I arrived to T. P. McCampbell airport at 8:00 AM this morning with Diego my 3 year old grandson and Rudy my son-in-law. Diego has never been at the airport, as we got out of the car I waited for him to come to the hangar door so we could open it together. His big eyes looked at the big door opening and I could detect that he had no idea of what to expect. The noise of metal on metal scared him and Rudy explained to him what was going on. Diego saw the plane and said " I want to go the back", thinking of a car. I opened the canopy and he was ready to be helped inside. He sat on the
left seat and thought it was neat. We turned on the Skyview and proceeded to upload a new software. He also thought that was neat. Rudy said "Diego, don't touch anything". We completed the upload, everything checked OK. I moved Diego to the
right seat, I sat in the left seat, Rudy pulled
the plane out of the hangar. I asked Diego if he wanted to go for a ride, he said "yes!". Seat belts on, Bose headphones on. I said, "Diego, I am going to start the engine and it will be noisy" he said "OK". The idea was to taxi around the airport and come back to the hanger. I did not want to scare him. We got to the end of the taxiway, the end of runway 13. I asked him if he was OK and he replied yes, talking through the intercom. I asked him if wanted to go flying and he said yes. We announced, and were airborne, around the pattern we went. I asked him if he wanted to go back to see his daddy and he said, no. We went for a half hour trip, made a few turns so that he could see outside. He was happy, talking to me and smiling. We came back to the airport and did two landings. We taxied to the hangar and Diego was happily waving at Rudy. Diego's big eyes and smile were enough to make this flight one of the best I ever had. We'll do it again.
