Oh that first one,, my first plane was at age 19, 65 HP Champ. My friend and I were air knocking out over the Mississippi river. I saw a sand bar covered with people having fun, camping and skiing. We circled the bar a couple times and my bud said, 'lets land there", duh, OK I said. I touched the mains a couple times and decided it should be OK, I didn't consider a departure plan. When we landed and the tail wheel dug into the sand, the landing roll was about zero feet it seemed. People ran over and the first words I heard was,,," I can believe you landed, that was stupid". My friend was not an aviation guy, was unconcerned and went straight to a ski boat and was out on the river. I relaxed for a bit and schemed on how to get back in the air.
I knew we could never get airborne from the soft sand in the middle of the island, so walked the little feller over to the waters edge. It was fairly packed and was not straight, had about a 10 degree slope to the right with an right turn about half way down. I am guessing I had about 200' ending with a hard left turn at the end. We marked the entire left side with drink cans and then put a pile at the point where we HAD to be airborne.
When we loaded up to give it a go, I got back in the front and quickly saw that I needed to be in the back since my friend was about 40 pounds heavier. I had never flown a tail dragger from the back and this wasn't the best time to start. I walked the course a few times and rehearsed it all in my head. We had a boat waiting down range and people briefed on a rescue plan. I interviewed and recruited the best two drunks available to run along and hold the tail wheel out of the wet sand. With only 65 horses and two late afternoon drunks, here we go. Full power and forward elevator,,, I remember one guy falling flat early and the other soon after. Luckily the tail stayed up, had it fell into the sand my plan was to abort. We made the slight right turn and chugged to the pile of beer cans. I couldn't see the airspeed but knew I was slower than usual. I pulled back just enough to fly and not rob any speed and limped the little dumpling out across the river. That was 50 years ago, wasn't one of my better decisions but it worked out fine and fun to tell the story.
Gordon