December 14th was our first planning meeting for the Air Race Classic 2013. I flew over to Union City in my C-172 from Athens. Jo Ann greeted me and like any good pilots we decided to go eat before we got started. After a wonderful lunch at a local sandwich shop we headed back to UCY.
Jo Ann gave me a nice tour of her airport. She has several great hangar construction projects going on. State of Tennessee Aeronautics really helps us keep our general aviation airports growing. She also took me to the hangar and showed me her C-172. This will be our race plane. Beautiful 1976 C-172! I am excited to fly it.
OK now it was time for us to get down to business. We started by reviewing the forms we needed to send in. Later had a conference call with Terry from team Mama Bird. She was very helpful and answered a lot of our questions. Although I am sure we will have more. Finally out come the maps. Being two ladies born and raised east of the Mississippi River we really studied the first half of the race with all the mountainous terrain. By this time we had a full day and called it a night.
Day 2 of our planning was back at the airport. We spent a good portion of our morning plotting the course on our IPads, which we are both still learning. Better to learn this stuff now however then during the race! This was a good first planning trip but we still have a lot to do.
I departed UCY around 2:00 pm so I could arrive at MMI before dark. With the sun at my back, smooth air, and a slight tailwind I hoped this would be the weather for our first race!
