Birthday Belen Adventure

Luke, Allie, Wes and I decided to go on an adventure Saturday. It was a day before Joy's birthday and we decided to let her have some peace and quiet for a few hours to sew her curtains. Well, I'm not sure this little girl gave her the quiet, but at least Wesley was not tackling the baby. When she began to be fussy Isabella (the neighbor girl- our other "daughter") came by and held her. Here is a photo of Joy when we returned- hmmm... smiling....
The Belen airport was hosting an open house with the EAA (experimental aircraft association)- who could resist, we were supposed to get lost for a few hours right?
If the kids were a bit older the EAAre is an organization that will take them for a free ride, but not this day...
(Cool radial engine on this 1930s vintage Stinson Reliant).

We wandered around and wound up talking to this guy who is a UNM student and pilots the drop planes for a local parachute jump school.
He was very nice to answer Allie's questions and let her sit in his plane. This is a 1959 Cessna 182; it has oxygen so the passengers can jump higher. The "seat" Allie is sitting in is the guy's parachute, so he is really just sitting in a little metal frame. He said he charges $30 to just go up and back down to drop jumpers off. He said he likes to "have fun" on the way back down. He flew later in the day and after dropping off jumpers he basically slipped the plane out of the sky. The thing was turned almost 90 degrees and spiraled down and landed. I have never seen a Cessna do that and decided I would spend my $30 on lunch instead (the kind that stays down). I learned later they do this to cut costs in order to get on the ground quickly. He taught Allie what the ailerons and elevators do.
Of course she had to try on his parachute.
We wandered over to the hangers where the jump school stores their things. We met Rudy, a crusty old guy with a German accent that is one of the jump instructor. He was nice and taught the kids a thing or two.
Allie lapped up every last word. Rudy has one child, a grown daughter and he misses her. Maybe he was happy to teach Allie for that reason.
OK, if you are going to jump out of a plane you need a helmet:
You also need to know some cool moves that you can do with your siblings after you jump out. Don't forget to lift your legs up; that's how they'll look when you are flying through the air.
OK, now that we have that down, let's get the feel for the controls:

So when people first jump, they have a radio strapped to them and Rudy instructs them as they fall. He put a radio on Allie (blue pouch below) and ran around the corner and gave commands through a walkie-talkie. Allie was very good to follow:
1) OK parachute out...
2) Turn right!
3) Turn left!
4) Go straight!
5) OK, here comes the ground, now flare! flare! flare!
6) Good job Allie. Now let's suppose your chute didn't open properly, here's the emergency release and this is how you deploy the backup chute.

He was very impressed with her-- I was too, I'm not sure he remembers what a six year old is like- he talked to her like she was a 16 year old. Allie was very interested and seemed to understand it all. He said she was ready to jump and understood better than some of his students. Allie looked at me with this "well, what are you waiting for dad, let's go!" look. When she came home she ran in and bragged to Joy that she was his first student to understand him on the radio. We hung out in the parachute hanger for almost an hour or at least until Wesley started going crazy.
So my little pilot Luke had his highlight in a little plane that a 80 year old man from Socorro built. He hauls this thing around to fly ins around the southwest for kids to sit in. It is his own design and the control stick works just like a real airplane. It has rudder pedals as well. He pulls you off the ground with a lever then the controls are yours. The plane pitches, rolls and yaws just like a real one. He said he has given over 9000 rides over the years and it is very important to him to do this to get kids interested in aviation. It seemed to work for the Paynes- especially Luke. Oh the sound effects!


Allie thought it was cool for awhile but wanted to check out the Blackhawk helicopter the Special Ops guys flew down from Albuquerque. She came back and told me she put about 20 switches in the correct position.

By the way, check out her hair. Although I didn't comb it before we left, this photo looks nice.
Her dear old dad cut it for her the prior weekend.

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EXTRA:
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OK cousin Trevor and all you other plane spotters out there, here are a few cool planes we saw:
You can see the Stinson taking off here and a Velocity kit plane in the foreground. We had a chance to chat with the pilot of the Velocity- a pretty cool airplane. It seats four or five and is powered by a Subaru engine. He had a nitrous bottle in the back of the plane that he uses to juice the engine on takeoff. The engine goes from 240 to 290 horsepower under nitrous- pretty cool.
Allie @ controls of 182:

The VariEze, a 1980s Burt Rutan design that uses a Volkswagen engine. This plane holds the current record for fuel economy (probably ~50+ mpg).
Kids running the 50 cal:
Here is another kit airplane, the Zodiac 601XL. This one had a cool new fuel injected FADEC controlled engine (96 horsepower UL260i). It was super quiet when it took off.
And finally, I dressed up in my Tron outfit for the occasion. Here's your's truly with my brand new Zodiac 601XL. The kids were grosed out so I had to change back to my mild mannered skinny self.
A highlight of our trip was eating at Taqueria Sinaloa in Belen (I found this place on a work trip earlier in the week). Mmmmmm. I had a torta asada (a sandwich), the kids had a sincronisada (a fancy quesedilla). When we saw the calling cards for sale and the ladies inside jamming out to Norteno music (the polka/accordion sounding music of northern Mexico) we knew we were in for the real stuff. Of course we had to have Mexican soda in the bottle. Allie was mad when we couldn't take it home.
Wes said it was "spicy" (the soda that is).
All in all we stayed away from the house for about 5 hours- everyone had a great time, Joy and Rachel included.