WDYDWYRTW? April 3-5 2026

[airguy]

Starting this one, because Doug is dragging a little behind and I have a cool flight to add!

My son and I have a thing for good crawfish - and I had today off from work, and he was out of school. Low weather across most of Texas, but a non-issue for me with my instrument ticket. We loaded up and launched from west to east Texas for some of the best mudbugs I've ever found, at Kilgore Crawfish. Ate ourselves stupid and hauled another 15 pounds back home for later.

We lost ground contact about 800 feet up on departure, caught it again about 4 miles out of Longview. Same on the way back. Love having that IFR ticket.

700 miles roundtrip for the best crawfish in Texas. 5 hours in the airplane. $200 for the food. $140 for the fuel. Spending the day with my son on an adventure like this - priceless.

The trip out - https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N16GN/history/20260403/1430Z/73XA/KGGG
The trip back - https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N16GN/history/20260403/1925Z/KGGG/73XA

 

[DeltaRomeo]

Not a lot of RV activity here in North Texas this Saturday morning. Storms passed through starting around 5 AM and airlines are still swinging around the backside pretty far to the west to get in.

[ed. Spent Sunday (Easter) in the sim. Ugh. v/r,dr]

 

[Weefle]

Took my bride to the funky town of CZNL - Nelson BC. It’s a quick :35 minute flight from Vernon or over 5 hours by road! It was nice having a little push from the back getting there.

Winter is slowly loosing its grip on us and the temps are getting more bearable. Hard to beat the climb performance in the cold temps though

Keith




.

 

[DeltaRomeo]

Lunar flyby day! (Quick Monday hop)

I just landed after taking the RV-6 up to get a photo of the moon off my wing (just barely above the horizon in the center of the screen). I just wanted a picture with my airplane wing and a tiny moon, knowing there are humans in the very near vicinity of it, for the first time in my memory. As I’m dictating this still sitting in the airplane the moon is already at the horizon and I’ll be home just like everybody else watching online. I sure was hoping it would be visible in the night sky during the pass, but maybe next time.

What an amazing day!!!!




I’ll see later if some of these look better, but I’m glad I got one for my digital logbook


The nerd in me wanted to combine two of my interests in one shot on a historic day, Aviation and space flight. I was seven years old in 1972 the last time humans were near the moon and I don’t really have any memory of it. I’m really excited about today.

 

[N890GF]

Testing out a new camera angle. Super helpful in identifying the shimmy I have on landings. I have some work to do

 

[bifft]

Just a typical aerobatics/flight seeing weekend, but on a quiet Sunday afternoon had the pattern to myself. Was able to do practice power off landing instead of extending downwind to the edge of the class D. Picture did turn out.

 

[planenutz]

Easter Weekend this year meant Warbirds Over Wanaka - for us it was four days of living and breathing aviation. We had two aircraft on static display and getting the RV-6 and the Bolkow 209 to the venue on Thursday was the easy part. My son was in the Bolkow and we launched from Cromwell at 08:10 along with our good friend Lloyd in his beautiful RV-7. While we were expecting heavy traffic and holding patterns, it seemed like the rest of the world was still asleep and instead we were cleared straight in. Easy. Sadly my wife didn't have it so easy - she was towing the caravan over and had the 50 litre water tank in the back of the SUV. It fell over in the back and split open, filling the vehicle with 50 litres (13 gallons) of water and proving that Toyota's door seals were excellent... none of the water leaked out. Argh.

The F-22 Demonstration Team were scheduled to appear this year however with the fuel crisis about to hit I understand the NZ government cancelled all modern military appearences 3 days out from the event. It was gutting. No USAF, no RAAF, no Singaporeans, no French Polynesia and not even our own RNZAF. To the credit of the event organisers they pivoted well and made up for the loss where they could. We still enjoyed the wide variety of aircraft on hand and had some stunning diplays from L-39's, Spitfires, Mustang, Yaks and more. Our privately owned Blackhawk put on a fantastic handling display and was a real crowd pleaser, both in the air and on the ground.

Our aircraft on display received a lot of attention and I was pleasantly surprised to meet a lot of Australians who were over here specifically for the event. I was very impressed by a couple of very polite kids who respectfully asked if they could sit in the RV-6 and listened carefully to their instructions when given permission. Huge grins! Hopefully they will go on to be pilots in future. At one point I was standing there watching the Yak 3 display when a young lady walked up to me and said an enthusiastic hello - two years ago I took her flying after meeting her at this very event and this weekend she announced to me that she was heading to university next year to complete a diploma in Aviation Management. Awesome. One more person I've inspired.

I won't post up a heap of pictures here as this isn't the forum for that, however if you want to see some great photos of the event there are plenty online taken by photographers who are better than me. Seach up Warbirds Over Wanaka and you'll get some good hits. Facebook has heaps on there at present too. The good thing about WOW is the proximity of the audience to the runway - you're right there.

Overall it was a great event and everything ran smoothly. We are all keeping our fingers crossed the F-22 team might be able to come down in 2 years from now to have another shot at it. Hopefully this current global drama will have settled and fuel prices will be back to a more reasonable level. We're paying nearly $5 per litre for avgas at present - (nearly $19 per gallon) - and it's gonna hurt for a while.

 

[jmbrwn]

Starting this one, because Doug is dragging a little behind and I have a cool flight to add!

My son and I have a thing for good crawfish - and I had today off from work, and he was out of school. Low weather across most of Texas, but a non-issue for me with my instrument ticket. We loaded up and launched from west to east Texas for some of the best mudbugs I've ever found, at Kilgore Crawfish. Ate ourselves stupid and hauled another 15 pounds back home for later.

We lost ground contact about 800 feet up on departure, caught it again about 4 miles out of Longview. Same on the way back. Love having that IFR ticket.

700 miles roundtrip for the best crawfish in Texas. 5 hours in the airplane. $200 for the food. $140 for the fuel. Spending the day with my son on an adventure like this - priceless.

The trip out - https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N16GN/history/20260403/1430Z/73XA/KGGG
The trip back - https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N16GN/history/20260403/1925Z/KGGG/73XA

Coincidence Greg . We took advantage of the good WX and flew to MLU (Monroe, La) to visit family and eat crawfish!!!

 

[cgeyman]

just slugging away at tank sealing, and proseal wrangling with our chapter build project

 

[crabandy]

I also got a cool Moon shot on Monday about 5:30am!
Essentially IFR with all the smoke from controlled range burning on the way home.