Night Flying Images

Don't Try This at Home

The images presented here were taken in late July, 1999, when I went to visit my friend David in California. Dave has a unique talent for discovering new situations in which to fly (we compete with each other to find the most unusual circumstances, like flying in adverse wind conditions, thunderstorms, cross-country, through sunset and sunrise, in the shadow of a mountain with a forest fire in the background, through the center of a dust devil, etc.). So far, neither of us has lost a plane in doing so. But we're always looking for something new to try. This time, someone suggested Dave try to land his plane on the ramada at the field. Dave determined that a landing was probably unlikely, but that he would perform a touch-and-go. There is no "try", there is only "do", so Dave promptly climbed up on the roof and performed the maneuver. And here are the pictures to prove it.

	Here's Dave moving into position after I handed his transmitter up to him. He is already bringing his plane around (not shown) in anticipation of making the approach. He didn't even make a practice approach. Instead, he just did what he got up there to do.
	This shot is a bit distanced from the action, but if you look closely, you can see his plane on final approach over the end of the ramada, just before it touched down.
	Here, you can see the plane on the roof. It has already rolled a fair distance on the roof, and is now beginning to accelerate on its take-off run.
	Like taking off from an aircraft carrier, the plane rolled right off the end of the ramada before it became airborne. A successful touch-and-go off the deck!
	The final challenge was to hand over the controls to someone on the ground so Dave could climb down from the ramada. That's Dave handing the transmitter down to me while his plane is still in the air (visible in the upper right corner). While Dave got his feet safely back on the ground, I brought his plane safely back to the ground. We were losing daylight and the lights on the plane were not on, yet.

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Don't Try This at Home

07/28/2000