November 11, 2023 - Breakfast at Allen Airstrip, NJ
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Usually, November is a barren month for aviation events in the Mid-Atlantic area. So I was happy to discover than Allen Airstrip was having their monthly fly-in breakfast on this beautiful Saturday morning.
Mugsy would be joining me from Easton, and Rich/Nhu-An would be flying in their Martin State-based Cessna 172.
Mugsy and I launched on time at 9am, and once over the Eastern Shore could see each other on ADS-B.
Here, I'm looking north over the intricate South Jersey marsh.
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Crazy! Like the cover of a Yes album.
All it took was a single 360-degree turn to allow Mugsy to join on me just west of Millville Airport.
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| Flying past the "Flying W" airport, famous for its airplane-shaped swimming pool. Allen Airstrip is very close and uses the same freq: 122.8. |
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Overhead Allen Airstrip. I was a little nervous that they might not be having the fly-in breakfast in mid-November, and was reassured when I saw the planes below. It had also rained yesterday, so a soggy field was also a worry, but the grass runway turned out to be very firm as I had predicted.
The landing here is a little challenging as there are electric wires and tall trees at the approach end, but I slipped the RV-7 after clearing the trees and had lots of runway left after slowing to taxi speed.
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| Safe on deck at Allen Airstrip. |
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You go through the covered bridge at center to the big green building at left for the breakfast. The excellent breakfast only costs $7, and because I'm a veteran and today was Veteran's Day, I got mine for free! Can't beat that. The event gets a lot of drive-in business as well, and why not? Where can you get such a good breakfast for $7?
They have this fly-in breakfast year round, the second Saturday of every month.
Rich and Nhu-An were delayed for various reasons and hadn't arrived yet.
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The big hangar is filled with all sorts of treasures: planes, cars, fire engines, trolley car, etc.
This is a Mini-Max, a minimum-cost wood aircraft that requires a minimum of building space, time and skill, but which provides a maximum of enjoyment and performance. This would be a good plane for a young flying enthusiast who doesn't have a lot of money to get into aviation. Although Wikipedia says more than 1,800 have been built, I have rarely seen them over the years.
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A rare 1930 Fairchild KR-21. It's powered by a 100 hp Kinner K-5 radial piston engine. It was designed and built by the Kreider-Reisner Aircraft Company of Hagerstown, Maryland. Fairchild Aircraft took over Kreider-Reisner in 1929 and continued to build them, as the Fairchild KR-21, later the Fairchild 21. |
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| This is my third time flying into this event. There is always a good assortment of aircraft types attending. |
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| Watching flight ops. |
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Rich and Nhu-An finally arrive.
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Touchdown!
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| Safe on deck at Allen Airstrip. Unfortunately, a 30-minute delay on the Martin State taxiway caused Rich and Nhu-An to miss the breakfast cutt-off at 11am by 15 minutes. |
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| A well-used Pawnee. |
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Allen Airstrip even has a taxiway. Here we are in a conga line taxiing for takeoff.
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| Crossing big Delaware Bay. |
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| Approaching the Delaware shore. |
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| Looking down at a big container ship. This is how all the stuff you buy on Amazon arrives in the U.S. |
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Passing by Dover Air Force Base. The big C-17s based here are easily seen parked on the ramp.
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| The scenery is pretty, even though the leaves are well past peak and many of them have dropped. |
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Blurry close-up.
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| Flying up Southeast Creek off the Chester River. |
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| A big private grass strip with perpendicular runways! |
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| It's funny, I've flown this area so many times but never really noticed the compound all by its lonesome to the right. |
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Close-up.
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Another private strip running left to right in the middle of the picture. I remember this place being for sale ten years or so ago. I should have bought it. Not only does it have the runway but it is on the water as well.
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Close-up. The runway used to be asphalt but it is pretty much grass, or should I say weeds, now.
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| Finest waterfront estate on the Chester River, bar none. |
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Still a little color left, but not much and it's dull.
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