Sunday July 16, 2006

An absolutely perfect flight. With the chute finally trimmed right it takes less work to keep me steadily flying in the correct direction. The ground was covered in many places with mist, and as the sun came up it was breathtaking.

Rusty was taken aloft by Marty Polinski, and took some excellent video. Marty uses an elliptical, and with the combined weight of the two, as well as the faster nature of the chute, Marty was able to make multiple passes, circling around and catching up again.

I climbed to 1,500 msl (about 1,000 agl) and followed the line on the GPS. The air was so smooth that I had a few occasions of having to work on keeping myself awake. It was that relaxing. Reached Terre Haute a little over 3 hours later, the tower vectored me in to runway 18 (keeping me a good distance from the F-16s practicing takeoffs and landings on the other runways), and had a gentle landing on the runway. (I wanted to land on the turf, but was denied.)

As I finished packing the chute a car from the FBO drove up. I taxied back to the terminal, following him, and was soon set up with hangar space for Voyager and even a hangar in which to park the RV! Tomorrow I'll call the media and set up interviews.