The sound of a persistent rain woke me about an hour after dawn. Looking out the window it was easy to see that this stuff was just passing through. It was a much clearer sky to the west, our general direction for the day.
We drove to Katana Airpark, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, at about 10am, and had breakfast at the little restaurant while we waited for the skies to clear. For some strange reason, the weather at Martha's Vineyard was not doing what it was expected to do. It was not clearing at all. Ceiling stayed at 500 feet, with intermittent rain. We talked to arriving pilots who confirmed what we could see with our own eyes: that it was clear on the mainland to the west.
We could have stayed there all day waiting for the ceiling to lift, but we decided to make a break for it. As we taxied out to the grass runway, several cars stopped along the adjacent highway to watch us take off. These planes sure attract a lot of attention.
Art goes first. The headwind is so strong that his tail lift almost immediately after starting his takeoff roll. I notice that his plane wanders off to the left of the runway, and then veers back again. I make a mental note to be careful of the gusty winds, and be ready for a similar crosswind. He lifts off and banks right, out over the ocean. My turn now. Full throttle. Lots of noise. Waco rumbles over the turf. Tail comes up. Speed builds. Crosswind tries to push me left, but I was ready for it and already have lots of right stick. I'm up and out of there and over the ocean and almost instantly I'm brushing the bottom of the broken cloud layer at 500 feet.
The flight was at times very bumpy, especially after we got out over open water between the island of Martha's Vineyard and the mainland. Here the sun had already burned through the cloud layer and was heating up the water and building convective turbulence. We got hammered the whole trip.
The visual highlight of this leg was the coastline along Newport where dozens of the world's most incredible mansions face the sea, side-by-side. It seems that only from the air can these extraordinary estates be fully appreciated for their size and magnificence. And to see MILES of them all at once is breathtaking. Surely America is the land of Plenty.
In fact, I am so mesmerized by the sights that I'm not taking care of business. Navigating on this leg is so easy (just follow the coastline), that I don't turn the page on my chart to see what's coming next. All of a sudden I'm looking just ahead and to the right at a LARGE airport and get that queasy feeling in my gut that this is a Class D airport and that means that I should have called them for permission to transition their airspace, but here I am already in their face. I have two options. Try to become invisible by turning off my transponder and fly low(er) on the water, and keep radio silence, OR radio the tower and publicly confess my stupidity. I have tried the first approach on at least two different occasions (Monterrey Calif and Gary Indiana) and it worked OK, but I figured that I would go with something new this time. I radio to the Groton Tower that I am "about 2.5 miles east" when really I'm about half a mile east of the field, and the controller was real pleasant about it. He simply suggested that next time I call before entering his airspace (5 miles out). Must have been a slow period.
On the way inland to Chester airport a twin-engine plane flies directly overhead, with a vertical separation of only about a hundred feet. Where the #()(#*@ did HE come from? A reminder that we are now in airspace that is a lot more congested than we have been flying for the last 3000 miles. This is the Northeast Corridor. Time to keep your eyes open Mikie!
Chester airport is only a few miles ahead. A call to the Unicom operator on the field reveals that runway 35 is in use, with winds from 060 at 12 knots, gusting to 15. No problem I figure. Good crosswind practice. Art is in the lead now and he goes in first. I'm on downwind while he is over the numbers so I get a good view of the action, and I'm expecting to see a really smooth landing because Art is very good with crosswinds. He has a lot of experience, having flown his Waco for about 7 years now. All of a sudden, Art is GOING AROUND! Wow! What's this? On the radio, he says that he came in way too hot, and that the crosswinds were a lot stronger than advertised, and that the gusts were stronger, and the angle of the crosswind was greater.
Well, I'm thinking this all through and figure that if Art is having problems with landing here, then maybe I should be thinking about finding someplace else to land, so I break off my base leg approach and let Art go ahead in the pattern for another try at landing. His second attempt got the plane on the ground somewhat successfully, but not gracefully. As he told it later, he barely got it stopped by the end of the runway, he smoked the tires, and bounced and bobbed and weaved all the way, but he got it down without breaking anything, and in the final analysis that's all that matters.
There's an old pilot saying that goes: "It's better to be on the ground and wish you were flying than to be flying and wishing you were on the ground." Today I understood that very well because I still had to get down and I knew that it was not going to be fun. But there was no one else up there in my plane to help out. My flight instructor Lowell Williams was back in California and he wasn't going to save my life and my plane like he had so many times before. Or was he? Maybe he would! All I had to do was to remember to do EXACTLY what he had told me so many times before, and it should work.
"On final, keep the plane straight down the runway, using the rudder. Use the aileron to keep the wing down into the wind. Touch the upwind wheel first, full aileron, stick back, stick back, STICK BACK."
Well, Lowell, my old friend, my landing wasn't as pretty as you would have done, but I got it on, and it stayed on, and I didn't break anything, so I guess it's OK. Thanks for the lessons.
Art watched my landing from a place of safety on the taxiway. Later he told me that my landing was very well done, and that it was a whole bunch better than his under these severe conditions. That sure made my day.
Art spent the day with his brother Bob. I spent the day with Nancy Brooks who drove three hours from Hanover Mass to do some custom paintwork on my Waco. Nancy does the most awesome stuff you can imagine with a paintbrush, and she is the secret sauce that makes Dave Perewitz's Harleys such an eyeful. Dave asked her as a special favor to spiff up my Waco and she jumped at the opportunity. She did such a great job that she earned a special invitation to the St. Patrick's Day (3/17/97) Party at the new, improved Mikie's Fun House, and a fully paid airline ticket. Keep the name Nancy Brooks in mind. She is destined for greatness.
Weather is supposed to be good tomorrow. How different!