Thanksgiving with a different kind of bird

[Matt Gunsch]

Who said Thanksgiving has to include a turkey many years ago I had a Thanksgiving that involved a different type of bird. Carl schmieder my friend and mentor and I had a lot in common when it came to Thanksgiving, we more or less tolerated it and both of our families ate late in the afternoon. This particular Thanksgiving was the typical Phoenix Thanksgiving Day clear skies nice temperatures and both of us were bored and ended up at the airport I found Carl in the back workshop tinkering with something. We were just chatting and I said something about how nice day it was, he looked at me and said how long will it take, I said give me 20 minutes. 20 minutes later he comes into the ready room hanger and helps me push the t6 out, we strap in fire up and start taxing to the active runway. As we were making our way to the run-up area I caught some movement down low and across the face of the foothills just to the east of the airport turned out it was Chris woodson and his super Marine spitfire, he made a low pass down the runway and disappeared to the north. I commented to Carl if we were only 10 minutes earlier we would already be in the air, we completed our run-up and took off and headed to the north aerobatic box, when Carl asked for frequency change deer valley Tower approved it and added that the spitfire is waiting to the north and gave us a frequency. We were able to contact Chris and joined up for 30 minutes of formation, when it was time to head back Chris decided that we need to make a low pass at deer valley one thing though is he forgot how slick a spitfire was and how fast it built up speed. As we pushed over for the low pass Chris left us like we were sitting still Carl pushed everything as far forward as it would go and of course there was no hope of catching him but it was fun to try. So that year instead of having turkey Carl and I celebrated with a different type of bird, a Spitfire

[C VEICH]

Mk.XVI SL721 or TMk.IX TE308? Inquiring minds want to know! I will guess it was the former as TE308 may have passed on to Greenwood before Chris was flying Spits. Cool story either way!