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"I didn't even know that Winter Haven had an airport!" exclaimed our driver, Maria.
Yeah, we get that a lot, I thought, but kept it to myself. I flashed back to the hotel courtesy shuttle driver from Kennesaw, GA in 2011 who took over 1.5 hours to locate the large Class Delta airport just two miles away from his hotel.
We preflighted the Warrior and reloaded our luggage. The Bear would be riding north to Ocala with her grandparents. When the airplane was ready to go, we checked out the Flightline Café for lunch. We chose outdoor seating and, though it was hot, we were under shade with overhead fans moving the air around. The outdoor seating provided a great vantage point to watch a pair of Citabrias practicing take-offs and landings.
We both ordered the spicy shrimp tacos. In addition to living up to their name, they were delicious! Two thumbs up for the Flightline Café. With the tacos assembled as they were, I clumsily consigned one shrimp to the patio floor as I ate. Kristy did too, but her errant shrimp departed with style by rolling out of the taco and up her arm almost to the shoulder before plummeting irretrievably to the concrete. I flashed back to one of my few distinct early childhood memories when my ice cream fell off the cone at Meadowbrook Village Mall and splatted on the cobblestone floor right next to the faux cider mill. I stared at the ice cream where it landed on the floor in sheer disbelief for several moments, then promptly burst into tears. As an adult, I felt the much same way about the shrimp.
"Northeast Pennsylvania," I answered.
She immediately made a face. "Oh, that's much too far away!"
Outside, a Cessna 337 Skymaster taxied to parking and shut down. The first thing I thought was, "Oh no! The Night Flyer!" Because it was noon, I let this hypothesis go. It was simply out of character for the fictional, nocturnal serial killer. Then I wondered who names an airplane after the FAA's Form 337, "Major Repair and Alteration"? That seemed like a set-up for failure right from the start.
Tailgater
| Date | Aircraft | Route of Flight | Time (hrs) | Total (hrs) |
| 11 Jul 2021 | N21481 | GIF (Winter Haven, FL) - OCF (Ocala, FL) | 0.7 | 2291.8 |
“Cirrus is on a five mile final, runway 5, Winter Haven.”
With a trumpet fanfare and a chorus of angels, a Cirrus-driver was about to descend through a golden sunbeam to bless lowly Winter Haven Airport with his presence. As we climbed into the sky over Winter Haven, I snorted at the self importance of the transmission. One of the Citabrias was still flying in the pattern and announced a base leg. This evidently alarmed the Cirrus pilot, who plaintively repeated his call of a five mile straight in ”final”. I do not recall what words the Citabria pilot used in his response, but his tone spoke volumes. “Whatever, dude.”
Thus ended our brief stay in Winter Haven. Maybe someday I'll make the pilgrimage again to earn my seaplane rating at Jack Brown's, located at the west end of the field.
Leveling at 3,000 feet, I surveyed the area around Winter Haven and suddenly remembered that Kermit Weeks' Fantasy of Flight was nearby. Within moments of the thought, I spotted it.
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| The unmistakable campus of Fantasy of Flight, with apologies for the crummy image. |
My last visit to Fantasy of Flight was April 2006 during Sun 'N' Fun. I wondered what improvements had occurred there since my last visit.
For the short flight from Winter Haven to Ocala, we flew VFR on a 1200 squawk; no IFR flight plan, no VFR flight following. I adjusted course once along the way for a potentially conflicting aircraft. Naturally, about fifteen miles out from Ocala, I spotted a new threat.
ADS-B showed a target directly behind us, N725MF, with a 30 knot overtake and also on a trajectory for Ocala. I called Ocala Tower ten miles out and was told to report three miles southeast of the field. In the descent, I left power in for a groundspeed bump that helped maintain separation with the unseen aircraft following us. A few miles out, I reported the target to the tower. Tower called Five Mike Foxtrot and asked if they had the Cherokee in sight at twelve o'clock, one mile, same altitude. By now, ForeFlight was throwing traffic alerts as the other aircraft swooped into the pattern at high speed.
"Yes," the pilot responded with bored nonchalance. Then, "Uhhhhh...no. No, we don't see him." This response did nothing to ease my anxiety. Fortunately, we turned onto downwind and because our tailgater was a helicopter (a helicopter?!), it descended below pattern altitude and made a beeline for midfield.
Once separation was already assured, Five Mike Foxtrot finally announced that they had eyes on us. At this point, I had already nicknamed the helicopter based on its tail number...and it wasn't "Mike Foxtrot". We watched the helo settle toward a sandy portion of the field, kicking up an absurd localized dust storm adjacent to the runway that was still swirling when we landed. Style points for Mike Foxtrot: zero.
In hindsight, I should have just turned away from Ocala before entering their airspace, circled around behind Five Mike Foxtrot, and let the faster aircraft reach Ocala first. Maybe I have become a little too accustomed to IFR flying. Maybe I also expected him to slow down a little before entering the pattern.
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| ForeFlight ground track from Winter Haven (KGIF) to Ocala (KOCF) |
FBO Opulence
Sheltair Ocala has a beautiful new facility. The staff were uniformly friendly and helpful. I have nothing but good things to say about the FBO in Ocala.
Five Mike Foxtrot taxied to parking nearby and, once I saw it, I understood how it was possible for a helicopter to cruise so rapidly. Egad. We were chased into the pattern by freaking Airwolf.
(OK, so this is a Sikorsky and Airwolf was a gussied up Bell 222, but nonetheless...)
Behind Warrior 481, a mass of cumulus in the distance gathered itself into a thunderstorm. Due to my concerns about thunderstorms, hail, and heat in the south -- some of them based on direct past experience -- I arranged for the FBO to keep Warrior 481 in a hangar for the entire week of our stay. The weekly hangar cost was $300 and that seemed like money well-spent given the climate. Minimally, it was nice not to have to bundle the Warrior up in her pajamas each time we made an excursion from Ocala.
Ocala is in Florida's horse country and the entrance to the FBO was lined with a series of jockey statues.
I was amused by the COVID-related signage. Hey, if we're going to have to do these things, we might as well have some fun with it, right?
Lisa gave us a tremendous welcome and saw to it that Warrior 481 received excellent care. Because of our planned excursions, I chose not to take on more fuel at that time, planning instead to top off after a couple of excursions out of Ocala. Lisa requested that I provide at least an hour's notice of any requests to pull the Warrior out of the hangar. We did her one better by calling ahead the day before. The line crew always had Warrior 481 pulled out at the time requested and waiting for us on arrival.
The comfortably-appointed lobby featured an old airport beacon that looked a lot like the one atop the tower at Telfair-Wheeler. A polished Navion hovered above at a rakish angle, adding aeronautical gravitas to the space. A new restaurant plans to open in the near future.
Lisa hooked Kristy and I up with some Sheltair swag, specifically t-shirts and ice-cold bottles of Sheltair's private label water. We spent a couple of hours waiting for Kristy's family to pick us up while I caught up on email and updated my logbooks, both paper and digital.
Entertainment was provided by a Bee Gees playlist, a slide show of magnificent aerial photos playing on a massive TV, and a tiny horde of miniature dinosaurs scampering about outside.
When Kristy's parents arrived, they had The Bear, Lisa, and Nate with them in their SUV. To allow adequate seating for Kristy and I, everyone's bags were stowed in a U-Haul trailer. Evidently, shifting a modern vehicle equipped with a collision warning system into reverse while towing a trailer makes for quite a challenge when the system detects that trailer and automatically engages the brakes. And some say that pilots struggle with first world problems.
Oxford Oaks Ranch
SurnameFest 2021 would not officially begin until Pam and Stephen joined us later that evening, but exploring the new house was a key milestone in the process. We stayed at the lovely Oxford Oaks Ranch in Ocala horse country. We were surrounded by horses, donkeys, goats, and ducks. I wondered how they all felt about a Bear staying in their midst. It seems like they might be skittish.
The house itself was spacious and comfortable, but with a few more dead things tacked on the walls than most of us would have preferred. Of particular noteworthiness was a stuffed turkey vulture that dominated one of the main rooms, wings spread as though actively working a thermal. When the ceiling fan was cranked up, the dead beastie flopped around on its mooring like a Walking Dead zombie caught on a fence post. Naturally, this took me back sixteen years to the pair of turkey vultures circling the Kalamazoo UberCo building in which 500 of my colleagues and I were relieved of our jobs. Harbingers of doom, those turkey vultures. I would not want one in my house.
There were also barking tree frogs that sang a disjointed chorus throughout the night. I actually miss the barking frogs. They have personality.
Otherwise, we played games, cooked meals together, and indulged in a new activity for 2021: virtual reality headset games courtesy of Lisa and Nate. Cool stuff.
Stephen's brother is the brewmaster for Wax Wings Brewing Co in Kalamazoo and dispatched Stephen to Florida with some of his experimental wares to sample. These included some very interesting sours that were finely crafted beyond the typical sour-for-the-sake-of being sour mentality. I also enjoyed the crisp, refreshing House of Earth lager, which was an effort to reproduce a traditional brew from the town in Poland where their grandfather was born.
While I am not exactly sure of what The Bear was doing, I am certain that it involved holding a virtual lightsaber in her virtual hands.
When taking group photos, variety is key. This one is "dignified".
Normal.
Precarious. (Granny is totally freaking out in this photo, but hiding it well.)
And...oh no, the trolls are proliferating! How does this keep happening?
When the titular burrito from the game Throw Throw Burrito winds up in the alligator's mouth, what then? This scenario is completely omitted in the rules; we were completely off book. And that, my friends, is what SurnameFest is all about.
The Braying Dock
"Eeeeeeeee...awwwwwww."
Bizarrely, when the floating platform rubbed against those open PVC pipes, a very credible donkey bray was produced. Rather than being startled, The Bear laughed uncontrollably while I continued making the dock bray at will.
While Oxford Oaks Ranch was the official name of the property and emblazoned on the fancy stone entrance gate, I will always remember the place as Braying Dock Manor. I am sure that the owners would be mortified.
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