At the Grassroots Fly-in, Brodhead, WI.
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In CMH, circa 1981 – 1983, I was invited to fly a freinds Stearman. The stick felt like a baseball bat only better. This guy was a Tech Rep for Dassault/Falcon Jet and lived on a farm north of town with a 3500 ft grass runway. Once a year he and his wife hosted a “Fly-in” where everyone could participate in an aerial scavenger hunt, bomb drop contest, the hangar barbeque and evening of fun with live music.
I brought my girlfriend in an Aerospatial Robin, a tent and two sleeping bags. We had a great time dropping small sandbags on a floating target in the pond and an excellent feed but after we went to sleep, the rain came hard and pretty soon, we were wet and cold. At dawn, I fired up the Robin and taxied out to the grass strip. There had to be 25 airplanes, each with a tent or two pitched in the makeshift campground. On my taxi out, I tried to cross what looked like a small grass drainiage ditch and Q-tipped the prop. It was an expensive mistake. $500 dollars and eight days later, the airplane was back in service……
Jim and Dondi, thanks for a great time!
Stearman – my sole experience with flying in these kinds of aircraft. White-knuckly flyer that I am, I was scared to death to go until my father-in-law took us to the skies.
It was mid-October in New England – autumn from that height was beyond breathtaking. It was 20+ years ago that I did that and I can still smell the air and the engine on the old bird. Slow banking turns over the in-laws’ house; slow banking turns over the local reservoir. The colors, the smells. It was so exhilirating that even the grass strip landing at the end didn’t bother me.
If we could have gone up again I would have, but time was passing too quickly as the sun started to set. The owner of the plane took her to Florida that winter and she never came back north. I still reminisce about that with my FIL.
Those in East Texas parts can enjoy something similar even if not so much focused on purely antiques. Fall in the air, airplanes in the sky, campfires in the woods. Enough to make one forget about all the troubles in the world for a few hours.
Ya’ll come…I’m hoping to have the RV-4 there if I get my upgrades finished in time.
http://www.reklawflyin.com/
My cousin moved his Stearman, Travel Air, and Cub to Brodhead years ago after he sold his barn. The only guy I’d known who rebuilt and restored sixteen antique planes. He absolutley had to own this particular Travel Air which was one of the planes Lindberg flew.
It was my first flight in a Cub. Take off, cruise and landing speeds were pretty much all the same. Loved the fuel gage which was a wire on a cork floating in front. When the wire went all the way down, so did you.