Unfortunately, the camera I was using malfunctioned and lost most of the pictures I took.
Landed at Castle airport to checkout the nearby Castle Air Museum.
I kept hearing about this place at pilot forums.
Known for its large
collection of military aviation, it is considered a must see for aviation buffs.
Coming from Napa (west), the Castle tower cleared me to enter
at 45 left traffic for runway 30. Being a former military base,
it's a huge airport with very long runway (11,800 x 150).
On weekdays, it's known to be busy with student airline pilots
from Asia.
During my visit, there were
wildfires at Central California County contributing to the haziness. The airport was
supporting the fire fighting efforts
with fire fighting aircrafts taking off and landing.
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Upon landing, tower guided me to the transient parking with chain tie downs in front of the terminal building below the tower. |
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Entrance to Castle Air Museum; the FBO at Castle airport, Gemini Flight Support, gave me a ride to the museum. |
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One of the displays --- a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird; designed to fly at Mach 3.3 or 2,350 mph and up to 80,000 ft. |
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B-52 flight simulator display.
Unfortunately, the camera I was using malfunctioned and lost most of the pictures I took. |
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Walked back to the airport from the museum; about 25 minutes walk. |
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Inside the Castle FBO --- Gemini Flight Support; it has clean restrooms, and nice pilot lounge. |
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Merced Regional Airport was just a few miles south of Castle. So I decided to land there to check it out. Besides avgas at Merced airport was 10 cents cheaper than Castle --- good enough reason for me to land there. There's no self-serve fuel in Castle; one has to call the fuel truck to refuel. |
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It's about 3pm on a Saturday afternoon when I landed at Merced. I parked towards Gateway Air Center building where there were several spaces with chain tie downs. But then found out that Gateway Air was closed for the day. |
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No one's around the airport at this time but I heard this loud party music blarring towards the airport terminal building; so I started walking towards the music. |
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And that's how I found Hanger BBQ. One has to go through the security gate (--- and remember the code to return). |
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Although the place was called Hanger BBQ, it was not serving BBQ at this time. Its supposed to start serving BBQ at 5pm. Just drinks and munchies for now. Can't do drinks since I'm flying. End up getting fries and chicken wings --- it was okay. |
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Outside view of Hanger BBQ; there were some few locals "partying" at the outside patio. |
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| Refueled at the self serve station near the control tower building. I believe, Merced Regional was a towered airport before but not currently. With everything closed at the airport at this time, used the porta john below the tower building before the 1 hour return flight to Napa. |