South Carolina Breakfast Club in Orangeburg

The day after the Trenton Flyers candy drop I got to attend my first South Carolina Breakfast Club (http://www.flyscbc.com/) "meeting". This is a great group that is very active. Weather permitting (and last year it doesn't look like there were many they had to cancel) they hold a breakfast and short meeting at a different airport in the state every other Sunday. Attendance is typically very good, with there commonly being over 100 attendees.

The morning of the breakfast, I awoke early to be there and tied down for the 9 AM start. It was a beautiful morning, but with patches of fog in the low-lying areas. The Trenton airfield was clear and I elected to go. Apparently, attendance at this breakfast was hurt by a report of Orangeburg being IFR due to fog. Supposedly, they got about half of the attendees they were expecting (I heard there were around 70 attendees). The SCBC president drove in too due to the reports. I guess now they know which half of the attendees call for weather briefings before leaving!

The flight to Orangeburg was beautiful, and I experienced one of those aviation rarities - a good tailwind! I averaged about 115 mph in my champ for the flight there! It was clear and quiet with the sun rising directly in front of me and the hollows filled in with patches of fog. It was definitely worth getting out of bed early for!

Fog was covering the low-lying areas

My only complaint about the flight there is that it was directly into the sun

I arrived around 8:30 and there was already a good crowd there. They were another welcoming group of aviators. Breakfast was in a large hangar and had quite the variety. Afterwards, there was a brief meeting. Prizes were given to the people who flew the farthest to be there. One of the themes of the breakfast club meeting was to keep people flying. The president talked about how you need to keep practicing to stay proficient. In order to motivate people to do this, they used to have a tradition where the person who made the worst landing at the breakfast had to take a ball with them at the end and bring it back next meeting - a promise to come back and keep practicing. Supposedly, they lost too many balls that way, so now they just have people sign them. When they started talking about bad landings I got a bit worried, but nobody had a truly bad landing that day, so instead they recognized the guy who had the best landing. They didn't announce they were doing this though, so when they called out the N number, the room fell silent and everybody just started looking around. When he announced that he wanted to recognize a truly nice landing, the culprit fessed up to it being his.

Part of the aircraft line-up

Nice Sonex that attended

Another pretty attendee - a Swift

A very sparkly trike

If you couldn't tell before, the SCBC is mainly about friendship and camaraderie. People were greeting others as good friends that see each other weekly at these meetings. They really formed a supportive aviation community with the breakfast club.

After breakfast, I got Rudolph fueled and ready to go (they gave me a good discount, I guess for coming in for the Breakfast Club). While I was in the FBO paying, a government helicopter flew in with a surprised pilot. He thought he was going to a quiet little country airport and was greeted by a large crowd of GA planes. He flies VIP transport for government officials, and had dropped one off and was stopping briefly at Orangeburg to see his kids. It was a nice family moment.

Incoming helicopter!

On the way back, the tailwind had turned into a headwind. Since I didn't have any place to be and wasn't getting anywhere fast anyways, I used the time to practice some slow flight and ground reference maneuvers. Also, it was fun!

Orangeburg after the breakfast crowd left

The South Carolina Breakfast Club is a wonderful, welcoming organization. If you live within comfortable flying range of one of their events, GO! You'll be glad you did.