Sunstate Rotor Club Recovering From the Hurricane Season

If you wanted to see a sad face, you could have visited Wauchula, Florida (KCHN), the home of the Sunstate Rotor Club, right after Hurricane Charley in August. The glum members of the club thought they'd have to cancel the club's flagship event, Bensen Days, which takes place in April. There was no thought at all that they might be able to run their next most popular event, the New Year's Weekend Fly-In.

But the club members underestimated their own abilities. The club, which is one of the most active chapters of the Popular Rotorcraft Association (and is also affiliated with EAA and ASC), has a lot of energetic, committed people. Not only will Bensen Days be on time and as good as ever, but the chapter fly-in held over the New Years' Day weekend drew pilots from several states and saw many gyroplane and some helicopter flights.

A First Flight... And All Those Other Flights

Rick Martin of Bradenton, FL, brought his freshly completed GyroBee ultralight to the fly-in for an inspection and its first flight. There was nothing amiss with Rick's pretty yellow-tailed gyro, so Ron Awad put it through its paces.

Ron arrived in his fixed-wing plane with his wife and son, and having a machine that was faster than any of the gyros, found himself roped in to fly for parts. He and Greg Spicola bopped over to Lockwood Aviation in Sebring and came back to get Greg's Air Command running again. Then they had to do it all over, because they had gotten the wrong part the first time! In the end, they got Greg back into the air (in the next section you'll learn what got him down).

Ron has flown 26 different gyroplanes, in addition to fixed-wings and three-axis ultralights. He owns a Piper Pacer, a Dominator gyro, and an ultralight... and has been known to wheel and deal in gyros (one reason he's flown so many: he's owned six in the last few years). If a representative of Rotor Flight Dynamics (RFD) is not present, Ron will be guy one who appears to be selling RFD's Dominator gyroplanes. He likes them -- a lot. (The picture of him flying shows him aboard a Dominator Ultrawhite).

Ron didn't bring his own gyro, but he had no trouble borrowing them, and got to try out some unusual machines, like Chuck Beaty's one-off gyro (which doesn't appear to have any other name -- just "Chuck's gyro"). Chuck designed the machine to put the pilot in a near-recumbent position.

It wasn't all gyros. Some helicopters, including a Mosquito XE ultralight and an R-22, flew as well, and fixed-wing planes dropped in to visit; a lot of club members and "family" are interested in anything that lets you defy gravity. But the main focus of the fly-in was on those affordable, exciting rotorcraft, gyroplanes.

For the potential gyro pilot, instructors like David Seace were instructing. For someone who wanted to talk about gyro design, here was a chance to get one-on-one with experts like Chuck Beaty, Ernie Boyette (Rotor Flight Dynamics, "Dominator") or Dick DeGraw ("Gyrhino," among others). If someone was curious about a gyro design, here was a chance to see it up close, compare it to others in its class, possibly even fly it.

Was The Hurricane Damage Bad?

Was it bad? It was worse than bad. The clubhouse, a trailer, was rolled over. Hangars were collapsed. Mighty oak trees that had stood for a century -- and that were loved by the airport crowd for their blessed shade, they're not joking when they call it "Sunstate" -- were bowed and splintered, and stripped of leaves. A hangar door had fallen on Greg Spicola's gyroplane -- not something that's in the gyro's design envelope. An old DC-3 that somebody was going to restore one of these days ran out of days; it was bodily lifted and slammed down into an adjacent pasture, crushed, inverted and forlorn. A storage shed that had held the club's supplies was gone, squashed like a bug under another trailer that served as the club's showers. The shower trailer was a one-off, built by a club member who had passed on.

The site was so bad that the Governor and President came on August 15 to visit and encourage the cleanup crew. The crew needed it. They couldn't even take a break at the picnic tables under the defoliated trees: what picnic tables? They were off downwind somewhere, in pieces, along with all the club's other "stuff".

The smashed storage building had contained all the printed materials that were going to be used for Bensen Days, etc., as well as a lot of other lightweight stuff that had just blown away in the hurricane winds. Even the disks containing some of the files for those printed items were gone.

How They Recovered

There's no big secret to recovering from a disaster like this: it's just applied hard work. They wasted very little time on what they would have, could have, should have done ("We forgot about the clubhouse, we could have moved it!"), or feeling sorry for themselves, but put their shoulders into it and worked together. Greg Spicola didn't even assess the damage on his own rotorcraft for several days -- he was too busy helping on the community projects.

Some members of other PRA Chapters chipped in voluntary cash donations to replace the lost materials from the shredded trailer. Other rotorcraft fiends joined the club as a way to show their support.

In the end, even the oak trees made a full recovery. (The wreck of the DC-3 is still in the pasture next door, though. That would be a Humpty Dumpty project).

And Bensen Days Are Ahead

The fly-in, named for gyrocopter pioneer Dr. Igor Bensen, will be held from April 5 thru 10, 2005. It should be bigger than the New Years' Fly-in, but not so big as to prevent you from mingling, meeting most of the sport rotorcraft community, and, if you like, trying to get more gyroplanes in your logbook than Ron Awad.

Camping with Power on Site $12.00 a night Camping with Tent No Power $7.00 a night Registration Fee $5.00 Vendors' Fee: $50.00, must sign a release.

There'll be designated parking for autos and also a specific parking area for rotorcraft trailers. The club will have showers and porta-potties, and the miraculous oak trees will provide shade.

"Florida has some of the best flying weather in April!" says MJ Oxnam of the club.

Summing Up

A small fly-in like this is different from a big production like Sun-n-Fun or even the annual PRA convention in Mentone, IN. It feels more like a family outing than a mass cult pilgrimage -- and that's exactly the way they like it at Wauchula.

Rick Martin, having seen his gyro fly for the first time, posted his opinion: "A really great weekend. Not too big - not too small. Lots of great people. Lots of great food. Weather cooperated. Great fires." Fires? Well... you can take the camper out of the boy scout suit, but you can never get the boy scout out of the camper. There's something about staring into a fire, when the night is clear and the company is good.

Ron Awad agrees: "Had a great time, possibly the best New Year's fly in yet."

Sound like your idea of a fun time? Well, the wind may blow in central Florida, but next year the Sunstate Rotor Club will be having a New Year's fly-in -- you can count on it.

(Aero-News thanks Ron Awad for the use of his pictures and tales of the fly-in, and we'd like to thank all the members of The Sunstate WIng and Rotor Club for turning us on to their New Year's secret. Next year, in Wauchula!)

FMI: www.rotaryforum.com