August 27, 2019 The Last Day of Re-Flights

The Liberty Gazette

August 27, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: We had great fun filling the week with re-flights around Southern California. Flying select cross-country flights with Mike allowed me to share in his memories of his earliest days aviating.

He still has friends out there where he grew up, and one couple invited us to stay the night before we started our long flight home. They rounded up another friend Mike grew up with, and we all went to dinner together. Since we’re vegan, Asian restaurants make a good choice when we’re with a group of meat-eaters. Avocado rolls and edamame are always on the menu.

Mike’s buddies wanted to know what he was up to, what this trip west was all about. He’s writing a book of historic interest for pilots on the significant changes that have occurred in the way we fly, since he began his journey in flight training 44 years ago. For research, we took the same type of airplane he learned in, back to the same airspace, and retraced his chem trails, noting differences in FAA regulations, shape and size of controlled airspace, changes in the number and busyness of airports and air traffic control towers, and much more. Technology has changed much of the way we fly, too. Both in and outside the cockpit, technological advances have made flying easier, even in the crowded skies over Southern California.

On the way back from the Japanese sushi house, at a stoplight, we thought Leandro, whose big truck we were in, was messing with us, pumping hydraulics or brakes or something. The truck was a-rockin’! Randy, Nancy, and I were laughing at Leandro, saying, “Okay, that’s enough bouncing the truck.” But just then, Mike hollered, “Look at the traffic lights! He’s not doing it—it’s another earthquake!”

Only one day after my first quake, I had just experienced my second. It came from the same epicenter, but jostled us with more magnitude, 7.1 this time. To me, it was exciting. When we returned to our hosts’ home, their dining room chandelier and heavy window blinds were still swaying.

As we do when hurricanes threaten us here, everyone turns on the TV news to find out what they need to know. From the local news channels, I learned about Dr. Lucy Jones, an amazing expert from Cal Tech. She’s been at this a long time and reports what’s happening geologically. Somehow, she takes complex technical details and makes them easy for non-geologists to comprehend. No wonder she’s so popular.

Departing the next morning, we flew the rest of the day and overnighted in Las Cruces. Landing back home the following day, we tucked the Elyminator back in the nest, and tallied it all up: 10 days, 41.7 hours of flight time, 4,075 nautical miles, 32 landings, 21 pages of notes, 2 earthquakes, many good friends, and loads of memories.

Every day of this adventure was chock-full of fun. These past few articles have been teasers for Mike’s upcoming book. We’ll let you know when it’s out.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

August 20, 2019 Strawberries

The Liberty Gazette

August 20, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Strawberries sold for $5 a flat back in the 1980s. A flat holds 12 pint-sized baskets and I could fit about a dozen flats in the nose of a Beech 99, a twin-engine turboprop, without crushing them.

When I flew freight for Cal Air back then, I’d hop around to all these cities in Southern California, at first collecting cancelled checks and later moving up to flying UPS feeder duty out of Ontario. One of the regular runs I flew had me laying over in Oxnard for the day. With some of the richest soil in all the country, it was a strawberry-growing place if I ever saw one.

Before leaving the airport in the morning, some of my fellow pilots would hand over a five and place their order for strawberries. After making my morning run and offloading cargo in Oxnard, I’d head out to fill those orders—strawberries fresh from a farmer’s field. I’d bring them back to all the pilots at our base, and I’d save some to bring back home to Mom.

Linda: He was probably hoping for homemade strawberry pie in appreciation for his efforts. His mom was a great cook.

During our re-flight of the early days of Mike’s first logbook, on approach into Oxnard, I wondered if all those rows of ground covered with big white plastic might be strawberry fields. But then, we had no room for a flat of strawberries. We were already near maximum gross weight with the camping gear and a week’s worth of stuff. Still, I could imagine the taste of fresh strawberries just then.

That reminds me of a side-story about strawberries. Humor me a random interlude. When I moved here to Liberty, my brother-in-law, Rusty Blue, was keeping a garden in my back yard. I wanted fresh strawberries, so I told him that would be a good thing to plant. Of course, he suggested if that was something I wanted, then I should do the planting. But I know my brother-in-law. All I had to do was go buy the tray of strawberry plants and place them by the garden. Sure enough, he stuck them in neat little mounds. They produced sweet berries!

But back to Oxnard. As we were on final for the runway, just over the highway, besides wondering if all those covered fields had juicy red fruit growing, I wondered if the people on the road below us could read the words on the bottom of the Elyminator – “Stuck In Traffic?” I’ve enjoyed having that sign on the bottom of the airplane ever since we put it there in 2012. It gets lots of laughs.

Mike: I rarely carried any cargo in the nose of that Beech 99 other than the strawberries. So, the evening flights back to Ontario during harvest season often meant the sweet scent wafted its way through the airplane during the thirty-minute flight. It also made that airplane the most popular and welcomed on the UPS ramp.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

August 13, 2019 Favorites of the Re-flight

The Liberty Gazette

August 13, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: When the person you love tells you stories of a time pre-us, you long to know what it was like. Flying the routes with Mike that he flew when he was a new pilot gave me an opportunity to explore today’s airspace in yesteryear’s flights. Of the many airports we landed at, I picked five favorites.

Kern Valley was one (my first earthquake). Others were Long Beach, Santa Barbara, Catalina Island, and in a way, El Monte. I wrote about those first three over the last couple of weeks.

A few years ago, we stayed a weekend at Avalon on Catalina Island. Unfortunately, this time, we couldn’t stay, but landing at the “Airport in the Sky” and spending thirty minutes at the restaurant/gift shop was nice. Avalon is romantic, so you can bet we’ll be back. Probably when the Zane Grey Hotel re-opens after remodeling.

Why El Monte? Because that’s where Mike learned to fly. This was where his story began. And it was my first time there. When the tower controller instructed me to fly over the Santa Fe dam and follow the water toward the runway, I couldn’t tell immediately where that was for all the congestion below. But Mike was taken back to a place long forgotten. From that moment on, the week of re-flights created its own special place in our hearts.

We dropped in on Burbank and visited one of Mike’s former co-workers still at Ameriflight (formerly California Air Charter – CalAir). Pete handed Mike his I.D. photo from 1985, in which he looked a bit different than today. The guys reminisced a while, then we took off to replicate the first leg of his first flight for CalAir. It was a short one, Burbank to Riverside, about 30 minutes. On October 1, 1985, young Mike carried 1,100 pounds of canceled checks and bank mail in a Piper Lance.

Approaching to land at Riverside, I laughed in appreciation of the “note” at the end of the runway. Painted in large white letters is, “Wheels,” a nice reminder for every pilot, every time, to check that their landing gear is down.

I cannot imagine what it felt like for Mike to revisit this flight, but it swirls in my heart. In the years since then, he’s been the chief pilot for an international corporation, flying all over the world, and people have come to him from around the globe for instruction in flying jets. To come back to Riverside, flying that first leg from Burbank, thinking about the freight he carried, must have brought a tidal wave of thoughts and emotions. He had to be on time in those days before electronic banking. In the Piper Lance, every minute it took to get his cargo to its destination meant thousands of dollars in interest. Later, when he flew canceled checks in a Learjet, he carried billions, with every minute being worth millions. That’s more than a flat of strawberries, which I’ll tell you about next week.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

August 6, 2019 Shaken, But Not Stirred

The Liberty Gazette

August 6, 2019

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: My first earthquake experience happened July 4 this year, as we prepared to depart our camp-by-your-airplane spot at Kern Valley Airport. What a feeling, the earth moving as we stuffed our gear into the baggage compartment! We didn’t know yet where the epicenter was, or the magnitude. The runway looked fine, so we took off, back over Lake Isabella and headed up the Owens Valley at 8,500’, part of a route Mike used to fly regularly. There’s so much history and geology there.

Mt. Whitney

With Lone Pine Airport off our right wing, and Mt. Whitney off our left, we were between the highest and lowest points in the Continental U.S.: Mt. Whitney is 14,491’, and just 88 miles away is Bad Water in Death Valley, elevation minus 282’!

Lone Pine Airport

We flew north, over the Alabama Hills. From the sky, it was just a little clump of hills, but this has been the most popular location for filming Westerns since the silent movie days of Tom Mix. Many scenes in John Wayne movies were shot there.

The perspective from the Elyminator above this grand valley is stunning, but not void of some sad history. We had a good view of Manzanar, the U.S. internment camp where Japanese people were held during World War II. The airstrip is still visible, as are the outlines of former campsites, now lined with dark clumps of trees across the road from the airstrip. There’s a museum there that tells the history. It was a time of panic in the U.S., and we did the best we knew in a time of fear. If you saw the movie or read the book, “Unbroken,” you know what we feared.

Manzanar

Flying over Manzanar on Independence Day had a sobering effect—oh, the wars we’ve fought. But the next town up the valley was, appropriately, Independence. We circled over Independence and flew back down the Owens Valley, past Mt. Whitney again, and headed to Inyokern to fuel up. That’s where we would learn more about the earthquake.

Approaching Inyokern, we tuned in their common traffic advisory frequency and heard the pilot of a TV news helicopter asking if she could get to the self-serve fuel pump or if there was a fuel truck. Aha! The news must be covering the quake! Mike figured we must be near the epicenter.

CHiP at Inyokern

The California Highway Patrol had landed for fuel in their Cessna 206, as did about four more TV news helicopters. We talked with the airport manager and his fiancé, and learned the epicenter was in the next town, Ridgecrest, only about 30 miles from where we had camped. Magnitude 6.4, with several aftershocks forecast.

Helicopters were transporting patients from the damaged Ridgecrest hospital to hospitals in Lancaster and Palmdale. Other buildings were damaged, too, but the CHP pilots said so far, the roads looked okay.

With fuel in the wing tanks, we took off for more destinations, a couple of which are on my “favorites” list. I’ll tell more next week.

TV News Helicopter at Inyokern

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 30, 2019 Earth Shattering

The Liberty Gazette

July 30, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Ever camp out near a rushing river? Parts of California’s Kern River have Class VI rapids, the highest rating on the International Scale of River Difficulty. Those are death traps for rafters or swimmers, but where the water flows slower, Class I through III are easily enjoyed by the average person.

Lake Isabella

I don’t know the class of the rapids closest to the airport’s campground—maybe Class VI—but about 500 yards from our tent, it sang us to sleep. It was delightful!

Everything about coming to Kern Valley Airport was delightful. I loved the approach to the airport from the south. Just around a mountain, Lake Isabella came into view. Surrounding mountains reflected in her mirrored surface. With the lake off our right wing, we descended into the valley. On the left, and all around the runway, the mountains kept us from flying a wide pattern to land. The visual cues while descending with high terrain all around is fascinating and seems somewhat movie-like. It’s certainly 3D at its best!

We secured the Elyminator with tie-down ropes, set up camp and cooked primitive-style with the latest equipment from REI. The airport’s grassy area caters to fly-in campers in a way every non-airline airport should do. Since there are about 600 airline airports in this country, and about 17,000 non-airline airports, we need the other 16,950 airports to look to Kern Valley as an exquisite example.

Camping at Kern Valley Airport

The entrepreneurial veteran who shuttled us to town for a sunset dinner brought us back later to settle in under billions of stars. Coyotes and jack rabbits ran by in the cool evening, probably wondering who invited us.

The next morning, July 4, we began packing our gear and loading the airplane in preparation for some sight-seeing. I’ve always wanted to fly the Owens Valley, Mike has talked about it so much, as it was part of a route he used to fly regularly. As we were at the baggage compartment, Mike on his knees, stuffing the sleeping bag in, me standing next to him, handing him stuff, suddenly, I felt funny. Surely, I wasn’t getting dehydrated, was I? Maybe I was, I thought my head felt kind of funny, and I wasn’t used to the dry heat.

But no, it wasn’t that at all. A few seconds later, Mike yelled, “Earthquake!”

So, I wasn’t getting sick after all! That was my first earthquake, and now I know how disorienting they are! It wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. Not like the drama Hollywood has produced, although I’m sure they can be that devastating. One of my sisters was living near the epicenter of the Northridge quake in 1994. There were 57 fatalities reported from that one.

But we were not near any buildings, just mountains and lake. We didn’t know where the quake’s epicenter was, or the magnitude. The runway looked fine, so we took off over Lake Isabella. Come back next week and we’ll fly the Owens Valley together.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 23, 2019 Mike's Re-flights

The Liberty Gazette

July 23, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: When I accompanied Mike on his venture back to recreate the earliest pages of his first logbook, something special happened. Landing at the airport in El Monte, California was the first of many places that helped put together so many stories I’ve heard him tell over the years. I didn’t know him 44 years ago when it all began, when he soloed in an airplane for the first time. I was only 10 when he took his first flight. That’s why going back with him had so much to offer. The trip brought me right to the places he’s talked about. The high desert and mountains he loves made their way to my own eyes, and straight to my heart. And now I have my own memories and can picture the area that birthed my favorite pilot.

Long Beach

While his purpose was to document the many changes that have occurred in flying over the past four decades, I soaked in the exciting combination of newness, yet virtual familiarity. Finally, I was flying the flights of his storytelling!

Three of my favorites were Long Beach, Santa Barbara, and Kern Valley.

The Long Beach airport is super cool in a way that’s hard to explain to non-pilots. It’s a busy but spacious airport, with a friendly, small airport feel. Big jets and small prop planes are treated the same here. Kind of like Ellington in south Houston. I also have friends in Long Beach. Nina, who owns a helicopter flight school, and Tanille, who’s working for SpinLaunch. It’s always good to run into friends when you’re far from home. We felt welcome, and the Elyminator was well cared for, parked safely on Ross Aviation’s ramp.

Santa Barbara

Over Santa Barbara, I was awed. The blue-green sea snuggles up to the sandy shore; the mountains just beyond, standing guard. The view from the air is stunning. We parked on the ramp of Signature Flight Support. Usually, the facilities of this world-wide company are upscale. I figured their Santa Barbara location would be a real high-falutin’ place. Was I ever surprised to roll up to a mid-twentieth century hangar and find a humble lobby—the irony of such a simple, old building at an airport where billions of dollars are based! I loved it! It was like going to Chez Nous in Humble and ordering a burger and fries; like your husband’s comfy, old recliner in your new mansion.

Speaking of comfy, the nearby rushing Kern River made for sound sleeping in our tent on the grass next to our plane at the Kern Valley Airport next to Lake Isabella. The mom-and-pop airport cafe even had a separate vegan menu. This was the Fourth of July. On the fence post along the walkway to the diner, a raven perched next to a flowerpot with an American flag stuck in it and looked hopefully through the window at us.

Raven at Kern Valley

There’s so much more to say, so I’ll pick up next week where I’m leaving off here with some earth-shattering news.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 16, 2019 Re-flights

The Liberty Gazette

July 16, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: El Monte, California was where it all began forty-four years ago, when I soloed in an airplane for the first time. There are many public airports in southern California and many flight schools. I picked El Monte Skyways because it was closest to my home. I didn’t have a car because all my money from after school jobs went to flying. I took the bus to school, work, and the airport.

I’ve wanted to go back, reconnect with old friends and re-fly several of my student flights, to see if things are different now. I’ve changed—I’m seasoned. The shape and volume of controlled and restricted airspace have also changed, as have means of navigation and FAA regulations. This was what I wanted to see, the changes flying in the complex and congested area around Los Angeles today.

As Linda flew the Elyminator, I listened to radio chatter and the stream of instructions issued by controllers. When the El Monte tower controller said to fly over the Santa Fe dam and follow the water toward the runway, memories clicked. I was taken back to a place long forgotten.

It was beyond that dam where, as a student, I practiced aerial maneuvers and flew patterns low over the ground. Sometimes, I did this in smoggy conditions. I’d get a special clearance to fly in low visibility. Then I’d follow the flood control channel from the dam’s spillway to a straight-in approach to the runway. The sky is still hazy some days, but it isn’t nearly as bad as I remember it.

Duplicating several cross-country flights from my first logbook, we landed as far south as San Diego Brown Field, only a mile from Mexico and as far north as Kern Valley in the Sierra Nevada, where we camped next to our airplane. We scooted through a special corridor over Los Angeles International to have lunch in Santa Barbara. We could do this more efficiently now, because we have GPS to navigate more directly. This equipment didn’t exist when I was a student.

As we flew between mountains, over deserts and along the sea, Linda took notes as I explained the differences from my new pilot days, such as several of the old airports that no longer exist. Due to politics and greed, houses and industrial parks have replaced them. In one instance, a replacement airport was built only to be threatened by further urban sprawl.

Further, redesigned airspace has added rules in convoluted layers in altitude, designating where one must have a clearance to fly. As a result, activity has increased on already overcrowded radio frequencies. We rarely had a break from the constant staccato of pilot-controller verbiage flowing through our headphones.

In this “going back” adventure, we put 41.7 hours of flight time on the Elyminator over 10 days, flew 4,075 nautical miles, made 34 landings, wrote 21 pages of notes, experienced 2 earthquakes, saw many friends, and made loads of memories. And I noted, so much has changed.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 9, 2019 KSHN FM Memories

The Liberty Gazette

July 9, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: The morning of June 28, Bill Buchanan rocked this part of the world when he announced the sale of KSHN FM.

When he said, “I hope we’ve been of some positive service to this community,” we imagine everyone in Shine All 9’s listening area reflected on stories that confirm Bill’s hope. In fact, it was Hope we thought of.

Besides regular broadcasts of high school football games, the Partyline, and local news, for weeks leading up to Saturday, May 31, 2008, Bill, news director Tiffany York, and others joined forces to pull off an outstanding benefit fly-in. It’s is one of many memories we hold dear, which KSHN helped make a success.

Emotional and financial hardships had descended on a local man and his wife when their second pregnancy ended early with the premature birth of twins. The one baby who survived was hospitalized quite a while, and the bills and upheaval brought trying times with daily trips to the medical center. Their uninsured portion was just shy of $13,000.

Bill promoted the fly-in and as usual, his radio station became the hub for donors and sponsors to join in support. Tiffany put long hours and hard work into planning and logistics, and on the day of the event, it all paid off.

Mike: I took Bill up in our Grumman Cheetah so he could see the sights from above – all the airplanes, the lines of cars, and all the kind-hearted people who had heard Bill talk about the fly-in, whose heartstrings were pulled at the enormity of the burden one local family was asked to bear. From the air, we watched in awe of what people can do for each other.

We flew circles above their remote transmitter. Bill had the birds-eye view and gave a report like none other, which brought more people flocking in.

I’ll never forget that flight with Bill. He spoke into his microphone in one hand and with a radio in the other, checked that his voice was making it down to their audio equipment. Tiffany took care of the rest.

The donor list took up several poster boards hung along the fence. And in the end, Prosperity Bank employees reported over $13,000 raised.

I had a blast flying him, and I’ve enjoyed running into him many other times since then. I can’t help but feel impacted by the sale of the station to KSBJ.

Linda: At 11:30 p.m. on Monday, July 1, the last Community Bulletin Board came on. Then we heard Tiffany’s voice. “It’s twenty-four minutes before the hour and yes, you are still listening to KSHN.” Three songs followed, as we watched the clock: Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” Toto’s “Africa,” and The Beatles’ “Fool on the Hill.”

In the final twelve minutes, she again explained how to listen to KSHN.com online via TuneIn Radio. They played the theme from “A Summer Place,” and then she and Bill said good-bye from the terrestrial station.

“So long everybody.” Bill squeezed out the words, as the Partyline theme began one more time. “So long, we love you, thank you very much for your support.”

As do we, Bill. As do we.

KSHN FM August 8, 1991-July 1, 2019.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 2, 2019 Toddie's Rocket

The Liberty Gazette

July 2, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Clint and Toddie were buds. Both hailed from the Big D, both invested in real estate development, oil, and restaurants. When Clint founded the Dallas Cowboys, Toddie bought a piece of that, too.

Clint was a hands-off owner, trusting the experts he hired to do their jobs. He also loved practical jokes. Before the Cowboys’ first Superbowl, he wrote to Coach Tom Landry: “Dear Tom: I have taught you all I can. From now on, you're on your own.”*

While Clint Murchison lived large, he didn’t live all that long. The last few years of his life, he was bankrupt and battling a rare nerve disease, wheelchair-bound until his death at age 63.

Toddie Lee Wynne’s life went a little differently. He and his brother built Six Flags in Arlington in 1961, the name honoring the six countries that have held power in Texas: Spain, France, The Confederacy, Texas, United States, and Mexico.

Many years before, not far away, the Cuellar family had worked as cotton pickers and cow hands on a ranch in Kaufman. The matriarch was a mother of 12, and accustomed to cooking big meals. One weekend, to help make ends meet, she made extra food and sold it at the county fair. Her dishes were such a hit, she made more money that weekend than the whole family had the entire year. From that success came the El Chico chain of restaurants.

The Wynne family loved Mama Cuellar’s cooking so much, that when they opened Six Flags, one of the first restaurants in the theme park was El Chico. This, friends, is how we got introduced to Tex-Mex. Tacos, enchiladas, fajitas, guacamole, thanks to the Cuellars, and Toddie Wynne.

And here comes the aviation part. It is bitter-sweet.

Toddie partnered with the U.S. government and the state of Texas to purchase Matagorda Island. His one-third of the enclave was the southwestern end, with plenty of room for an airport. Toddie kept his DC-3, and later his Convair there. Oh, the luxury! Astronaut Deke Slayton would fly in and give impromptu airshows. Imagine the parties!

In 1981, his real estate business partner David Hannah II convinced him it was also a great place to relocate their Space Services, Inc. Unfortunately, their Percheron rocket exploded on the launch pad during an engine test. That’s okay, these things happen. Just ask Elon Musk. You regroup, try again.

In 1982, they launched the Conestoga I rocket. It shot 30 miles straight up, as planned. But Toddie would never see the success of his most interesting investment, the first privately-owned rocket to go into space. While waiting for the launch, he had a heart attack and died on the way to the hospital.

Both launch pads are still visible. On the website Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields, you can see aerial photos and old aviation charts that keep the history of Wynne Airport alive.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

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 * Dick Hitt (1992). Classic Clint; the laughs and times of Clint Murchison, Jr. Plano, TX

June 25, 2019 Airplanes and Eateries

The Liberty Gazette

June 25, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: The familiar sound of taxiing aircraft lured me out of the cool shade in our hangar. Reverberation from twin propellers rattled all the heavy metal doors. Two Cessna Skyhawks soon appeared rounding the far end of the row of T-hangars. They waltzed their way along, stopping a few units away.

As their engines clattered to a stop, I sauntered over to my hangar neighbors Selby and O.J. to say hi and find out where they’d been. They don’t usually go far, maybe just a quick flight across the bay to Anahuac. They’ll throw bikes in the back of their planes to ride the six or seven minutes from the airport to the Dairy Queen on Ross Sterling Avenue. The destination isn’t as important as the flight. They don’t need much of a reason, they do it just to fly.

Then the process starts. It’s nearly a ritual: move their cars out of the hangars, carefully push their planes back in, start wiping bugs off the wings. They don’t use anything exotic, just Pledge. They clean their windows, check the oil, maybe adjust something on the engine or airframe. When they’ve finished, it’s just as important to check out what the other has done and talk about it at length. Maybe give advice. Inevitably, someone will show up to offer unsolicited ideas. This is a regular pilot ritual at friendly little airports across the country; first you fly, then you clean and fix, which often takes longer than the flight, then you talk about it.

On Saturday mornings several pilot friends meet for breakfast with the intention of deciding where to fly next. From Baytown, where most of them roost, there are half a dozen places within a half hour flight.

Lufkin has a diner on the airport as does the Texas Gulf Coast Regional airport in Brazoria. Brenham’s Southern Flyer Diner recently reopened for business. Local pilots cheered as did the residents of Brenham who dine while watching airplanes come and go. Liberty’s Jax Hamburgers was recently descended upon by the Baytown group. They used the airport’s crew vehicle to shuttle more than a dozen visiting aviators to the eatery. With copious amounts of burgers and fries consumed, would that added weight prevent their takeoff?

Pilots don’t need a reason to fly, but if there is a nice place to go just for an excuse, that’s enough. Last weekend the place to go was Weiser Air Park on the west side of Houston. This time, it wasn’t pilots’ love of food that provided the impetus. It was to say good-bye. After 56 years, “the country’s friendliest airport” is shutting down. The land that holds its privately owned thirty-four-hundred-foot runway will become an industrial park. The owners hosted a huge going-away party with barbeque and ice cream for the pilot community and anyone else who happened by. While pilots use anything for a reason to fly, the journey home from this affair did so with a heavy heart.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com