Airventure 2024 | Day 3

July 19 | Remember the sunset patrol yesterday? The sun rises just before 6 am Mountain time here in Brodhead, as do the first airplanes. No one sleeps past 6 unless they’ve expired during the night.

I couldn’t tell which Pietenpol was first up because my tent door was closed, but it was soon joined by a gaggle of others. Around and around the circuit they flew, with some cutting close over the campers just so they wouldn’t miss the wake-up call.

Burrowed into my sleeping bag, I just smiled. This isn’t my first trip to Brodhead and the Pietenpol fly-in, so knowing the routine, I crawled out of bed and started dressing. The kitchen crew, made up of Brodhead and EAA Chapter 431 members, had the coffee made and set out before that six am alarm clock went off. I got my first cuppa’ joe and sat down at a table with other pilots and listened to them tell some of their hangar stories.

Breakfast was served at 7 and consisted of scrambled eggs, biscuits and gravy, sausage and orange juice, as well as a refill on the coffee. I learn a lot by just listening, including what happens when you’re racing deer along a grass runway while trying to take off, praying they don’t turn suddenly in front of you and how much damage a solitary low-flying goose can do to your airplane.

Our Experimental Aircraft Association, EAA Chapter 1268, is building a Pietenpol Aircamper as a Chapter project. Michael Wray, our Chapter Build Team Leader, asked me to take lots of photos of the details of the different Pietenpols on the field. We’re also using some of the parts Jim Boyer donated for the project.

Jim Boyer, A Pietenpol builder back home in Northern California, , donated quite a few Pietenpol parts and aircraft construction books to our Chapter, so I took the back seat out of the 182 and loaded most of it in for the trip. After breakfast I carried the parts, with the help of two other West Coast Piet builders, Gary Booth and Mike Weaver, over to the pavilion and set up a sale table. Business was good throughout the day, and generated some valuable funding for the Chapter 1268 Pietenpol.

I took a break from the sale table to wander over to the Kelch museum to get a cup of the soft serve ice cream they were serving to the guests at Brodhead over the weekend, and decided after that big breakfast and the whitefish boil for supper, that was all I needed for lunch.

I then went out on the field and started snapping shots of the variety in the details on each airplane. The Pietenpol Aircamper is a tandem two place, open cockpit tailwheel airplane originally designed and built by Bernard Pietenpol in 1929. It is still being built in surprising numbers because it has proved to be a good flying, economical airplane that really can be built with simple hand tools.

Every builder conforms to the basic design, but the variation in the details is both astounding and delightful. It is an airplane that takes its pilot back into the barnstorming era of low and slow flying that allows the pilot and passenger ample time to enjoy the countryside below.

I spent the afternoon back at the sale table working on my daily blog. It takes a while to recall and document all the activity and observations, and the blog is never long enough to include everything.

The whitefish boil starts serving at 6, and is one of the reasons I fly all the way from California to Brodhead whenever I can. My poor wife just doesn’t understand, but she is very tolerant of my obsessions. Sometimes I’m not sure I understand all this myself.