I do still use beet juice for days like this and it helps a lot.

Tom: It's a 3-seater PA-12 Super Cruiser. I sure do like the extra room.

That's a great plane Richard. I flew a 1947 Piper J3 C-85 Cub in traditional yellow with black markings. Great plane and a kick to fly.

Funnest flite I've ever done was in a classic yellow 100HP J-3. Fairbanks to Pontiac Michigan. 10days of bliss. Most unforgettable part was low-level cruising the expansive sunflower fields in southern Minnesota with my arm draped out the open window as if I was driving a '57 Chevy and so close that my downwash was creating a wave in the sunflowers... for miles, it seemed. Talk about fun! In that same area I saw ahead of me 3 stout farmer lads jumping up and down - one was standing on the seat of a quad - and waving at me, so I swung around and gave them a flyby that was almost low enough to blow their hats off and finished it off with a full stall near-roll wing-over. They loved it. If they had had a driveway big enough to land it I would have landed for a visit. I'm sure I'd have had all the Brats and beer I could stand had I landed. You don't forget flites like that one. Definitely goes in the "life well lived" list.

I want to come back as Richard Flanders...






.

There is often, in the flying world, a lot of hype about fast, high flying planes that zip from point A to B. In my view they are nothing more than a conveyance to get somewhere. Real flying that fills the senses is low and slow. I have had some very memorable flights across this great land of ours at smell the flowers altitudes. Once I flew an 85 horse, then considered a Super Cub, into a very strong headwind and was actually flying backwards. That was a kick.

love hearing you fella s telling them stories...charlie

Another very fun thing to do with a small low flyer in our great west is to chase coyotes across the tops of the extensive Columbia River basalt plateaus in Washington state. You see one and pull up into a wingover so as to not lose sight of them then circle around behind the now hauling ass coyote and come up from behind try to bowl them over with a tire. Big fun, I can tell you! They really can haul once they discover a mysterious noisy bird rapidly approaching from the rear. That's when I figured out where the wide-eyed Wiley Coyote concept came from. I also think that the song line, "nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide" had to have been written by someone who was a practitioner of this particular form of ridiculously entertaining recreation. I hope I'm not giving away trade secrets here!

I'll never forget the flight through Lake Clark Pass and the flights into and out of camp in Alaska. Oddly enough one of the pilots was from Grand Rapids MI.

That's an incredible flite Rich, and one I never do at an altitude of less than 8000ft so that I am looking straight down on the 20 some plane wrecks that litter the pass.

That's so damn cool Richard. If you really wanted to impress those boys you could have flown inverted. :)