ScottM
Taxi to Parking
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2005
- Messages
- 42,529
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- Variable, but somewhere on earth
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iBazinga!
Today I took my Cherokee, the type with an engine not the type Tony flies, out for a little weekend flight. My SO was marching in a 4th of July parade and I thought it would be fun to watch from the air, it was BTW.
I then decided to just practice some slow flight stalls, steep turns, etc. I noticed that from when I took off to that time the air had really calmed down. A very high over cast had moved in and there were no bumps at all. I had my fun and headed back to the home aerodrome. As I entered the patter to land on runway 27 I noticed a white something on the grass runway 36/18. As I came around on final I could see it was a glider that had just landed. He was nordo but that is no big deal, we have lots of nordo traffic at my airport.
As I rolled out I saw a guy get out and start walking. Later, after I washed the plane got fuel, etc. I met him in the FBO lounge and we chatted. He was up when all the lift in the area went away. He thought about trying to get back to gliderport near Huntley, but having to go over a couple of lakes and lots of green fields and housing tracks just did not sound like a good idea, so he set it down.
As we chatted I asked if they were bringing the tow plane to pick him up and he told me, no, that the wing span of the glider was such that he only had a small amount of room for our very tall non-std runway lighting and the grass strip was just a little too short. I learned something! I never thought about our lights or the length of our grass strip and had wondered why we did not have a glider operation. Well now I knew.
It was a good visit!
As I was leaving his ride arrived and they packed up the glider and took it home. It was nice to see something a little different at our strip.
I then decided to just practice some slow flight stalls, steep turns, etc. I noticed that from when I took off to that time the air had really calmed down. A very high over cast had moved in and there were no bumps at all. I had my fun and headed back to the home aerodrome. As I entered the patter to land on runway 27 I noticed a white something on the grass runway 36/18. As I came around on final I could see it was a glider that had just landed. He was nordo but that is no big deal, we have lots of nordo traffic at my airport.
As I rolled out I saw a guy get out and start walking. Later, after I washed the plane got fuel, etc. I met him in the FBO lounge and we chatted. He was up when all the lift in the area went away. He thought about trying to get back to gliderport near Huntley, but having to go over a couple of lakes and lots of green fields and housing tracks just did not sound like a good idea, so he set it down.
As we chatted I asked if they were bringing the tow plane to pick him up and he told me, no, that the wing span of the glider was such that he only had a small amount of room for our very tall non-std runway lighting and the grass strip was just a little too short. I learned something! I never thought about our lights or the length of our grass strip and had wondered why we did not have a glider operation. Well now I knew.
It was a good visit!
As I was leaving his ride arrived and they packed up the glider and took it home. It was nice to see something a little different at our strip.
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