Quest for Chile
All photos on this page courtesy of Doug Reeves
The first annual Land of Enchantment (Las Cruces 2001) RV fly-in turned out to be a real nice time. Airplanes started arriving pretty steadily late in the morning on Friday, continued all Friday afternoon and Saturday morning prettily heavily, then tapered off. It never did get busy for arriving traffic, yet there were a total of 101 RV's and a lot of miscellaneous, including the bony Giles, a CJ-6 and much Wichita/Pennsylvania type iron, plus some nice older planes like Swifts and Luscombes. RVers flew in from all four corners of the United States of America and everywhere between those four corners. We had em from Florida, from southern California, from Oregon, from northern Montana, from Pennsylvania and from Florida.
Scott McDaniels and Ken Krueger with demo riders getting a more up close and personal ride than they expected
It seemed to me that many of the nicer airplanes arrived in groups, like the southern Cal group or the Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas group. People must set their workmanship standards by the airplanes they see around them. As for we solitary builders with beater/flyers, we tried to be sort of inconspicuous back in the corners of the tie-down area.
F117 Pilot Tim, flew this RV-4 from Alamogordo. His buddy JJ flew a blue one in formation with him. The 117's usually fly alone, so maybe the RV's are their main chance for formation flying?
I had never met Red Marron before. Many of you have and many of you know him from the Burlington, Colorado fly-ins. For those of you who don't know him, he is impossible to ignore. His personality sort of ripples out in waves until it envelopes the entire area. His voice carries clearly and strongly over long distances with command authority. He likes people and it shows. You would not want to face this man in dealings over a used car. By the end of the dealings you would be pleading with him to please raise the price.
Red Marron, Just Getting Revved Up
At the banquet Red described his rules for a fly-in being "the only rule is that there are no rules." This philosophy seemed to work very well at Las Cruces. Everything was relaxed, yet it seemed like people were being more careful than normal. Larry Vetterman commented that he can not help but notice safety practices, since he was in that business so long, and he did not see anything at all unsafe occur.
Members of the Texas BC Squadron, in front of Adventure Aviation, planning the precision flying for their next airshow
Much of the actual nuts and bolts was handled by Adventure Aviation at Las Cruces. It was striking to me that every time I looked up, there was an Adventure employee cheerfully helping someone or doing some work that needed doing. The truth is that we overwhelmed them a bit, but they coped very well. They had to make a lot of adjustments, like car rental people waiting on tables in the cafe. Remarkably, they did not seem to be trying to make a killing. Shoot, the mid-sized cars were less than $20 a day and gas from the constantly roaming truck was $2.29. This sure ain't like one of the big name fly-ins.
La Posta in Old Mesilla
I wasn't familiar with Las Cruces, but found it had a nice individuality to it. Many of us went to La Posta restaurant on Friday night, and I thought it was a more than respectable representation of the New Mexico take on Mexican food. There was a rumor, that I can't personally believe, that there are areas of the country where they don't know about green chile, even on enchiladas.
I heard about much shopping in the old town (Old Mesilla) area. Temperatures were generally in the 70's and breezes were light. You just had to see the Organ Mountains silhouetted by the sun, in the morning, to believe the view.
Col. Frank Borman added a lot of flavor too. He opened his pristine hangar to all, along with all the mementos it contains. He also favored us with some P-51 fly-bys on Sunday morning during omelet breakfast, as well as doing the aircraft judging duties.
Grand Champion Stewart RV-6A
The banquet on Saturday night featured legendary RV builders, Bob Brashear, Larry Vetterman and Red Marron. Larry commented that he told the organizers it would normally be $100 to speak for 100 people, but for a group this large he was willing to pay $200.
Entertainment was a mariachi band made up of local high scool students. In general, I'm not a big fan of this style, but I enjoyed it. These young people were very good and their deportment was outstanding.
Brian, Larry, Judy, Charles, Martha, Bill and Cindy.
Any rumor that three of these pilots, with two gps's on board, were lost on the way to the motel, is entirely unfounded. How can you be lost if you're still in the city limits and have not run out of food or water?
Some of the highpoints for me were meeting bird man and car man (Owens and Sobek). Getting to closely inspect Jim and Marty Cash's stunning F-1 Rocket, black as Saddam Hussein's heart and shiny as a new penny, and visiting the local EAA club meeting at nearby Cielo Dorrado residential airpark community, where our host, who has very limited use of his legs, showed us his Stearman project and the hand steering and braking mechanism (on a Stearman?) he had designed. He already flys a Smith Mini-Plane, C182, C210 and has a Mystery Ship on the back burner.
Col. Frank Borman and Jim Cash
Among others, Borman has flown Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. Cash has flown F4's, F15's and F16's.
"THE" Jay Pratt headed back through Guadalupe Pass on the way home to Dallas. Ahh! Life is good!
Larry Pardue
Carlsbad, NM