{"id":1539,"date":"2010-10-31T22:50:18","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T03:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fitzvideo.com\/sky_surfing\/?p=1539"},"modified":"2015-04-04T09:01:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-04T14:01:12","slug":"turning-leaf-fly-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/2010\/10\/31\/turning-leaf-fly-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning Leaf Fly-In"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Doug Moler’s third annual ultralight fly-in, held at Highpoint ((3K55)\u00a0October 30th,\u00a0 brought those birds out of the woodwork plus some of the “heavy iron”.\u00a0 It\u00a0 was even cause for a temporary truce between\u00a0the Huns, the Brits & French. Note in the photos that\u00a0a Hun and a\u00a0Hun hunter\u00a0are parked side by side.\u00a0 Actually\u00a0it was part of the truce, that way our\u00a0guns would not be aimed at each\u00a0other and neither would take a sneaky shot!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fokker DR-1 Turning to park next to other warbirds<\/p><\/div>\n

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Fokker DR-1, AirBike and Sonnex (all warbirds)<\/p><\/div>\n

Small planes swarmed\u00a0 in from Cook\u00a0 Field (Hart’s Coyote II\u00a0and Hilderbrand’s Sonnex), from Cherokee Strip (Girard’s Kolb, Geide’s Geide Hawk), Selby Aerodrome (Fiebich’s AirBike, FitzGerald’s Quicksilver), Miles Field (Curtis’ Fokker DR-I) plus an\u00a0 assortment of Pipers, Rans, Interstate, Cessna’s,\u00a0 Champ,\u00a0 Bonanza,\u00a0several from the\u00a0host airfield\u00a0and a few others that escape my mind.\u00a0 About 18 airplanes in all joined the afternoon of food, friendship, constant flying and ride giving.<\/p>\n

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Dick Geide climbs into his self-designed Geide Hawk<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Full power fly-by done by Gerry Sibley in his BT-13<\/p><\/div>\n

Doug and wife Sabrina supplied the majority of food and refreshments with everyone bringing their speciality dishes such as home made chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin pie, cranberry cobbler, potato salads,\u00a0etc.\u00a0 Bowls of Halloween candy were placed stragetically.<\/div>\n
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Nestled deep in enemy territory is Niel Wrettberg’s Fokker D VII<\/p><\/div>\n

Knowing I was\u00a0near enemy territory I wanted to follow up on a hunch about a new Hun\u00a0plane about to join the fray.\u00a0\u00a0With engine out and gliding silently, I\u00a0landing softly\u00a0on a\u00a0Neil Wretberg’s sod strip\u00a0and coasted to a stop near some pine trees.\u00a0 Sneaking into a hangar I spotted a brand new scale replica of a Fokker D\u00a0VII.\u00a0 Attempting to frighten people away, Neil had positioned several cardboard cutout “scarecrows” of himself in the hangar next to the plane. I took several espionage photos then scrambled away. We may soon see more of this weapon in our gunsights!<\/div>\n
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The plane is real, the cardboard “scarecrow” cutout of Niel is not<\/p><\/div>\n

As the saying\u00a0 goes, “all\u00a0 had a good (actually GRAND) time”. The pilots had as much fun flying, giving rides and smoking up the place as did those ground-pounders who watched. These are\u00a0 the events we look forward to, enjoy while they are taking place, and\u00a0exaggerate while reliving the memories via photos and subsequent hangar talk.<\/div>\n
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I left Selby Aerodrome about 1:00 in\u00a0 the early afternoon and with a waiver from the Mid-Continent tower, flew through the airport’s Class C airspace while following the Big Ditch at an\u00a0altitude of 400′ AGL.\u00a0Over the\u00a0tower frequency I\u00a0heard them announce: “Watch for wake turbulence from AirBike\u00a0flying the Big Ditch.”\u00a0I think there was a bit of sarcasism is that voice!<\/div>\n
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Flying over a watery subdivision adjacent to the Big Ditch<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A smoking flyby at Highpoint announced my\u00a0 arrival and signaled more temporary IFR conditions to follow during\u00a0the day’s activities. It wasn’t long before\u00a0a later\u00a0smoking\u00a0solo performance by me was challenged\u00a0by Doug Moler’s in his AirBike.\u00a0\u00a0Later we teamed up for multiple formation smoking fly-bys.<\/p>\n

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A “militarized” Sonnex built and painted by Mike Hilderbrand<\/p><\/div>\n

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Detail photo showing Doug Moler’s customized shoe heel to fit muffler<\/p><\/div>\n

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Doug Moler wows the crowd with his smokin’ Airbike fly-by!<\/p><\/div>\n

At 6:15 PM I peeled\u00a0out of our formation,\u00a0circled\u00a0the\u00a0runway and made a mad dash for Selby Airdrome 30 miles away and 15 minutes prior to official sunset.\u00a0 Even at 65 MPH I didn’t make\u00a0it but the sky was clear which provided an extra 15 minutes of civil twilight.\u00a0 Five minutes after landing, the lights went out, it was dark as the inside of a cow!<\/div>\n
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Carefully adding mixed oil\/gas, Paul Fiebich refills his AirBike’s twin wing tanks.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Refuled,\u00a0 wiped down, parked and covered, my AirBike was soon fast asleep in its bunker while the hot engine parts popped and creaked during its continued cool down. Hangar door shut, ceiling lights out, I walked the hangar’s length in darkness towards the entry door knowing by heart\u00a0where the obstacles were.<\/div>\n
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Paul D. Fiebich<\/div>\n
a.k.a. AirBike Ace<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doug Moler’s third annual ultralight fly-in, held at Highpoint ((3K55)\u00a0October 30th,\u00a0 brought those birds out of the woodwork plus some of the “heavy iron”.\u00a0 It\u00a0 was even cause for a temporary truce between\u00a0the Huns, the Brits & French. Note in the photos that\u00a0a Hun and a\u00a0Hun hunter\u00a0are parked side by side.\u00a0 Actually\u00a0it was part of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fly-ins","category-uncategorized","category-4-id","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11088,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions\/11088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}