Good Morning to all our family friends and followers. It's 4:30 AM in Denver and Susan and I are starting another LONG day, but wanted to catch you up on what we've done so far.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 2009. Our plans were to leave Keystone Heights at noon on Wednesday, June 17th. We have now learned nothing goes as scheduled. I arrived Keystone from Jacksonville at about 1:30 PM.
Unfortunately, I missed the Mayor of Keystone, Mary Lou Hildreth, riding out to the airport on her Harley, to wish us luck. We began the Sponsor Decal task of putting all of our wonderful decals on the plane. (Thanks to Lisa from Blu Dove Designs and Carl from Signs in Motion in Jacksonville!!!) This took about 3 hours, in about 95 degress heat, but MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
Susan and I departed Keystone around 5:00PM headed Northwest. A major thunderstorm cell just North of Keystone had us lose about 45 minutes on diverting. We had planned on making it to Arkansas the first day, but due to our late departure, stopped in Montgomery, AL. We had filed to Selma, AL., but changed our clearance limit to Montgomery, AL. It was a much larger airport and with the night coming fast, we felt we would have better accommodations. Flight time was 2.6 hours. The lineman were very interested in our airplane and what we were doing. The fuel was very EXPENSIVE (thanks to our sponsors, we could afford it!!!!)
THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 2009: After a SHORT night, we departed Montgomery on Thursday morning around 7:00 AM, headed to Russellville, AR. We had great weather for the flight. In fact, with great weather and IFR filing, we were able to spend some additional time on getting familiar with the G-1000 Glass Panel and the Multi Function Display. BUT, best of all we found the SPA music channel on the XM Radio! What a life!!! We both are we really enjoying ourselves!! To this incredible experience we owe a HUGE thank you to Diomond Aircraft for making this Dream Machine available to us, and to Bob Ohle, for his countless hours in preparing us for this epic trip.
At Russellville (which happens to be one of the airports on the Air Race route, we met Bobby Day, the manager of the airport. He made our stop there very enjoyable. We were given the courtesy car and Susan drove into town and got us both a delicious Veggie Sandwhich from Subway. Bobby gave us a tour of their new facility at Russellville, which is most impressive. They have installed a camera which covers the tarmac and you can actually go on __________________, and see your airplane parked. Keep an eye on the webcan and you might just see us land there!!!!!! If you don't see us, you will see other racers coming in for fuel. Our flight time on this flight was 3.4 hours.
Next, we were on our way to Scott City, Kansas, or so we thought. After Susan went into the MFD for our frequencies, we realized the airport only had a turf runway, with no fuel. (We MUST improve on our flight planning!!!!) We changed our clearance limit to
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