Flying Adventures

One of the things I really like about flying is that every flight is an adventure. Sometimes you plan an adventure by planning to fly someplace fun but sometimes the adventure finds you even on a regular ordinary local flight. These local adventures are usually the best.

A few weeks ago while flying my ultralight aircraft around the area. Because of my flight I caused someone else, a non-pilot, to have an adventure of his own. I took off with my ultralight aircraft from a small private grass strip east of town and decided since it was a nice afternoon and would fly around the town. I flew west towards the town, only a few hundred feet about the ground, and came to a housing development on the east edge of town called King’s Ridge. I decided to turn north and fly along the edge of the town toward the North Baseball Fields a few minutes north of where I was. After circling the field for a few minutes, and apparently interrupting a couple of baseball games with my appearance, I flew south along the west end of town.

Near the Fairgrounds I saw a bunch of kids playing in a field so I took the time to circle the field a few times just to show off. Hey, don’t we all like to show off our airplanes? After that I continued south towards the airport about 5 miles away.

I followed the east edge of the town almost to the airport. I was planning to do a touch and go but the airport crew, who want to see me fly this ultralight, had already gone for the evening. So, I turned around and headed back to the field where I took off from. Of course, this means flying by the kids I saw before which meant another couple of circles around the field.

As I approached the field I originally departed from and wanting to continue to fly, I decided to fly east out into the country for about 6 miles. I know someone living out there that does have an ultralight similar to mine and he has not seen mine fly yet. So off east I headed to find his house. I arrived at his house several minutes later and circled twice. They apparently were having a cookout and I received many waves but nobody signaled me to land in a field so I headed back to my flying field from where I started.

Arriving back at the field I decided to so some approaches and a few touch and goes on the field. After I did a few touch and goes, a car drove up to the field and parked in the parking lot. I did not recognize the car and I figured it was just somebody stopping to watch. So, I did a few more touch and goes before finally landing for the evening.

As I was taking off my headset my visitor had walked up and said, “Bob? Bob Ackerman?” I answered, “Yes” and I looked at him. Here was a friend I had not seen in a few years. I ask how he was and we chatted for a little bit and then he said, “Do you know what you did to me?”

I said, “What?” He said he saw me when I approached the Kings Ridge housing development on the edge of town at the beginning of my flight and he wanted to learn more about this ultralight. He had no idea who was flying it or where it came from, so he got in his car to find out. He followed my flight up to the baseball fields north of town, followed me down towards the airport a few miles south of town, back to town and he got to the Fairgrounds with the field of kids just as I left. He then followed me out into the country and watched me circle a house and then head back to town. As I was doing my touch and goes he figured out where I was landing at so he drove up to checkout this ultralight aircraft.

Here I was having a nice flight around town and all the while he was chasing my ultralight around town, down to the airport, out in the country and back to where I started for more that 45 minutes, just to find out about this ultralight aircraft. My pleasant flight turned into quite an adventure for him.