Williamsburg, VA (JGG)
December 9, 2001

John and I talked on Friday night about the weather for Sunday. It didn't look too promising -the weather channel was forecasting rain. By Saturday afternoon the forecast changed to clear skies but maybe a little breezey. Since the temperature was supposed to be only in the mid 40's my wife and kids decided not to come.

Sunday morning the weather looked just fine so on my way to the airport I called Leesburg FSS for a briefing. To my surprise, the briefer told me that VFR flight was not recommended before 2:00 PM at the earliest. I looked at the nearly clear sky and wondered where he got his information from. As I pulled the Glasair out of the hangar I kept looking at the sky, it looked OK so I decided to go ahead and give it a try. When I taxied to the active runway I noticed a beautiful yellow with black Pitts doing some taxi testing. It was Bob Jacobs with his latest creation. For sure the airplane looks like just what you would expect from a builder like Bob.

After take off I climbed quickly above the clouds and leveled off at 7,500 feet. The air was smooth at this altitude. Due to a tailwind, the ground-speed kept increasing until it settled between 212 and 215 knots. With this speed it would only take 40 minutes to fly to Williamsburg. I called John and Bob on 122.75 MHz and found out that they were about 20 miles ahead of me. The race was on. After I passed I 95 we gave position reports to each other and it sounded like they were just ahead of me. John and Bob went into an orbit to let me catch up.

Bob enroute JGG - Smooth up top

For several minutes we tried to find each other. At one time I thought I was ahead of them and started to orbit, but we never found each other even though we had to be within one mile, so we all went on separately to Williamsburg. When they called the airport for advisory, I was about 8 miles behind them. I turned downwind when Bob (as number 2) was on short final. To have any view of the runway in the Glasair I have to be 1,000 feet above the runway when I turn final. From there I keep 85 MPH until I get over the runway. As soon as I start the flare, the runway disappears in front of me. John was watching me during my landing and thought it looked pretty good even though sitting in the airplane it felt pretty bouncy.

Juergen in Glasair

Delaware RV-8's

Two RV-8 pilots were already waiting for us. Joe and Ralph are from Delaware and like to exercise their RV-8s as much as possible. As we ate our sandwiches in the little restaurant right at the field we did the usual hangar flying and soon it was time to hit home.

JGG Restaurant

We decided to do a formation join up to get a picture of four of us tight together. I am the least experienced in formation flying, so we decided that I would fly the lead airplane. It must have looked impressive when five airplanes take off right behind each other. Since I was the first one, I couldn't really tell, but when I started my climbing turn and looked over my shoulder I could see every one else in line behind me.

It took us a while to get every one lined up, but finally I was able to turn on course for the flight home. John took the lead and I joined up on his right wing. Bob flew behind me to give me instructions on how to position myself beside John. He constantly guided me:"Drop a little lower. Now move a bit closer. Move forward a little more." After a while he was satisfied with my position and joined John on the left wing for a three ship formation. As I was told by John and Bob, when you fly the wing, you do not take your eyes off of the lead airplane. If John would have flown into a mountain, I would have been right beside him hitting the rocks. I did not let him out of my sight.

After a while John got bored flying the lead and switched with Bob. Now I was stuck on Bob's right wing. We stayed like this until we came close to Culpepper, than I decided to go ahead into Winchester and gave the Glasair full throttle to speed ahead. With the headwind however, my ground-speed never exceeded more the just above 160 knots. When I landed at Winchester the wind was at a manageable 10 gusting to 15 knots. The bigger challenge was that the wind direction was variable between 300 and 030 degree. This made for an interesting landing. This was the first fly out for me to take the Glasair rather than the Pacer. As soon as the spring will arrive my family will come along again, but until then you may see the Glasair (N41SS) show up at our fly outs.

Next month we have plan to fly to Wheeling, WV which has a nice restaurant on the field. Click on the "upcoming events" tab to review the fly outs for the next month.

Juergen