Day 7 – On the other side of the Mississippi

We spent the rest of the 6^th day in Rantoul, a city once home to a lively Air Force base which is now closed. The city owes its generous airfield and an aviation museum with a lot of ex-AF planes to the Air Force. Unfortunately we didn´t have time to really visit the museum and took only a few shots of the planes on display outside, just opposite where our gyros were parked. Here is a shot of Rantoul airport and an old DC-3. I just happen to like DC-3s, that´s why you get to see one here.

We flew from there through Champaign´s Class-C and Decatur´s class D straight towards St. Charles County Smartt airport (KSET), home of Magni America and a bunch of really cool, great guys. I was excited to get my first few of the Mississippi. So much so that I´m going to share it with you:

After landing at KSET we were greeted by Bert and Doug, joined shortly thereafter by Gregremminger who flew in with his yellow Magni M16.

The plan was for me and Rob to fly with Greg so that he could sign us off for our Sport Pilot License exam, which we had planned to do with Paul Salmon the next day. Here is Robert in Greg´s Magni and, in the second picture, again Robert with Greg in the MT03. I have no idea what Greg is so excited about; you have to ask him about that.

While Robert and Greg were flying, I got to look around the hanger and discovered an ultralight gyro which was pretty far along in the build. This is Bert´s gyro who designed it himself with some vital input from Greg.

Here is shot of the cockpit which I think is kind of cool:

There were two Minimax ultralight airplanes being built in that same hanger but I´ll save those shots for tomorrow´s story.

After we were done with the flying we went with Bert and Tom to a Mexican place where we ate enough food and drank enough beer that our respective CG´s kept us stable while lying in bed.

– Robert & Chris.