Lone Star Hover-in September 2004.

Lane and I departed Spring, Tx at 6:40 am and rolled into the Lone
Star camp site at 11 am. It was a longer drive than I remembered
from last year. I told Lane it took only 3.5 hrs last year - well,
perhaps they moved the river.... Sorry Lane.

Anyway, five crafts and about 25 people were there. Dan Wakeland
had been there earlier in the morning and had left apparently not
feeling well. I hope he is better now. Kind of a bummer missing
your own hover-in. There were 2 Scats, one red hovercraft that I
think was a hovertechniques craft, a 12T4 and a Canair 506.

Peter Tew, I am sad to say, was selling his very fine 12T4 there but
the buyers seemed real interested so perhaps we will see the craft
at a future hover-in here in Texas. Peter is moving to the East
Coast shortly. The two Scat crafts were not feeling well either and
pretty much stayed on thier trailers. I know what it is like to
have a sick Scat - no fun. Peter did a number of demos of his 12T4
and it is a real nice performing craft.

After almost 5 hours of driving, Lane and I decided to go hovering
and we took the 506 and headed up the river for about an hour. We
went pretty far. I am still working out the odd bugs in the 506 so
we pretty much went up river as I figured if anything happened, in
due course, I would make it back to the camp site. Now it might be
days later but I would get there. Anyway, we finally got hungry and
turned around and came back for lunch. The craft flew flawlessly
for the first time. Due to problems I had a Lake Somerville the
previous weekend on the shakedown cruise, I had replaced the cable
going to the splitter wings Thursday night and what a difference
that made. The old cable was 9 years old and would hardly move.
The splitter control was very smooth now and we had no trouble with
it the whole trip.

After lunch, Lane and I headed up river again and kept going and
going and going. We finally realized we were so far up river that
we would be in serious trouble if something happened so we decided
to come back after about 30 - 40 miles.

Once we got back I gave Peter Tew a ride in the 506 and let him fly
some. He seemed to like the craft. Some others turned down rides
so we trailered the craft at about 5PM and headed back for Spring.
Nine hours driving and 6 hours hovering - well, we had a good time!

Hopefully Dan will feel better next year and we can all go cruising
together. I did find out that my truck's gas milage is quite a bit
less pulling the 506. We averaged 9.4 MPG on the way home. Well,
all I can say is that is 3 MPG better than the RV I rented got going
to Muscoda last year so I am doing better although not by much.

I uploaded some videos on my web site thanks to Lane and his camera.

Hover safely,
Howard