29th annual gathering of Luscombes at Columbia CA
Me and flight fearing but trusting buddy Don - who puts his life in my hands once again for a day trip to the 29th annual
Gathering of Luscombes
We arrived around 10 am Saturday right during the flour bombing and spot landing competition
The turnout looked pretty good but not wanting to be mistaken for one of the contestants and it being an absolutely
stunning day we decided to do an overfly of nearby Yosemite and check out the reported spectacular waterfall activity
Still plenty of snow up there and the air was silky smooth
Even from here we could see the incredible amount of water in the Merced river
that had shut the place down with floods just a week ago
Coming up on Yosemite Falls, it was obviously roaring
If you've ever climbed the Yosemite Falls trail you'll know just how significant that huge cloud of mist at the base of the upper fall is
It's incredible even when it has far less energy than it is currently exibiting
You can see evidence of the floods but there are a bunch of cars down there so it's open to the public again
Good ol' Half Dome, I once climbed to the top of that as well
Everyone should do that 14 hour hike at least one time
Hard to tell from this incredible perspective but the difference in altitude between those shrubs at the top of El Capitan
and those trees down by the river is about 3500 feet and it's STRAIGHT down
Okay, back at Columbia I'm presenting a special Project Luscombe webpage to make up for my lack of activity lately
I'm sure many of you were getting ready to give up on me but I'm facing incredible demands on my time lately
So I'm posting as many pictures of all the planes there that I can
Enjoy
Luscombe Pete was in his usual spot with another ground display
There was gnarly lookin' RV8
But it just didn't shine enough, I could have looked at it without sunglasses and suffered no retinal damage
Now we're getting to the real shiny stuff
I'm especially interested in upholstery lately
and panels too
and paint schemes and colors
So....why mess up a superb polish job whith even a spot of paint?
On the other hand, if you're gonna paint
you might as well go all the way
I gotta apologize for the framing on many of these pictures but after looking at those polished planes
even with my sunglasses on
I was a bit blinded
Some folks just like paint AND polish so they do it half and half
Living the American dream
Basic, simple, economic, emensly fun transportation
That prop looks more like what Jack Norris was telling us we should have
He basically told me that my square tipped McCauley was probably the worst you could possibly have
:-(
Another classic
Nice hubcaps but where's your pants?
Here's Dan McNeil , exactly where he belongs between two blinding shafts of Nuvite rendered light
Okay - got the 29th GOL T-shirt
mission accomplished