20th Annual Taylorcraft Rendevous

[BMayes]

Re: 20th Annual Taylorcraft Rendevous

Laptop, maybe. Mine is like hauling around a brick.

[Jim Meeker]

Re: 20th Annual Taylorcraft Rendevous

Jerry
Tell Ron I plan on being there.
Cheers
Jim
PS the picture with my name is from the 18th Rendezvous at Columbia

[Pearson]

Re: 20th Annual Taylorcraft Rendevous

Well the bird is fueled, the GPS has fresh batteries, and the coffee maker is set to go off at 0515. I will be joining up with Brent Mayes in Grants Pass, OR at 1100 tomorrow (Fri). Oh yea, the digital camera is in my flight bag. So plan on some great pictures of a great gathering of Taylorcrafts at Sonoma, CA this weekend.

If anyone reading this is within a short flight, come join us, even if you can't show up in a Taylorcraft.

[Pearson]

Re: 20th Annual Taylorcraft Rendevous

Well the fly-in was a lot of fun. For those of you not interested in reading the report, the pictures are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardpearson/sets/ . There is a "slideshow" icon near the upper right. Or you can just flick through them. With the slideshow you don't see the captions describing the picture, but it is faster.

The weather was marginal when I first took off, but improved as I flew south. I had to fly about 8 miles over a solid overcast, which I try to avoid. I was familiar with the terrain below and had about 800 feet between the clouds and the ground. The engine was running fine, so I pressed on. I met Brent Mayes in Grants Pass. He took off out of McMinnville, OR. From there we flew down and back together in loose formation.

The turnout was poor, only 8 Taylorcraft. But the weekend was very pleasurable. We parked and camped right next to the grape vines surrounding Sonoma Skypark. The EAA chapter opened their hanger with kitchen and shower facilities. They also put on the best feed ever, grilled tri-tip. Of course, as a vegan you might not care about that. But they also had Sierra Nevada Pale Ale for a buck apiece so we filled their coffers.

Everyone flew over to Petaluma for breakfast except me. I had all kinds of food and snack stuff, so I just stayed at camp and ate that. While eating on a picnic table under a huge Oak tree next to my plane, several people walked, drove, or biked up to me and sat down to chat. It is that kind of airport. Before long it was a regular gathering. We all watched as the Taylorcraft bunch all returned, grading their landings in good pilot fashion. Before you know it, they had all tied their planes down and walked over to our shady spot under the tree for a regular hangar flying session.

Brent Mayes and I got a private tour of a collector's hangar full of extremely interesting stuff. This fellow had an old biplane called a Populair that only had 200 hours on it. It had been sitting in hangars for decades and the fabric was all original. It was in very poor condition, but I was excited to see such a unique plane in it's ORIGINAL condition. He also had a plane called an Eaglerock. Others included a Curtis pusher and a Taylorcraft L-2 in near ORIGINAL form.

We watched video of guys in Super Cubs and a Maule landing on water and skidding to a stop on a sandbar. There were also videos of a spot landing contest and a guy that flew a Taylorcraft L-2 across the north Atlantic through Europe to Greece. I also brought a DVD of the Alliance, Ohio Taylorcraft Fly-In 2001, complete with Steve Alsterlind taking off with golden drops of dew tinted by the morning sun streaming off the back of his wings. Everyone thought it was really cool. My DVD also had a lot of video from the very last Northwest Antique Airplane Club fly-in held at Evergreen Field in Vancouver, WA. Everyone wanted a copy of that.

As usual, Sunday morning there were two or three Taylorcrafts that must have had a fire to go to. They were cranking up at 0630 that morning. I stayed in the bag until a little after 7. Then I figured why fight it. I knew I wasn't going to get anymore sleep. Brent and I took off about 0830, stopped in Benton, CA (Redding) and Grants Pass, OR for fuel. I landed at my home airport at 1730. Flight time going down was 6:39. On the way back it was 7:08.

[Forrest Barber]

Re: 20th Annual Taylorcraft Rendevous

Thank you Richard, we looked it all over twice..... Patty & I should just take off some day and visit. Oh , well..... Remember the Alliance gathering in 1973 only ahd five ships from off field. Even now a lot just drive-in...
I think I heard C.G. sigh a bit as I watched your slide show and the one from Alaska this morning.
It is a bright & sunny day out there in Alliance.
I will be timing Alan Rudolph's Piet this afternoon so the new owner Frank Paviliga can fly her this week-end.

[gfortin]

Re: 20th Annual Taylorcraft Rendevous

Being a BC12-D owner for only a year, I hope to make the trip to Alliance this year and meet all you great guys I have been reading everynight. I think I will drive this year because I only have fuselage tank. I am preparing to install a wing tank sometime this year. Then I will fly out from Maine. Are any of you going to Sentimental Journey?