We got up this morning around 7am and headed to the airport after breakfast to set off home from Atlantic. I must admit the Super 8 was starting to feel like home after three nights there! Many people had departed very early (Mary Unger left at 3am to get a ride to Omaha to catch a flight!), but we said goodbye to many friends, and also to Lori and Barry at the airport who have been wonderful to all of us.
Mary piloted the first leg, which we planned from Atlantic Iowa to Fort Wayne Indiana. The latter is a place that Linda and I stopped at on our way out to last year's Air Race Classic, and was exactly half way home. Over the last few flights we had noticed that the right magneto was dropping, and during our runup this morning it exceeded the 175rpm drop recommended in the POH. But we decided to head out, and had a backup plan for if we lost the right mag. We were probably a bit braver than usual because of the Mooney team this year, who completely lost a mag during the race but managed to fly that leg on the other mag and still placed in the top ten - great going girls! The flight to Fort Wayne went without a hitch. We filed IFR at 7000 and flew it in beautiful VFR weather. We kept a close eye on all engine parameters and everything looked good, although we thought there was a little more vibration than normal which made me sweat a bit. We got great tailwinds as it was a very windy day, and were cruising at 170-180kt most of the way. But it was also very windy on the ground, and Mary landed in 30kt, but fortunately they gave us runway 28 so it was pretty much all headwind and no crosswind. She did a great job as always.
Once on the ground, we taxied to the West ramp and did a runup. Now the right mag drop was more like 250rpm, and we decided enough was enough. Fortunately a mechanics shop was right there in the middle of three hangars on the West ramp (Mercury?), so we taxied over. When we had shut down and climbed out, we saw a lot of oil on the underside of the cowling, so we knew we had made a good decision to get it checked out. The first person we saw at Mercury was a lady A&P and avionics person (yay!). She knew Margaret Ringenberg! Margaret was a lady we raced with last year, a legendary pilot who had her own chapter in Tom Brokaw's book "The Greatest Generation". She was in her 80s, and still flying and racing, and was based at Fort Wayne. She died last year in her sleep while at the great annual airshow at Oshkosh, and we miss her.
Gary from Mercury worked on our plane while we got a ride over to the commercial side of the airport and had lunch. When we came back, he was already taxying it around with the cowl off. He explained that the right mag had the wrong seal on it (that's not the right word, I do know the right word but I'm so tired I can't remember it), and was leaking oil, and the mag had worked loose. I asked what the worst case scenario would have been, and he said the mag could eventually have come away all together, and we would have lost all our oil! Not good. I could have hugged him. He replaced it, tightened everything back up, retimed it, cleaned up the belly, charged us a minimal price, and we were good to go by 3pm. Thanks Gary and Mercury for really helping us out, we appreciated it so much!
On the runup leaving Fort Wayne, the mag drops were 55rpm and 65rpm, a vast improvement. We took off feeling much happier and confident in Adelle's airplane, which has worked so hard for us over the last month. We had a smooth flight at 7000ft just under the cloud deck, with great tailwinds. We felt so excited as Pennsylvania came closer, and we reached Akron Ohio then Pittsburgh. By the time we got to Harrisburg, we were in our home turf, where every landmark and curve in the terrain is familiar. There were very few clouds, and a soft late afternoon light as we flew over Lancaster and back to Pottstown Municipal, where I landed on 26. Nancy and the crew were still there and welcoming as always. We put the plane back in the hangar, loaded our bags into Arnie's car, and headed home.
I had left my car at Perkiomen Valley airport all week and it obviously didn't like it, because it seems to have some kind of brake problem (knocking sound at the back on braking). Just something else I'll have to fix over the next week or so!
So now we're back at home, after about 4600 nm of flying, totalling about 45 hours. We did really well in the race - we overcame obstacles we didn't anticipate - we learned many new things about flying the race and just flying in general - we made new friends - and we came home safe and whole. What a great 12 days! I hope everyone gets the chance in their life to have such an adventure, and to have such a wonderful friend as Mary to live it with.
