Sunday was another beautiful day - not a cloud in the sky (in the morning), around 62 degrees. I took off around 10 AM and headed up to 6500 ft. towards Windham. This time, I landed there, got flight following while over Bradley Class C (didn't hear a dang thing from them the whole way, even though there were about 7 zillion planes in the air - every Unicom frequency was wall to wall pattern call-outs), and headed up toward Pittsfield. At about 1500 lb., on a cool day, PT climbed at about 1600 fpm - it took no time at all to get to altitude after each takeoff.
I landed at PSF, cracked opened the canopy to get some air, and taxied back to the active.
Wait, I can hear you say - the goat entrails don't look good. I pull out onto the runway, advance the throttle, and at 50 mph realize that the warning horn is screaming at me and there seems to be a LOT of air coming from somewhere. For the second time in five days, I make an intelligent decision and abort the takeoff, rather than trying to latch the canopy while rotating. What a dope. Anyway, I took off from Pittsfield and headed toward Northampton (7B2). This is about 3500 ft. long, but only 50 ft. wide. I wanted the practice at shorter, narrower fields. There was a pretty good crowd on the field waiting for parachuting, so that fact that the landing was decent, and used maybe 2/3 of the field meant that I didn't embarrass myself -). From Northampton I headed north up to Turners Falls (0B5) which is about the same as Gardner - 3000 ft x 75 ft. Another decent landing there, and then I headed back to FIT.
I spent about an hour pumping fuel from one tank to the other to finish the calibration of the fuel senders for the electrical gauges (got one side done, and the other side about 1/2 way there), and then my wife picked me up at the airport and we drove out to Gardner to purchase a dining room table (Gardner is apparently the furniture capital of the known universe).
After blowing as much money on the table as I have on gas for the plane for the past two months (we each have our own priorities), Deanie dropped me off at the airport for another short flight.
I headed up to Keene, did one landing there, and then headed over to Jaffrey, NH (AFN), which is 2982 ft. x 50 ft. The interesting thing about Jaffrey is that it's slightly downhill (or uphill, depending upon which way you're going) and has no taxiway at one end. It does have the distinct advantage of a Kimball's Ice Cream about 200 ft. from the end of the runway, and even a small cone is about the size of a medium watermelon. I landed downhill, touching down about 500 ft. past the threshold (you don't want to land short - the end of the runway is a 30 ft. tall berm, and you'll stop VERY quickly) and realized that one other characteristic of Jaffrey is that it's the bumpiest place I've flown into in a long time, and then parked to get some ice cream.
The COZY got a LOT of attention there - many pilots and non-pilots alike spent a bit of time examining it and asking questions. The fact that many of them thought that it looked really good, both inside and out, indicated to me that they've never been to OSH -).
The downhill takeoff out of Jaffrey was interesting - the bumps tried to throw the nose in the air long before it was ready to stay there on it's own, even with full back stick. After about 1500 ft., the plane jumped in the air. I headed back to FIT, put the plane away for the night, and was happy (and full - even the "kiddie" size ice cream is too large for one human being).
So, except for the Yankees losing to some weird team from California, it was a pretty good weekend -). The only thing left to do is the last of the flutter testing. 36.1 hours and counting - I expect to finish Phase one by the beginning of next week, and then I'm FREE!
Salisbury, MD, here I come. . . . .
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