AAR: NEW YEARS DAY FLIGHT -- Harford Flight to meet Joanne...Keystone Flight meets Potomac Flight

Happy New Year to everyone!

Great way to ring in the New Year, 2009 - go flying with your best friends!

Cold, but exceptionally CLEAR day today for flying - a little windy at first, but calmed way down during the day - fantastic! We could see city skylines from 35 miles away - incredible!

Sorry about Robert's plane having electrical problems - we sure did miss 29X in the pack! Hope it is not serious and you only need a new battery, Robert! Fortunately, Fred took right off and got Rick at Deck.

We had a great rendezvous over McGinnis - timing worked perfectly - the formation departed on time and we landed at Harford EXACTLY at 1030.

Joanne's plan had a minor MX problem - and our philosophy with this flight is to never take a problem you have on the ground into the air, so Joanne flew along in our planes the rest of the day - still a lot of fun, but I am sure she missed flying her steed! Next time!

Great low flying over MD and DE checking out the waterways - Delaware Airpark is a gem of an airport - though fuel was a little high there, the FBO was super nice.

"Short" walk to pizza. MAJOR KUDO'S to John for picking up the entire tab of KEYSTONE FLIGHT's pizza and drinks - good on 'ya, GA!! Very good pizza - I even took a few home, and had them with me in the cockpit - see photos!

Nice flight back doing a pass over Massey Aerodrome...wonderful grass strip! Then, we landed on the 1600' turf back at Harford - rutted from the rains but still OK - had plenty of runway to spare, too. Just odd coming in at an angle over the paved runway to the turf one!

Dropped off Joanne, but not her stuff (we still have it - a good reason to go back!) so another flight is in order! Joanne, you fit right in with us - keep flying and you will have your PPL by THIS SUMMER! Make it a goal so that you will FLY TO CLINTON IOWA with us!

Eric was "the man" today taking extra folks and returning Rick up to Deck, then re-joining us for another aerial rendezvous with a matching time-over-target join up over a point - very neat to see actually work - you guys are great pilots! Thanks Eric!

Toured Enola with Doug to see his house, and Tom and Joe Black toured Boiling Springs to do the same - fun times. Doug was able to spot traffic from miles away today - what a great pilot to have with you when you are "heads down" working commo or navigation, etc! Thanks Doug!

We also found the legendary "crashed plane" of North Middleton, which Eric informed us is not a wreck at all, but a real fuselage someone bought for a "haunted airplane" for a Halloween Party some years back! I wonder how often the CAP gets called on that one? Ha Ha! Anyway, it was fun to try to find from 1500' up.

Plenty of air-to-air photos I hope we all share. Here is a "sampling" of the many I took - these are compressed files - I'll send full-sized ones to the pilots or anyone who needs them for printing.

All in all, great day - our timings and flexibility when things went wrong was exemplary - great teamwork guys and gal! For Joanne and Joe Black; great having you with us for the first time - hopefully you will join us again as you are more than welcome to fly with us anytime!

Not sure when the next one is - if anyone has an idea, throw it out here and work up a plan - we are eager to keep flying through the winter! It's good for our plans, our pilot skills and our attitudes.

Take care - enjoy the photos here!

Mike Marra