The Liberty Gazette
October 19, 2021
Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely
Linda: Last week I storied on about the new James Bond movie, “No Time to Die,” and the fun we found in my sister going to the show with a former U2 spy plane pilot. I happened to share that story with a Canadian pilot friend, who got a kick out of the fact that I had never heard of the actor who played Bond, Daniel Craig. My friend had once had the pleasure of having Mr. Craig as a passenger on his commercial flight. He said, “I remember looking back through the flight deck door and seeing him in the front row with his golfer hat on. He looked like he literally just walked off a movie set. I was all worried I was going to crunch the landing with James Bond on my flight. Luckily, I did not.”
That’s kind of similar to what I’m thinking when we arrive at a fly-in, like we did last weekend for the annual fall Critters Lodge event in Centerville. It’s a 3,100-foot turf runway surrounded by trees. Nestled among those trees are coves cleared out for parking spots. People set up their tents and camp out next to their airplanes. It stands to reason then that unless you’re the first one there, you’ll have an audience.
Mike: The first challenge is always finding the airstrip. The GPS gets us to the area, but the runway surrounded by piney woods isn’t easy to pick out. We can be deceived by the many small open patches in the furry green landscape until we are directly above it. This time, a glint of sunlight reflected from another airplane’s wing got our eyes focused on the right spot. Then we knew right where to join in the pattern.
The opening for the strip is not wide – about twice the wingspan of our airplane, so landing there can seem a bit daunting for some. Bright red balls mark the powerlines at the east end of the runway. Once we’re clear of those lines, we can reduce engine power and drop right down. Linda made a smooth landing for the spectators to envy.
Linda: Mike recorded it, too, so I inserted a few seconds of it at the beginning of my new Instagram video. I have experience with desktop video and audio editors, but this was my first experience using the app, InShot, recommended by my niece. It’s easy to use and offers a fairly nice variety of tools for moving, cutting, speeding and slowing, fading, and even reverse video. Free background music options only require that the artist be properly credited with embedded text on the video for a couple of seconds, and they make that easy, too. The music selection within InShot isn’t great, but their library is growing, and of course, if I had original music, I could use that instead.
If you’re on Instagram, follow me at either @lindastreetely or @paperairplanepublishing, and boogie to the scenes from Critters Lodge.
ElyAirLines.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment