52FA Bent Willie's
Sunday last, while I was tooling around the beautiful Florida sky, I decided to check out an airstrip owned by a friend.
Bill had graciously allowed me to camp there when I dragged my boat to do some crappie fishing at Lake Rosalie.
RV rocket owner Bill Whidden owns 52FA, Bent Willie's grass strip West of lake Rosalie east of Lakes Wales Airport.
(it's not on the charts but I punched it in to Foreflight and the app knew where I wanted to go)
However, I had never flown in. It's a terrific strip with commercial sod fields surrounding it on the North side.
Talk about a near perfect emergency landing area adjacent to the airport. However, I'd rather not "buy" 2000' of sod though
The Ridge Barnstormers RC club is permitted to use the field but with instructions to yield to full-scale landing aircraft.
The club maintains the field and "their" portion of the strip. They are a great bunch of guys and I thoroughly enjoyed visiting.
They put on quite an air show for me, complete with a turbo fan Messerschmitt Me-262 !!
After their show, the guys spent some time checking out my -6.
They were all thumbs up, even though I burn a little more gas than them ��.
Bill says I'm the first RV-6 to land there. He has had most models RV in to the airport but has never had a -6 or a RV-9a.
ATTENTION VLAD, you see this? Sounds like it's right up your alley (and definitely smoother than the first grass strip we met at.