Cincinnati Flyin 2010

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Velocity squadron on alert

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For all of the folks who could not make it to our first (annual?) Velocity Midwest Cincinnati Fly-in. This was a pretty informal little canard gathering based around Terry Miles passing through town for his cross-county trip to California. In honor of his stop we invited all of our local canard builders and fliers to Warren County Airport (our home field) for free breakfast and camaraderie. We had a pretty good turnout, with 4 Velocitys and Ray's Varieze. Here are some pictures. Linda and our staff photographer Al Wolfson will be sending high resolution pictures shortly.



Jerry, Bob and I had been working all week getting Victor Fox as close to flight status as possible, and at a minimum picture worthy. By Friday she was ready for her close-up, but thunderstorms were threatening, so Terry launched early to beat them in. We watched Flight Aware to follow his progress.
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Terry touched down well ahead of the storms, happily, and we buttoned up Rocinate in Bob and Jerry's hangar where Terry gave us the tour of his airplane - complete with some nice Hangar 18 modifications.
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Jousting at windmills comes to mind when you're staring headlong into a sweet Aerocomposites prop. Here Bob is checking out the panel.
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Terry has a wonderful airplane and we spent over an hour just learning about all of the neat touches that he's included on her, from the custom side-extending-control-handle for transitioning pilots, to the screwless doghouse cover, and the wing-root oil cooler.
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I have to say, though, that one of my favorite shots is "twin Velocity storage". There's something magical about having several of these airplanes together, and having a deuce in our hangar was awesome.
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After seeing his plane, we showed Terry the Fox. He looked her over like an eager schoolboy, hopping into the back to check out the systems and wanting to understand what each installed component was. It's flattering to have someone take an interest in your baby, and especially so someone who understands what they're looking at.
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Then we took Terry to lunch, and prevailed upon him to try our Cincinnati-style Skyline Chili. I'm not certain he came away a fan, but we enjoyed sitting down and talking airplanes. Next we went to the Brainard's shop so we could show off Linda and Jerry's XL/RG which is about 50% complete, and Bob Buls XL/RG with a Vesta V-8, PSRU, and prop.

After talking airplanes in the shop for another couple of hours, it was time to pick up Elizabeth and settle down for dinner. Linda and Jerry hosted us for a wonderful dinner of Velocity talk as well as many other topics, and we stayed so late we barely got Terry in bed before midnight. Certainly a long day as he was up before 6 watching the weather.

Saturday dawned brilliant and clear, but cool (nearly cold, to tell the truth), and before we were able to set up breakfast the Velocitys started arriving. Bill Stockman's Standard Elite Thunderbird was the first to break the silence, and I enjoyed watching him deal with a Cessna on a 4 mile final, seemingly hovering in mid air, not moving an inch. Luckily Bill gets a lot of this at his home airport and extended his downwind a half a county! It was time for the Fox to take her place, so we walked her up and put her on Bill's wing.
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Next in was Vaughn Pleasant from Wright Brother's airport in his SUV. Vaughn's flown off his flight test hours and is getting ready for paint. We've spent time with Vaughn at Moraine's Funday Sunday fly-in, so it was nice to host him at Warren County. Elizabeth brought a spread of hot breakfast sandwiches, doughnuts, bagels, muffins, coffee and orange juice from Tim Horton's that everyone enjoyed once Terry's plane was in position. It's fairly rare outside of Oshkosh to get 4 Velocitys together in one place, so I felt pretty special. I particularly enjoyed this shot, which I call the Velocity fighter wing 4-ship.
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A little bit later our technical counselor (Ray Parker) flew his Varieze in, and parked her on the line too. A pretty fair turnout, in my opinion.
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Since we'd parked the planes by the FBO building, we were obliged to move the airplanes closer to the windows so Al could get us some nice overhead shots.
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Everyone hung around enjoying breakfast and plane talk for a few hours. Folks from the airport later mentioned that they didn't come out to check out the airplanes and have a bite with us because they thought it was a corporate event for customers considering buying one of those pointy airplanes. I hadn't considered it, but I suppose it did look a bit a car lot with various models on display. And I consider it a compliment that it seemed organized enough to be a sales job. ;-)
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But we had a wonderful time, and it was a very special weekend. I want to thank Terry for picking Cincinnati as a destination and giving us an excuse to do this, and Elizabeth for putting up with my exuberance to do things like this without complaint. Thanks also to Jerry and Bob for putting Victor Fox's best face forward, and Linda and Jerry for hosting dinner.
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Thanks also to Al and Linda for taking the high resolution pictures of the event, my sad little camera isn't up to the task really, and I know it keeps you from fully enjoying the event when you're always looking for the next picture opportunity.
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And finally, but not least, thanks to Doug and Brian from the airport, for encouraging events like ours. Doug was moving airplanes all day long, and working around us blocking the ramp for hours without a complaint. Events like this build an airport community, but only if you survive them without anyone feeling too much imposed upon. Happily I think managed a balance and had a great time. Thanks so much to you all.

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My baby... N44VF
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