The perfect flying day

What is your definition of a perfect flying day?

Mine is a cross-country that includes a get-together with fellow aviators while making new friends, then a meal accompanied by a round or two of hangar flying tales. Add to that a chance to look at a lot of interesting aircraft and finally a safe return home.

With those considerations in mind, I nominate Feb. 3, 2024, as my candidate for that perfect day.

Here’s how it unfolded: Out the door with my flight bag before the sun rose. Wheels off the ground at 8 a.m., exactly on schedule.

My friend Mark Jenerette, a flight instructor who has forgotten more than I will ever know about flying, is in the right seat of 2263C, my Cessna 180 Skywagon. Mark is relearning the lessons from his tailwheel endorsement many years distant and hand flies us most of the 164 miles to our destination, SC00 near Woodruff in the South Carolina upstate.

SC00 is better known as Triple Tree Aerodrome. With 7,000- by 400-feet of manicured grass, Triple Tree is the holy grail of fly-in destinations in the Southeast.

There are only a handful of days a year in which this great facility is open to all aviators. And Feb. 3 was one of those. It was the Chili Chilly Fly-In, a cold-weather rite of winter.

“Welcome to Triple Tree,” a voice over the aircraft radio replied as we reported left downwind. “Land long and taxi uphill,” another voice instructed as I announced final.

I have little experience at intentionally landing long and added too much power. So we ballooned a little, bounced a couple of times about midfield, and then slowed.

At the top, we found only one other aircraft in a parking area that looked like it could easily accommodate 500 planes. We were guided into a slot beside that first arrival, a pristine Cessna 120.

“You’re early,” the guide said. It was 9:20, the temperature 38°, and the sky a cloudless, brilliant blue. The high for the day was predicted to be 60.

As I sorted out my camera gear, the distinctive sound of a radial engine caught my ear and moments later NC16598 tucked in beside us.

Jim and Eileen Wilson of Cross, S.C., got out of their 1936 YKS-6 Standard Cabin WACO and we were flying friends just like that.

Jim, a General Aviation News reader, said he was a mentor to Benjamin Givens, subject of a recent story on the Ace Basin Tailwheel Flight School at Walterboro, S.C. (A flight school only for tailwheel pilots).

The Wilsons flew in from SC37, their airfield in Berkeley County. I immediately accepted Jim’s invitation to visit and talk more about his plane and airfield.

Five minutes later I could now count the landing lights of eight planes spread out in a long line on final. And another long line of planes streamed overhead to enter the downwind.

The Fly-In announcement had noted a heated hangar for the meal, but the big door was up when I got there. Obviously, they were anticipating the warmer weather.

If you don’t know Triple Tree, the big hangar is the focal point of events on this sprawling 400-acre oasis of aviation. On regular days the hangar houses the museum’s outstanding display of planes. Today some of them had been rolled out front to make space for tables and chairs.

The main action at the moment was on the runway and I made the quarter-mile walk down the hill to a spot near the touchdown point.

The variety of arriving aircraft was amazing. Every kind of Cessna and Beechcraft you can imagine, tailwheel aircraft galore, warbirds, ultralights, twins, seemingly every iteration of RVs and all the Zenith models. Beautiful birds, many of them spruced up and some polished for the occasion, floated by one after another.

Half an hour into the picture-taking two familiar individuals showed up.

Steven Grant and daughter Bree arrived in the family Skylane. The Grant family was the subject of a November 2019 story, The Flying Grants, which described daughter Kyra’s determination to pursue a career in aviation with the support of her family.

Since that time Kyra got her college degree and all her ratings, including Certificated Flight Instructor, and has been selected for a major airline training program. Next year this time she should be a first officer on a scheduled airliner.

With Steven was his youngest daughter Bree, who decided on an aviation career also and is now an Airframe and Powerplant student at the Myrtle Beach campus of the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics.

Back up at the main hangar the chili was ready and several hundred people queued for the serving line.

The food was hot, the conversation dominated by aviation, and the mood overwhelmingly positive as the mercury rose. Hard to imagine how many “there I was” stories were told during the lunch hour.

Meals and visiting finished, the fly out went off as quickly as the fly-in and we joined a takeoff line of a dozen aircraft shortly after 2 p.m. We were off in eight minutes.

Flying Home

One of my favorite phrases is “I have met the enemy and he is me.” That comes from tracing the source of a problem, in airplanes and in life. This was applicable on the flight home when the voltage warning on the JPI 830 engine analyzer flashed red. I pushed the alternator breaker and within a couple of minutes it popped out again.

One hundred miles from home at 3,500 feet we were running on battery power and the voltage was 11.4 and dropping. We notified flight following we were shutting down all electricals except one nav/com.

Touching all the breakers and then the switch pulls on my 1953 panel revealed that the landing light I turned on at Triple Tree that morning was still on. With all the other devices going it was too much for my old bus-bar.

With the landing light turned off, everything worked normally again.

FYI, I already had an appointment with the avionics shop to redo the bus-bar. And on Monday I’ll try to move that appointment up a couple of weeks.

To cap the day, a Citabria followed us in for fueling at the tanks at my home airport, Marion County Airport (KMAO) in South Carolina. The pilot introduced himself as Jim Poston. He flies from his airstrip called The Chicken Coop (42SC) inside the Class D ring at nearby Florence. He invited us to come over and land anytime.

The Skywagon was in the hangar by 4 p.m. and I was home half an hour later where my wife Elizabeth asked how my day had been.

“It was,” I answered with a smile, “as perfect as perfect can get.”

Thanks, Triple Tree.

Want to visit Triple Tree?

Upcoming Triple Tree events in 2024 include:

General Aviation

• Uncle John’s Fly-In: April 5-7
• South Carolina Breakfast Club: Aug. 25
• Triple Tree Fly-In: Sept. 23-29
• Young Aviators Fly-In: Sept. 27-29

Radio Control

• Joe Nall Week: May 10-16
• Midsouth Sailplane: May 24-26
• Youth Masters: July 26-28
• Heli Extravaganza: Aug. 29-Sept. 1
• Nall in the Fall: Oct. 4-11

For more information: TTA.aero