The team all met at Skip’s house located on Cannon Creek Air Park in Lake City FL Saturday March 19. Bill, Brian and Ripper came down from the Chicago area, Scott from Cincinati and Ed from Ninety Six, SC. Patti and Skip had a great dinner for us and we were all off to bed early.
Sunday morning we did a three hour brief going over in detail our new aerobatic routine. Then it was off to our practice area just East of the airpark. We broke the team up and practiced individual manuevers before putting it all back together for a full practice. It went amazingly well and after a couple of runs we were back to Lake City for fuel and then Cannon Creek for lunch. Another full afternoon of practice ended with a wonderful dinner hosted by Craig and Mary Walters on the airpark.
Monday was the same routine with multiple practices in the morning and the afternoon.
We put on quite a show for the lone fisherman who was on the remote lake that we used for our practice area.
Tuesday night our best new friends Billy and Jacki Aldrich hosted a dinner for us at their home on the airpark. Did I mention they they also took in two of our pilots for housing.
Tuesday was packing day and we were off to Southern Florida 2pm. Bill lead a four ship down to Bret Davis’s private strip while Scott stopped to pick up a freshly packed parachute and Ripper dropped into Spruce Creek near Daytona to pick up our announcer Rick Nichols. It was quite a site at Bret and Kathy’s house to see seven T-34′ (including Bret’s) along with Skip Stewart’s highly modified Pitts. Skip will be flying over to the Dom Rep with us in the morning. Bret and Kathy grilled steaks and we all had another reat meal at the home of one of our T-34 fraternity.
Beakfast at Perkins this morning and then on to Great Exuma, Turks and Caicos and finally Santa Dimingo. I’ll a follow-up tomorrow and hopefully get some pictures up on Facebook.