A really fine flying day

 Tuesday, June 27

Today was a lovely day. We had a great breakfast with Jimmy and Carrie Young, and then went to the airport, where the staff brought our planes out of the hangar, refueled them, and we took off for False River Regional Airport. (KHZR) 

We retraced our route south, back to the coast, and flew the beach east again. It was a relaxed flight at varying altitudes, and at first looked remarkably like yesterday's scenery.

At one point both of us were down on the deck, at about 100', out on the ocean but with a glide path to the sand. In one of the few stretches of beach that wasn't covered with people, trucks, cars, cabanas, and tents. I didn't mention in yesterday's post that we had a wonderfully smooth 30 mph tailwind and it was back again today. I was showing about 115-120 mph over the ground! 

The housing developments and MacMansions were astoundingly numerous. Notice that most are up on stilts.

And we passed literally dozens of refineries.

After we passed Little Pecan Island, a private airstrip, we left the beach and angled northeast to False River Regional Airport. ((KHZR) In Falso River, LA.

We flew over miles and miles of bog, then rice fields, miles of pecan grove forests, other trees and lakes. It was one of our longer flights: 3.25 hours.

I had flown in to False River 14 years ago, and since then a new airport office has been built. The airport manager, Yvonne Chenevert, welcomed us with cold water, of course. There isn't a courtesy car at False River, and Yvonne offered to drive us into town. We ate at Hot Tails, a Cajon-inspired restaurant where I had fried pickles and crawfish etouffee. It was delicious.

Then we were off to Plane Crazy (25LA), Wayne Spring's airstrip about 2 miles north of Albany, LA.  This was a short flight of 45 minutes. I was a little concerned because Dennis said that Wane's airstrip had two runways, one 800' long and the other 600' long. Yet the approach was between trees so I could get down low on final and landing on the grass strip was easy. We stayed overnight at Wayne's house. Wayne owns an Aeroprakt as well as a powered parachute. Like me, he picked Dennis' brain, making full use of Dennis's knowledge and experience with the Aeroprakt. We were able to put both our planes in Wayne's hangar, which is a good thing since it's thunderstorming now.

Tomorrow we're off to see Ronnie Smith of South Mississippi Light Sport. Fourteen years ago Ronnie introduced me to fried pickles and I've been an addict ever since!

Here's our track for today's flights.