Our next meeting will be Saturday, October 2nd.  As usual, lunch at 1:00 and meeting to follow.  Don't forget, if you have anything you can donate to the monthly drawings that are given away with the 50/50 tickets, it would be greatly appreciated.  You know the type of items that are traditionally there, or use your imagination.  By the way, last month's 50/50 drawing was won by E. J. Wilson, and he donated his winnings back to the club.  What a guy!!

    The WVFF Eagle Award was presented to Lucy Beckett at the last meeting.  For several years, Lucy has been donating her hand made quilts for us to use in fund raising raffles. 

    Thanks to Mark Payne for helping me with recently working on the wind sock.  I used a climbing tree stand to climb the pole and removed the mechanism.  The bearings are totally shot, and had dropped down to the base where it would not turn.  For the time being, Mark fashioned a spacer from a piece of pipe, and I returned the sock to the top of the pole.

    Vinton County - The visibility was incredible and so was the weather.  The trikes (Curtis, Steve, Mickey, Gretchen) left Leon for the trip over to Vinton around 8:15.  Because of a 10 mile an hour head wind, they stopped at Mason County for a precautionary topping off of fuel.  Captain in the Hurricane and Dave in Captain's Titan left around 8:30 and, of course, blew right past the trikes while they sat at Mason.  Rick left a little later but arrived in Vinton well ahead of the show time.  Glen and Lucy flew there in the 150.  Gwain drove there and took many pictures.  Mark Payne and family drove from Leon all the way to Vinton where he encountered water over the road.  He had to turn around and head for home without seeing the show.  John Upton flew there in his Starduster.

    The sky was full (large planes) by the time we all arrived and it was a little challenging to get in pattern and land in front of these much faster planes without causing all kinds of commotion.  However, there was much zigging and zagging and at least one extra go around for a couple of those in pattern with us.  We announced ourselves and those on the ground announced us also.  Everyone in the air was aware of us and let us in pattern by keeping everyone in the area abreast of who was in the lineup. 

    Vinton had their usual chicken dinners and they were good.  The air show was good one.  It ended at 3:00 and then the mass exodus began, which is a show in and of itself, and of course - we waited.  It was around 5:00 and very nearly all of the larger planes had departed when the WVFF finally took to the skies over Vinton.  With a fairwell wave to the crowd, many of whom waited just to see us take off,  we were off - this time with a favorable tailwind.  Just a soon as we climbed to 3500 it was so clear that we could see all of the power plants including John Amos in the far distance.  Something else we could see, however, was the rising water.  When we arrived at Leon the lower end of the field was under water all the way to "Captain's" hanger.  Everyone made safe landings on the shortened field.  Members moved many planes before dark up onto the hill in case the water continued to rise through the night.