Eventually it's time to mosey. We're going to stop at Princeton, to check out a Diamond Aircraft fly-in. We take a closer look at the Caribous on this ramp... these old birds have seen some hard duty.





A close look at the Spanish markings...




This gorgeous little C120 is a real charmer. Lovin' that nose art!!



I really should've taken a full-view shot of this 1969 C150J Commuter... the (original)paint's been trashed by the salt air, but if the annual really is fresh (and any internal corrosion dealt with), and it's got a few hundred hours before overhaul is due, i'd say $14K is a pretty good deal.




Ooh... pretty... A Globe Swift.





Just about ready to go...This time I sit in the back, just to see what it's like.




As we taxi, I take a last look. got to come back here some day; what a great fly-in location! If you look closely, you can see that 150 I showed earlier...



Sadly, my camera's battery died right after this shot. Some things we saw on the way back that I didn't capture:
All the gorgeous Diamond airplanes on display at Princeton (see Marco's site for his pix)...
A dust devil (in NJ?!) over a fallow field; it must've been 1000 feet high...
A cluster of toy balloons; I didn't see them until marco veered to avoid them...
On approach to 47N, some other plane turned and descended behind us from above, looking for all the world like a fighter trying to get on our "six". What a great photo that would've made!!


What a great day!!

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D'oh... sorry; haven't looked into that yet.
Have you asked your folks yet?

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Touché.

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Didn't even ask to fly her, and Marco didn't offer. This might've been after I mentioned that I'd bounced 715... LOL. No big deal; I was making an effort to learn about the passenger experience, and enjoying the lack of responsibility. Besides, I'd be getting my fix the next day...
  I was surprised to see that that Hersheybar down there doesn't really block the view of the ground much; it's well aft, so one can easily spot that checkpoint just off the nose. Overhead vis. is not much better than a Skyhawk, but almost as shady. And I liked the manual flaps- no breakers or motors to worry about there.
  The real difference, it seems, is in the flare. The technique used to put a Cherokee on the ground would probably result in a bounce in a Cessna; it seems to drop swiftly, but then the ground-effect airflow grabs the wing and sort of firmly sucks it down, with a solid thump.  Very interesting. Marco did a great job on all three landings that day, despite the crosswinds (not to mention the thermals bouncing us around on the approaches!)
But they're not idiot-proof, like any airplane: After that flight I was hanging around 47N and watched some other Cherokee pilot practicing landings in the gusty crosswind- on one approach, he first almost wheelbarrowed it, then as he jerked the nose up (now halfway down the runway and floating along like crazy), he dropped a wing, very nearly touching the runway. My heart was in my mouth- and I'm sure he was a little excited, too!! It looked like he missed cartwheeling that thing by mere inches...
At least he managed to go around OK, and made a couple more better landings...

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What's odd is that it was on the dock at least 30 hrs prior, charging. But I did use the flash quite a bit that day, and was previewing and editing (using the LCD), both of which gobble power. I need to get a second battery pack is all... and another card so I'm not tempted to delete pics to make more room.
Regardless, it's still so much better than the limitations of film!!