It’s that time of year again in the Northern Hemisphere—finally!—when many pilots turn to scraping off all the rust their skills accumulated over the winter months and set their sights on flying to fun places offering shirtsleeve weather. One popular destination is always a local or regional fly-in, and literally thousands of pilots save up their nickels for the big, international events like SUN ‘n FUN Aerospace Expo (KLAL, April 8 through April 19, 2024) or EAA AirVenture Oshkosh (KOSH, July 22 through July 28, 2024). Other events, like the recently concluded AOPA Buckeye Air Fair in Arizona, are not as large as SnF or Oshkosh, but remain major attractions.
I’ve flown into my share of these events over the years, with both good and bad experiences. The good include a “Nicely done!” from an SnF controller; the bad involved an experimental amphib cutting through the arrival corridor at my altitude. At a recent local event on a nearby island’s grass strip, my passenger and I touched down, rolled out and parked smoothly, only to be greeted by some glum faces. Turns out there was a Cessna 172’s tail sticking out of some heavy brush toward the end of the runway. I don’t recall what happened, but the airplane wasn’t flying off the island that afternoon.
