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Kim offered to buy me a tandem skydive for my birthday last year. It took me this long to get up the courage to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

Well, after a few months of downtime for service I finally got my plane back. Yaaaaay!

Lima had to have three cylinders replaced due to cracks. Two had really low compressions and one had an exhaust leak. Since they were also cracked they had to be replaced instead of overhauled. So that set me back a bit. Anyhow, she’s running better than ever now and I decided to take the “run-in” opportunity to take a few pictures.

Enjoy!

It’s the start of fall, my favorite time of year to fly! I’ve been wanting to do some night flying to practice night landings and get my currency back. This weekend provided absolute perfect weather to do so.

I decided to go sightseeing over downtown, after checking some schedules to ensure there were no college/pro games going on. My only regret is that I landed before that amazing fall moon rose.

This flight also gave me the opportunity to try some night aerial photography with my Canon Digital Rebel XT.   Previous attempts to take photos from a plane at night had proven fruitless, but this camera is much more capable than my previous ones - the results came out pretty good!

One early morning nonfucious and I set out in the Cessna to visit the aircraft graveyard in Maxton, NC. We found the place eerily quiet. Luckily for us, we found a couple of the 727s already opened up and accessible for a photo session. (Too bad the DC-10 wasn’t as accessible.)

After wandering around the ramp with cameras, we ran into a local pilot parking his aircraft. We inquired where a good place to have lunch would be, and he pulled out a sectional and gave me the following directions:

“Oh, what you want is Stanton’s Barbecue. What you do is fly on a heading of about 265 back over the town of Laurinburg. You’ll come to the small railroad town of Gibson, NC. Turn left, follow the highway to the south. When the road forks, take the right fork, and you’ll see Stanton’s next to a grass airstrip.”

Sure enough, after being sure I’d never recognize that little town I spotted a town square with railroad tracks and a white water tower. Nonfucious confirmed the “Gibson, NC” on the side of the tower, so we turned South and flew along the road and found the airstrip. Good BBQ, too!

To anyone who wants to try Stanton’s without using pilotage from Maxton-Laurinburg airport, the coordinates are N 34 43 60.00 W 79 40 00.00.