Well folks… The day just wouldn’t give us what we needed to get into the air. At the 10:30 pilot meeting it was decided to have another meeting outside at the big hangar later at 12:00 to take a better look at the sky. At 12:00 we moved the meeting on forward to 1:00. At one o’clock Jerry called the day off and the ships never came out of the big hangar. (By the way, still a record of 17 contest ships, three local gliders and three power planes in our hangar.)

With the day free until 6:30 p.m. when the pizza and barley pop event was scheduled to start, a group headed north to Angola to hit the go-cart racing track. I’m not sure who won that, but I didn’t see anyone with tire tracks up their back or limping when they got back to the ‘port. So it must have been a successful road trip.

With 6:30 fast approaching it was time to head for the big hanger for some hot pizza, barley pop, and the left over wine. I’m thinking wine doesn’t much go with pizza, but it went just the same. What do you recommend for a fine pepperoni? It was a very good year.

As evening settled in Gary Lopscomb, our local hot air balloonist brought his rig out and we all got to enjoy a great show. Watching a hot air balloon being put up is always a good show, and helping is even better. Carl Brown and Ron Schwartz got to take a ride. They were not back yet by the time I had left the airport and I was wondering if they filled out a landout card before leaving? Oh wait, the retrieve desk doesn’t have to handle hot air balloon calls!

That’s it for this report. We are down to just three days of contest time left, and we’re all hoping we can squeeze out the necessary flights to complete a contest. If lift doesn’t develop tomorrow, maybe we can get Gary to run his balloon burner out on the field and make some thermals for us?

Jim.