Flying is what it's all about!

When I got to the airport, there was a plane parked on the tarmac. This is pretty unusual for Ft. Deposit. Upon inspection, you could see that the propeller tips were bent.

I suspected that the pilot had forgotten to put the gear down. Besides the prop, nothing was apparently wrong from the topside. I looked underneath and sure enough, this plane had made a belly landing.

After preflighting my MX, I took off for the Fountain City Flyers radio-controlled airplane field in Autaugaville. This would be my third trip to that nicely manicured short strip. For the first time since I have purchased my GPS, I was going to attempt to navigate a 30-mile trip without using it. I had it with me to use as my altimeter, but that's it. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but it was just slightly hazy.

A baseball field that I've never noticed before.

A closeup of the biggest lake at a gravel pit that is one of the landmarks that I use to get to Autaugaville.

As I was flying along, I was alarmed when I saw a HUGE shadow of an airplane zoom past me on the ground. I looked up, and a few thousand feet above me was a C-130 tooling along headed north. By the time I got the camera turned on, he was quite a ways away, but I thought I'd show the shot anyway, since the skys were clear blue.

Flying over another landmark slew, I noticed for the first time that the houses in this area are built on stilts to keep them dry in most floods. Heaven help them should a catastrophe flood come along.


First time I've ever seen a sailboat on the Alabama River, not only from the air, but EVER!

When I landed at the FCF field, nobody was there. This is the third time that I've been there and only once have I found a soul there. Oh well, I used the outhouse and decided to fly to the Prattville airport, which was only about 6 miles away.

Ray Hill is an Airframe and Powerplant mechanic (A&P) who runs his business out of Prattville in this hangar. Ray is a good guy who has helped me out when I needed that bolt or nut or washer that I didn't have. He's building a Wag Aircraft "Wag-A-Bond" in the rear room of the hangar. I'll get a picture of it next time I'm there and post it.

Heading back to Ft. Deposit, I took some more shots. This one is of a new bridge being built on Alabama Hwy. 14 right near the Prattville airport.






What appears to be a catfish pond.


Those aren't ducks, they are Canadian Geese and they didn't seem to be bothered by me at all, even though I was only a couple of hundred feet above them.



A typical Southern Baptist Church. This was the last shot of the flight. I flew about 80 miles and was in the air just over 2 hours. I had a great time. I worked on the Phantom some more for about an hour, then I went back home.