"You can't have a better fly in than we did"



First of all, you can't have a better fly-in than we did with the weather conditions like they were. They're absolutely perfect.

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It doesn't get any better than this.

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Okay, well the first year, of course, was exciting, it was our first time out here and didn't know many people. And by now, the third time, it feels like meeting up with people you know and still seeing some familiar faces a so many guys. So, being at the big shows, Sun and Fun several times, Oshkosh once, but coming together with a smaller group of friends and people you get to know over the years in a nice place like Llano. Much more relaxed country setting and shoot the breeze. It's different but also really great.

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Well, Armstrong put it all together with the Maule guys, the Texas Maule Group, and it's just a, it's a social club if you will, with a little bit of flying involved and coming out to show your wares, your skills and have a good time. You know, it's a good place, it's pretty country, it's, it's, we've got this airport kind of in a really recognized playground for a destination fly-out with the amenities that the town has, Cooper Barbeque being one of them. And they leave a big van out here for anyone who flies in. It's getting a lot of notoriety because of the grass strip now. The guys with the bush tires, the soft rubber compounds, it costs a lot of money to put that stuff on the pavement, so anytime you can get to a grass strip, and especially a premier grass strip if you will now, which I think that we have, it is certainly appealing to the masses.

My name's Kyle Hopf. We are here at my dad's place, Jeff. We call it the Maule Cave.

I bought a piece of property, put a hanger on it, discovered I had enough room for a runway, put a runway out there, bought an airplane.

So, our event here at the Maule Cave is just inviting the whole group over here for some pork burgers, just to provide a, kind of a destination for people to fly that's not just landing at the airport. My dad has a beautiful place here and we just love to share it with everybody and he does too, and I think he enjoys having everybody here and all the airplanes here just as much as he does flying. So it's a great event, we're glad to have everybody here. My grandmother is Alice Hopf, she's 88 years old, she's absolutely terrified of flying, but I guess she just kind of got wrapped up in the moment out here and decided she wanted to go. So she got to go for a ride in Russel's 1950 de Havilland Beaver. She loved it.

Looking forward to visiting the little, small airstrips just like we did on Friday, going to do it tomorrow again. That's something, of course, that isn't part of a big airshow. You know, you just fly in and then you're there.

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This part of Texas is known as the Texas Hill Country. If you got out to West Texas, it's flat, if you go out to East Texas, there's a lot of trees. A lot of North Texas is maybe rolling hills, and South Texas is more plains. But in the Central Texas area, we have a lot hills or mountains and beautiful scenery, a lot of grain and outcroppings. We got a lot of lakes here, especially Llano County where we had the Maule at the municipal airport. There was a lot of creeks and rivers, which because of our rains, have really caught water, and if you get the sun just right, they're just like sparkling mirrors all over the county.

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My son got a group of pilots to make a little fly-around. They flew down Sandy Creek, flew up the Llano River, flew over to Lake LBJ, flew up the Colorado arm of the Lake Buchanan, and flew over Falls Creek and went up the Colorado River. This is probably the wildest part of Texas that you've ever seen. Canyons, waterfalls, eagles, wild pigs, deer are in their natural habitat, and it's a ranch that's probably 30,000 acres.

I was asked to be the Air Boss of the event this year and last year. I've been the Air Boss of the two STOL Roundups that we've had here in Llano, this past April and the last April also. Everybody's got a different style of flying, and where they fly, and how they fly. There's no set form, in my opinion. If you're coming over an obstacle or not, there's several different ways for a short take on a landing. Whether you got a beach landing going on, you water ski up to the beach, or if you hit the first brick coming over the obstacle, there's too many variables to sit there and really critique, if you will, each individual's landings, or an individual landing. No matter what, it's everybody's got their own style, their own comfort level. Having a well run program is, is part of it, where people feel confident that they're not gonna be put in a situation where they exceed their own limits. Or in this case, we have an active general aviation airport in operation with a different runway, so we're coordinating with traffic and to the other runway, and keeping people out of, trying to keep people out of trouble, and have been successful so far. Hopefully that never changes. But, you know, just the hospitality that this region, like I said, the amenity of this airport provides is, it's close to being unparalleled, in my opinion.

The hottest temper, too. When you landed, weren't you mad? You got so far.
Well yeah I was mad. I didn't even wait on anybody to mark me.
Yeah, you pulled out there.
It's the weights. Jimmy Giss did it to me, he's the one that added all the weight to the tail of my Maule. The day before contest, I should have known better.

Don't exceed your capabilities, but challenge yourself. You know, take the challenge, expand your abilities. That's what we're trying to do here with people and get them comfortable with some different facets that, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't scare them or anything but they go, wow. You know, let's change the weight and balance like we were talking with Russ and his Maule and the Beaver. Let's, let's get the tail weighted down, because weight is weight, so you have to put it where it does the most good with the least amount of weight. And, you know, he, he learned a lot today, he said it's a totally different flying airplane, it feels good, it feels better than it has felt, and so he took something away from this.

He made a pretty good argument, but I think you have to, have to practice a little bit with putting weight in the tail. And, you know, if your tails not flying there, if you don't have any elevator authority then, you know, you're losing what? 15% of your wind could be helping you provide some lift, I guess. So Steve and I went up in the de Havilland Beaver here, and in the back of this plane, there's a...
Bomb hatch.
We call it a bomb hatch, it's a hatch, and we can actually take the bottom belly skin out, about that big. And Steve in the back and we made a normal bomb run and won, and won the flour bombing contest with a, with a legal run. But then we had a surprise flour bag, we had a five pound flour bag and about a, we estimate about a 18 pound flour bag was the last one. So, Steve dropped that out and we powdered the runway pretty good.

So on Sunday, everybody got together and did a progressive fly-out for breakfast. David Beaver came over and gave everybody a briefing and they went to two airports. One was a, David's home airport, actually, and Marie Beaver gave everybody orange juice and coffee there. Then they took another flight over to Tom and Hetty Ball's place, and at Tom and Hetty's place they had some juice and water, and cinnamon buns, and things like that. Tom and Hetty also donated a fleece jacket with the insignia of their ranch, and gave everybody a ball cap as well.

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On the whole, it was a great day of flying, the weather cooperated the entire time, the progressive was successful, and the scenery in that area of Texas is just absolutely phenomenal, so everybody had a great time and we'll look forward to it again for next year.

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Excellent video. Very professional! Great photography.

As a resident of the Pacific Northwest I tend to forget the midwest and Texas also have terrific areas to fly.

My Maule and I would have loved that strip. I've had it with gravel islands and sandbars I also like to land on. I'm tired of fixing holes the rocks have put through my belly and bottom of my elevator.

Did he say "porkburgers?" Making my mouth water...

Nice work, great documentary. I like Jimmy's philosophy.

Interviews really added a great perspective to the video. Solid evidence that you guys were having fun and safety was paramount. No glamorous results to woo the wannabes, just regular guys having a good time. By the way it's getting close to dinner time here .

Great report video! Excellent group of folks and venue. The WX sure cooperated on that weekend, unlike lately around TX.

Nice work Rich! I liked the interviews and the format of the video! Beautiful country for sure.

Zzz wrote:Did he say "porkburgers?" Making my mouth water...

Nice work, great documentary. I like Jimmy's philosophy.

Man, the pork burgers were absolutely delicious. Your mouth should indeed be watering.

Jimmy is a great guy. He gets it.

rcwflyer wrote:Great report video! Excellent group of folks and venue. The WX sure cooperated on that weekend, unlike lately around TX.

Yeah, we really couldn't have had better weather. Absurdly good by any standard, much less compared to the weather in Texas in general this spring.

Crzyivan13 wrote:Nice work Rich! I liked the interviews and the format of the video! Beautiful country for sure.

Thanks buddy!

I'm back to the US for a couple months soon. We should get together...

Dang, another fabulous fly-in I missed. I really need to organize my life more around flying and events like this. It hurts each time I see a report like yours and think of the stories I missed and the adventures I didn't have. The video presented the best possible report on the event for those of us that couldn't make it in person. Thanks for all the time you spent putting this together Rich. I know there is a lot more video in the recycle bin than made into your finished product. Each of the interviews was clear and focused, did you provide a teleprompter?

I think I heard Pops say it best, "You'll never have any war stories if you don't go to war!"

Very well produced video! Looks like a great event too!

Flyhound wrote:Thanks for all the time you spent putting this together Rich. I know there is a lot more video in the recycle bin than made into your finished product. Each of the interviews was clear and focused, did you provide a teleprompter?

Lol. Yeah, there is a bit of video cluttering up my hard drive(s). Charlie shot 400-500 photos and sent a hundred or so, of which maybe 10 got used. I shot a little over 4 hours of video to get the remainder of the 10 minutes.

I love it when people enjoy my work, but I gotta say, the interviews for this kind of thing are about 90% having the courage to point a camera in someones face and then honoring the implicit agreement to make them look good. (The other 10% is mic'ing everything properly which I failed miserably at in this one).

Great job Rich, I wanted to make that fly-in but couldn't swing it. Next year I need to make it for sure.