Sunday, August 16, 2009

My first landing at the farm

When we arrived at the farm, it was very close to dusk. Diana and Tom were quite concerned that there would be too little light left to land. They radioed us while we were still about five miles away and asked me to turn on my landing lights. As soon as I did, they announced "You're directly on course!"

When I arrived, I started to enter a pattern for runway 21 and then realized that I'd gotten it too tight for me. I swung around and flew south far enough to be able to come back into a proper downwind. This video picks up pretty much abeam my intended landing spot on the grass runway.

The runways are surrounded by tall corn, as you'll see from the video. You can also see that there was a fairly stiff crosswind -- it's evident by the large crab angle on the final approach. At times, the runway is barely visible in the camera's viewfinder. As we ducked below the corn, the wind died down and I was able to straighten out the plane in the last few seconds.

Grass runways are a sheer delight to land on at any time. Diana and Tom keep their runways in terrific shape and they are a joy to see and use.

At the very last minute, you will see Tom riding the motor scooter as he tries to find out where we have disappeared to amongst the corn. This was truly a wonderful, magical evening and one I won't soon forget.

The video can be seen here: Landing at the farm on August 8, 2009

1 comment:

  1. Definitely had a crab in there - you brought her down nicely. Grass runways are incredible, I'm lucky to fly out of one on a regular basis.

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