Today wins for best flying day of the trip - hands down.
I've had other great days of flying, but today I got to fly with Brett, another A5 owner, all around the Adirondacks. The weather and water conditions were absolutely perfect and having two identical A5s [they are numbers 36 and 37] added a whole other level of fun.
We started out on Lake George with a formation flyby and a couple water landings. Then we moved on to Friends Lake. That was a pretty small lake with enough boats on it to feel crowded, so we decided to just fly over and move on to Long Lake.
Long Lake is a nice, big lake and it wasn't at all crowded so we were able to do a bunch of water takeoffs and landings and just generally splash around.
Our next stop was Tupper Lake. Not as big as Long Lake, but still had great conditions and not a lot of traffic, so we set down there to check our plan and see what our next move was.
We headed out for Lake Placid, home of the 1980 Winter Olympics and the Miracle on Ice. The landing pattern for Lake Placid airport has you flying right by the ski jump towers, which are almost as high as the pattern altitude! It takes a special kind of talent to launch yourself down something that high and into the air. I'll stick with wings, thank you.
We fueled up at Lake Placid then headed back to Glens Falls. We did one last low-level pass over Lake George and then into the airport. Conditions were getting a little bumpy at this point, so it was a good time to call it a day.
I honestly can't think of a better day of flying than this. Huge thanks to Brett for being the most gracious host anyone could ask for. He cooked up this whole route and flew lead for most of it. Neither of us had ever flown any kind of formation before, but we did an extensive briefing ahead of time and agreed to keep it pretty loose. But, it was still amazing to look out and see another A5 right there. Dunno if I'll ever stop smiling from this.
😀👍🏼