Billed by the organizers as “Spring Break for Pilots” Judy and I have attended this show about eight times first in 1990 and 1991 and then starting up again in 2001. We attended pretty regularly until we started going to Oshkosh every year, now we try to make it to Sun and Fun every other year.
We last attended in 2010 meeting up on the field with Pete and Beth from Beaufort North Carolina. We first met them at Oshkosh in 2009 when they were tied down directly behind our plane. Beth likes coffee and it was their first year at Airventure and they had left their coffee pot behind. The necessity of caffeine broke the friendship barrier and we’ve been hanging with them at distant places with airplanes ever since.
Taking off from Danbury VFR the plan was to pick our way southwestward around the New York Bravo as the IFR routing would have put us in the clouds while joining v16 over JFK. The surface winds were blowing big during the departure from runway 26 and it required two hands on the controls to keep everything upright climbing into 50 knot winds aloft at 3000. AIRMET’s Sierra Tango and Zulu were in effect for most of the northeast with low clouds turbulence with the freezing level at the surface. Icing up an airplane in the busiest airspace around isn’t the way I want to get on the nightly news so we headed west from Danbury and try to get a bravo clearance at 3000 direct to Solberg New Jersey. In that neighborhood jogging southeastward towards Robbinsville kept us clear of the Philadelphia Bravo to join Victor 1 east of the MOA’s and Restricted areas. Calling the approach controller we apprised him of our plan.
He counter offered down the Hudson at 2000 till south of the statue of liberty the over to Colts Neck where we climbed a bit and headed southwestward. The weather cleared up nicely around Salisbury MD and we climbed thru a hole to 6500. Rewarded with some spectacular tailwinds we pulled the power back and changed our destination from Hampton Roads Va to Kinston North Carolina.
Departing Kinston on an IFR flight plan filed to Lakeland we arrived there two and a half hours later, where Pete had saved us the Number 1 camping spot. New York to Central Florida in six and a half hours flying with an hour lunch break thrown in nearly rivals the elapsed time it would have taken to get to Lakeland commercially when driving to airports, checking in, flying, luggage and rental car retrieval, along with the drive to Lakeland are factored in.
We didn’t attend last year and fortunately we missed the tornado’s. I have been there when there has been severe weather but generally our experiences at the event have been pleasant. Camping at the end of runway 9 is a lot of fun. The showers in the campground are first class and the local EAA chapter's corn roast nightly is a good activity after the sun sets. We used to spend the week but the last few times we have gone we’ve limited our stay to a few days usually adding in another destination either on the way there or on the way home. We did Key West for a couple nights then Sun and Fun four years ago and did a few nights in St Simons the year prior to that.
We’re planning on attending again this year and if you’re thinking of making the trip we’ll see you down there. I’m planning a Sun and Fun NOTAM briefing session in our new classroom space at Motion Simulations the Monday before the show. If you’re interested in attending please call or send an email to info@fullmotionflight.com and we’ll reserve a spot for you.
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