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It started out simple enough, 3 Lancair pilots with a desire to see the air races at Reno in 2001. It was worked out so Tom and his lady would take a flight from Tampa on Wednesday, as would my wife, flying from Chicago, and we would all meet there. Arnie and I would fly our Lancairs out earlier in the week to really get involved in the race preparations. I hadn't been there since 1992 and Arnie had wanted to go for 20 years. All of the tickets were obtained over the internet, hotel and flight arrangements set up and a car reserved at Truckee.
Day 1 - Sunday 9/9/01 - ARR->MRJ->RAP
After much discussion, Arnie and I decided we would leave on a Sunday, refuel at Rapid City and overnight in Jackson Hole - we weren't interested in flying the mountains at night. The weather Sunday morning found us with low ceilings, rain, tops below 25,000 ft with the system to move out by afternoon. Well, I had to go from ARR (Chicago) to MRJ (Southwest WI) to meet up with Arnie, so I departed IFR, spent an hour in the clouds and shot the GPS 4 approach at MRJ down to minimums (800 ft ceiling, scattered to broken below) and had to circle to land because I couldn't identify the airport environment until I was alongside the hangars.
Lesson #1 - The GPS is so accurate, I could not look down over the Lancair nose and thru the broken clouds to see the runway that I was perfectly lined up on! Believe the GPS and maybe slip the plane at the DH and ½ mile to the threshold waypoint. You had to be there!
Of course, it was raining at Mineral Point (MRJ) so we shot the breeze for some time, fueled the planes and changed our plans a bit. You see, the point was to fly VFR formation and we knew VMC was coming. Instead of Jackson Hole, we would spend the night in Rapid City and "inspect" the workmanship at Mt. Rushmore upon departure the following morning. After all, we would still reach Truckee on Monday and fly into the mountains in the morning. At three in the afternoon, the rain had stopped and FSS told us it was clear 30-40 miles west - so we departed into the scud - overcast and low broken clouds. Of course, the humidity must have been 99%; the climb out was causing condensation to form on my windshield and my Radio Shack CPU cooling fan defroster left me with a 10-inch diameter clear porthole to peer around the gray wispy lumps ahead whilst the rest of my canopy WAS overcast. 20 minutes of this was enough and seeing a bit-o-blue, I climbed to the light - Arnie shot by me with surprise since we hadn't quite worked out our inter-cockpit resource management yet (he just wouldn't switch to our agreed on frequency).
Lesson #2 - Make sure your defroster will handle a worst-case scenario. You had to be there.
Lesson #3 - Duh, we could have filed, canceled in the clear and joined up in comfort.
From this point to RAP, it was pure beauty. The clouds to the South and Southwest took on intriguing complex forms and unusual coloring. We were happy to finally be on our way in the sunshine. Later, approaching RAP as a flight of two, the tower directed us to enter the right base for runway 32 - Arnie had the honors and was going first - The tower did query him as his transponder indicated he was aiming for runway 31 at Ellsworth AFB a few miles to the North. Of course, I learned from Lesson #1, believed my GPS and landed first while Arnie circled back. This pattern would repeat itself several more times before this trip would be over.
Lesson #4 - Quickly recognize the difference between 8700x150 ft and 13500x300 ft runways from 3 miles away.
The FBO called for the hotel van as we watched 4 Stearmans arrive from their yearly Galesburg, IL fly-in enroute to Seattle. Galesburg is about the same distance as Mineral Point and it was now about 6:30 pm - we had left at 3pm, they had started at 7am. The FBO hangared all our planes for the night and the crowded van ride culminated in the hotel bar. Lesson #5 Lancair pilots ingest higher quality libations than their Stearman brethren. You had to be there.
So ended Day 1 - only 5 lessons learned. Well, we were set for an early start and the Mt. Rushmore fly-by with good weather forecast for the next two legs.
Grayhawk
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