Fly-Ins Made Simple

One of aviation’s great pleasures is to meet up with a bunch of friends at some out-of-the-way airport and just watch airplanes, enjoy the scenery and wallow in all things aviation for a little while. This is the heart of what has been known for generations as “the fly-in.” Someone organizes the event, chooses a place and date and gets the word out on what is going to happen. Fly-ins can involve as few as two airplanes or can expand to the size of that little annual outing in Wisconsin each July. In fact, one of the big topics of discussion inside the EAA’s Homebuilt Council over the past few years is “how do we help create more widely spread out grassroots fly-ins?”

Well here’s an answer: Disorganize them! I say that tongue in cheek, of course; organization is the heart of a safe gathering of airplanes. But organization might not be as complicated as you think. In fact, I have made a practice of “disorganizing” low-effort fly-ins ever since I built my first airplane and find that I enjoy the true grassroots nature of a simple gathering more than one with catered dinners and event hotels. A few examples might illuminate.

Back when I finished my first RV, I put about 350 hours on it in the first year. Yeah, I was really enjoying it! I was down on the Texas Gulf Coast and the flying weather was good year-round. There were also quite a few other RVs in the Lone Star State and it wasn’t hard to raise a quorum by posting on the Van’s Air Force site. Just about every weekend, you could count on finding folks at one of the popular Hill Country barbecue spots or the ’50s diner in Brenham. One of the regulars, a guy from Fort Worth, was always raising the idea of a camping event—you know, throw a tent, a bedroll and a few days’ worth of food in the back and head off somewhere to camp by the plane.

He kept talking about it until one day he announced, “Petit Jean, Arkansas! It’s a state park with a runway beside it. Be there the day after Thanksgiving.” Since he was a former naval aviator, we all saluted and loaded our airplanes. I think about seven or eight airplanes showed up, and the highlight of the weekend was Friday night around the campfire when we discovered that everyone had brought too much food. So we built a nice cooking fire and shared steaks, burgers, drinks and what-not until the last survivors crawled away to their tents about 0300. The next day we hiked, explored and sat in lawn chairs around the airplanes. There was no plan—just meet at an airport with whatever you needed to survive.

That little gathering became an annual event and we weren’t the only group that discovered the place. The local boys had been doing the same thing. Eventually, they decided to bring some vehicles and a group tent and arrange lodging nearby for those who didn’t like sleeping under canvas. A recent Petit Jean fall fly-in attracted something like 150 airplanes, all because a few folks decided to get away with little planning. Grassroots at its finest.

A year or so after the first Petit Jean gathering, I looked around Texas and found a state park of our own with a runway: Lake Whitney, located a bit southwest of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Again, I just dropped a note out there saying I was going camping. Anyone who wanted to join me could find me at the southwest corner of the runway on Friday night. Sure enough, a half-dozen airplanes showed up and someone (I think he was a Swift driver) drove down from Fort Worth with a BBQ in the back of his truck. We lay under the stars and counted heavenly bodies, traded rides in each other’s airplanes and just had as good a time as we could make. Someone threw me the keys to their big-tired Super Cub clone and said, “Have fun!” So I did. He had the keys to my RV in case I screwed up.

Now that we’re living near Lake Tahoe in Nevada, we discovered a hidden gem of an airport about 30 miles away as the crow flies. Alpine County is nothing but a long paved runway in the mountains, with a paved ramp and some tie-downs. It’s there to serve firefighting aircraft when the need arises. Otherwise, it’s more or less abandoned. The nice thing is, you can camp right next to the ramp. There are no facilities, but there are clearings in the trees and fire rings built out of rocks from other visitors. Shortly after we discovered it, we put out a note on VAF that we were going to go primitive camping one October weekend. Sure enough, 10 or so airplanes appeared. Nothing was provided but a place and time—but another wonderful night was spent by the fire and we did it again and again for several years.

Probably my most special “disorganization” was something I set up after a reconnaissance flight way out to the Big Bend area in West Texas. There I discovered the Big Bend Ranch State Park. Formerly one of the largest cattle ranches in the state, it had been deeded over to the public and turned into a park that was magnificent but had trouble attracting visitors because it was so remote. Fortunately, the former ranch owner had seen fit to build a 7000-foot paved runway about half a mile from the ranch house complex, which made it a perfect location for pilots to fly in and enjoy the wilds of the west as nature intended. The place sported a bunkhouse bed for $25 a night and three meals a day in the mess hall for about $20.

All I did was put out the word that I was going to be there on a given weekend and if anyone wanted to join me, here was the number to call for reservations. That was the sum total of my efforts to put the thing together, and we attracted 10 airplanes or so. We took jeep rides through the nearby national park. We mountain-biked. We rode horses, hiked, flew around the desert enjoying the scenery—taking care to stay on the correct side of the Rio Grande—and sang songs around the campfire late into the evening while watching the stars. We got to know the “4:45 javelina” that sauntered through the compound at the exact same time every day.

And in all that swirl of activity, I met an interesting lady with an RV-6 who had flown in from Carlsbad, New Mexico, despite the fact that her radio wasn’t working­­—not that it made much difference out there in the middle of nowhere. She also was intrigued by the idea of a weekend out away from the madding crowds, with airplanes as our trusty steeds and new friends to meet around the campfire. I was really glad she came because it turned out that weekend wasn’t just a fly-in success—it was the time I met my future spouse!

You never know what you’ll find when you “disorganize” a fly-in.