By NINA LARAMORE

Staff Reporter

The weather cooperated beautifully, sunny but not too hot, and all the weekend’s fly-in events were well attended, according to Experimental Aircraft Association Fly-in organizer Dwight Guss.

He estimated that about 110 airplanes came to the fly-in and a couple thousand people came to eat pancakes, eggs and sausage at the firehouse, look at aircrafts, talk to pilots and check out the cars.

“The antique auto show had lots of lookie-loos and some drooling,” Airport Manager Beatrice vonTobel said. “The fly-in itself had 112 planes on the ground at 11 a.m. on Saturday, but over the weekend, there were a lot more aircraft that probably didn’t get counted. People arrived early on Friday to camp out for the weekend, and some are still here.”

Craig Nelson, who hosts a meal on Friday, had about 60 people show up at his hangar, according to vonTobel.

“Although there were some waits for traffic, we didn’t receive any noise complaints,” vonTobel said.

She said only one aircraft came in from Canada. A regular attendee from Canada who usually flies in gave up on the amount of paperwork and bureaucracy involved in flying across the border and took the ferry this year instead.

“We sold out of every sweatshirt, t-shirt and hat we had,” Guss said. “Lots of people stopped by to talk to the Airlift helicopter pilots and they passed out lots of applications. I am thankful for the turnout from both pilots and the public.”

The fire station pancake breakfast was well attended on both Saturday and Sunday, with Saturday being the busier of the two days. Guss says he spent nearly the whole weekend between the fire station, where he helped with the breakfasts, and the port where he met pilot friends from all over the Northwest and Canada including pilots from Idaho, California, Oregon and Washington.