The following is excerpted from an email message from Dave Hempy:

Had a super time at the Crawdaddy fly-in today! Thanks to Barry and Patsy for hosting it. Anyone who hasn't been up there needs to treat themselves to a visit. It's a little piece of heaven!

Had a turnout of about 10 ultralights and 5 or 6 R/C planes. Kenny let us all take an R/C plane for a flight. What fun! He attempted flight with his half-tailed bird. I'll let him tell you exactly how it happened...but if he doesn't mention at least three different crashes, he's not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!

Carl - what are the coordinates of your strip? I tried to find it on the way home today without luck. Is there an easy way to spot it from the air?

It was all blue skies on the way back until I crossed I-75 at Corinth, 15 miles from home. Then all of a sudden the sky ahead was dark gray. Got caught in a bit of rain about 10 miles short of home. I turned back west, went south five miles and tried again...rain there, too, so I backed out and went further south. I knew it was an isolated system, but I just couldn't tell how far south I'd have to go to get around it.

Back west, another five miles south, and I could make out a distinct bit of the eastern horizon between two dark blobs of gray. I knew I could get to Georgetown safely to the south, but I figured I'd try this gap, being so close to home. I got into just the lightest mist/drizzle (not enough to even get my shirt wet) but saw blue sky ahead. I dropped my RPM all I could to go easy on the prop and pressed through to pop out 2 miles later with Cynthiana visible 8 miles out. (See my wacky track log attached.)

Jim Price had beat me back and was just taking off again, so I chased him north for a few miles, before remembering I was due to see a man about a dog at the airport. Got down and saw the prettiest stationay thunderhead develop 15 miles to the south. Just amazing with a dark, black bottom and blinding white top some 20-30 thousand feet up, against an azure sky. Glad I was seeing it from the hangar, not the cockpit.

Steve Risen was getting some time in Ray's Kolb Mark III with Joe Pircher. Jim came back a bit later, discouraged by the lightning two counties to the south. As dark fell, we all went into town for pizza. I think we ended up at two different pizza joints (which is hard to do in Cynthiana!) or else Joe and Ray didn't want to eat with us. ;-)


All in all, a great day with great friends!

The following is excerpted from an email message from Jerry Pridemore:

I fully agree, and want to thank Barry, and Patsy for being such great hosts.
Great host, Good food, Good airstrip, Good company Good shady spot to sit,
and tell hanger stories. You just can beat it.
I certainly hope he has us back.

On my GPS it showed me flying 90 miles total yesterday, and I hauled my trike
in, and setup at the field.

From Kenny Downard:

Well considering the threatening weather I think the fly-in at Crawdaddy’s airfield was a success. The weather was a little hot, but all and all everyone seem to be having a good time. I brought three radio control planes with me , two of which I use to teach people how to fly and the other was my aerobatic plane. The aerobatic plane you might remember was the one that I was telling you about that had the whole left elevator and horizontal stab broken off of it. I mentioned something about I didn’t know if it would fly or not, so to make a long story short, it did fly.

Now Dave said it crashed three times on take off, but in the RC community we don’t call it a crash unless you actually break something. Since nothing was broken on the plane, then it was not considered a crash. We of the RC community call them mishaps. Just thought I would clear that up. Oh I forgot to mention an RC friend of mine came with me and he brought two real nice planes to fly. Toward the end of the day while he was flying one of his planes something went amiss and he buried his plane.. The crash was such that the only thing that resembled a plane was the tail. Now that in the RC community is what we call a crash. My friend was doing some pretty wild aerobatics so when it crashed, he said he really didn’t know what happen.

Everyone that flew the RC’s seem to had a good time. Now I personally thought everyone that was brave enough to try to fly the RC’s done a good job, although I am sure one or two of them might not think so. It was to bad we didn’t have some kind of a trophy to give to our club president Gerald Gilpin, because he stole the show. I have been teaching people how to fly RC’c for nine years and Gerald is the first one that I have ever seen that flew it almost seven minutes before I had to take it.. Traditionally the first time a person tries to fly a RC, you have to take it away from them about every ten to fifteen seconds for the first couple of flights, so that kind of gives you a ideal about what Gerald was able to do. I guess you could truly say, when it comes to flying RC’s Gerald is a natural…

Now when our buddy Dave Hempy try to fly one of the RC’s that was a whole different story.. Just kidding Dave, because if there was a second place trophy I would have to say that Dave would have gotten that one hands down..

I apologize for all the RC talk guys, but anyway that was my side of the story . If anyone would like try to fly a RC sometime give me a call and I will take you to our RC airfield at Louisville Tom Sawyer Park and let you have a go at it.

I’m finally through , buy Kenny

PS I want to thank Barry and of course Barry’s wife Patsy for hosting our fly-in. They done a great job. They also wouldn’t let the club pay for the food. Maybe they will let us treat them to lunch sometime. Thanks Barry and Patsy, you guys are greatest.

And last but certainly not least, Gerald Gilpin, BUG President:

Larry Scott and I had a great time at Crawdaddy's. We were not as lucky as
Dave. We could not find a way to get to Springfield last night. We
finished our flight this morning.

When we left Crawdaddy's last night we headed for Dan Yeast's place. We hit
rain about 4 or 5 miles out and had to land in the rain. I could not see
through the windshield and the prop was shooting water back on my glasses.
It was interesting to say the least but we got down OK. After a trip into
town to get some oil (I didn't bring enought for the trip), we topped off
our tanks and headed for Springfield 41 miles away.

We got about 18 to 20 miles south of Dan's and ran in to a solid wall of
black. Lightening was shooting to the ground. We turned and made a run for
Paul Huber's field. We had a rough 4 or 5 miles before we could get ahead
of the storm and back into some less turbulent air.

My wife (bless her heart) drove to Paul's to pick us up and Larry's wife
picked him up in Lawrenceburg. She brought him back to Lawrenceburg at 6:30
AM this morning and Gail took us back to Paul's. It was pretty foggy so we
sat around until 9:00 AM and then left for Springfield. The flight was
great. Smooth as glass.

According to my GPS Larry and I covered a total of 200.3 miles for the trip.
We got in 165 yesterday and the last 35 this morning. I wouldn't have
missed it for the world. Thanks to Barry and Patsy for hosting the fly-in.
I look forward to my next trip up there. Thanks to Dan Yeast for allowing
me to use his field and for carting me to town for oil. I would like to say
a special thanks to Paul Huber for the use of his field.