We’re lucky enough to have one of the larger regional flyin’s pretty close to us. I hadn’t thought much about how close until one of my EAA chapter friends mentioned that from the chapter’s airport (KHAO) it took him about 40 minutes to get to MERFI (at Urbana Grimes Field). KHAO is about 7 minutes by air from us, and we were at MERFI in about 18 minutes. That’s nice. Elizabeth got the flying duties this trip, she hadn’t flown much lately, and I’m better with the on-board systems than she is, so from a ‘crew resource management’ standpoint, it’s easier in a stressful flight environment if I’m there to help her. It was a beautiful day for flying too, check out the video below or the full Picture Album.
We got flight following from Dayton (now handled by Columbus Approach Control), but didn’t need to, we were easily able to climb above the airspace of WPAFB and Springfield, but it’s nice to have someone watching. MERFI is always a bit of a beehive, and last year we slept in and made the mistake of arriving just as the race was starting. We had to fly around until they were gone, and then try to land with the other 30 airplanes that had backed up, as well as everybody that wanted to leave while the race was getting under way.
So, this year I got Beth up early, and we at the airport by 8:30 and off the ground by 9ish. We were again fairly lucky that we got parked close to the the taxiway and didn’t have to off-road it too much. The flight up was great, we flew at 3,500′ MSL and we cruising about 160 kias/175ktas/150 kt ground speed at 2,500 RPM and leaned to the rich side of peak. We would normally go to the lean side, but the flight was so short that we didn’t bother. If you watch the video, note that on final we have 2 airplanes cross ‘base’ in front of us to the nearly parallel (to RWY20) grass runway 19. I didn’t care for that much.
On the field there was a pancake breakfast, of course, a hot rod show, a smattering of weekend campers, a B-25 on display at the Museum (which was open, but we didn’t go in), biplane rides, various vendors (food but also a small booth from Wick’s), and of course the airplanes. We visited with Dave Adams (Race 83) who’d come into race, and a bunch of our EAA chapter. Unfortunately we didn’t see any of our canard friends there (shame on you guys, the weather was perfect!).
We hung out until almost noon, but Elizabeth had places for us to be, so we fired up and headed home. On to our next adventure.
Posted By: Brett FerrellSunday August 23rd, 2015 at 8:41 PM