November 6, 2010   Lagrange, Texas


My pal Jeff Weiss flew me over to Lagrange for a short walkabout around the Lagrange Annual Experimental Aircraft and Classic Thunderbird Automobile Show and BarbeeQue.   I'm not sure that the event actually had a name that long and confusing, but given that, well....given that that's what the thing was - if it wasn't called "The Lagrange Annual Experimental Aircraft and Classic Thunderbird Automobile Show and BarbeQue" - it should have been.

Maybe it was really called that.

 There were a lot of airplanes (both experimental and regular old FAA certified to carry more than one passenger type planes - which, incidentally is what I flew over in...  experimentation and aviation are not two words which mix well for me, personally...);  there were a lot of obsessively restored and maintained T-Birds; and, as these things go - the BBQ wasn't all that bad.

 I liked this airplane so much I added it to my consulting website.  It was not an experimental airplane either.  However, as it was built in 1947 (giving it that sort of rakish Indiana Jones look I was going for on my website... or something....) for all intents and purposes it was, for me - experimental.

An aircraft built before the era of Glass Cockpits, GPS, Intertial GPS Autopilots, that sort of thing... I'll pass on being a passenger.  They look great, though....   One exception:  I've always wanted to go flying in a DC 3.  Seems like it would be like river rafting or something...

This WAS NOT my mother's T-Bird.  She had one when I was a kid - but boy it didn't look  like this one.

Thanks to Mr. Weiss for the great, brief and thoroughly enjoyable trip.  He even let me fly most of the way home.  2,500 ft.  visibility about a million miles and not a cloud in the sky - 65 nautical miles straight in one direction.  This is the flight plan you want if your pilot is a CPA whose only interaction with the FAA is paying passenger security fees in large US airports . . .


(c) Mark W. Lee (clubnano, llc)