Smoketown Fly In 2010

The Smoketown 2010 Fly In was today. I'd promised to have my Velocity on display, but the weather was bad all week, so I hadn't had time to bring it over from Chester County. The forecast was good for today, so I decided to just fly it over really early before the fly in began.

They wanted to have it parked by 7:00, so I left my airport at 6:30 and got there as things were being set up. I parked, then helped get some other display aircraft into place.

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There she is, all settled in with a Champ, RV, Waco and a Sonex. Time to start walking around to check out the other planes.

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By about 9:00 the planes were just pouring in. It was clear, cool and comfortable for the first time I can remember all summer. What luck to get this weather on the day of the fly in.

At any given moment, there were 4 or 5 planes in the pattern and in no time at all the parking area was full. I wouldn't be surprised if there were over 200 planes. It was fun walking up and down the rows, checking out the planes, seeing old friends and finding out where everyone flew in from.

I ran into several people I'd met at Oshkosh, other attorneys, my CFI who soloed me and more.

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My wife, Nancy, brought Katie and Sean out to see the planes, have a burger and, of course, to give Dad a ride home. It was funny to see my very modern Velocity juxtaposed against the WWII tableau set up behind it.

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Here's a new one. Someone actually sketched my plane, grey primer nose and all.

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My friend Kerry Fritz flew his beautiful Long EZ, Race 99, into Smoketown. He is a repeat Airventure cup racer as you can see, but is running out of space on his plane for the stickers.

Here he is headed out after breakfast. We are making plans to fly together soon.

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We were even graced by the Grand Champion from Oshkosh. How do you top that?

It was a great day, with perfect weather, lots of planes and pilots getting together to enjoy what we all love to do. Smoketown was the perfect venue. As I've said before, this place is the kind of airport, and more importantly, the kind of community, that is hard to find.

I flew in today with an airplane load full of copier paper boxes from work to pack up my hangar to move to Chester County. It's closer, longer and more convenient, but I felt sad about the idea of giving up my hangar at Smoketown. My friends there keep reminding me that it's only 5 minutes away from the new airport and I'm sure we'll still be flying together. The folks there have been very good to me through the construction of two airplanes over the last 14 years and I'll miss being one of the Smoketown airport bums.

I'm going to do a few more repairs/improvements, then move the plane to the new hangar by the end of the month. I'm going to try to get a few more good trips in before paint in October.

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