It quickly becomes apparent why the Atlanta-based Rebels flying club has been a successful organization for more than 35 years and now boasts 155 dues-paying members. "The club's focused not on airplanes, but what you can do with an airplane," explains Nolan Hanson, president of the Flying Rebels. "If you want to build an airplane, you join the EAA [Experimental Aircraft Association]. We're more concerned with enjoying the fruits of flying and the freedom that airplanes give you."
The Flying Rebels spell those fruits "F-U-N," and its founders were using their airplanes to find it even before the club was formally organized. In the mid-1950s, a pilot named Clarence Grubbs and a couple of his buddies from Atlanta started gathering each Sunday morning to fly somewhere for breakfast. This breakfast club soon attracted more participants, and breakfasts led to weekend "wienie roasts" at Atlanta's Fulton County Airport. The Fulton County Wienie Roast Association, as they called themselves, soon extended their flying trips to include night flights to Gainesville, Georgia, where they'd have steak fries and parties on top of Coal Mountain.
By 1960, the group's size and activities had begun to dwindle, so a pilot named Dave Barton decided to attempt a revival by making it an official club. Barton also recognized that one of the reasons the group had been popular in the first place was its emphasis on fun activities that whole families could enjoy. So when he and the other pilots started the Flying Rebels in 1961, they kept the emphasis on activities that used airplanes but were also broader social events.
In addition to the breakfast fly-outs, the Rebels began organizing fly-in picnics, cross-country proficiency races, flying scavenger hunts, poker rallies (one card at each stop), and parties. Barton also introduced an activity that has become a mainstay of the organization and one of its most popular draws: "Adventure and Romance" weekends.
As the name implies, Adventure and Romance weekends are organized group trips to fun, adventurous, or exotic places. Destinations range from the Bahamas to Key West and St. Petersburg, Florida; Branson, Missouri; Annapolis, Maryland; and New Orleans. Volunteer trip captains arrange for transportation from the destination airport and hotel accommodations in addition to researching good restaurants and fun things to do in the area. Although the trip captain(s) will sometimes suggest routing, the Rebels usually don't try to fly together. They all simply try to arrive at the destination within a set time window.
For some of the Rebel pilots, the trips provide that little extra motivation they need to get the airplane out and go flying. "I had just gotten my license when I joined the Rebels," Ed DeGross remembers, "and I didn't know what to do with my airplane."
Going on an organized group trip also gives some pilots the confidence to fly places they might not have gone on their own. "The Flying Rebels have such experience flying to so many places," explains Dave Binnix, who has been in the club for 14 years, "they know the best routing, the best hotels, the best restaurants, they plan activities of interest to everyone, and you don't have a lot of hassles, because all the arrangements are made for us."
Aside from getting to and from the destination, the activities generally do not revolve around aviation, because the trips are designed to interest not only pilots, but their spouses and families as well. This balance is one of the keys to the weekends' success.
"A lot of new members like the idea of A&R [Adventure and Romance] weekends because, they say, 'my wife would like that,'" explains Hanson. "And they say, 'if I join and do this and my wife likes it, we might be able to do more with the airplane.'" It is a strategy that works.
"I was with the Rebels for 5 years and my wife didn't care," Jim Clark recalls, "but after we took more of these trips, she got more interested and then even started to plan around them." And Hanson's wife, Nancy, confesses that she still doesn't really enjoy the time in the air, but she likes the A&R weekends because "I have such a good time when we get there."
A good time seems to be a specialty of this group, and it is undoubtedly another reason their trips are so successful. They are, in a word, fun. On a trip to St. Augustine, Florida, for example, festivities started almost before the props stopped turning on the Rebel airplanes. A welcoming committee set up a makeshift refreshment bar on a bench in front of the FBO, and arriving Rebels were greeted with hugs, handshakes, laughter, and offers of food and drink before they even tied down their airplanes. Jokes about tail-end-Charlies and navigation or weather challenges mixed with enthusiastic greetings among friends who hadn't seen each other since the last club trip. "Well, we had to leave some of the clothes at home, but we managed to fit in the most important item," one member announced to the group as he walked up and pulled a blender out of a paper bag. "Margaritas, anyone?" Welcome to a weekend with the Rebels.
Several trips with the rental van later, the group convened for dinner at a local restaurant — followed, at least for some, by an exploration of the night spots in town. The next morning, the trip organizers had made arrangements for trolley car tours of the city for anyone who was interested. Part of St. Augustine's appeal is the fact that, founded in 1565, it is the oldest permanent European settlement in North America. It is home to many historic buildings and the massive Castillo de San Marcos fort (circa 1695), as well as the legendary Fountain of Youth and, for the less historically inclined, a Ripley's "Believe It Or Not" museum and miles of beaches.
The Rebels split into several groups to explore the town at individual paces. They might not have seen all the sights, but by late afternoon, most of the candy stores, eateries, and pubs had been at least sampled by most of the group. "If we do nothing else on these trips," one Rebel joked, "we sure know where the best places to eat are by the time we leave town."
The group joined up again for an informal hospitality hour that evening, followed by dinner at another restaurant. Breakfast on Sunday morning was something of a progressive affair, with new arrivals filling the seats of departing club members in a revolving 2-hour occupation of a cafe's best tables. Finally, with reluctant sighs but with many laughter-filled memories, the group began preparing for the flight back to their various home airports in and around Atlanta.
Club members have a hard time pinning down any one particular "best" trip, but there have been many enjoyable weekends. Trips to the Bahamas and the Florida Keys are always popular, according to Hanson. Other memorable adventures include the time they stayed at the historic (and reportedly haunted) Civil War-era Windsor Hotel in Americus, Georgia, and had a murder mystery party, and the time they flew to Lexington, Kentucky, to go to the horse races. There was also the weekend in Andersonville, Georgia, where they visited a POW camp from the Civil War, and an infamous New Orleans trip where everyone "ate themselves into a coma," Nancy Hanson recalled.
There is one particular weekend that stands out in the minds of many of the male pilots, however, and is a strong testament to the club's ability to interest and involve spouses in aviation. On a trip to the Callaway Gardens resort in Pine Mountain, Georgia, a group of their wives took a course to learn enough basic flying skills to handle an airplane in an emergency. "It was a real switch," Binnix laughs, "because at night, the wives were all talking about their flying experiences, and the guys were talking about the flowers we saw." But, he adds with a measure of respect and pride, it was a pretty incredible experience for the husbands to stand on the ground and watch their wives fly and land their airplanes. "It's something I never thought I'd see," he says.
The course is also one example of the way the Flying Rebels manage to combine fun with safety and proficiency efforts. Another example is the club's annual "Rebel 600" air race. The competition started in 1964 as a 600-mile round-trip proficiency race, but it has since been scaled back to 300 miles to make it more manageable. Forty-five minutes before the start of the race, pilots gather at one location, where they are given a weather briefing and the routing, which is generally a round-robin course with fly-by checkpoints at three or four different airports. The fuel tanks are topped off, and the pilots must estimate their fuel burn and time en route for the course before they depart. The winner is the pilot whose estimates are most accurate, and the competition is tough. Winners have been as close as 5 seconds off their estimated time and three-tenths of a gallon off their predicted fuel burn.
Of course, in typical Rebel fashion, the race is followed by a picnic and party for all the families. No matter what the club activity, the main point is "just being together and having fun," says Edna Grubbs. "You also meet a lot of lasting friends by going on [Rebel] trips," adds Judy Hayes, who has been flying her Cessna 172 on Rebel adventures for 10 years. Binnix agrees. "Everyone comes for a different reason, but you know you're going to have a great time," he says.
Binnix, who says he was "hooked" by the very first Rebel event he went to, can't understand why everyone in aviation wouldn't want to belong to a club like this. It's a good question. After all, the Flying Rebels' goal of combining airplanes with adventure, romance, people, and fun is more than just an attractive notion. It is what many of us sought when we first learned to fly.
For more information on the Flying Rebels, contact Linton Broome, 2886 Dunnington Circle, Atlanta, Georgia 30341, telephone 770/934-1365; fax 770/449-9314.
