My co-pilot, Eric Tasker, an old school buddy from Alaska, came down on the airline to fly the round trip with me. We fired up the old Stinson and departed Hampton Airfield at 0700 Sunday July 26th, and stopped at some nice little airports that our leader, Joe Dion, recomended. First stop was Kamp out near Syracuse, then on to Ackron just this side of Buffalo. From there we filed a flight plan across southern Onraio to Port Huron MI. It was on this leg that my Garmin GPS died, but the railroad tracks and section lines are still there. The folks at St. Clair County Airport are very nice and got us a hotel room and drove us both ways.
The trip from Port Huron to Ludington was very slow with a 50 kt. head wind most of the way. It was very embarrasing to watch the eighteen wheelers and hay wagons passing us up. We gassed up at Luddington and made it the rest of the way to Oshkosh via Manitowok and the published route over Fond Dulac, Ripon and the railroad tracks up to Oshkosh. We had to land on runway 27 so it was a long taxi in a cross wind to get down to the antique area. When mechanical brakes get hot, they don't work very well, so it took awhile to get to our parking and campsite. As we got there early, we had a good place to park and camp under the wing.
The weather was great the whole time and it was fun to see about 200,000 close friends I haven't seen in years. I did buy a new GPS, a Garmin 195 so the trip home was much more relaxed.
We started back Sat, Aug. 1st, and flew across Lake Winnibago to New Holstein and had breakfast with some old friends. From there we made the same stops on the way back getting to Hampton on Sunday, Aug. 2nd.
It took us 13.2 hrs. west bound and 10.3 east bound. We burned 283.8 gls. of gas which is not bad for a 300 Lycoming.
It was a great adventure, but I don't think I will do it next year.
