A women flying organization, the Ninety Nines, held a local contest early last month. The event consisted of flying to various local airports and drawing cards at each one in an attempt to get a winning poker hand, hence the "Poker Run" event name. I went with a friend and just to save everyone the suspense, we drew a pair of threes.

I know you'll be disappointed by this, FP, but the Ninety Nines are not named after a sex position - the name is derived from the original 99 members.

We started at Gillespie Field in somewhat sunny San Diego. While waiting to start, this P-51 was towed over. I'm guessing the plane was going to be taken to the Miramar Airshow later since the airshow was going on at the same time. The yellow biplane is a Grumman Agcat which is normally used for crop dusting but this one has been converted to a two seater. The friend I was flying with actually got a ride in it a few years ago.

We next hopped to Ramona airport where much of the county firefighting aircraft are based. The big 4 engine job is a Lockheed Electra/P-3 converted into a firebomber. The picture isn't the greatest (doesn't help that our windshield was dirty) but one can see that the outboard engines are shut down and the plane is taxying using the inboard ones. While waiting to take off from Ramona I snapped the pictures of the Bellanca and Piper Cub landing. The black squarish thing under the first Cub picture is our compass mounted on the glare shield. To the right of the Cub in the second picture you can see the orange airport windsock. Yes, in this digital age of computers and GPS, airports still use windsocks.

Onward...

 

Next stop was Fallbrook airport. Not much was going on so I took a sequence of a Cessna 152 taking off. Of course I also had to get a picture of the lovely Poker Run ladies sitting in front of a Grumman Tiger.

 

We next stopped at French Valley airport and then hustled up to Hemit. Paydirt at Hemit - lots of planes so of course I had to take some pictures....

When we were landing a sailplane was being towed aloft to our right. I managed to get some crappy pictures but hey, they are better than nothing. The third sailplane picture is blown up.

The Cessna 172 is an older one - probably a late sixties model. You can tell because it has two exhaust stacks, which means the engine is a six cylinder Continental. In 1072 Cessna switched to four cylinder Lycomings.

There were actually two DC-3s parked tail to tail. That's my friend looking up at one. I also took a second picture where you can better see the orange buckets hanging under the engines to collect oil.

Please sir, may I have some more? Of course......

 

Oops! Forgot the pics.




OK, looks like the pics are going into Never Never Land and aren't getting posted to the site. After trying three times I'm calling it quits for tonight and will finish this up tomorrow.

 

Poker run via aircraft...... sounds like some folks aren't being hurt too badly by the current economic situation. Good for them!!!

Looks like you had a fun day Brent, so good for you too.

 

Well Mike, flying has been way down this year. We first noticed in Feb that private owners had pretty much parked their planes and then in May we saw the club flying drop off. I think that if we had high gas prices (avgas peaked at $6.13 in the summer) or the current economic troubles then flying would have stayed the same. But the two together were enough to dampen flight activities by half. Now we are starting to see an uptick in club flying and private owners are beginning to go up again too. But still, sometimes my shop has to take the business day to day, fortunately the planes break enough to keep us working.

A once a year Poker Run will attract participants, but even in the best of times a weekly Poker Run would not be sustainable. Flying is known as the worlds most expensive pasttime for a reason. At any rate it was fun and my friend and I will do it again next year.

And what a miracle - I was able to upload the pictures.

 

And the final pics from Hemet.

The colorful plane is a Piper Cherokee, probably a 140 series model. That's the kind of paint job I like on a plane because I detest the standard stripes one sees otherwise. Bet the owner spends more time polishing the prop each weekend then I have spent on my Crossfire all year.

The derelict looking plane is another Piper - a Piper Arrow, some assembly required. The plane is in pieces but work is being done on it - there is new sheet metal being riveted to the top of the fuselage. The little pointed things sticking out of the fuselage top are clamps used to hold the metal in place. They are called clecoes in case any of you ever get a Trivia Pursuit question about this.

Elijah's Chariot is a home built canard and is classified as an Experimental. Sounds dangerous but most home builts are safe and all require inspection by the FAA before being flown. Even then, after FAA inspection they must fly in a restricted regime for 25 - 40 hours to ensure there are no problems. On the flip side, this is the type of airplane John Denver crashed in, but that one was more related to pilot error. Since this plane, a LongEZ I believe, has the engine in the back; it is very easy to tip backwards. So after flight the nose gear is retracted so the plane can be securely tipped oven onto it's nose instead.

And last picture - it's a Northrup F-5, obviously stolen by the navy, and cleverly disguised as a Mig. Confused? I sure am.

 

Nice pics of a good time Brent.

The plane with the blue cockpit cover in the first pic is a much loved and updated Navion designed by North American and built by Ryan in the late 40s/early 50s.

Enjoyed seeing the Grumman Tiger pic. I was the draftsman who drew the outboard wing panels for that plane.

LongEZs and their predecessor the VariEZ were the homebuilts that popularized foam/fiberglass aircraft construction.