PFA at Kemble

Flying with Martin

in our Vintage Cessna 170B

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2 July 2005 - The PFA rally at Kemble
The PFA rally is an annual event and took place 1 - 3 July 2005. We decided to attend on Saturday as the weather forecast seemed best for that day, there was a promised air display and we had other family commitments on the Sunday. Our friend Paul "K" had taken receipt of his new car the previous day and planned to meet us at the rally. Paul "S" had been working late the previous evening so agreed to come later in the day. We took off and stopped off at Popham to refuel the plane as we thought it may be a bit busy at Kemble. After chatting to John "M" a fellow vintage aeroplane member about how wonderful Badminton had been - Thanks John!!! we then took off for Kemble. We were careful to follow the suggested route that we had taken from the 16 pages of essential reading supplied by the PFA official website. Martin had planned the route marking it carefully on the map the evening before. We arrived and landed on Runway 26 hard and were soon being guided to our parking spot. Immediately we realised that there were not as many aircraft in the park as we had expected. Apparently only one aircraft had flown in on Friday evening, usually the field was littered with aircraft and tents when we arrived on Saturday. That unhelpful English weather being the problem.

Having signed in we met up with Paul "K" and started to view the stands, homebuild aircraft and goods on view. Without doubt the boys were most interested in was the 80% scale spitfire

Of the planes in the field there was one that was attracting the most attention an aeroplane called a Delta produced by a company called Verhees engineering which had flown in from France. That must have been an amazing flight I wished I had been there to see it.

Regrettably the weather took a turn for the worst. Rain started to fall, the cloud base fell causing the air display to be rather poorer than hoped. Certainly we were beginning to wonder whether we were going to get home that night. However by 19:00 suddenly the clouds lifted and we decided to take the chance of a safe return journey. Paul "S" returned in his Bulldog, we flew our Cessna 170B and Paul "K" drove back to the airfield by road. We took the opportunity to offer Paul "K" a short flight in both our aircraft before we packed them away for the night. He was delighted to take up our offers and returned with a definite smile on his face. Discussions about the highlights and low spots the day went on well into the evening over a cup of coffee. I am unsure what was in the coffee !!!!!

Apologies about the focus but the boys would just not stay still. The car on the left is Paul "K" 's new Volvo.