Miami County: Pancake Breakfast Fly-in and Air Museum Tour
On Saturday, July 21, with Caleb’s flight instructor in tow, we flew up to Miami County to visit Grissom Air Force Base. Grissom had been on our radar for a while but we hadn’t made it up that way, yet. The allure of a Fly-in/pancake breakfast/lunch/$5 museum tours made this activity perfect for this Saturday.
So we jumped in the air plane with Richard (Caleb’s past flight instructor) and headed north.
Since we had a safety pilot on board, Richard, Caleb decided to log an instrument approach; this added some time, but is useful for Caleb to stay current with his instrument flying.
The runway at Grissom is 12501 feet long – over 2 miles. On a bad day I need about 3000 feet to land my plane, and on a good day closer to 1000. This runway is massive.
We landed on a runway farther away from all the action but we taxied past a handful of military jets.
The pancake breakfast started at 7:00 so we were a little late to the game when we arrived just after 10:30. Caleb talked to someone involved with running the event and said they served over 700 pancakes but most of the fly-ins had already left by the time we arrived.
There was still plenty of activity, though. Isaac was able to sit in a helicopter and watch a second helicopter take off to give a handful of event goers a ride. There was also a helicopter display, two Isaac sized airplanes, a dog, and a little toy airplane that entertained Isaac for quite a while.
Richard and Isaac decided it was time to partake in lunch. After lunch there was more time to watch the helicopters, explore a few exhibits and play with the toy airplanes. Then Caleb rounded up a volunteer to give us for a ride to the Grissom Air Museum; less than a five minute drive down the road.
The first thing you notice about the air museum is all of the airplanes in the outdoor exhibit. While the indoor portion of the museum is great make sure the weather is nice because the outdoor exhibit is by far the best part.
I was a bit concerned that being a 2.5 year old boy, Isaac may have been bored but he loved the museum. Of course, who wouldn’t be excited about climbing in and out of airplanes and helicopters.
You could sit in the cockpit of an F-4C. Or you could crawl into the fighter jet’s intake. The air intake just happens to be the perfect size for Isaac; he enjoyed more than one trip inside.
Other items in the museum included: old uniforms, a BA53 Thermonuclear bomb, old airplane propellers and more.
Then we ventured outside to checkout the airplanes.
Isaac’s favorite plane was the A-10A Thunderbolt II; he thought it looked like a dinosaur.
After we finished with the museum, we caught a ride with the same great volunteer, back to our airplane and headed home.