We will piggyback our fly-in with the local EAA Chapter 704's 3rd Annual - Great Lakes Aviators Build Off and Fly-In. Roland Ashby will be our host. BAC gathering will be at Roland's hangar E-2, which is across from where breakfast will be served. Fly-in starts at 8:00am EDT and breakfast is served until 11:00am. Breakfast is free to pilots that fly-in. If it is anything like last year this was an awesome breakfast. The Ford Tri-Motor will be there as well.
Last year had a great Breakfast. This year is promissimg to be even better with more planes, young eagle flights and the EAA Ford Tri-Motor. Stop by on the way up to Traverse City or Makinaw!
I wasn’t sure I was going to make it in to Sparta. Started seeing ground fog just North of Kalamazoo. Grand Rapids was reporting 800 Broken and 8 miles. The MDA for the RNAV 25 approach was 1280 using Grand Rapids altimeter. The AWOS for 8D4 is out until next year. Fortunately there was a break in the fog just, and I mean just south of the field. I wasn’t able to make out the hangars north of the runway until 2 miles out. A text from Roland backed this up. After landing at 8:22am EDT I met up with Roland Ashby and Mike Risko. Mike landed just before me in his Sierra. This is the first time I met Mike. I enjoyed our talk about adding WAAS to his Garmin GPS, flying his Sierra, and questions about the condition of his donuts. We all had a nice breakfast. While eating that fog I spoke about slowly moved in and prevented any additional aircraft from landing. You could hear them flying overhead hoping to find a break. Finally around 10:30am the sun started to break through and aircraft started to depart and arrive once again. As I was taking off around 11:00 a voice came over the radio and asked is that you John? I said yes. I thought it was Mike but learned later via text it was Larry Newland and his wife Mary arriving for breakfast. Sorry I missed you. That makes a total of 5 for the fly-in with 3 Sierras flying in and 1 Sport based on the field. Thanks for hosting again this year Roland. Looking forward to next year.
Pictured are Mike Risko, Roland Ashby, and John Redmon.
