Wednesday, January 2, 2013

New Years Eve

Monday, New Years Eve, was the D-day. We're flying Wilga over to Horsham! Griffo stayed over night with the owner and we were supposed to meet them in Naracoorte and pick up the plane from there. The amount of grape juice they consumed the night before delayed the whole procedure towards the afternoon hours.
Dick kindly offered us a ride from Horsham to Naracoorte in his beautiful Piper Saratoga. Well, when you're going to pick up a Wilga you do it with style, right?

now we're talking

Jake and Dick preflighting

Jake and Michael seem comfy back there


The GPS was showing we were doing 180 kts TAS and it took us less than half an hour to get to Naracoorte ... with 35 kts headwind.

heading west of Horsham

Cpt. Dick

straight-in for Naracoorte

here we are

Griffo and Blacky were already there trying to make the fuel pump working. There's gotta be complications ... always. It turned out the pump was in working order but there was no Avgas in the tank. The delivery truck didn't make it over the holiday season, people were flying like crazy using days off work and they consumed all the fuel. Desperately we started looking for a drum to get some Unleaded from the gas station in town. Luckily this Wilga has a supplement for Super Unleaded - not all of them do. There is always a way out of a crapy situation and we also got lucky this time. Not only we found a drum but also one full of Avgas. One of the locals had a storage in his hangar and agreed to sell the fuel to us. We were saved!

here she is thirsty for Avgas

heading back east


not much of working nav equipment on board motivated me to renew OZ Runways subscription

"see Griffo? This is how you fly a Wilga ;-)"

We got lucky with the tailwind and were doing 100 kts ground speed (80 kts IAS). Dick in his Saratoga took off from Naracoorte exactly 30 minutes after us and we met again in landing pattern in Horsham. It took us 50 minutes to travel while he was up in the air for 20 ... Quite a difference, huh?

I haven't flown a Wilga for over 2 years now but it's amazing how fast it all comes back. It's like you've never been out of there. I had to sum up my Wilga experience for insurance issues and came up with over 1800 landings in various Wilgas. I think this amount on one type helps too. You think you forget but it all sits somewhere there in the back of your head.

She's home

a warm welcome in Horsham

Not only New Year but there was also this one more reason for celebrations. How about a hangar BBQ dinner?

is this a dinner table with a view or what?

amazing is the rapid conversion even of the biggest skeptics

Mr. Griffoski opened up a bottle of good red for special occasions

Everyone wanted to have a look, sit in and listen to the big radial engine.

Happy New Year from the Horsham Flying Club!

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