September 27, 2014 - Red Star Formation/Easton Airport Day
On deck at our secret, undisclosed location training base.
Chef sitting in his new ride. He has moved from the RV-4 to a big RV-8.
RV flight of five doing a low pass.
I was in the cockpit of my airplane when I took this shot. Riggo has the lead.
Practice complete, we flew over to Easton and registered. I flew in a four-ship practice flight Friday afternoon. That evening, everyone had dinner at a nice restaurant in Easton. Instead of the luxurious Econo Lodge I usually stay at, this time I stayed with Mugsy out at a vacation home on Tilghman Island, where I had never been before. It's very remote. You have to drive through St. Michael's, which is sort of remote itself.
This is the view of the house next morning.
The view from the backyard, looking south out into the Chesapeake Bay.
Back at Easton Airport the next morning enjoying coffee and donuts, talking flying.
Riggo and Lawbreaker went up early in the morning for a photoshoot. Nice picture! Notice the rubber-chicken launching device on the right wing.
Lawbreaker also has a chicken-launching device.
In the morning, Pablo, Chef and I did a little formation, photo flight of our own, then Chef and I split off for some fun fly.
We were all sitting in our cockpits, waiting to start engines at the proper time, when this flight of Aircoupes taxiied by. They were the warm-up act!
Lined up on the taxi-way in a conga line, doing run-ups prior to takeoff. Looking towards lead.
The mass delta formation. My flight is on the right side of the formation.
After takeoff and join up, we flew around in line astern with 100 feet separation between flights, then we joined up for this big delta. I think the crowd enjoys seeing so many planes so close together in the sky. It's something you hardly ever see unless you go to AirVenture or Sun 'N Fun. The delta flight was followed by the world-famous Rubber chicken drop competition.
Each flight did a break over the airport, followed by individual chicken-drop runs. The target was the yellow pickup truck. This is a good shot of Riggo making his run. Regretfully, I had electrical problems with my launching device so I did not drop a chicken. But I made a drop pass, of course.
Even the Avenger made a drop pass. But each plane was only allowed one competition chicken to drop and as you can clearly see, he is dropping more than one!
After landing, the Avenger taxiis in.
Following the brief, I walked around and checked out the Airport Day static displays. You don't usually see nose art, much less nose art like this, on a Cessa 172.
It really looked great, sparkly in the sunlight.
Nice.
In the afternoon, we did a six-ship formation flight led by Condor, who is a very experienced formation flyer and recently moved into the Mid-Atlantic area. We did six low-level passes over the airport in different formations. I'm sure it looked great but regretfully there isn't a single picture.
The evening's festivity was a dinner cruise on this rather large boat owned by the father of one of the pilots.
Now I'm looking north. The place where I stayed at is visible on the right side of that peninsula, four piers up.
The bridge that joins Tilghman Island to the mainland.
Looking north at the peninsula just south of Kent Narrows Bridge.
Like the pool.
These three-day flying events are a lot of fun. We had fun just messing around on Friday, plus I did a form flight. On Saturday I flew in three significant form flights, and then another on Sunday. Plus the dinner on Friday and the cruise on Saturday. Good times.
