We decided to pay our second fly-in visit to the Dayton Airshow this year, but this time in style. The field is open most of the day, you just need make a reservation at one of the two FBO’s prior to launching. Once we had this in hand, we took off and turned north at about 120 kts so we could listen to the ATIS prior to contacting them.

Since we’d done air-to-air work in the morning, we were getting a late post-lunch trip in (about 2:25), and the field was due to close at 3 for the Blue Angels. Dayton gave us our transponder setting, and admonished us to proceed at our best practical speed if we wanted to get in before they closed. They apparently aren’t all familiar with our type, and honestly felt we might not make the 26 nm distance in time.

Not to fear, we started to let down from our 3,500′ cruise and went to WOT, and soon were blasting north at 170 kts. A couple of more radio calls and we were on the left base for 24L, cleared to land. We were parked at Aviation Sales’ ramp by quarter to 3, and were comfortably in our folding chairs long before Fat Albert took to the Sky. This, my friends, is living the dream.

On departure the tower asked us “Velocity, do you have time for a question?”, which was silly because that was a question already, and what am I going to do for the next 10 minutes but listen to him anyway? “Sure” we said, and he comes back with “What model Velocity is that?”. How cute, we’re famous all of the sudden. Elizabeth told him we were a fixed gear XL, and he came back with “I want to build one of those when I grow up!” She makes a splash wherever she goes, folks, she just really does.

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