Day 3 – First flight

Looking back at this day, a lot has happened and I need to get everything in the right order so that it makes sense.

After the usual wake-up call at 5 am we organized ourselves, packed, checked out of our hotel and drove to Lexington where the Boston FSDO is located. There Robert had an appointment to pick up his US PPL. I was waiting in the foyer of the FSDO office and keeping my fingers crossed that everything goes alright. After 45 minutes and just before I started to get nervous, I was greeted by a smiling Robert who showed me his new temporary license.

Then we drove to the airport to fix the recalcitrant brake and be off on our first leg. We estimated maybe 15 minutes for the brake. Four hours later we finally had all the air out of the brake lines and were happy as a bunch of kids on a birthday party. I don´t want to get into any details how we did it and what we tried but it involved using about a quart of brake fluid which got onto parts of the gyro and everybody involved that I don´t want to remember anymore. But in the end all was good and we suited up to fly over to Hampton, NH, for a quick lunch.

Robert was excited to try his funky helmet camera that drew stares from everybody who saw us. It´s a Sony with a wide angle lens and a remote control. We are going to try it out and then hopefully post some short clips on youtube. 

Together with Angelo in his Cherokee, Robert and I took off from Lawrence and flew about 20 miles north to Hampton, just across the border in New Hampshire. Here is a view of the Atlantic coast near Plum Island. 

In Hampton we had nice grilled Haddock sandwiches and returned back to Lawrence. It was a great feeling flying our gyros in American air for the first time. They seemed to like it! Here is Hampton from the air. 

Back in Lawrence again we got ready for our first leg to Saratoga Springs when a nice gentleman walked up to us and asked a lot of questions about gyros and introduced himself as John. He seemed genuinely interested and flies a Cessna 150 himself. When we had gassed up and wanted to pay, we discovered that John had already taken care of it! It was a genuinely heart warming gesture to treat us to the fuel for our first leg. We said goodbye to Angelo, without whose help we would never have been able to get our gyros ready to fly. You already know what Angelo looks like, so here is a picture with Robert, John and me. 

I called up DUAT for a briefing and the weather looked good except for the temperature. It was a freezing 9°C on the ground and we donned everything on clothing that we could fit. I wore a T-Shirt, a sweatshirt, a sweater, a fleece jacket and a windbreaker on top along with two pairs of jeans, one over the other. It was barely enough to keep us warm. Back in Austria I had consciously decided not to bring gloves because, after all, we are in the middle of May and temps were around 20-25 °C. That was a decision I started to regret only 10 minutes into our flight. I had to push myself to take photos because it forced me to expose my right hand to the fiercely cold wind. Still, here are a couple of impressions. 

Crossing the border between New Hampshire and Vermont: 

Here is a self portrait of another kind: 

Over the Berkshire mountains we had to climb to 4000 feet due to mountains and unlandable terrain beneath. At that height my thermometer showed 0°C (that´s 32 °F)!!! There ought to be a low on such low temperatures. Maybe the new administration will do something about that. Write your Congressman.

After about 2:30 hours we arrived in Saratoga Springs, where my old buddy John Urbahn made himself heard on the radio on our approach. He is a flying nut himself, owning 3 planes (a Libelle glider, a Bower´s Fly Baby and an RV4 with a Mazda engine) of which he built 2. He showed us his RV4: 

It was about 10 pm when Robert and I couldn´t keep awake any longer. We had been up since 5 am and the excitement of the day took its toll. I postponed writing our report until the morning.

Today we plan to fabricate tarps for our gyros first and then set off toward Erie, a flight of about 4 hours.

– Robert & Chris.