The Breakfast Club
An Affiliate of the
The Knife & Fork
Breakfast Club Visits Blythe,
By Warren McIlvoy
11 January 03
It's not every day that an aviation organization drops-in on a location that is more well known for its capacity to cater to the cross-country highway traffic plying the Interstate system. But if you have any inkling as to why otherwise sane people, would get into their personal aircraft and fly, sometimes 100's of miles for that elusive "$100 hamburger," then you would understand why we would visit such an unobtrusive spot such as the Union 76 Truck stop in Blythe, California. It is hard to explain the allure of a truck stop to an aviation oriented group but just let a hungry pilot, or in our case, a hoard of hungry, intrepid aviators, get a whiff of frying bacon and eggs, and we will zero-in on it like a pack of hungry wolves chasing a meat truck. Besides, as a Zen master might say, "It's the journey, not he destination, that's important." And, we all have a common interest, flying and eating (which ever order that is important to you).
The flight would cover about 140 miles and take a little over an hour so I had arranged to meet the Paul Fortune (BC-201) who would be accompanying us today as his aircraft was still in the "airplane hospital". The flying weather promised to be delightful but this Saturday followed a week of high dew points and every exposed surface had a healthy coating of dew. I wiped-down the window several times but this was almost a useless gesture as the windows quickly regained a thin coating of moisture. To make matters worse, the inside windows were every bit as wet as were the outside windows. After pre-flighting the aircraft, we climbed into 76H and commenced the ritual of attempting to clear to fog from the inside windows as our body heat only made matters worse.
The engine fired-up after only two blades and at least the air flow from the prop helped to keep the exterior of the window clear. However, it did not help the inside much. I opened the defroster vent but that is entirely dependent on airflow and at idle, the benefit was minuscule at best. From the south end of the Kilo ramp, it was about a 1 mile taxi to runway 3. I was constantly wiping the inside of the window to gain a modicum of forward visibility but when I turned into the sun, we were almost blind. The view out the side window was enough to help us get orientated on the taxiway and I taxied as slow as I ever have to the run-up area. The movement along the taxiway, all-be-it very slowly, began to mitigate the fog accumulation on the inside of the windows. After the run-up, the forward visibility was sufficient enough to allow for a safe take-off environment. Once into the air, the defoggers (as the English would say) did their job admirably and everything was right with the world once more as we turned west.
I dialed-up Luke Approach on the com but I did not expect to hear anything on the radio as Approach had not been working on the weekends. So I was a bit surprised when I heard Approach respond to another aircraft that was nearing their airspace. When I was over Deer Valley Airport at 4500', I called Luke to get our squawk code to traverse the Alert Area. I could hear some other aircraft numbers that I had recognized as being part of our group but they were well ahead of me. After completing the crossing of the Alert Area, I tuned-in our air-to-air frequency to report in. It turned out that we were "tail end turtle" on this trip. Where was BC-310 (Jim Nelson) when I needed him? This position has traditionally belonged to him and I certainly did not want to infringe on a title that dutifully belongs to him.
The air was smooth as glass and clear of clouds but the visibility was only about 30 miles due to the haze on the horizons. Just after passing the desert metropolis of Quartzite, we began a slow descent for a straight-in approach to runway 26 at Blythe. By now, there was only one other BC aircraft in the air along with us and they were in the pattern of Blythe. After a "greaser" landing that caught the attention of my two passengers, I taxied all the way down to the approach end of runway 8 and parked well off the side of the taxiway that was already populated with Breakfast Club aircraft.
The Union 76 Truck Stop was a little over a 100 yard hike through the desert scrub. To the west of the truck stop was a huge trucking terminal that was not here the last time that we visited this location in 1997. And speaking of 97, that was the event that a staff writer Linda Helser of the Arizona Republic, joined us for that fly-in. She took some pictures of us and on the front page of the state section of Monday's edition of the morning paper, was a story about the Breakfast Club. About 2 weeks or so later, on a Friday morning, I got a long distance call at work from the CBS Morning Show and did a phone interview about our flying group and our activities. The truck stop is typical of such venues, nothing fancy, just utilitarian. One side of the building and where we entered, was a "Circle K" type convenience store that has about everything a cross-country trucker would need. Like I said earlier, the restaurant is not fancy in any way but it serves the purpose and with its' proximity to the airport, make a unique fly-in location. The floor space was about equally divided between free-standing tables and booths. The food was good and in sufficient quantity to satisfy the hungry aviator (or truck driver). Considering that we had about 29 folks show-up for breakfast, the service people handled the fly-in crowd admirably.
After breakfast, some of the Breakfast Club folks were opting to fly-up the