Georgetown De. Wings and Wheels

As the days get shorter and the temps get colder the fly-in season tapers to an end. Pretty soon the Holidays will be here and my die-hard aviation friends will be talking about April and Sun'n'Fun. And we'll do it all over again. My personal finances are such that I can't host too many parties, but I'm thinking that I'd like to have a winter fly-in. Maybe a campfire and a few local planes. Just to get the engines exercised and the batteries charged. So it turns out that GED Georgetown, De. may be the last fly-in for the season. Of course there's always Campbell, almost every Sunday. I went to GED this last Saturday. It was a wings and wheels. The weather was about as bad as it could be without canceling. There were about 200 cars. It was great. Cobras, a Jensen, lots of vetts, a tricked out Corvair, 2 rail dragsters, street rods galore. Just as a car show alone, it was excellent. They were giving rides in a restored PT 19. There were two B-25's. One was the polished "Ponchito" and it was selling rides too. There were formation flights flying around all day with smoke systems. One formation was 2 L-39's with 2 T-28's. It was a spectacle. Constant fly bys of beautiful war birds. Yaks too. So I showed up in my little M-10. There was a small turnout for display airplanes due to the weather. However the beautiful 1957 Cessna 310 I had seen at Essex Skypark was there. It was my favorite of the day. A "Sky King" airplane. I have some videos of the old Sky King TV show. The oldest episodes had Sky King with a T-50 Cessna. But in the later episodes it was the 310. I got to meet Kirby Grant, the actor who played Sky King. He signed one of my log books. It was at College Park and not too long before he passed away. The guy who had the 310 at GED lives in my old home town and his wife went to high school with me. They win prizes wherever they go with that 310. This day he won the prizes for best twin and largest airplane. And he also won a prize for being the youngest pilot displaying an airplane. Trouble is, he's in his late 40's! These car shows and fly-ins seem to be for old geezers like me. And the guys with the street rods are long in the tooth too. Sometimes there's a young kid with a 60's classic. But if you talk to him, it's his Granddad's car. This fly-in had a food court. Incredible. Lot's of choices. I had a hot dog. They had Karaoke at the food court. Lot's of families. Good ole Delaware east coast Americana. I found myself turning in a little slip of paper to the Karaoke guy ( who was a good host and good singer). Then I was singing "Someday Soon" at a fly-in. That's a first. It started getting windy, and misting and raining. The antique and classic cars started rolling out towards the gates and home. They still had Halloween to celebrate tonight. The t-28's kept flying. I wandered back to the M-10 and found I had won a prize. It was a plaque for "Shortest Distance Flown". 23 miles. It was time to go, but I wasn't going home. I was hoping I could get the airplane up to Dover in the wind and the rain. My flight up there went well and I only went through a little shower and it wasn't dark yet and the winds were dying down with the sunset. I tied the Cadet down and didn't have to wait long for wife to arrive to bring me home. We stopped along the famous Rt. 13 retail corridor to celebrate Halloween. The only better Halloween I ever had was when I was about five or six and my trick or treat candy had, among the hard candy and candy corn, a pretty good supply of Three Musketeers bars. GA Informal :::::+:::::