I spent the weekend in Washington, DC with a group of Socata owners. As I explained in my last post, there is an active web site for owners and once a year they try and get together. There are 4 meetings annually; one in Europe, one in Australia and two in the United States; a West Coast and an East Coast Fly-in. This year, the East Coast Fly-In was planned for Washington, DC. Since Vince was in town, he came with me as did my favorite co-pilot, my cousin Ken Wellington. We made the southbound flight to
Fredrick's Municipal Airport in Maryland on Friday afternoon and the trip was beautiful -- warm, clear air and no turbulence, but a killer headwind. I'd filed to fly down at 6,000 ft AGL, but Air Traffic Control assigned me 8,000 ft. to keep me above the arrivals into Teterboro and Newark airports. At that altitude, we were fighting a 50 knot headwind!! That meant we were traveling at 95 knots over the ground or only 2/3 of my normal speed. I asked for lower and the controller paused prior to his response, "Yeah, I guess 95 knots in a Trinidad is not too good, I'll have lower for you in 5 more miles." Once at 6,000 ft AGL, the headwinds were a more reasonable 20 - 25 knots and we made much better time.
We rented a car and drove to our hotel in Bethesda, MD. Dinner was within walking distance of the hotel at
Positano's. We had a wonderful Italian dinner and were serenaded by Vince our very own pilot / opera singer! He is a marvelous singer and everyone enjoyed the performance. Saturday we traveled as a group to the
Udvar-Hazy Center of the Air and Space Museum and were provided with a 3 hour private tour because one of our members is a large supporter of the museum. The aircraft on display are simply awesome. It is a worthwhile trip out to Dulles for this unique aviation experience.
Saturday's dinner was held at a DC landmark,
Clyde's of Gallery Place. A few of the local Socata owners also joined us and "virtual" friends became face-to-face friends as the mask of the Internet was removed. It was wonderful to actually meet so many people that I'd been conversing with for the last few years.
The group met for breakfast at the diner on the field at Fredrick's and following breakfast we had a seminar on glass panel installations by Landmark Aviation. Informative, but not in my current budget -- I guess I can dream. The trip home was made with a few more clouds and haze than the trip down, but offered a nice tailwind to speed our return to White Plains. It was a fun weekend with nice people all of whom are just as crazy as I am about airplanes.
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