Destination Unknown (Da Da DUM!)

 

OK - It's Tehachapi

November 5, 2011.  This year's annual Mystery Fly-In was a huge success. Thirty-three DAFers in 16 aircraft participated. By some quirk of fate, all aircraft landed at the correct mystery airport. For those that did not attend the fly-in, the Mystery destination was Tehachapi (KTSP). As you know, the Mystery Fly-in consists of a quiz and a fly-in. The correct answers to the quiz let you deduce the mystery destination. In order to win, you must get the highest score on the quiz and show up at the mystery destination for lunch. So, to reduce the embarrassment and frustration to our veteran pilots caused by the quiz, the fly-in committee really went to great effort to dumb it down. Unfortunately, the committee did not reach the proper level of dumbness. Maybe next year we will just publish the answers ahead of time. All participants had a great time. Some were even "starting to have fun yet." ...Joe

 

Was the Jackson Trip Fun or What?

October 7-9, 2011.  Jackson, California is a fun place!!! After a week of wondering whether the weather would cooperate, (which it did), 10 airplanes, 1 helicopter and 3 cars arrived in Jackson on October 7 carrying a total of 29 DAFers. The weather was perfect for the entire weekend (except for a slight headwind going) and we had a great time exploring an area of Northern California that many of us had not visited before.

The weekend began with a happy hour by the pool on Friday night. As usual, the gang brought lots of food and beverages. We had a beautiful a view of cows roaming in the pasture and of the Amador County hills. On Saturday, we toured four towns in the area starting out in Plymouth which had some nice eating establishments. We found the corn maze at the Amador Flower Farm and managed to wind our way through it. Next was Amador City where many of us bought our picnic lunch at Andrae's. Then we headed to Sutter Creek. Sutter Creek was having its 4th Annual Musical Organ Rally, so we were lucky enough to hear some of the music coming out of those beautiful instruments. Next was a picnic in at the Kennedy Tailing Wheels Park and then off to the city of Jackson. We completed our tour at Drytown Cellars where we were treated to a private wine tasting. Many of us went our separate ways for dinner on Saturday night but, we all found something delicious to eat. Sunday brought perfect weather (and a bit of a tailwind) for the trip home.

Thank you to everyone who came on the trip to Jackson! We hope you all had a good time!

...Liz & Peter.

Jeopardy Redux

Larry Chapman did a fabulous job again in putting together the DAF version of Jeopardy. Participants were actually able to grasp the instructions for playing the game. The winners were Jodie Chapman and teammate Dave Weir. The losing teams were Stacy Livergood / Lisa Hahn and Jack Kenton / Tom Lagrelius. Because a score was kept, the losers suffered a humiliating loss of self esteem. Larry deserves a big "atta boy" for putting on a great program given the overwhelming odds against him.

World Flying Adventure

The September program featured Robert F. Gannon who presented "World Flying Adventure ... a decade of global exploration." In 2000 Bob departed San Diego in a Cessna 182 named "Lucky Lady Too." For the next 10 years he circumnavigated the globe twice, once in each direction. He has flown to Antarctica, over the North Pole, into Iraq, Iran and Israel. He has landed in 1,200 places in 155 countries on all the continents. Bob did a great job in presenting an unbelievable trip. Thanks Bob.

Those Who Can't Fly - Walk

September 11, 2011.  Well, it was bound to happen sometime. While it was expected, it surely wasn't expected in September. I'm talking about weather!

As we all met at the general aviation building Saturday morning, the skies looked tempting but the forecast looked somewhat threatening with thunder storms and hail in the surrounding areas and moving north in the direction we wanted to go.

What to do? We discussed the options and took a vote (never take a vote :>). Because we had all of the food for the BBQ, we decided to divert to a local airport with less chance of being stranded. Surprisingly this turned out to be one of our better attended fly-ins. As we sett up at the east end of KTOA's Tee's in the grassy area, folks drove by and pitched in bringing chairs, sodas and something we seldom see at a lunch flyin, BEER! I understand that one of the pilots went out to fly the pattern just to make this an official fly-in.

Because there were 4 BBQ's, Mitch, Larry and Wayne shared the chores at the stove while many others pitched in setting up the serving tables and preparing the other dishes. At the end everyone pitched in to help clean up and some of us headed home to watch college football. As I tried to watch the USC game, Ii found it somewhat irritating that every 10 minutes they had an emergency announcement about thunderstorms, hail, and flash flooding throughout the Los Angeles basin, as well as a stationary thunderstorm over San Luis Obispo. Seems we made the right choice.

...Wayne

Editor's Note: A big thank you goes to Wayne for flawlessly executing his Plan B, "The First Annual Del Amo Flyers' Walk-In".

Aviation Goes Hollywood!

The August Program was the annual Del Amo Flyers' Hangar Party. Once again the party was a great success. This year's theme was "Aviation Goes Hollywood." We had an excellent turnout. Mitch worked his Photoshop magic on the movie posters, putting DAFers' faces on movie star bodies to die for. A planeload of thanks goes to all the DAFers who helped make the party a success. A special thank you once again goes to Lambi & Sally Haralambos for donating their hangar for this event.