’d been torqued later, it was too late. So he put in new gaskets, cleaned the heads, and declared it done. Then Brad asked Ronnie to look at HIS engine’s oil leak, and then Randy asked him to look at the problem he was having with getting to full RPMs in a reasonable amount of time. To make a long story short, we were there for 5 hours!

It was a very pleasant 5 hours. I lay on the grass and snoozed in the sun, forgetting that us pallid north westerners aren’t used to seeing the sun in April – and that it causes a condition called sunburn! Then Mike Basswell and his brother Paul flew in. Paul flies a black Darth-Vader of a GT 400.Mike flies a beautiful Storch, and I shamelessly begged a ride in it.

Here are the four of them lined up in front of Ronnie’s hangar. (My Drifter was in the hangar.)

Ronnie also has an amphibious trike project that we all oogled.

I am going hog wild over southern food, so for lunch Ronnie took us to a restaurant where I ordered deep fried dill pickles (how could I resist?) and a deep fried shrimp po’boy. I’m absolutely not going to think about – much less worry about – eating so much cholesterol, artery-clogging stuff. That would be an insult to all my southern friends.

Mike and Paul helped us plot our flight path over Mobile Bay, and then shepherded along. The flying was spectacular. I’ve never flown over water so wide, so I flew high at 3500’, pretending that I had a glide path to the bridge to Dauphin Island. (Don’t read that, Norm. Honest, honey, I’m being VERY careful!)

This is a shot of Mobile Bay.

Our destination was Jack Edwards Jet Center Airport on Mobile Point. Mobile Point has two forts on it, one at each end of the peninsula. The one pictured is Ft. Morgan.

Even though Jack Edwards Jet Center Airport has to be one of the plushest airports I’ve been in, they treated us like royalty and gave us the red carpet treatment.

Mike had invited us to stay at his airstrip overnight and from Jack Edwards we made the 30 minute flight to Basswells. Cathy and Mike cleared land to create the most astounding airpark I’ve ever seen. It looks like a golf course!

Mike and Cathy have built an apartment in the hangar where he and Paul keep their planes, as well as a car that Mike restored.

But the coup d’grace was the sign they put up!!!

I didn’t have the heart to tell them that by the time I touched down at their airstrip I had flown 3129 miles! I’m sure Mike was calculating as the crow flies, rather than as the Drifter flies.

We went out for another fabulous southern meal, where I had the best coleslaw I’ve ever tasted and the creamiest garlic cheese grits in the world. Then we put our air mattresses and sleeping bags in the hangar and settled down for sleep. You can see why I was too tired to blog!

Friday, April 17, 2009

Although Mike and Cathy had to get to work early today, they generously gave us free use of their apartment so we could have breakfast, shower, and do our flight planning. We were the noon patrol again, heading east into bumpy headwinds. 1 hr. 40 minutes to cover 70 miles – but we made it into Florida!

Florida has beautiful farmlands as well as lots of forest – and swamps. We were advised to stay north of I-10 as we flew east, to stay out of lots of Military Operation Areas and swamps.

I’m always intrigued by the choices farmers make as they plow their fields. Why did this farmer decide to leave these two trees?

We had headwinds all day, and since Brad is pretty draggy (his DRIFTER is!!) we had to stop more frequently than usual for gas. Tonight we’re camping at Mariana Municipal Airport. There is a maximum security federal penitentiary on the downwind approach of one of the runways. This is an old military airstrip that is now city-owned. We’re comfortably tented down – and I just realized that I’m pretty sure we changed time zones again! Which means it’s even later than I thought it was! So I better get into my tent or I’ll never wake up tomorrow.