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GO EAA GO EAA
Tri-State-Ultralights
Edward G Neff
edneff@adams.net
1430 East Cty. Rd 1900 N
Hamilton IL 62341
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(UFIE) (AFI) ED Advanced Flight Instructor
217-746-8911 or 217-653-8911
(UFI) (BFI) ERIC Basic Flight Instructor
319-524-4827 or 319-795-4087
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IL IA MO
Authorized Dealer
BUCKEYE & PARA-SKI
POWRACHUTE
HIGH ENERGY SPORTS
ICOM's- LYNX-YAESU
QUANTUM ADVANTAGE WINGS
http://www.adams.net/~edneff
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No Power Decent Record 20,287 to 630 & Altitude Record is 20,287.
I recently had the great opportunity to join Ed Neff and Eric Lindley of Tri-State Ultralights to become a dealer for Powrachute. Any body from the area that knows Ed knows he has a fly-in every year. We scheduled it for July 18th 19th and 20th, and had permission to use an airport in Iowa, but as many of you know with this sport, things can fall through. We went to the private airport that I fly out of in Macomb, owned by Henry and Betty Smith and made arrangements to have our fly in there. About three days before the big event I got a call from Ed, “ I’m going to try to break the altitude record.” I thought, “Hey that sounds like fun.” Ed had previously set the record with almost 16,000 ft. In 2001 Bud Gish broke the record in Alaska with a highly modified Six Chuter. Ed talked with Eddie Johnson, the president of Powrachute, and they agreed that we could probably do it with a stock Pegasus. Thursday the 17th rolled around and Eric and Ed came over to get oxygen for the long haul up. We didn’t know that you had to have a prescription for oxygen. So I called my dad at the Hospital, he is a Nurse anesthetist and asked if one of the doctors could write a prescription. As it turned out, all the doctors had left surgery for the day. I ended up calling a friend who was a pilot and a doctor to see what he could do. He wasn’t to keen on writing us a prescription, but did call the Macomb airport to try and find an oxygen tank. All they had was an old 20-pound tank without a regulator. At this point we were starting to worry. Finally a paramedic called me and said that he had a small tank in a kit at his house. Finally everything was in place, and we were feeling pretty good! On Friday most of the pilots showed up. It was windy and overcast so; we decided to go out to eat at a pizzeria. After dinner the winds had calmed and we were able to get about an hour flight in. Friday morning all the pilots showed up well rested and ready to fly. I used Ed’s PC 2000 to lead the way on a cross country to Argyle Lake state park while Ed stayed on the ground to get my Pegasus ready for its record breaking flight. The flight was very smooth that morning and the scenery west of Macomb was beautiful. To compensate for the high altitude Ed put a carb compensation kit on each of the carburetors. This allowed him to richen up the mixture the higher he went. We also Put a Sky Bolt 430 on for max climb. At about ten we landed form the cross-country. Buy 11:00 Ed was ready. After getting into several layers of clothes and a hardy coverall Ed was sweating pretty bad. He wedged the oxygen tank under the seat and set the altimeter to 630 msl and was off by 11:17. The crowd cheered him on. Eddie Johnson and I tried to follow him up in the 912 Pegasus, but he had too much of a head start on us. We were able to see him most of the way up, but eventually he turned into a white speck. After about an hour and a half we were starting to get anxious. Walt Meziere had flown his Comanche up from Texas for the day so he and Eddie went out looking for Ed. They got up to 17,800 and saw him once and decided to come back down. We finally saw Ed getting closer while doing one of his famous Spirals. He landed with out power, and I must say it was one smooth landing. Everybody ran out to see if he made it. The total flight time was 2 hours 33 minutes. He ran out of fuel at what the EIS said was 17,870,MSL but was actually 20,287 MSL, and it was a good thing that he did, because when he landed there had about an 1/8 of an inch of oil in the oil bottle. The first thing Ed did when he landed was to get his shoes and socks off and to go stand on the warm cement. The temperature got down to –30 degrees, and at that temperature your camera freezes up so, we weren’t able to get any high altitude pictures. Ed also set the record for the longest engine out at? Ed was walking on cloud 9 that day He had finally got his record back! That night we had a small competition that Jim Reed brought up as a trial run for nationals. It included two accuracy landings, a bean bag drop, and a hoolahoop drop, that one is a lot harder, you have to get the ring around as many tiny pole as possible. It’s allot harder than it looks, but it was a lot of fun. The meal of the evening was smoked chicken that was some good chicken. On Sunday morning the winds picked up, and only a few brave flyers stayed around to fly. I think this is one fly-in all the pilots will remember and one they will say they were proud to be a part of.