Race day 3 - we made it!!

Woke up this morning in Indiana after the storms of the previous night, to a 900 foot overcast and a chilly day. After getting breakfast and a weather briefing, we took an early ride to the Elkhart airport. Our plane was fine, although a bit wetter than when we left it the night before, and the pitot tube cover had blown away in the storm. The briefers had forecast that the low overcast would lift and break up, but cautioned about convective weather warnings to the north of our route.

Our friends Linda and Barbara had been texting and calling all the previous day – they ended up flying out from Pennsylvania to Parkersburg in Linda’s club C-182 to meet up with us along the race route, and had spent the night there.

We waited around for an hour or so till we judged the weather to be acceptable (which is always a combination of hard information and gut instinct), then took off for our flyby to continue to Parkersburg WV (PKB) around 10am, Mary flying. The first part of the route was beautiful, with severe clear visibility under the breaking cloud deck, and we zoomed along with a nice tailwind admiring the scenery. However it soon became clear while talking to Flightwatch and to the race planes ahead, and looking at the radar on the GPS, that an angry looking line of thunderstorms was building directly across our route, just before Parkersburg. As we approached the line, darker lowering clouds and light rain appeared, but we found a gap to fly through. On the other side however the weather was dark, scuddy and raining, and since the next and final leg was quite a short one, we decided we had plenty of fuel to fly the procedure at Parkersburg as a flyby to continue, so we could then exit the area quickly and find better weather. So we flew right past Linda and Barbara, who saw us flyby overhead then shoot right off for Maryland without stopping!

The flight profile for the Parkersburg to Frederick route involved a climb from flyby altitude to about 4000 feet to get over the mountains, then a descent back down again to the lower plains where Frederick sits. Initially we were paralleling rather than outrunning the storm line west to east, so the first part of this final leg was dark and not very pleasant. But as we started to climb and round the end of the storm line, conditions improved quite a lot until things were calm enough for us to effect a mid-air change of pilots, with Alison moving in to the pilots seat and Mary over into the right seat. This was a first time for me, and I’m here to tell you its no easy thing in a Piper Arrow! But we managed it and I flew the rest of the way. The last thing that this day of challenging flying threw at us was about 60 miles of bone-jarring turbulence as we crossed the mountain ridges, to the extent that we had to tighten our seat belts to stop our heads hitting the roof. We got clearance through Martinsburg, then descended into Frederick for the final flyby, then cooled off and landed on runway 30. We had finished the race!!

We taxied to the ramp, and saw that none other than Mary’s husband Arnie was there to marshall us into place! We tied down and unpacked the plane, and went into the terminal where we were welcomed by the official ARC greeters, 99s from the Sugarloaf, Washington DC and other chapters. We also found then and later that so many of our friends from the Eastern PA Chapter had come down either to help the terminus organizers, or to welcome us and Ethel and Barb. Our friends at the terminus included Linda Evans, Barbara Strachan, Kate Macario, Gayl Henze, Arnie Wunder, Adelle Bedrossian, Silver Knepshield, Heather Hill with Dan and their girls, Laura Fonseca and Gene Poppel.

After a late lunch at the terminal, we checked into our hotel, and went back to the airport to be reunited with Linda and Barbara, who finally made it in from Parkersburg around 530pm. For Mary, the day ended with quite a few hours working at the airport, helping the terminus organizers to meet and greet the 20 or so teams who arrived after us, and transport them to their hotels. For Alison, the day ended with Linda, Barbara S and I going out for a lovely relaxing dinner with Ethel and Barbara Z, Laura, Gene, and Heather, Dan and their girls at an Italian restaurant in the old downtown area of Frederick.

Barb Z, belated happy birthday!! And MaryEllen, if you’re reading this, get better soon, we’ve all been thinking about you.

A well deserved dinner out - Alison and Barb Z















Heather and Ethel

















Laura and Gene

















Everyone!









Susan and Seth at the terminus













Ethel and Barb with Mary just after arriving










Gayl and Kate














Mary, Adelle and Alison (Adelle is the owner of N29SP aka Classic Racer 9!)










Frederick has many airplanes, even on a normal day













Linda and her plane

















Linda Cain and Peggy Doyle at the terminus


















A beautiful day in Indiana












Still a beautiful day in Indiana (but not for much longer..)















The Baron on a fly by at Elkart (this is the only twin engine plane in the race)












One of the collegiate teams relaxes after arrival in FDK!