Now that the weather is warm (albeit a tad soggy), we can fly a lot more often. And with the 2009 fly-in season already begun, it's impossible not to find a good excuse to go for a flight. The weather for this coming weekend looks promising, which is good news for the Young Eagles Rally in Waterloo Saturday morning.

What are your plans for the weekend?

Late Friday night we found out about a pancake breakfast Webster City was hosting on this rainy Saturday morning. Since our friends - Dan and Diane - were in town, we hopped into Hap's 172 and flew up there.  Passing through some light showers, we were one  of about a dozen planes that made it to the breakfast. Dan and Diane checked out a beautifully restored Navion at the airport, and we gabbed with a few friends, only to realize too late that the morning flew by (no pun intended) and we missed breakfast. So, we flew back to Ames through more rain showers and on empty stomachs and joined the early lunch crowd at Hickory Park BBQ. As a substitute for a pancake breakfast, the pork ribs were pretty darn good.

On Saturday, we enjoyed our first fly-in breakfast for 2009 - the ISU Flying Cyclones and Haps hosted pancakes for all those who decided to fly or drive (or in our case, walk three hangars down) to the Ames airport on an absolutely beautiful spring morning. The food was good, the people were great, and the variety of airplanes was amazing. Everything from a pair of nicely restored L-birds to a Cessna 170 and 195 with fresh, immaculate paint jobs. It was a busy morning - with a few dozen planes coming in for breakfast, airplane rides, helicopter rides, and jumps.

And, of course, I chose this day to forget my camera (dang it!). So, I pulled out this old picture of the US Airways Hudson River Landing. Just in case you need another reason to fly first class.

Recently we sold a couple wildcat engines to Erik Hokuf from Minnesota (in the photo, Erik is on the left and Jeff Bryant is on the right, supervising the loading of the engines onto Erik's trailer). He has restored some pretty rare birds - the P-40 Aleutian Tiger and P-38 Ruff Stuff just to name a couple.  Erik and his wife Sarah have a website (www.aircorpsdepot.com), with clothing designed with World War II themes. They have some awesome designs, and I've enjoyed doing a bit of shopping myself. The best part of shopping here is that it's guilt-free... Erik and Sarah donate a portion of every sale to non-profit aviation organizations. Kudos to Erik and Sarah for keeping warbird nostalgia alive... and fashionable!

There's an organization dedicated to carrying on the legacy of the Tuskegee airmen. Doug Rozendaal has been very involved with the project. They're nearly off the ground (no pun intended) and have a website worth checking out: http://www.redtail.org/