Sun-n-Fun 2009 And My Encounter With The Sbach 342

A little slice of Sun-n-Fun 09... and the Sbach 342 that I got to ride in!

 I did the math and have determined that I've slept an average of 4.25 hours a night in the preceding four days! Why? Sun-n-Fun of course!

 Too bad a lot of  those hours awake were spent 'ground bound' on I-75 covering the 1,150 miles between my house and Lakeland Linder Regional Airport!  But if you're an airplane nut like me, lots of white-line-fever and not much sleep is a pretty good trade for seeing so much aviation in one place. Plus, now more than ever is the time to be supporting any aviation event.

 I hadn't been to Sun-n-Fun since the early 80's when I had the incredible opportunity to travel there (and back) in the very rare 1936 Stinson Model A Tri-Motor.  So I was curious to see what the event was like now in 2009, and in the midst of "this economy" as so may are prone to call it.

 I'm really glad I made the trip, it was very well worth the time spent and the lack of slumber.  Especially when you make sure to dig in a bit and take in the details. If you only go to see the biggest or mostest of something, you really miss the heart and soul of events like this.

 It's the things you learn, the people you meet, or maybe even the best picture you ever took that make the experience extra special.  Even unforgettable.

 I don't know what the attendance numbers look like for 2009 compared to previous years, but I sure saw a lot of very happy people covering the grounds the time that I was there. There was a ton of cool things to see and do which translates to: if you weren't there, you should have been.

 It was especially cool to meet up with lots of people from twitter. It was like going to the event with a big pile of friends, even tho we'd never actually met before. I've never experienced an event like that before, with a lot of people to continually interact with.  I liked it.  More on that later as well as several posts with SNF details.

 My SNF highlight came from meeting Kevin Eldredge from www.sloair.com. He's is the U.S. distributor for the Sbach 300 and 342 airplanes, and he's also known for flying around in circles (really fast!) in 'Relentless', his awesome Nemesis NXT.  As for the Sbach 342, it pretty much drained my saliva glands the first time I saw it at OSH 08.

 It wasn't just the meeting him that was cool tho... it was the 15 minute rocket ride I got in the Sbach 342 that was out-of-this-world!  I'll have much more about that to come before long, including a bit of video, but right now I've got 1,150 miles of white-line-fever that's calling me back home.