Last Saturday Danny in his(& Mike's) AR1 and I flew a 240 N mile XC from Anahuac to Bastrop LA ... to pop in for some good food and enjoy the company of the AR & LA PRA Chapters8, & 20 ...in attendance! We heard the gyro activity radio calls from the S side of Monroe ... a full hour before we arrived!

We had two pit-stops en-route @ Jasper TX & Nachodoches LA ... mostly to just get out & walk around a bit! ... we added some fuel @ the second stop - just to be sure we had plenty. The TE has a 21 gal tank ... the AR 17 ... with the headwind our estimated flight time increased from the foreflight "planner" of about 3 hours to over 4 - in fact it ended up being 4:20 ... when including the extra TO & landings - for the pit-stops!

each having one-up ... the 912's ran about evenly with Erpm & fuelburn - Danny found his shoulders stressed with the lack of a passenger ... necessitating him having to push constant fwd stick to keep up the 70-75 kt indicated AS pace! (It is NOT good on long XC to NOT have pneumatic trim ( or some really effective way of in flight-trimming) - in flight to relieve that stick pressure!) Hopefully the future models of AR1's will address this issue! ( I know they are still a work-in-progress - as customer feedback comes back!)

I had a great new IFly740 on my panel ... that I had been learning to use during the 40 hr fly-off. ...As the AR1 had no nav equipment ... all the navigation was up to me! I was cautious in also chopping up a new Houston sectional ...to fit into my leg-case - with our course plotted & magnetic headings ... dry-erase marked on my WS ...along with every airport ID & freq. ...along our route - plus the Monroe appr & CT ...although planned to stay under the TRSA outer ring - as my transponder antenna had got broken off a few days before!

Thank you so much for sharing. I love to see active clubs. Chapter 62 is a great group.

Chris- You are such a shining example of getting on with your life and at a higher level. FJ is proud and you won't have to fill him in when you see him again.