another successful (charity) demo

[skypuppy 1]

I don't know what the skygods will think of this, since, contrary to Airtwardo's philosophy we didn't, 'make a jump, get a cheque', but we had a lot of fun yesterday.

Buttonville is one of Canada's busiest airports in terms of take-offs and landings, and yesterday was their open house, in support of the local United Way charity. Previously they have done it in support of children's aid.

This year they supplied us with a 172 (door off) from their flight school and told us to go have fun. 4 of us did 4 loads, taking turns to sit one out as ground crew.

Nothing real exciting. We had hoped to do some crew since 3 of us have been doing a lot of it this year, but the winds were pretty strong so we decided not to risk it, opting instead for some rw (from about 5000) and some low jumps to deploy United way flags while I spent some time with a hand camera trying to take some pictures from above.

All jumps resulted in safe landings. The landing area was pretty tight, a grass strip between the runway and apron with a hundred or more a/c parked on it, and with the winds at the upper limit, there was some turbulence coming across the hangars. The kids liked it, and I heard we made the local news.

Actually we've been doing this event off and on for about 10 years now.

Anyone else do jumps for charity?

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[BillyVance 35]

I've done charity jumps at the Wings and Wheels air show for several years, most recently just last weekend. It's hard not to please 8,000 spectators... And signing autographs for the kids is fun too.

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban