July 10, 2021 - Fly-in Breakfast at Mifflin County Airport, Pennsylvania
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Absolutely beautiful flying weather this Saturday morning. Today's destination is Mifflin County Airport in central Pennsylvania which has a highly-regarded fly-in breakfast the second Saturday of every month. I've been wanting to go since I heard about it over a year ago. Today is the day!
Mugsy in his RV-8 out of Easton and Rich/Nhu-An in their Decathelon would be joining me.
Here I'm passing the intricate and complex I-95 and I-695 intersection overpass on the north side of Baltimore.
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Crossing the distinctive tree-covered ridges of central Pennsylvania.
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| The arrival at Mifflin County was a little tricky. I was above a broken cloud layer coming in, to stay above the ridges. But the airport was down in the valley between two ridges. So I had to descend quickly through a gap in the clouds to get down to pattern altitude. |
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And there is Mifflin County Airport (KRVL), near the little town of Reedsville.
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| Looking down at the airport. I can see the line of breakfast in the hangar row with all the cars. |
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Safe on deck at Mifflin County. Mugsy is headed for the food line.
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| There was a long line when we arrived and stayed this long the entire time we were there. The breakfast ran from 8 to 10:30. We arrived around 9. We were probably in line for a half hour. But it worked out well since Rich & Nhu-An arrived about 15 minutes after us, joined us in the line, and we all could eat together. |
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EAA Chapter 518 hosts the breakfast and does a great job. There were quite a few chapter members behind the counter working the grill and counter. The breakfast was superior to what you find at most airport pancake breakfasts: omelets, scrabled eggs mixed with sausage and spinach, potatoes, pancakes. Plus coffee and tang. Rich and Nhu-An are in the longer right hand corner.
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| A Wittman Tailwind taxiis by. I rarely see these but at one time, before the advent of the modern kitplantes, they were popular. The designer -- Steve Wittman -- is a legend in the homebuilt community. The Tailwind is constructed with a steel tubing fuselage, wood wings, and fabric covering. They are fast compared to most of the older, plans-built planes. Approximately 350 were built. You can still buy the plans from Aircraft Spruce & Specialty. |
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| We talked to the owners of this nice-looking Citabria during breakfast. |
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My RV along with another, unpainted RV sit out front the pilot's shack.
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| Bob G. flew in for breakfast with his AirVenture Aware winning RV-7. I met Bob back in 2016 while he was still building: Link. |
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A big Stinson on the ramp.
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| Nhu-An and Rich taxi by while Mugsy gets some gas. |
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Mugsy and I took off and 41 miles to the east north-east later, were over Sunbury Airport (71N), which is a grass strip in the middle of the Susquehanna River.
The runway is 251 feet wide!
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| Parked on the ramp at Sunbury. This is the widest runway I've ever landed at. |
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| The runway edges are lined with mobile homes, RVs and trailers. |
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| Winds were light and variable. |
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Mobile homes camped with the river on one side and the grass runway on the other. We talked with one of the mobile home owners. He and his wife life here half the year and down in Florida the other half.
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| EAA Chapter hosts a fly-in lunch the first Saturday of every month from 11-2. I'll have to check it out. |
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The airport manager told us this airport has been around a long time, since the 1920s. There were no trees then, and the island was 100 feet wider than now, so it was just a big grass square. Airplanes could land in any direction, into the wind.
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Not only is the grass runway wide, but it is 3,250 feet long.
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| Departing Sunbury, we passed over Muir Army Airfield (KMUI) on the way home. They have quite a few helicopters parked on the large ramp. |
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I had to get back to Essex Skypark before 2PM because there was a TFR closing down the airspace over W48 for an airshow from 2 to 3. What?!
So Thursday I was at the Skypark polishing my RV-7 when this Pitts I had never seen before landed and was put into the maintenance hangar. Very unusual. Later that night I was at home doing some flight planning for Saturday. I noticed on the Weathermeister.com map that there was a temporary flight restricted area (TFR) right over Essex Skypark and the Back River Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 3. I did some investigating on the internet and it didn't take me long to discover that Brian Correll Air Shows was doing an airshow for Tiki Lee's Dock Bar on the Back River. The Pitts was Brian Correll's. I'd never heard of Tiki Lee's before, or seen it from the air, even though I fly over that area all the time. I discovered Tiki Lee's Dock Bar is relatively new, and one of those bar/restaurants with tables on sand and palm trees that are so popular in Ocean City. It was Tiki Lee's 1st Annual Shootout On The River and involved speedboat racing as well.
So, I knew about the TFR and the airshow beforehand, thanks to Weathermeister.com.
I arrived back at the Skypark around 1:30 or so of course I had to check out the Back River and Tiki Lee's.
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I've never seen so many boats on the Back River.
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Now that's a party!
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| Waiting for the airshow and boat races to start. |
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Tiki Lee's Dock Bar. Will have to try it out one of these days.
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As you can see, Essex Skypark is very close to the action. I landed, just ahead of another Essex Skypark pilot, who had no idea what was going on or that a TFR was going into effect in a few minutes and the Skypark would be closed.
On the ground, a bunch of us watched the airshow -- although the Pitts was frequently so low we couldn't see him because of the trees. Here's a video of some of the airshow: Link
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Brian Correll in his highly modified Pitts S2S. (photo from his webpage)
And so ends yet another interesting aviation day.
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