Lake Hennessey

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(Click a picture for a slideshow)

Checking Floats	Final Check	Rising off the Water	In Flight
In the Shade	Lunch Time	Picture-in-Picture	Homebuilt Seaplane
Belt Drive	Special Extra	Electric Speedboat	Land Ho
A Real Seaplane	To the Sky	Up and Down	Ground Crew
Out of the Woods	Coming in Hard	Oops!	Big Cub
Water's Edge	Glassy Water	Nice Take-Off	Coast Guard

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A Day the the Lake

On the last Saturday of every month, a group of PCC flyers and friends make a trek north to Lake Hennessey, in the heart of California wine country, north of Napa.

They bring their float planes and flying boats and spend most of the day taking off, landing (though landing doesn’t seem like exactly the right word), doing touch & gos and rescuing downed planes.

These are pictures from Saturday, April 28, a warm, sunny and mostly wind-free day at the lake.

Jake Chichilitti makes it all look easy, but it isn’t. Jake describes proper take-off technique: “To go up, give the plane up elevator. To go down, give it more up elevator.”

Excess up elevator on take-off causes the plane to stall, and when it stalls it usually noses in to the water. But the group brings an inflatable rescue boat, and most of the planes survive their dunking.

Sound like fun? Check the PCC Calendar for the next get-together.

— Pete Johnson

Our Photographers

Photos by Pete Johnson and Gary Morgan.

Further Reading

Pete’s written more about the day at Lake Hennessey here.