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We had a good time. I showed up on Friday and left on Saturday since the winds weren’t looking good for Sunday, but we got in a good flight Saturday morning.

Some forum members were there, including of course Walt (Waltm), Jeff (Carwasher), Kelly (Riceman), Corrie (Mrs. Riceman), Craig (Sharpcf) & Mike (mikermudd). Hopefully I’m not missing anyone!

A few guys flew Friday afternoon, but it was bumpy. You can tell by the way Bobby is holding on in the back seat when flying with Walt! I’m sure Walt has made a few people do that in smooth air, but this time it wasn’t his doing!

A few planes showed up, including my friends Chris and Bill in their 172. There was a nice Luscombe, an A-36 Bonanza, another 172, and a Commander.

The Trestle Board Lodge of Boles Home fed us Friday night and the Boy Scout Troop 392 was there Saturday morning to provide breakfast.

All in all, great turnout, great friends, and great food. Thank you Walt and Rachel!!

This was about the only thing flying in the heat of the day! It’s controlled by an iPhone and has two cameras.

Walt’s Comanche.

Hang on!!

Just a good ol’ boy… never meaning no harm.

Ummm… this will forever be known as Pecker Hill.

Here are some of the photos I shot from my Chris’s Cessna.

Here is the full set.

Well, I had some fun flying adventures this weekend, but never touched the PPC. I headed out to take some photos on Saturday morning and when I got to the airport I ran into my friend Bill. We headed off in his 172 for awhile.

Sunday, it was perfect flying weather for PPCs, but I’ve had a long-standing offer from my friend Phil to go fly in his Aeronca Chief. Travis said his eye was hurting and he wouldn’t make it out to fly PPCs, so it was an easy decision. I didn’t know what to expect from the Chief. I’ve flown similar airplanes, but this one was really comfortable and very pretty. We flew with the windows open, which made if very comfortable. Not only that, but it stalls at 40mph! We flew along between 55 & 85 mph most of the time, slow and low! It’s like a PPC on steroids! I’m hooked!

Then, after flying the Chief, I went with Chris to take some photos of Lake Travis for the marina he uses. The lake is lower than they’ve seen it since the 50’s and there are a lot of “sometimes” islands.

Anyway, I know it’s non-PPC, but thought I’d share a little. This weekend is Walt’s Middle Finger Fly-In, so I should come back with a couple of photos!

Would you guess I didn’t take this from a PPC?

Phil’s house.

Back at Kittie Hill Airport.

Up with Chris now. It was 104 on the ground…

At the bottom of this photo, about the middle, to the right of the five blue covers, you’ll see a black spot in the water. This is actually 3 & 4 foot catfish! This restaurant throws their scraps into the water.

The BARF Club meeting was in Wharton, TX this month. I’ve been there a few times for meetings, but never got a chance to fly there. I love flying in a new location.

Saturday morning was predicted to be perfect flying weather and the predictions were true.

I took off and headed East toward town. There’s a nice river there and a neat looking bridge across it. It was a little hazy when I got there, but soon the sun was up and burning off the haze.

After flying for awhile, I spotted Frank in his “Red Baron” Predator and headed his way. While I was chasing him around I spooked up some deer. I kept chasing them until they crossed some water! I’m always happy to get photos of something I’ve never seen before and this was great!

To end the day, these guys came out to launch a weather balloon! It took way too much patience for me, but they seemed to be having fun.

Hope you enjoy the photos. I can’t wait until the next meeting.

The End.

We got to the airport around 6:30. Soon after that we were taking off. I decided to fly to 5,280 feet and shut off the engine. When I got up there, I saw Lake Pflugerville and told Travis we should head that way. We had a pretty strong headwind, so we knew we’d have no issue getting back to the airport.

I was flying ahead of Travis, so he got plenty of reports of what I was seeing! Wow, that’s a buffalo. Wow, it’s one brown buffalo and two white buffalo. That’s a rare site! After circling them until the brown one started pawing at the ground and snorting, I heading to an open field and dropped down low. I was then chasing jack rabbits!

When I got to the lake, I saw joggers, swimmers, and fishermen. It’s funny watching someone run while looking straight up!

I flew around the lake a few times waiting on Travis and then decided to fly to the new Austin Executive Airport. By then it was getting pretty windy, so no touch-n-go, but we flew by and took some photos.

It was a quick, bumpy flight back and Travis even passed me up! He flew higher than me and found a strong tailwind. When we got back to the airport, a Mooney was taking off and asked me if he could fly by us and take a look.

It turned out to be a great day for flying!

City of Hutto from a mile up.

City of Pflugerville

Buffalo!

Rabbits

Bikes

This King Air took off while we were on left base at Executive.

You know we’re flying slow when I’m on base and have time to take a photo of an old truck!

A guy bought an old airport called Bird’s Nest and then put in a new 6,000 foot runway, new hangers, and this terminal building. It’s incredible.

And a quick 180 and we’re away from the modern building and heading back to Taylor.

Travis with a hazy city of Austin in the background.

Sometimes you just have to cut your buddy off to get that photo!

The preacher came out to wave at me! You can see him by the column.

Firefighter training facility.

Ducks! There was no shortage of wildlife on this flight!

I was surprised to see this small cemetery way off the road, in the middle of the field.

You can see my shadow above the trees.

Back in Taylor.

Back at the airport, the Mooney flies by.

Travis does a tight turn with the Mooney behind him.

On short final.

That’s all for now. Hopefully we get to fly at the BARF meeting next weekend.

The BARF Club decided to have our July meeting at Lake Whitney. Since this is very near to my friend Craig McPherson’s place, my plan was to arrive there Friday afternoon and spend the night. My job had other ideas though and instead of heading out Friday afternoon, I got up Saturday morning around 3AM and headed that way.

I arrived when it was almost dawn and after driving past the airport a couple of times I finally found it! There were some guys who came out to watch, so I loaded one of them up in my back seat and headed off.

It was pretty bumpy down low so we climbed to around 1500 feet and found smooth air. We got a good view of how low the lake was. We need some rain!

As usual, I tried to chase a few of the guys down for photos, but between the light being low and everyone else flying the opposite direction, I didn’t get nearly as many shots as I usually do.

Hope you enjoy them!

Jim Brewer in his new Predator.

Ol’ Shorty

I could make a pretty nice hanger out of that railroad car…

Jim Brewer flying with the jets.

Ron flying low.

Short Final

Lake Whitney Airport

Bill Alcorn tree-top flying.

Air Force One

Bruce in formation with me (whether he knew it or not!).

Why do I always feel like saluting when Bill lands?

Hey here comes Jim Howard!

Hmmm… looks like he’s coming right at me. I have faith he’ll miss me.

Looks like I might be the only one that has faith in him!

He missed me, but after all of that stress he needed a nap!

Ken and Carolyn landing in their award-winning Predator.

It’s a good thing Ken installed that autopilot! Top of the line model too!

Mike Singletary flying by in his Predator.

Wayne Powell landing in his Pegasus

Hey Danal even showed up! He did touch-n-goes for about three hours after the rest of us landed!

Hour number two…

Okay, if I’m being honest, maybe it was 15 minutes. Three hours makes a better story though!

Something was wrong with my wide-angle lens. Everything was blurry on the right side, but here are some group shots anyway.

I’m even in this shot. I’m the blurry guy, next to the white PPC, fourth from the right in khaki shorts and my PPC Forums shirt!

The end. Hopefully more to come from our August meeting!

Since Friday was supposed to be a holiday at work, I decided to fly before I went in. I took off from Taylor and headed toward the building I work in. We have a large field in front, so it was easy to make some low passes. As I was getting close, I saw a hot air balloon. I thought it would be neat if it flew over the building so I could get some photos…. then it did just that! It was a nice morning for a flight.

I was sharing the air with Charlie Papa, but only saw him when he was taking off.

Sunday was one of those perfect days. I got up early, as I normally do, and Bruce joined me at Taylor. He said it’s not a normal thing to see him out there that early, but I may have converted him! It was so calm and cool out. It’s the time of year where it’s over 100 degrees every day and that means it’s still 95 when we would normally try to get in an afternoon flight.

By 6:30 I was up. Bruce was still setting up so I circled the airport, did a few touch-n-goes on the runway, and waved at a family that stopped to watch. I knew this would be a great day for flying, it was perfectly smooth.

Soon Bruce took off and we headed to the lake. I flew along the shore waving at boaters and campers as they came running out to see what the noise was! The water was so calm you could follow a boat’s trail all the way across the lake. We flew over the dam, then behind it, then on the other side! Bruce even disappeared below it! As we flew away from the dam, I started a climb to 2500 feet and shut the engine off. I took my headset off and wished I could just stay up there. Nothing but the sound of the wind (and the creaking of my PPC!).

We headed back toward Taylor, flying low over fields and taking a bunch of photos. As we were getting close I heard two airplanes entering the pattern and one of them said he had the balloon in sight. I could see it from 3 miles away, but by the time we got there it was put away. We circled them a few times to show them what it’s like to turn and to land in the same place we took off from!

After that, we landed and reflected on how great the flight was. What a day!

Circling over the airport.

Going down?

Stealth mode.

Almost at 2500 feet.

Bruce is way down there!

Granger in the background. This is where they filmed the new True Grit movie.

Leaving the lake.

Hello Bruce!

I was expecting my ride to get pretty rough about now, but it never did.

Shadows

Looking back at Bruce.

I like this one!

Very cool shot. Looks like shag carpet!

Bruce with two shadows! Hard to sneak up on a guy with the sun behind you!

Beautiful trestle… notice the power lines.

This is a memorial for a friend of mine, [URL="http://aircrashed.com/cause/cDFW05LA138.shtml"]Clayton Young[/URL]. I was out for a drive with my wife when I saw the road blocked by state troopers. I looked over and saw what was left of the plane. The trooper motioned me to go by, but I stopped. He walked over and I asked him if it was Clayton. He said yes and asked if I knew how to contact his wife… I did. Please, watch out for power lines. Clayton left behind 5 children.

Dock reflections.

Even rusty culverts can be pretty!

Bruce coming in for a landing.

I’ve now flown three days this week. This one was the second flight and I took my youngest daughter with me.

We got to the field early and it was perfect. Every day here it’s breaking 100 degrees, so I like to get up early and enjoy some time outside.

We took off to the South as the wind was predicted to come from that direction when they picked up. We flew low over some ponds with her pointing out rabbits, dogs, cows, and horses.

We also flew over to two different private strips where I know the owners and did some touch-n-goes. The first one belongs to Mark who owns a Beech 18 which always poses for great photos!

After awhile we headed back to the airport to see if Travis had shown up. He had, but was still setting up his PPC, so we climbed to 2500 feet and shut off the engine. My daughter really loves this and wanted to do it even though she was really ready to land and go eat! After we came down and started the engine again, she wanted to do it again, so back up we went.

We then headed back to the airport to land. We watched Travis do some touch-n-goes and packed up… well, to be honest I did. She headed back to the truck to play Angry Birds on my iPod.

All in all, another great flight and the best flight is still to come. Sunday was the best flight and the best photos, so standby! I’ll try to write that story today.

You can see how low this tank is. We’re in the worst drought I can remember.

Another great fly-in put on by Wayne Spring. We flew every morning and afternoon, the weather couldn’t have been better! We also had a great turnout. I think it was around 40 PPCs and a helicopter!

Hope you enjoy!