I do apologize for falling so far behind on the blog—so many plates spinning in the air at once, this sort of fell by the wayside for too long. Let’s go back to a time called….Covid!
Summer 2020
After my fun trip out to IL to see Dr. Bruce, I enjoyed a summer of flying, both solo and, carefully with appropriate Covid precautions, with friends. In mid-July, Len had to ferry his Cessna Cardinal up to Hartford for some maintenance on the engine. The flight was a short hop up there, and then we headed back to Bridgeport.
Coming in to the airport, I could hear an ELT (emergency location transmitter) going off on 121.5 (I regularly keep radio #2 tuned to that emergency frequency while in flight). After 30 years or so of chasing ELTs with Civil Air Patrol, I could quickly tell it was coming from somewhere on the airport as the signal was strong. I offered the Tower my assistance if they needed help finding the offending beacon and they graciously accepted.
Not long after I had tied up Gwaihir, the Ops truck rolled up and I got my handheld radio out and we started driving along the hangars on the southwest side before crossing over to the hangars on the northwest side of the field, where the signal grew increasingly stronger, even when I stepped the radio off the frequency. (As you get closer to a beacon, you can step off the 121.5 to 121.550 and up—eventually, when you’re right on top of the thing, you can be at 123.0 or more and still hear the signal—it was how we would “home in” on the beacon, particularly on an airport or marina with dozens of vessels.). Sure enough, within a couple minutes we pinned down a hangar and found the owner and some friends working on his plane, a beautiful French military/civilian trainer jet (Morane-Saulnier MS.760 Paris) that I’ve mentioned before on the blog. (4/14/2020 and 2/2016 link).
I had a quick chat with the owner and he was quickly able to disable the ELT. It turns out he also owns the beautiful Grumman Mallard that’s often on the northwest ramp.
Later that month, I got to do some more instrument practice with Milton and also dropped off a power tool to my brother at Meriden Markham.
At the end of the month, Michiko and I made our summer pilgrimage to Red’s Eats in Wiscasset, Maine—though this time we flew into Brunswick where we had a bit of an easier time getting a rental car.
In August, I “enjoyed” my longest pre-flight ever. With all the birds building nests in airplanes because of the Covid lull in flying, I had rigged, with the help of a couple of the line crew, foam blocks to put into various openings on the plane to prevent the birds from doing their damage. Unfortunately, one got stuck in the tailcone and I spent at least 40 minutes wrangling it out! Then, to add misery, I found that someone on the line crew had done such a horrible tiedown knot on the tail ring that we literally had to get a knife out and cut the rope off.
Also in August, Michiko and I did our first social gathering in the midst of Covid—an absolutely wonderful socially distanced picnic with Dan, Gloria and the kids out at Andover Aeroflex. It’s a beautiful little airport in NJ with a pretty short 2,000’ paved runway and parallel grass strip. The runway is situated such that 21 brings you in for a landing over New Wawayanda Lake—and taking off from 21, you climb out over Gardners Pond. Because of the short runway and the turf option, the airport is home to a lot of smaller tailwheel airplanes, such as Piper Cubs, a Dehavilland Chipmunk and a Stearman biplane. I got some decent video of the Stearman in action. It was so refreshing to get to actually see and hang out with dear friends, especially in the midst of all the Covid fear and lockdowns—it brought hope that there would be a return to some sort of normality once we were passed Covid.
Michiko and I snuck in a second trip to Red’s Eats for my birthday in September and I did some CT/MA/VT leaf peeping flights over the next few weeks, as well as one trip with Michiko at about peak foliage.
In November, I flew my night currency flight and ticked over 1,000 hour total time flying in single engine airplanes.
On a balmy night in December, news reports indicated that a large solar flare had the possibility of generating the Northern Lights with viewing much further south than normal, so I hopped in the plane and flew up as far as central MA hoping for a glimpse. Unfortunately, I didn’t see anything and some high cloud cover further north didn’t help as well.
I ended the year with a big day of IFR instrument approach practice with Milton, knocking out 6 approaches.
Comments