A local friend Rob contacted me a couple weeks ago to ask if I would fly with him to go pick up an RV8 that another local pilot on our field named Troy had bought. The aircraft was located on a beautiful little grass airport named Kenly(7NC3) in North Carolina. So Rob had been updating me during the week with "the plan".
Saturday came and the weather didn't cooperate and we had to scrub the mission. Sunday looked better and we hoped for an early morning departure but wx was looking like it would be a later time. We kept in touch and finally saw that an 1130 launch would probably work. We launched in the RV7 and headed the 180ish miles to Kenly. We climbed to cooler & smoother air at 8,500' and landed at Kenly in less than 1.5 hours. The strip was a beautiful grass strip easily handled.
We planned for a quick turn around and got to business getting the RV8 prepped. In about 45 minutes we were cranked up and launched for home. We planned to go high as it was fairly bumpy and hot below the clouds, but a hot cylinder on the RV8 caused us to reconsider and stay low below the clouds at 3,500'. We bounced and got jostled a bit and it was hot but I had a good cross flow of air from the vents keeping it fairly comfortable. Again in about 1.5 hours we landed at home to a crosswind. Despite the bumps I was still able to get a few air to air shots in.
Rob had shaken down the airplane through the flight home and had a squawk list for Troy. Great mission for the logbook memories column!
