Sun ‘n Fun 2023

A report on this year’s Sun ‘n Fun, in Lakeland, Florida (home to the world’s largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings)…

Preflight planning:

• print out the 23-page NOTAM, which has detailed instructions for arrival and departure
• print out “GAP” and “VFR” signs for display during arrival/departure taxi (the VFR sign is likely not critical since it is the default)
• load airplane with tie-down kit and hammer if needed (screw-in tiedowns are sold for $30; the volunteers may not have hammers); tiedowns are required even if you’re there for one day and no weather is expected
• note the frequency crib sheet toward the back (restatement of frequencies that are buried within the 23 pages of text)

I arrived at 10 am on Friday and the traffic was continuous, with 1-mile spacing, but not so intense that anyone was required to hold. Controllers are great at coaching pilots, e.g., “Cherokee on downwind, turn base now”.

Let’s start with some inspiring stories and people. Here’s a pilot who flies with no arms (in an Ercoupe, which was designed without rudder pedals and therefore requires only two limbs to operate):

Maybe I will stop complaining about my physical infirmities for a few hours…

How about for those of us who think that we need a huge climate-controlled house for day-to-day living? Here’s someone camping out of a minimal-size vehicle:

What if you’ve closing in on Elon Musk with evil billionaire status? Executive configuration PBY Catalina from World War II, privately owned by a guy in Chicago:

(After the Indianapolis was torpedoed by the Japanese and a distress call was sent out and the ship did not arrive as schedule, the U.S. Navy did… nothing. A PBY crew on a routine patrol four days later found the survivors who had not been consumed by sharks and sacrificed their aircraft to rescue some of the men (first radioing for the rest of the Navy to assist). The story is retold, with the government incompetence left out, in the movie Jaws. One interesting aspect of the story is that, instead of blaming its own bureaucracy and procedures for the men left to be eaten by sharks, the Navy court-martialed Captain Charles B. McVay III for failure to zigzag. As part of this blame-assignment effort, the Navy brought Mochitsura Hashimoto to the U.S. to testify against Captain McVay. The Japanese sub captain said that he would have been able to sink the Indianapolis regardless of any zigzagging, but Captain McVay was nonetheless held responsible.)

What about new and exciting products? Despite an industry unable to meet customer demand, e.g., people ordering a Cirrus today might get one at the end of 2024, not too much new stuff was on offer. If you want to connect with great aviators of the past, such as Hanna Reitsch, the rebooted Junkers A50, made by WACO in Michigan, might be the ideal choice. Less than $200,000, supposedly, at least for the first handful that will be built. You just need to be a better pilot than Chuck Yeager and Mike Patey to avoid ground-looping the taildragger.

Most talked-about in the discussion forums that I frequent was an updated noise-canceling headset from Bose, the A30 (not to be confused with the prior “A20”).

Bose says that this is no quieter than the A20, but has less clamping pressure and better weight distribution. I tried it briefly and found no difference.

Aviation + Florida = high risk of Deplorability. Here’s a pilot whom we might infer was a supporter of the January 6 insurrection and, therefore, is a candidate for a few months (or years?) in a re-education camp:

Speaking of Florida, even Maverick and Iceman travel by golf cart:

Cirrus runs a great hospitality center for owners. Here’s a picture of the Blue Angels from the balcony:

Speaking of the Blue Angels, their announcer thanked a seemingly endless list of people and communities, but left out two groups: (1) the taxpayers who paid nearly $5 trillion to the federal government in FY 2022; (2) the children who are going to be stuck with the $31 trillion in debt (plus another $31 trillion soon enough?) for all of the federal spending that wasn’t covered by tax revenue. Here’s a nice break at the end of the show. If these F/A-18s were fully armed, even a bad dude such as Corn Pop wouldn’t stand a chance against six of them:

If you’re not an elite owner of a two-decade-old Cirrus and want a good seat for the airshow, you can bring your own:

Sun ‘n Fun is set up well for afternoon air shows because the spectators are on the south side of the runway (9-27; east-west) and the sun is mostly behind everyone’s back.

The Mississippi-based Hurricane Hunters brought one of their 10 C-130s to the event. There are two pilots and a navigator in the front and two data-gathering and analysis experts in the back. One releases dropsondes and the other looks at the information received. They do a lot of flying at 500′ to 1500′ above the ocean surface everywhere from Hawaii to the Caribbean. The back of the C-130 is generally empty.

And here’s a military flying job you won’t see in a Top Gun movie… Team Target in a humble Dash-8:

I didn’t have a chance to talk to these folks. It may be that part of this aircraft’s mission is to find people in the water who would be at risk from live-ammo practice. USAF page on the E-9A Widget:

Modified with AN/APS-143(V) -1 Airborne Sea Surveillance Radar to detect objects in the Gulf of Mexico, the aircraft can detect a person in a life raft up to 25 miles away in the water. It downlinks this telemetry data to the range safety officer who determines the shoot area for live-fire activity, according to the Air Force fact sheet.

Not only was expressed support for Joe Biden non-existent at Sun ‘n Fun, but QAnon brought their own Siai Marchetti S-211 jet (characteristically, the group was unable to spell its own name correctly):

What about the hundreds of additional aircraft? Here’s a homemade one that has flown 30 years and 3,000 hours:

For lovers of cameras and film, a 1955 Fuji LM-1!

A window into the challenges faced by mechanics in the final days of the monster piston engines (airshow superstar Mike Goulian in the background):

A nice Beaver:

The Blue Angels celebrate Dr. Bill Cosby, American icon and University of Maskachusetts Ed.D., by naming their C-130 “Fat Albert”:

An RV-12 built by high school students in Wisconsin:

(If it had been built by students in a suburban Boston high school, would they have to keep repainting the fuselage as builders changed gender IDs and first names?)

No date for the 2024 gathering yet, but first week of April seeks likely.