On Monday, May 6, 2013 1:48:13 PM UTC-5, vontresc wrote:
On Monday, May 6, 2013 1:28:52 PM UTC-5, Mike the Strike wrote: This might be a good time to tell my favorite land-out story - when lift died one day, I ended up at small strip of an aviation community in rural Arizona that consisted largely of retired airline pilots with hangars attached to their houses. I rolled off the runway onto the front lawn of a house where a Cinquo de Mayo party was in progress. The retired airline captain who lived there walked over and handed me a Margarita before I was out of the cockpit! My retrieve crew and I spent several hours there exchanging aviation tales with a varied lot of pilots. Mike I haven't had nearly as many landouts as Tony, but several of them were a lot of fun. A couple years ago I ended up in a field about 15 miles from the gliderport. I tried to get the crew to hook the trailer to the car, but instead I got a picked up, and then had to hook up the car and drive back to the field. In the mean time someone must have called in a plane crash, because as soon we got back to the field to de-rig the Ka-6 a local county cop shows up. The usual questions happen, and he gets a ton friendlier after I explain that I didn't crash and no paperwork is required. So now cop #1 is a bit happier, but has to go, so cop #2 shows up to get my info etc. This guy is a bit more curious about these bucket hat wearing weirdos. As cop #1 left he mumbles something about a "special weather statement". We didn't give it a second thought until we notice the sky turning angry. So now we're taking shelter in my trailer (think giant aluminum box) during a thunderstorm with pea size hail. So we make the best of the situation, and cop #2 is surprisingly cool about the situation. The rain finally stops, and we continue to put the plane away, when the cop asks me a couple more questions. Right at this point i notice a bunch of water pooling on the turtledeck, and I want to make sure I get the Ka-6 as dry as possible so I brush it off the turtledeck. Right onto the pants of cop #2 :-). Thankfully he gad a good sense of humor, and mentioned something along the lines of this will make a good story at the bar tonight. To this day I still get crap from my retrieve crew for that one. Pete

I'm really dissapointed in you Pete. My favorite Pete landout story was when I let him fly MY GLIDER and i flew my clubs Ka-6. Off we went XC and what does he do? lands out right after our turnpoint 50km away. Apparently he wanted the full Cherokee II experience. Supposedly it was a grass runway he landed in but it was basically a hay field. He basically called me on the radio and said "uh...now what?" I radioed him Leah's phone number. Using the far superior performance of the Ka-6 I pretty easily made it back to the airport. When I arrive I note the following:

My friend Pete is gone
My wife Leah is gone
My glider is gone
My truck and trailer are gone

What a deal! I had a beer and after another hour or so they arrived.