After my visit to the WACO reunion as recounted in a previous post here, I had a lot of pictures of a WACO owned by Steve and Tina Thomas. They own Poplar Grove airport northwest of Chicago. I had been there before and my earlier visit is described here. I decided to print a couple of shots from the sortie and take them up to Steve as a thank you.
I dropped in one Sunday and found Steve in his office. He was pleased with the pictures and took me off for a tour of parts of the field. They own a lovely Beech 18 as well as the WACO and their hangar has a great selection of prints and memorabilia on display so we had a look at that. Then we headed up to the hangar of Sean, another WACO owner. We chatted for a while and watched some Cub flying activity on the grass strip in front of Sean’s hangar.
Steve needed to get back to work so I got my car and ended up back at Sean’s place. We chatted about the usual aviation stuff while he cleaned his aircraft and I watched the flying. The Cub was being flown by Rick Kluver and, when he knew there was a camera nearby, he came by to give me something to shoot. He landed after having finished with his two previous passengers and we chatted for a while.
Rick’s Cub is one of the planes that I shot when we went to Oshkosh for the skiplane flyin and I had met him then. You can see a previous post about that here. Anyway, it didn’t take long before he offered me a ride. It would be churlish to refuse so I hopped in for my first ride in a Cub. I took the camera along of course.
Rick says he gets altitude sickness so likes to keep it low. In a plane like a Cub with the side open, this is a great way to fly. Down amongst the scenery, we got to see some cattle in a river and even some deer that we obviously startled a little. It was a fun little trip and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. There was time for a little video to be shot so the results of that are below. As before, Poplar Grove proved to be a friendly and welcoming environment. I will be back!