Whew! What a great fly-in!
Friday morning, I drove to Tijuana and got the adjustment, everything went well. I drove down there with a friend, and on the way back, we stopped at his cell phone place so he could get a new phone (his old one stopped working) and the visit there took longer than I thought it would. I lost track of time, and when I realized how late it was, I decided not to press on to the fly-in until the morning.
At 6AM Saturday I was out the door from LA driving to Columbia, located just outside of Senora. The drive was fantastic, I took the 99. At one point, I came around a corner and was stared down by a B-17 and an F-4 parked right next to the freeway. Mefford airport, I think.
In Fresno, I turned inland and took the 41 and 49 inwards through the mountains. Really great scenery and some great motorcycle curves.
I pulled into Senora around 11:30 and was walking into the fly-in before noon.
Canards everywhere! LongEZs, VariEZs, Berkuts, Velocities, Cozy's (like mine), even a VariViggen (one of like 3 flying in the world). The VariViggen was decorated with fighter markings, down to fake missiles hanging off the wing. ...well, I assume they were fake.....
At one point I was talking to a pilot about his LongEZ and asked if I could try sitting in it. He had me jump into the backseat. It was cramped, but I managed to squeeze in. Then he closed the canopy. Even tighter, but I could fit. So he opened the canopy and said "All right, let's go." and jumped in. Before I knew it, we were taxiing down the runway!
We flew up a couple thousand feet in nothing flat and he did a few high performance turns, wingovers, and so on. The roll rate was phenomenal, and the stick forces were light, but not twitchy. At one point about 30 seconds after taking off, he had me guess how fast we were (we were turning downwind). I couldn't believe how fast it accelerated, we were doing 160 knots before were were even halfway through the downwind.
The pilot (David Orr) was a vietnam air force pilot, and it showed! He has something like 2,500 hours in canards, and that plane sang. Great flight. He walked me through setting up for landing (the plane doesn't want to slow down, you really need to plan) and we touched down.
I realized that I hadn't felt cramped in the cockpit after like 10 seconds of flying, this plane is something you wear, not sit in.
Later that night, we had a party. With my adjustment, I couldn't eat solid food, but apparently margaritas on an empty stomach makes for an interesting evening. Great party, and my friends got there in time to enjoy it (same guy from TJ, plus his gf)
Sunday woke up at 6 feeling refreshed (I guess I drink rarely enough that my liver gives me a free pass on hangovers), broke up camp, and spent more time watching the beautiful canards heading out.
My friends went on flights with David, then we did breakfast in town, a restored gold rush attraction with no cars allowed. Finally, I headed north for home.
I took the 49 north to the 12 and finally the 99. Beautiful country, even drove through San Andreas. Stopped for lunch in a town that makes its whole identity from a Mark Twain story written about it (the jumping frog one), which was pretty funny. Pictures of Twain everywhere, Twain shopping plaza, etc.
Total drive time on the drive home from Columbia was about 9.5-10 hours. A fellow canardian from my area, for comparison, made the flight in 2 hours.
I gotta get me one of these.
