2nd Annual Fly In to Gastons is under way

j_w_bruce

j_w_bruce

Orbiting Earth
The South Central Region of the Beech Aero Club kicked off the fly in to Gastons on Friday Night with several BAC members making an appearance for Dinner.

Greg Smith and his family was already at the resort when the rest of us arrived at approximately 7:00 pm Central Time. The rest of us included Gary and Debbie Boyce, Brad and Amy Mitchell, Jay and Deanna Bruce.

Day 2 is planned to start at about 8:30 am when several more BAC members are expected to start arriving.

I'll be posting more about this fly in along with pictures by next Tuesday or Wednesday...

Jay
 
The Rellihans are up (after about 5 hours' sleep). We'll get some breakfast at about 0930, and will wander out around the runway. It sure looked barren when I went out to the truck earlier, without Sunny B parked on it somewhere. We are in Room 52, facing the river. Ground floor, second two-story building to the left of the office (while facing the office).

Too bad the SkyeMaster couldn't come with us. This place is literally over-run with squirrels. He would have very much enjoyed dealing with that particular issue. A lot more than we enjoyed dealing with a broken alternator belt. At least Sunny kept his tradition. He has never stranded us anywhere in the 17+ years he has lived with us.
 
11/5 was a good day to 'commit aviation' as we now say back home. After about 8:30 in the AM, the wind started picking up, but no problem with Gastons down in the valley. Yeah right!, we saw some interesting approaches, and the departures were a workout to say the least. At mid day, it looked like we would have a gusty 10 to 20 mile per hour tail wind for our planned departures, so we all decided that if that held up, we were going to take off going west and just motor out over the high tension wires. But by later in the afternoon, the valley had calmed down to just a few MPH's for our tail wind, so everyone decided to take off to the east. As soon as we cleared tree top level, the gusty cross wind/tail wind (10 to 20 MPH) picked us up and started really pushing us on down the valley. But no problem, by this time, we were already past the tree tops, and had a few options. It was great.

Spectacular weather, phenominal turn out: 7 Musketeers on the Ramp, and 2 families driving in.
Mike and Paula Rellihan (South Carolina)
Gary and Debbie Boyce (West Virginia)
Brad and Amy Mitchell (Kentucky)
Greg and Lauren Smith and family (Arkansas)
Keith Green (Arkansas)
Dave Buttram (Kansas)
Bo and Sandra Boggs (Texas)
Mark and Tyra Miller (Texas)
Jay and Deanna Bruce (Arkansas)

A wealth of knowledge was available for the taking. By my estimate, we had 1 IA (inspector), 3 A&P's, at least 1 maybe more CFI's, several instrument pilot experts, and 4 members of the leadership of your BAC type club. My thanks to everyone who pulled together to make BAC to Gastons a big hit and helped the South Central Region send out 2005 on a high note. Check back here, I'll be posting more about BAC to Gastons along with photos and links to landing and departure video as it becomes available.

Jay Bruce
 
We, like Mark and Tyra, got home around 7:30. They were starting up as we took off. We stopped in Harrison for fuel (Devil's own business finding it in the haze. As usual, when I identified it, it was dead ahead). We were passing over FSM when Mark took off after fueling there.

They went direct over the hills, while we did an end run to McAlester before turning south. From there, just fly down US75 to home.

Talk about a headwind! we logged 4.1 hours going 296nm with one stop.
 
Bo, I was there, but I'm looking forward to reading about the trip in your Journal. I'll probably upload some pictures tonight and some more tomorrow night into the photo gallery on the BAC web site.

Also, I'm trying to get a video of landing and take off (from inside the plane) to Dave Buttram for placement on his web site, and everyone can ride with me first hand as I make the worst grass landing I have ever made! It's only a single bounce, but it wasn't what I was expecting.

More later,
Jay
 
The first round of fly in photos are uploaded for you to check out. This is definitely not all of them. Just look for Gastons 2005, if it is not on the main page of the Photo Gallery, then look under SOUTH CENTRAL FLY IN's

Thanks
Jay
 
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