It started out simple enough, 3 Lancair pilots with a desire to see the air
races at Reno in 2001.  It was worked out so Tom and his lady would take a
flight from Tampa on Wednesday, as would my wife, flying from Chicago, and we
would all meet there.  Arnie and I would fly our Lancairs out earlier in the
week to really get involved in the race preparations.  I hadn't been there
since 1992 and Arnie had wanted to go for 20 years.   All of the tickets were
obtained over the internet, hotel and flight arrangements set up and a car
reserved at Truckee.

Day 1 - Sunday 9/9/01 - ARR->MRJ->RAP

After much discussion, Arnie and I decided we would leave on a Sunday, refuel
at Rapid City and overnight in Jackson Hole - we weren't interested in flying
the mountains at night.  The weather Sunday morning found us with low
ceilings, rain, tops below 25,000 ft with the system to move out by
afternoon.  Well, I had to go from ARR (Chicago) to MRJ (Southwest WI) to
meet up with Arnie, so I departed IFR, spent an hour in the clouds and shot
the GPS 4 approach at MRJ down to minimums (800 ft ceiling, scattered to
broken below) and had to circle to land because I couldn't identify the
airport environment until I was alongside the hangars.

Lesson #1 - The GPS is so accurate, I could not look down over the Lancair
nose and thru the broken clouds to see the runway that I was perfectly lined
up on!  Believe the GPS and maybe slip the plane at the DH and ½ mile to the
threshold waypoint.  You had to be there!

Of course, it was raining at Mineral Point (MRJ) so we shot the breeze for
some time, fueled the planes and changed our plans a bit.  You see, the point
was to fly VFR formation and we knew VMC was coming.  Instead of Jackson
Hole, we would spend the night in Rapid City and "inspect" the workmanship at
Mt. Rushmore upon departure the following morning.  After all, we would still
reach Truckee on Monday and fly into the mountains in the morning.  At three
in the afternoon, the rain had stopped and FSS told us it was clear 30-40
miles west - so we departed into the scud - overcast and low broken clouds.  
Of course, the humidity must have been 99%; the climb out was causing
condensation to form on my windshield and my Radio Shack CPU cooling fan
defroster left me with a 10-inch diameter clear porthole to peer around the
gray wispy lumps ahead whilst the rest of my canopy WAS overcast.  20 minutes
of this was enough and seeing a bit-o-blue, I climbed to the light - Arnie
shot by me with surprise since we hadn't quite worked out our inter-cockpit
resource management yet (he just wouldn't switch to our agreed on frequency).

Lesson #2 - Make sure your defroster will handle a worst-case scenario. You
had to be there.

Lesson #3 - Duh, we could have filed, canceled in the clear and joined up in
comfort.

>From this point to RAP, it was pure beauty.  The clouds to the South and
Southwest took on intriguing complex forms and unusual coloring.  We were
happy to finally be on our way in the sunshine.  Later, approaching RAP as a
flight of two, the tower directed us to enter the right base for runway 32 -
Arnie had the honors and was going first - The tower did query him as his
transponder indicated he was aiming for runway 31 at Ellsworth AFB a few
miles to the North.  Of course, I learned from Lesson #1, believed my GPS and
landed first while Arnie circled back.  This pattern would repeat itself
several more times before this trip would be over.

Lesson #4 - Quickly recognize the difference between 8700x150 ft and
13500x300 ft runways from 3 miles away.

The FBO called for the hotel van as we watched 4 Stearmans arrive from their
yearly Galesburg, IL fly-in enroute to Seattle.  Galesburg is about the same
distance as Mineral Point and it was now about 6:30 pm - we had left at 3pm,
they had started at 7am.  The FBO hangared all our planes for the night and
the crowded van ride culminated in the hotel bar.  

Lesson #5 Lancair pilots ingest higher quality libations than their Stearman
brethren.  You had to be there.

So ended Day 1 - only 5 lessons learned.   Well, we were set for an early
start and the Mt. Rushmore fly-by with good weather forecast for the next two
legs.


Grayhawk