We flew today
 

Hello; We had such a great day flying at the lake, I just had to tell you about it. The famous Bill Bond has a brand new PBY there which he graciously allowed me to fly, 70 inches wingspan, with 2 25's, no power problems at all most of the flight was at two clicks above idle. It looked so beautiful taxing(?) towards us with the water streaming out from the spray rails. I flew my big Bingo, after awhile the engine, a Saito 80 started to sound rough, so I landed and taxiied in, the engine died about a foot from shore right in fromt of me. When I tried to take the remaining fuel out of it, it was bone dry. Brian had a Lanier Sea Bird he was trying to sort out, he did many brilliant saves when the thing would snap as soon as it would lift off the water. Landings were pretty scary too. Mark had his big aeronca out there, Con had his Schneider cup racer out, he had lots of splashy landings, but didn't need the boat. We went for our usual flight de-briefing at Wendy's. Oh yea, it's December 16th, and we're talking Vancouver Island, Quamichan lake.