The Texas STOL Roundup serves two customers. Sponsors who support the event and in turn get to showcase their products to as many potential buyers as possible, and pilots who both come to compete and/or watch. This is your event. We make no money from this event, quite the contrary, even with the help of sponsors we still fall short many thousands of dollars and that comes directly out of our pockets without ever being reimbursed. We do it for the love of aviation and in particular for the love of the coolest form of aviation, STOL/Backcountry flying. Each year we attempt to provide the most unique, enjoyable, fun event possible. We thank everyone who supports us. Unfortunately this year Mother Nature and our venue threw many curve balls our way. A number of folks have questioned how/why we did what we did at the 2017 Texas STOL Roundup.

Here are the answers.

Why the venue change?

Those that attended the 2016 Roundup understand why. It’s success was so strong we ran out of places to park airplanes. We closed taxiways and parked on them. We parked on every piece of turf. We even parked airplanes in a circle around the windsock. And still more planes arrived but were unable to stay because there was no parking left anywhere. An exhaustive search was done and the airport at Hondo was the only possible alternative that would accommodate our success and let us fly off grass and hopefully let us camp on grass.

Jimmy and Phil flew to Hondo and met with the now former Airport Manager. He and the city were very excited to have us. We identified a grass area we could work off of both North or South, it would be crowd center with spectator viewing the equivalent of Llano. The former Airport Manager assured us, then and at follow up meetings, that the new grass runway would be in as good a shape as a golf course. Likewise he assured us he would take of several other tasks pertinent to the success of the event.

What happened to the grass?

Jimmy having experience with this before explained to the former airport manager on a couple of occasions what needed to be done to get it in useable shape. The former airport manager ignored Jimmy’s request and bladed the original designated grass runway effectively making it unusable until the following year.

With valuable time lost Jimmy identified an area adjacent to the first and requested that the first area be abandoned, now being unusable, and focus all efforts on this second area. The former airport manager again ignored Jimmy’s request and continued to put efforts into the bladed strip. He eventually quit his position with the airport just prior to the event.

In order to have the possibility to fly off of grass at the competition with an encroaching event date, Jimmy at his own expense started flying to Hondo on a regular basis and doing or coordinating the mowing and watering himself. This went on for several weeks right up to the event.

Leading up to the competition Hondo had received no rain. This caused giant cracks to form in all the turf areas, especially areas that had never been groomed before, like the new strip Jimmy was working on. Cracks large enough to swallow a baby bush-wheel. This necessitated arranging for water trucks to come water the area frequently. Can you imagine the amount of water it takes to improve a turf area 1,400 feet long and 100 feet wide when you get no help from Mother Nature?

Things were starting to look up but the turf area still needed work to accommodate everyone. Certainly no problems for big tire guys, but we have lot’s of competitors on smaller tires. The city was unable to supply a roller of adequate size but fortunately Dennis Smith of STOL Magazine volunteered to bring his big roller and did so, thank you Dennis. By now we were just a few short weeks from the event. The new turf strip was far from perfect, still had a lot of bare spots and cracks, but was starting to look useable. Then Mother Nature intervened.

Why did we fly off of concrete?

All of us arrived on site a week ahead of the event to set everything up. Hurricanes had and continued to strike Texas and the Gulf Coast. Our portable shower guy had to go to the disaster areas and provide his showers for first responders, rescuers, and cleanup personnel.

The wind shifted to out of the North and remained there. It started to rain and rain and rain. Day after day after day. And although the rain nearly closed up all the cracks in the turf, it rendered the turf so muddy it was clear it would be unusable, at least not on Friday and Saturday. The forecast was for the weather to clear by the weekend so we had to find an alternative.

For two full days Jimmy and Phil drove the runways and taxiways and walked in the tall un-mowed grass, and with hand drawn maps tried to figure out where we could fly. If the weather cleared early enough we could expect a pretty good attendance. We received communications from pilots waiting for the weather to clear throughout Texas and adjacent states.

This year we had only 2 volunteers to start the weekend, so we had to develop a plan that would allow movement of competitor planes without the danger of someone walking into a propellor- even pilots walk into propellors- and allow the arrival and departure of non-competitor planes and the flight school students without the danger of someone walking into a propellor.

Eventually Jimmy and Phil identified the only safe option to conduct our competition, the very north end of 17L/35R. Unfortunately on the concrete and far from spectators. But it was the only place we could operate safely and still allow non-competitor airplanes to come and go and competitor aircraft to taxi safely between runs.

Friday, the arrival day, the weather improved at Hondo and the rain ceased. But the rest of Texas remained mostly IFR and Low IFR. Still 20 or so competitors managed to find enough holes to make it in. Both Saturday and Sunday were forecast to be VFR. With pilots still on the ground throughout Texas and adjacent states waiting to continue on, we decided to push the event back a half a day; moving the STOL/Backcountry Seminar from Friday to Saturday morning, the Traditional STOL competition from Saturday morning to Saturday afternoon, the Obstacle STOL from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning, and we cancelled the Sunday morning flour bombing. This would allow those pilots still wanting to get in Saturday morning to do so. It worked, we more then doubled the aircraft and competitors.

So why couldn’t we sit in the big grassy area next to the runway on the north end of 17L/35R so we could better see the competition?

Remember the two volunteers? Well we now had three! A lady from an EAA Chapter and a 99’s Chapter offered to help. She attempted to get additional volunteers from both organizations (as had we) but no luck. Well three volunteers isn’t enough to protect spectators and bystanders from the competition aircraft that had to use the taxiway for the north end of 17L/35R (and grass area) nor from non-competitor aircraft taxiing to or from parking. The only option to get close to the competition was to volunteer to be a lines person. Many did and we really appreciate it.

Sunday morning the wind was mostly from the Southeast. The first thing we did was walk the turf area that Jimmy had prepped for our grass runway. Both Jimmy and Phil walked it separately. The cracks had closed up sufficiently and the ground was dry enough for big tire operations, but not for small tires. So we were once again forced to the concrete for the Obstacle STOL competition in order to keep an even playing field and ensure the safety of all planes.

Why wasn’t all STOL competition done at the same place it was for the Super Heavy Touring class?

On Saturday the Pilatus, which had flown in on an unrelated business trip and with no prior knowledge of our event, was so interested in what we were doing that they asked if they could fly in Super Heavy Touring. It was the end of the day, no more aircraft were arriving at Hondo and there were only two aircraft in the Super Heavy Touring class so we felt we could accommodate the needs of the Pilatus. The pilot of the Pilatus, having never before flown in a competition like this, turned to his plane’s manual to get landing distances with safety margins so he wouldn’t risk running off the end of the runway into the weeds and balling up the plane. Of course he landed far shorter then he’d planned for. By the time the Super Heavy Touring class flew on Sunday it was nearly noon. A lot of airplanes had already left. No new airplanes were arriving. Since only one aircraft would compete we felt we could fly it without interfering with any other aircraft arrival and departure and we could back taxi it on the runway instead of taxiing down Alpha which we notam’d closed in the interest of safety.

Why couldn’t we camp on the grass?

We had originally planned on camping everyone on the grass. After walking the areas Jimmy determined it wasn’t practical due to the extreme coverage of thorn bushes, terribly uneven terrain, pot holes, gopher holes, and fire ants along with being a safety issue with airplane overflight and pedestrian traffic (again only three volunteers). Of course once it started raining that alone made it impractical.

Looking Ahead

A few weeks ago a meeting took place with City of Hondo officials, the new airport manager and staff, and the Chamber of Commerce about the future of the Roundup and how all parties can improve next year’s event. This meeting was very successful, the City, Chamber and the Texas STOL Group individuals are enthused and looking forward to next year. City funds have been allocated specifically for the event and a memorandum of understanding is currently being developed to establish a closer working relationship between all parties.

The Texas STOL Roundup would like to sincerely thank: our sponsors and our competitors who came and made the event and competition a reality in spite of adverse weather restrictions; the Hondo Airport staff, Rey, John and Anna who worked tirelessly for us regardless of the circumstances surrounding management; the Corrigan Air Center and their employees, and Hondo Aerospace and their employees, who always said yes to everything asked of them and who did everything they could for their airport, their community and our event; the City Manager and the Chamber of Commerce who both stepped in to help as much as they could.

And, of course thank you to all of the other supporters and spectators that both attended the event and supported from afar.

Tough deal all the way around! We should be further ahead of it for next year and don’t hesitate to reach out for help. Lots of folks will pitch in, just need to put out an invite. Heck, I didn’t know til I got there that you all had endured such an ordeal and a tremendous amount of work.

Phil first and foremost I want to say thank you for all of the hard work you and others did to make this happen. We flew in from Ohio and yes the weather was sporty to say the least trying to get to our destinations for the last 100 miles. We were there Friday and Saturday. My cousin and I had a freaking ball and we are looking forward to participating in next year’s events.

Here is a picture of my cousin taxing back from the contest.

Phil-

Thanks for the insight. First I'd like to say 'Good on Ya'... you did a tremendous job putting on the event and flexing with all the problems. There are always problems. Some that you faced at Hondo were pretty big. It's good to hear the City is trying to make it good for next year. Weather will always be a factor. Keep up the good work!

gunny