Chuck LaBarreare and I left Charles Baker early on Sat. July 26 for Oshkosh. I was solo and his friend Charles Avera rode with him. Since Chuck’s RV8 is faster than my RV4, he followed me in what you might dignify as a loose formation. We made a fuel stop in Decatur Illinois where they were having a local event for antique cars and gyros. The bad news was that it started later than we wanted to stay. The good news was they were giving a $1.00 per gallon discount on fuel to promote the event. As we left Decatur, I lost Chuck in the climb. He located me soon and we went on to Ripon and flew the Fisk arrival to runway 27 for an uneventful trip. We spent a while cleaning up the planes and called it a day.

Chuck entered his RV8 in the judging and spent a lot of time answering questions from Judges and spectators. There was always a crowd around his plane. The judges liked it also. He brought home a Bronze Lindy award. If there was a dead grass award for the trampled turf around a plane, he would be a definite contender. Congratulations to Chuck.

Chapter 182 was well represented at Airventure. I ran across eight members during my three day stay and I believe we had four planes there. Ray Cole and Charlie Pittman were volunteer judges. Ray wore a name tag proclaiming him to be an official antique judge. I’m pretty old, but I don’t wear an official antique name tag - at least not yet.

 I left Thursday about noon. I had intended to come home early, but fog in southern Illinois and departure delays due to an accident delayed me until about noon.  I found out later that two people lost their life in the accident. I was at ten thousand five hundred with a nice tail wind doing 170 knots at 65% power with enough fuel to make it nonstop when Flight Service told me to expect thunderstorms north of Memphis and suggested a westerly deviation, so I reluctantly landed at Decatur again for fuel. Radar showed the storms southwest of Fayette County, so I decide to try to make it direct to the airport. I arrived just in time to get my plane in the hangar before the storm. After my arrival I called Frank to apologize for not getting my article to him on time and discovered that he was in Oshkosh with Vaughn and James Eastman.

We had a good trip. The weather was good both en route and on the field. The crowd was definitely smaller and for the first time I saw some empty booths in the vendor buildings.

Come to the breakfast Saturday for a full report.

Fly Safe.