Visiting on the Lassiter Farm

September 19-20, 2017

The day dawned pleasantly, but with a dense ground fog over the green fields.

Bobby is letting his chickens free range part of the time, and they obviously are enjoying that freedom.

Of course our enjoyment was in seeing little Mary Elizabeth's reaction to the chickens.

Mary Elizabeth was definitely interested in chasing the chickens, and they were tame enough not to mind.

Mary Elizabeth did enjoy the chickens, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed them. After all, I did grow up with free range chickens my first 17 years. And that was just up the hill from here.

Mary Elizabeth enjoys playing in the yard. She is enthusiastic about playing with Jag, and Uncle Brent helps manage the interaction.

Mary Elizabeth jumps right in and plays with both hands along with Grandmother Suzanne.

Even inside she gets to play with the animals. Bob has a lapful with Mary Elizabeth and the dog Jag.

Wednesday morning brought a gathering outside as we prepared to go to the Newport airport. It was time for Will, Mary and Mary Elizabeth to head back to San Antonio. Will is in his 3rd year of Residency in Anaesthesiology in San Antonio and had had to work to negotiate this much time off for his Grandmother Dorothy's service. Mary Elizabeth had one last chance to pet the dog as Grandpa Bobby brought him to her.

We drove to the Newport airport and the next steps were to open the hangar door and attach an electric cart to tow it out to taxi position. All that was accomplished in a few minutes, and Brent's twin-engine aircraft was ready to be loaded.

The elegant aircraft is ready to be loaded.

This is certainly a sophisticated-looking set of controls. We heard discussion of how Brent had upgraded its technology. The fact that he has had a landing at the Atlanta Airport in a larger plane would give one confidence that he could fly to San Antonio.

The fact that you have powerful engines on each wing means you can use the nose to stow luggage.

Time for the family farewell.

Brent has the aircraft ready and it's time to load the passengers.

Mary climbs in first into the back seat, then Brent hands in Mary Elizabeth. Then Will joins Brent in the front seats and they are set to go.

It's time for the family to retreat before Brent cranks the engines.

They're off! When Brent cranked the engines, they were surprisingly loud! I thought "Wow, not much in the way of mufflers."

Then it struck me that you don't need mufflers if you are going to be up there in the wild blue yonder, and mufflers reduce the efficiency of the engines. You want as much efficiency as possible with aircraft engines.

This overlay shows that after taxiing along this skirt, Brent makes a right-angle turn right to reach the runway. You might notice that Brian's cockpit door is open - that is to provide some air conditioning on this hot day until they get airborne.

We watched them taxi out to the main runway and move down it to take off. Bobby had software on his phone to track them. It took almost three hours to reach San Antonio, longer than usual because of a strong headwind. Bobby was able to check when Brent had filed a flight plan and was on the way back. Taking Will and family from Arkansas to San Antonio, and then flying back! All in a days work! Pretty amazing.