For past couple of days Flabob airport in Riverside, CA has been hosting a first (inaugural?) DC-3/C-47 "fly-in/gathering". Initially they had expected/hoped for 12-13 examples to attend, but as of last night 9 had been accounted for (including couple of non-working examples), some have been offering "rides" (for a fee), I've catched two with different aircraft so far, maybe one more today. Public attendance has been quite low (which I personally like), but I heard the organizers are/were considering making this an annual event, so hopefully next year will prove better for them, both in aircraft and public attendance. Image Unavailable, Please Login
P.S. I took several videos of take-offs, fly-bys and landings, but all appear too "large" to post here and I don't know how to make them "smaller", sorry.
What's YouTube ??? Something like that Television I threw away almost 30 years ago ? ;-) I'll look into it (or have some one else do it), maybe next week. Or perhaps other spectators will do theirs in coming days ? Just got back from the last day of this great event. Wasn't able to get my third ride (sold-out), but definitely enjoyed the ones I did and took some more photos & videos today. These are my favorite airplanes and only type I wanted ever since I can remember. "Almost" bought one over 30 years ago.
Famous Amos used to have the ex Hap Arnold plane and operated it out of Oakland for passenger rides. Even did an evening sunset champagne flight. Had the cabin attendant wear period Stew outfit and served refreshments. Low slow sight seeing flight around SF Bay. Not much room in those things. You could go forward and look over the flight crews shoulder. They really didn't have much room up front.
Inside of my 2nd ride. Sorry, I don't have photos of the first, which was a bit more "Spartan". Image Unavailable, Please Login
There were couple of other fly-bys on Sunday. Although not a DC-3/C-47 this didn't look or sound too bad either... Image Unavailable, Please Login
Thanks for posting. I spent some time working and crewing on the CAF C-53 and I'm still a member of Flabob's EAA chapter one but I don't make it down there anymore.
