What Fun! The Air Fair was a great time for everybody. The project is a fund raiser for the Western North Carolina Air Museum - tours of the museum, airplane and helicopter rides, hot dogs and burgers and belly washers of several descriptions ... it's a weekend blast.
The lemonade and ice cream stands are up early - on a warm day those rake in good money for the cause. On Saturday we had 18-20 airplanes fly in before noon ...
It wasn't possible to catch a picture of the airplanes that were flying rides because they weren't on the ground together ... there was a 182, a 172, a Tiger and (of course) Champ ... all together I suspect a couple of hundred rides may have been given to paying passengers at $25 each. The helicopter was busy constantly - a Robinson R44 - no way to know how many he flew because I was busy with Champ ...
The local newspaper photographer snapped this one of Bill and me getting ready for our "Dawn Patrol" flight (OK, it was a little after dawn - we called it an "advertising" flight)
This was my view of the Air Fair most of the weekend. Different hairdos, of course, but you get the idea.
The trees at the south end of the field make for interesting departures when flying rides, so we generally takeoff to the north and make our approach over those trees. With 3000 feet of runway (half paved, half grass) we have plenty of room as long as the pilot minds his airspeed. I like using the grass for landing with Champ, of course.
Sunday was a little quieter but was still a terrific day ... a Bell JetRanger from one of the local racing celebrities dropped by for awhile ...
The kids love riding the museum's ornithopter ... powered by an old farm engine that pops and clatters its way along a taxiway behind the hangars ...
The Air Fair for 2009 is history ... Champ flew 23 paying passengers and gave gratis rides to some of the volunteers ... we won a lot of friends for a friendly little airplane. Talk was heard from some people about learning to fly and from others who were finding possible ways to put together partnerships for some affordable flying fun ... that's what it's all about ...
Fly safe, Y'all.
