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mr pitts you made a great plane

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tedrankine

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This is kind of a silly and personal story but it is one of those that continues to add up to make me love my S2A more and more.
With an annual complete except for some touch ups for which we were waiting paint, the long weekend ( Thanksgiving here in Canada) was calling with some pretty nice weather predicted over the next two days. I picked up YMQ ( previously 24MC) from where the work was done and headed out into a wind blowing at a reasonable 30 degrees off the runway at 12 gusting 20. My destination home airport was only about 40 miles away but it is located closer to a big lake with the winds having picked up a bit and on this runway blowing @ 90 degrees. No one was flying.

I beetled into the pattern with none of my normal playing around. Being a small grass strip, we don't have an airport advisory, but the guy who runs the (now grounded due to winds) jump school warned me on Unicom of the now stronger winds. They 'were' strong but I felt worth a try, (I could always go around and go back), so after doing my normal downwind check .. hands off the stick, slap myself twice in the face and say in a loud voice ..'Now Pay Attention'... I turned base and onto final. Slipping into the wind from the left didn't work as well as I had thought it might so I crabbed down final. Diving down after the wires at the end of strip, I straightened and dropped my left wing into the wind. The plane burbled a few times up and down, in and out of ground effect and YMQ eventually settled into a nice left wing low(er) stance.. (( with spades, left wing low(er)is subtly different than left wing LOW) touched down and ran out straight as an arrow. As you might expect at any airport after a wind warning is issued to an arriving pilot, there were a few 'judges out' (without their grading cards) and after that landing, I really wish that I could have taken all the credit. But today it was Mr. Pitts that could take that bow for having his little biplane respond so perfectly and make todays short flight another one (in a long list) to remember.
 
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