BUG Blast 2008

Saturday dawned gray and appeared somewhat foreboding, but it improved throughout the day and the weekend.

Lee Creech in his Kolb Firestar II, Gerald Gilpin in his Phantom, Larry Scott in his Quicksilver GT 400, and I in my Zenith 701 arrived at the same time!  I was the last to arrive and land in this group.  We were followed shortly by Frank Hemko and Randy Oates in their red, white, and blue Quicksilver Sport 2S.  Dave Kidder, Paul Browning, Doug Huff, Jim Price, and Alan Boone drove to the Blast.  Keith Demaree, who graciously allowed us to use his hangar and mowed a nice area for us to set up our canopy was already there!

Here we are checking out the flying toys!

One of the highlights was of course lunch.  The airport furnished us with a courtesy car so we drove into town for some drinks and food!

Frank Hemko took the following picture of Taylorsville Lake during his flight to the Blast.

We had a great time Saturday and swapped tales and talked airplanes and then late in the day we all left for our respective destinations.  However, Sunday was a real treat this year for those of us that returned.  Below are images that Paula and I took Sunday.  In the following images note the BUG canopy in relation to the airport.  There are red letters denoting its location.

This is Randy Oates heating up his balloon for the race!

Randy and his two lucky passengers.  That's me holding the basket.

The next image is me getting our plane ready to fly and take aerial photos of the balloons.  Paula was the photographer.