Saturday, November 5th, 2016
I woke up early to catch breakfast on the way to my EAA chapter's monthly meeting. But we weren't just talking about planes. No, this month was special, it was the annual Slobovia Outernational pumpkin drop. Both breakfast, and the meeting were a blur, all I could think about was the upcoming fly-in.
Before I knew it, me, alongside 4 other planes, were lined up engines running. I heard my dad say " Challenger 443SR ,departing to the north" We were off. After a relaxing flight over we landed on the clean lush 4,000' grass runway of Slobovia. We followed the ground crew to our spot, and killed the engine. I had my first unhampered look at the festivities, there were planes all around us! Low wing high wing, ultralight, bush plane! The uniting factor was the lack of windows , in preparation for the pumpkin bombing runs they were about to embark on.
After a chat with just about every fellow pilot, and a look at each of their respective aircraft, we heard a screech over the loudspeaker saying " Come on and get some lunch y'all." One delicious lunch later and we were off to throw some pumpkins. We were in for quite the surprise though. Before any of us could reach our planes a P-40 streaked across the sky, it can around again and again showing appreciation for our soon to be bull's eyes.
When the show was over, the first wave of pilots clamored into their planes. we watched and learned, from 300 feet, it takes a pumpkin 5 seconds to fall. "One, Two, Three, Four, FiSPLATve!" As my dad flew I created a basic bombsight with which to aim. If you must know, it was halfway between the rivet and strut. I mentally pictured the pumpkin exploding just like the ones I saw from the ground. When we were I range, I extended my arm and waited for my bombsight to align with the target.
The bombers eclipse occurred as my target was drawn into my sights. "Drop" I told my hand, which was holding the pumpkin. And drop it did we hit ,almost, right on target! Lucky for us it was just bit closer to the crowd so all they saw was the pumpkin explode right on target! With our bomb bay empty we returned to base, the 3rd and 4th waves took off, bombed, and landed but our job was done. Soon we were up again flying side by side with our Challenger buddy
We landed back at Raymond, our bombing appetites for bombing satiated, for now. I can certainly think of no better way to spend a Saturday then flying.
-Isaac Shutlz
(flying)