Catherine and I arrived in Indus last night, and today made our way to the airport to meet with the owner of the plane.  He’s a great guy who has a handful of planes (the other one I’d love is a JURCA P-40 replica).  We went all around the plane discussing things and learning a bit of the history.  We got to meet the local airport gang (great bunch of guys).

After a preflight, I got to go up with the owner for a half-hour flight.  He gave me the controls through about 500′ AGL (we had briefed the flight on the ground prior to firing it up as there isn’t an intercom right now).  My flight was wonderful, the plane handled great.  I ran it through some climbs, descents, gentle and steep turns.  The seller took over and did a nice high-speed flyby over the field before pulling up and joining downwind for landing.  My only issue during the flight was that there was some fuel leaking out of the top of the left tank filler cap.

I got out and Catherine hopped in for basically a repeat flight.  She didn’t fly it as much as I did (but she shot some on-board video).  I had told her all along that we were in this together, so if she didn’t enjoy it, we’d walk away.  The grin on her face when the plane came to a stop told me everything I needed to know 🙂