1st Annual Maryland-Delaware
All Grass - All Day Tour (July 23, 2005)
Bad weather last Saturday postponed the All Grass - All Day but all conditions were go for this Saturday. Got up at 0530 and was out of the house by 0600. Topped off the tanks and was ready to go by about 0710, but had trouble with the cell phone, then getting through to Potomac, and didn’t take off until 0730. I was a little late getting to Smyrna but was still ahead of two people. It was hazy on the flight over, but visibility improved dramatically soon later. It was probably the best flying conditions in the last 3-4 weeks.
We had four Citabrias (myself, Tom, Mark and Dave) and one Super Decathelon (Dick), plus Herb in his RV-4 later. Smyrna’s owner came over, obviously delighted to have five colorful Citabrias parked on his grass ramp. We talked for awhile, then started the tour. I was flying lead, and in my initial nervousness, flew the formation at 1,000 feet right by Delaware airport. Not good! I settled down after awhile.
Our first stop was at Jenkins Airport which featured an aircraft boneyard. The landing was challenging because of some very high trees at the approach end. We looked at planes which had seen better days, then talked with the owner, Joe Jenkins. He had flown P-61 Black Widows over Germany in WWII – said they would have preferred Mosquitos -- and has made a living in aviation with his airstrip on the Eastern Shore doing crop dusting, instruction and now parts.
Next stop was Henderson. Again, we had tall trees at the approach end. When 3 of us were on the ground, a pickup truck came down the runway. Turns out the field was no longer public. Whoops! Tom said there was a Cub restoration specialist there but his hangar was closed. Other than that, there wasn’t much there.
Then it was on to Eagle Crest, which is an aviation community. On final, I noticed all these birds sitting on the runway. They started flying every which way in front of me. It got to the ridiculous point and I decided to go around, rather than chance hitting one. At least I cleared the runway for the others. There was no reason to get out and look around, other than envy those pilots who live on an airfield, so we just taxiied back, and took off.
Eagle Crest. The runway runs left to right.
We flew along the ocean coast at Cape Henopen for a little bit. We saw the Ferry to Cape May and a large sailing vessel right out of the 19th Century. Then we headed inland to Laurel. My suspicion that Laurel might not have fuel – despite what the chart and AirNav.com said - proved correct. As Tom said, if you aren’t skydiving or cropdusting, then .... We waited until some skydivers came floating down before taking off.
Lined up at Laurel.
Because we were running late, I decided to forget Bennett and go to Miller’s Farm, then Cambridge for fuel. I had Miller’s Farm in the GPS but could not see it. Then Tom said that we were right over a grass strip. I looked down and there it was. So we did a right 270 and flew down the runway.
We headed over to Cambridge to get fuel. Cambridge has a nice, new terminal building at the north end. It has a nice restaurant, although the old restaurant is still there. We all got fuel but it took too long. We were all getting pretty hungry at this point.
It was a short hop over to Horn Point. I lined up on the west runway but decided to switch to the north runway after looking at the sock. We did sort of a left 270 this time. This was another runway with high trees at the approach end. The runway was brown straw but surprisingly smooth. There were plenty of places to turn off and get off the runway. When I took off, I blew straw all over the Citabria behind me.
We headed north along the west side of the eastern shore. At this point, it was an absolutely beautiful day and the scenery was terrific. We passed St. Michals to the left and Easton to the right. We flew over Wye island and I pointed out Wye Plantation to them. Then we dialed 1233 into our transponders and turned west towards Kent Island.
Fueling at Cambridge.
The Citabrias looked great lined up on the grass.
Kentmorr is also an aviation community. It sits right next to the Chesapeake Bay. A very nice marina restaurant is a short walk away.
It was 1430 by this time and we were starving. But we had a great lunch in the air conditioned restaurant with a nice view and the waitress kept bring us lots of ice tea, lemonade and water. My crab cake and fries were excellent.
A shot of a happy group, just after lunch.
The original plan was to head toward Ridgely and overfly the private fields around there. But we’d done enough of that already, and it was getting late, so I decided to take the flight north and fly up the Chester River. We did that and it was great. It must have been something for the boaters to see five Citabrias in trail formation cruising overhead.
We did a break over Massey and landed. I surprised myself with a nice circling approach landing. Three to four foot tall corn fields surrounded the airport; it was cool taxiing with corn on each side. One of the airport owners took us on a tour of all the hangars and told us about the airport. Their aim is to enjoy aviation. They had some very cool airplanes in the hangars including a Stearman, Junker Bunkmeister trainer, Kolb on mono-float, Smith mini-plane, Cub, and a beautiful big Stinson gull-wing. It was 6PM by this time and everybody was excited after the exhilarating river run and great day. We all shook hands and said goodbye.
Three of us did a low-pass, then I headed towards Golda. I was pretty tired so I just climbed to 2,500 feet and just enjoyed the ride. ADIZ entry was smooth and I made another nice circling approach landing at Essex.