You never know who you will meet...

On Saturday when I took my kids to the airport, I had a chance to meet a bunch of folk. I was out there with my camera, had the telephoto lens on and my sunshade so it looked pretty impressive and I shot a ton of photos. I wanted to help out the local EAA chapter, so I shot a bunch of the kids flying in the planes.

One of the weirder machines flying around was a Sparrowhawk gyrocopter ran by a local company there. So I shot a bunch of photos of that since it was low over the runway and flies relatively slow compared to some of the other aircraft there.

Later on I was waiting for my boy to come back from his first flight and I was approached by a gentleman who introduced himself as Tom. It turns out this Tom is from Hawaii and is here in Utah learning to fly a gyrocopter. Not only that, but today was his very first day flying the craft all alone! So the photos I took were of him flying the machine alone for the first time.

When he was cruising along he noticed that I was shooting photos of him and was interested in getting some of them from me. So I got his email address and gave him mine and was able to send them to him. Once I got home and pulled the photos off my camera, I saw he was alone and waving in a bunch of them!

So now I've been emailing back and forth with Tom. He has graciously offered to show me around the island if I ever make it over to Hawaii. He is also thrilled to death to have some photos of this great accomplishment of his first solo flight in the gyro. You never know who you will meet and where you will meet them!