Thought I'd write up a short post on Steve's 23 August 2025 Invitational Fly-In. Ok, nobody flew-in but lots of guys did drive up 🙂 This is a not a BSRC / club sponsored event and is fly whatever you want however you want type of event. I've been out to Steve's farm 3 times for his get-together and as usual Steve does a great job with a nice hard-pack runway and wind break for hanging out and our lunch area. We had around 15 flyers out to the farm which included the gangs 🙂 from Havre and Helena. Steve's farm is about a one hour drive from Great Falls - my vehicle logged about 50 miles from the Great Falls Pitstop Raceway Cafe to his driveway.
John Sandy and I went up the day prior and helped Steve with some prep work, not much really and then unexpectedly Steve bought us lunch at the Clubhouse in Fort Benton!
The weather was great with winds probably never higher than 10mph mostly east to west but sometimes a little north-easterly. The temp was 56 at 8am when I arrived and 82 when I left at 4pm.
If you've never been to Steve's event you're missing a good time - his lunches have ranged from buffalo burgers to pulled pork, usually with all the fixings you'd expect. After that he usually does a giveaway drawing. Steve lays out a variety of items from new glow/gas engines to complete planes either already built or still in the box. John Sandy's grandson Kale took home a Kadet Senior this year and John himself a new engine still in the box. I won a new heat gun for ultrakote and some tires still in the wrapper.
One fun part about Steve's is the "Wagon of Shame" which is used to take flyers out to retrieve crashed planes. We did manage to snag a photo of a young flyer, his identity masked to ensure his participation at next year's event.
The gang's all here!
A fantastic flyer to watch is Ken Robbins from Helena. Ken's at nearly every one of our flying events and usually has his Edge 540 in tow. Ken's had the Edge for about 2 years and can fly this plane like he's had it for 10. The plane has a 92 inch wing span and uses a GP 76 cc gas twin cylinder engine swinging a 24x9 propeller. Ken was a competition pilot and it shows - the symmetry of his loops and rolls is amazing. While I forgot to get a photo of Ken I did get a couple photos of his plane at one of our club flys.
Steve returns with a flyer in the Wagon of Shame 🙂
Here's a picture of our parking area across from the runway.
I flew my camera up and took a couple pictures of the layout.
