March 29th - Poker Run!

[Geoff]

LoL, thanks for the "special consideration" for my late (and pokey) finish! My trusty Archer was really racing today -- we were doing as much as 120 knots on the last flight!

[flyingdrill]

Brilliant fun. Nice to fly VFR, and quite a hoot to have so many on the CTAF at once. Once or twice, I had to try and ensure that the plane I was looking at was indeed a real participant, and not a drone, as there were quite a few drones at some fields - or were they NORDO PE-ers? The airports and routes were so well chosen, that (unless I made a massive error), there was no need to annoy controllers. Avoiding Class C and D airspaces was easy. Thank you to those who arranged and executed this, and thanks to all the pilots, who turned it into a real community day out

Now, back to the Alphabet Challenge!

[Keith Smith]

In hindsight, it would've been appropriate to probably just shut down the drones for the whole day, or if time permitted, remove the drones from the participating air fields. I didn't have this realization until about 5 hours before the end of the event, though and most of the traffic had worked through the program by then.

Great job Chris and Ken! I visited KIZA briefly from SBA in the Bell 206 and the CTAF was being used perfectly. Good stuff!

[kullery]

Had considered asking you to kill the drones but thought that the added traffic might be a good thing. Honestly, with the event running all day, I never expected the concentrations of traffic that we had throughout most of the day.

Overall, I don't think they caused any major issues. I saw a number of go-arounds but that isn't any different from running across a NORDO or wrong freq aircraft at any uncontrolled field. There were numerous cases where pilots issued "heads up" traffic calls for military traffic around Crystal. The low passes by the F18's (DEVILxx flight I believe) were outstanding.

[tngarner]

Had considered asking you to kill the drones but thought that the added traffic might be a good thing. Honestly, with the event running all day, I never expected the concentrations of traffic that we had throughout most of the day.

Overall, I don't think they caused any major issues. I saw a number of go-arounds but that isn't any different from running across a NORDO or wrong freq aircraft at any uncontrolled field. There were numerous cases where pilots issued "heads up" traffic calls for military traffic around Crystal. The low passes by the F18's (DEVILxx flight I believe) were outstanding.

I think the Drones made it real. I truly felt like I was in RW on a Sunday afternoon. I have a little field in Alabama I like to fly to (exactly 50.5 Miles from my home field so Cross Country hour). Radios are 100% optional if you are based at that field. The only people on the CTAF at KPYP are those that are not based there, LOL. Great stuff,, thanks again for the event. Truly the most fun I have had on PE. My wife even said I was in a great mood after like I had gone flying in the RW....

[N119XD - Shawn]

OMG! That was so much fun!!! Had a TERRIBLE landing at Crystal, broke my airframe. Great time coordinating traffic patterns with others and BIG BEAR looked like Osh Kosh!!! Great Event! Well done!!! Look forward to more.

[N119XD - Shawn]

as others have said, wish I'd of had the scenery for those airports. Most were blah. BIG BEAR was covered in forest. Despite the trees I had a great landing. The F18s at Crystal were cool!!! Great VFR routes. Loved following the power lines and looking for the lakes.

[fabriciofigueroa]

Will you set up another poker run?
I will join.