Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Our first day of flying!

It was a slow start for our first practice day but considering all the travel & just getting used to everything this was OK. We all met at the Hotel's buffet breakfast and decided on which field to head towards. We wanted one that is not crowded as this can make the breaks between flights quite long making the day even longer. We decided to head south to a field near San Lorenzo. As this is 120km from Santa Fe and only a short distance from Rosario the girls decided they would follow along and take a tour of while the guys flew.


Heading south.





The girls follow us down the highway towards Rosario.



We headed out in a three car convoy and after a bit of searching for the correct exit, we found the field occupied by only fellow team members Dezso Vaghy and Xavier Moureux.

We unloaded and prepped the planes for the practice session. We had only brought our primary planes so we started putting in rounds one after the other. We are on our team frequency of Channel 30 which means nothing to anyone here.. it's 72.390.





We met Joe (the owner of the "campo" field) and his family and managed, through his wife's broken English, to explain who we were and what we were doing. They were very happy to have us visit and wondered if other teams would be arriving? That we did not know. We had the place to ourselves so we managed 7 rounds each.


The girls hooked up with Rosemary Ells and, along with Brian Northeast they headed into Rosario to check out the sights while we flew.

The winds were blowing out so we worked hard to maintain distance throughout the day. It was nice to finally fly and get some practice as this is probably what we will expect at the "Official" site. I let Mark take the sticks on my last flight.. hey he came all this way to helps so i thought it appropriate for him to get the chance. He had fun.

We headed back to Santa Fe and went for a late dinner. The lifestyle here leads to this as everyone goes out after 9 at night. The restaurants start to fill and it gets busy. Tonight it was the legendary beef that we wanted and after getting some tips from the Canadian interpreter Nick, we found a very good place down near the main part of town.


Mark finally got his steak!



The food was great and everyone was pretty tired as we headed back to the hotel. It was a late night and not really what I had expected.... hey I need some sleep! We made the next days departure arrangements and headed for bed.

Update later today.

Sorry folks, really busy this Wednesday. I'll update and bring everyone up to speed later on Tuesday. Connectivity is an issue on our floor so I have to head to the lobby to blog... bit of a pain. :-)