SERFI

SERFI this year was somewhat of a let-down. I decided the day before not to fly there, as it was raining on Friday and the winds were expected to be 10-15 all day on Saturday. My son and I were going to drive instead. Fifteen minutes out, I noticed that I left the camera at home. The pictures in this post were provided by James Kirkland, who owns a beautiful modified Quicksilver that is stationed out of the Greenville, Alabama airport.

Saturday morning at my house, it was clear and about 60 degrees. We started south on I-65 about 7:30, stopping for breakfast on the way. When we got south of Greenville, Alabama, it was starting to cloud up. When we got to Evergreen, it was completely overcast and the wind was blowing the wind sock straight out. Just a few planes were there at that time, but they were starting to arrive steadily.

Wes and I walked around and looked at a few of the experimental airplanes, the warbirds, which were all military trainers. There was the SNJ that resides at Greenville that I've posted about before, along with a radio-controlled (1/5?)scale model of the same aircraft.

There was also a PT-19 that was there last year, as well as a short version of it's purchase, duty station, abandonment and restoration. There was a PT-23 which to me looked like a radial-engined version of the PT-19.

Then there was an observation plane with an enclosed bubble cockpit that looked really strange. It was an all metal, single engine, somewhat large airplane with an in-line engine. Later in the morning, another appeared, but in civilian paint. My friend Kyle tells me it a Navion. After doing a little searching on http://www.airliners.net, I find that the plane is built by Ryan Aviation. The civilian designation is indeed Navion-B. The military designation is L-17. Thanks Kyle!

Only three ultralights made it to this fly-in, a single-place Challenger, a two-place Challenger and one of the Mini-Max versions.

This is the second SERFI that I've been to, the first was larger but not necessarily any better. It was an interesting activity to visit, but I wish I could have flown. Maybe next year in the Phantom!