Sunday July 02, 2006

The weather was a carbon copy of yesterday, but Wichita was only 35 miles away, and after fighting it for almost 4 hours yesterday I figured what the heck, this was only a little over half the distance.

Again at twilight, wheels up. This time Michael attempted to accompany me, but his radio had a problem. On top of that, head winds made it questionable as to whether his fuel would last the trip. So he returned to Morris'.

Rusty finally got to fly! Morris took off right next to me, with Rusty in the back seat. The head winds being what they were, Morris had no intention of flying all the way to Wichita. He just wanted to take Rusty up to take aerial video, and for the next 30 minutes that's what happened. Then Morris and Rusty bid me adieu, and returned to his place, where Michael was waiting.

Two hours and 3 minutes later I landed at Maize airport (70K). Distance flown: 35 miles. Unfortunately Maize (which was a last minute substitution from the original airport I was going to land at in Wichita) was not as described. Luckily another airport, Riverside (K32) is located a little over a mile away, so I simply taxied over to Riverside with the RV following. Once there we met with the airport owner who welcomed us and offered the amenities his airport offered. We'll probably be here for two days for the media, and then move on.

Update: Good news on the radio communication front! In addition to replacing the Vertex with an Icom radio (an A5 provided by a sponsor, PA Powerchutes, thank you!), the antenna was moved to the front of Voyager, positioning it much further from the engine, source of a tremendous amount of RF interference. Plus it's shielded by two seats and my body. The acid test came today when Morris called me just before he landed at his place. We were 15 miles apart, and we could hear each other clearly. What a relief!