Warm weather is here, and so are the fly-ins. And now that you have your pilot certificate, you don’t have to be the one who drives in and watches wistfully as airplanes arrive.
Fly-ins can be as simple as a local EAA chapter hosting a pancake breakfast (and who doesn’t love pancakes?) to elaborate, days-long events such as the Sun ’n Fun Fly-In, held annually in Lakeland, Florida, or EAA AirVenture, which draws some 700,000 people per year to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. AOPA is hosting six regional one-day fly-ins at airports around the nation in 2014, as well as a Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Homecoming on October 4.
See the website for locations and to RSVP for a free lunch.
Checklist
First-timer? Match your skills to the size of the event; start with a small fly-in closer to home and save the giant one for when you’ve gained more experience.
Are there arrival or departure procedures? Events that expect to draw a heavy volume of traffic may issue notices to airmen; others may simply post air operations on their websites.
Bring a friend or two. Another set of eyes in the cockpit helps when entering a busy traffic pattern.
How are your landings? At AirVenture, you’d better be able to put your airplane down on a specific colored dot. Nobody expects that at a pancake breakfast, but landing and exiting the runway expeditiously makes it easier for the airplane behind you.
Volunteers will direct you to parking. Brush up on your marshalling hand signals, found in the Aeronautical Information Manual Chapter 4-3-25. Bring chocks and/or tiedowns, just in case.
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