We got up early and headed to the airport to meet Ken and Jamie, wait for Chris then head out to the Colusa fly-in. It was a fairly uneventful flight over, but there was a lot of activity with people arriving once we were near - a group of Piper Cubs all landed at once, and I head "finals, number 7" at one point. Luckily everybody was down by the time we got there, and I pulled off a great landing in front of the crowd :o)
We had breakfast (pilots don't have to pay :o)), then Chris won a case of oil he can't use and some rice in the raffle. Luckily we ran in to Bruce and Scott, and Bruce offered to take it back to Lincoln for us.
After looking at the planes for a while, it was obvious that people were starting to head out. We flew back to Lincoln, and Chris to Cameron Park. After I put the plane away, we chatted to Dan who'd flown over in his RV-10, but turned back when he saw how busy it was :o)
I went to the airport nice and early to fly up to Auburn to meet Chris and Rob for breakfast. Randy was supposed to join us, but found that his front tyre was showing the cords, and the spare he'd bought was the wrong size. Doy.
After breakfast, we flew back to Lincoln and stood about chatting with Dan about John's RV-6A that he's helping build.
I got up early and headed to the airport, where I flew to Georgetown to meet Chris. It's the first time I've been there, and there wasn't anybody about, so I landed on 17, as the wind sock seemed to favour that. The runway drops off into a ravine, and I found it a little disconcerting to come in and land there, as everything just looks odd. Chris arrived while I was spinning down the rotors, and I told him there was pretty much no wind, so he landed on 35. We took off on 35, while a guy not on the radio looked like he was downwind for 17, but he turned away. I was shooting video, so I thought about running low off the end of the runway, but figured I'd have to worry about hitting Chris, so I just did a normal takeoff. We circled round over the airport, then headed towards Tahoe, dropping down in to a couple of canyons.
Despite a whole discussion about being warm enough, Chris decided he should have worn a jacket by the time we were at about 5,000', so he landed on a fire trail to stop and get his jacket on. I just flew around him in circles until he took off again, and we headed back towards Tahoe, flying over a couple of lakes and ridges before getting there. By the time we got there, I was a little concerned about gas, as I was between 1/2 and 3/4 of a tank, and we were expecting a 15mph headwind on the way back, so we flew for a short way along the coast of the lake before heading back. At least I've now had the gyroplane over 10,000' (previous record for me was ~4,500'). Of course, we didn't have a bad headwind on the way home, and going downhill meant I got to Auburn with just under 1/2 a tank.
We had brunch while waiting for Randy to show up from Lincoln, then waited for a paint match guy to show up and scan Randy's white and Chris' 2 different red paints, then we split off and went home - I went straight back to Lincoln, Chris went back to Cameron Park and Randy took his daughter on a short sight seeing trip on the way home. Just under 3 hours, on about 13 gallons of gas isn't too bad - I usually fly a lot slower than Chris, so I usually burn less gas than that.
Today was Independence Day, when the Americans celebrate treason by going shopping, barbecuing getting drunk and setting off fireworks.
As the neighbours (and Sun City, we think) started their fireworks stuff last night, and Tilly hates fireworks, we were pretty beat all day. Luckily I was covering work, so I checked in a couple of times while pottering about the house.
We spent the evening throwing the ball for Tilly to distract her from the noises outside, which went on past the 22:00 cut off that I guess I'd imagined.
I didn't sleep well as there were fireworks being let off last night, getting Tilly all upset. I pretty much dragged through the day, then we went over to the airport. It had been our intention to fly for a little while, then take Chris to dinner, but he got out of his ground school class early, so we skipped the flying and just went to dinner.
