Now that I've lived in my new home in the country for a month I figured it was time to find a place to fly airplanes. Not being much of a club joiner, I decided to try out the freshly baled hayfield about 50 yards down the road. Although the grass is nice and short, unfortunately it grows in thick clumps about 3 inches apart, which is no good for landing a 15 sized plane with 2 inch wheels. I was really spoiled by the paved runway back in Kansas City. I have to admit that I kind of miss it. The house we're renting here is surrounded by trees, and the owner has forbidden us to trespass on her cowpasture, hayfield, crop fields, or the big pond in the back. That came as a big disappointment to me, especially because I always expect country folks to be more neighborly than that. She's not really a farmer, she runs a greeting card company and lives in California. When she heard about the airplanes she was concerned that I would scare her cows, so she re-emphasized her ban on trespassing. I doubt that a cow would care about an airplane. We used to fly ten feet over the deer's heads in KC, and they acted like they didn't even notice.
About 2 hours after the hayfield experiment I heard the telltale sound of an airplane engine in the air. I looked out the back window and saw what looked like a Mustang flying just above the treetops. My boys and I jumped in the car and drove in that general direction looking for the source, but the plane had already landed and we never saw the pilot.
Today I heard the noise again and had better luck. As it turns out, the pilot lives directly behind me and has a nice runway that he mowed in his back yard. He's just a beginner, but he's doing a pretty good job with his Hangar 9 Mustang after only about 6 flights. He's a really decent guy, and he encouraged me to hurry up and finish building my current project so I can come over and fly it. I couldn't believe my good luck. I even planted the idea of float planes in his head and asked him if he knew of any ponds nearby. He said his neighbor has a nice one. I think I really got him going with the float plane idea, because he said he would talk to the neighbor about it soon. This could turn out better than I ever expected. The icing on the cake will be to wait until my landlady is in town and buzz her cows from his yard.