By Ted Luebbers, EAA 875984
EAA Chapter 534 was invited to host the Sunday morning pilots’ pancake breakfast at the Seaplane-A-Palooza splash-in held in Tavares, Florida, America’s Seaplane City, on April 8.
This two-day event was held as a prelude to the SUN ’n FUN International Fly-In & Expo which takes place in Lakeland, Florida, and gives seaplane owners from around the country a chance to show off their amphibian and float planes.
Tavares, Florida, located in Lake County, is in the center of the state and claims to have close to 2,000 lakes, 1,400 of them big enough to have names. The Tavares Seaplane Base (FA1) is found downtown on Lake Dora. This seaplane base was almost totally destroyed in Hurricane Irma in September of 2017 but it is coming back bigger and stronger than ever, thanks to the perseverance of the Tavares town leadership.
A number of aviation contests, such as the watermelon bombing and the shortest take off, had to be cancelled on Saturday due to strong winds blowing off the lake with gusts of 30 mph. Despite this, everybody who attended had a good time showing off their airplanes and swapping flying stories.
EAA Chapter 534, based at the Leesburg International Airport (KLEE) in Leesburg, Florida, only a few miles away, brought its mobile kitchen and set it up outside a covered pavilion that could accommodate about 50 people at a sitting. They served blueberry pancakes, sausage, coffee, and Florida orange juice.
The chapter has a lot of experience doing this kind of thing as they provide this service for their own fly-ins as well as those held at other airports around central Florida. They have a team of chefs that work like a well-oiled machine.
The mobile kitchen is mounted on a trailer which they constructed and is easily pulled along with a pickup truck. It contains two commercial grills that run on propane gas, as well as other gas-operated cookers. It comes equipped with all the cooking utensils needed, coffee makers, a tent for inclement weather, storage for the food and serving tables and chairs.