June 08, 2005

Horse 351 - I Believe I Can Fly



...well not me, and maybe not my Ka but my Ka can pull something that can. If you're thinking that this photo look downright daft, then you're 100% correct, give yourself a goldfish.

Yesterday afternoon after spending the morning thoroughly bored with calculating Elligible Termination Payments for a client's superannuation fund (believe me the rules are a nightmare), I was privvy to a phone call from someone who wanted to take their glider for a fly. Now being the sort of chap who likes merely watching planes, I thought this would be good for a few yuks but what was to follow was really something.

I arrived at Schofield's Aerodrome to find that my friend Big Ron had got his Falcon Ute bogged in the grassy airstrip. The problem it seemed wasn't so much as how to get the plane moving, but how do it without chopping up the grass before the glider ran over it. Solution?

My little Ka.

Only being a light car and having quite a lot of torque, I was able to accelerate both the Ka and the plane to a shade under 130km/h (80mph), now I can tell you first hand that doing 80 miles an hour over grass isn't the most fun thing in the world. Then having the rear of the car lifted into the air briefly as the slack is taken up by a plane some 100ft in the air is frightening.

Ka survived, plane was in the air. Photo looks daft and there are 3 million stories in the big city, this has been one of them.

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