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Redneck Fly-In visits Vidalia
 At first glance, it was a case of an old man in an Indy car racing a younger man in a mosquito hand-built helicopter.
The race took place at the Concordia Parish Airport as part of the third annual Redneck Fly-In weekend.
At the end of the race the two men returned to the starting line where when asked the old man said in a gruffy voice, "I won, I kicked his butt. And I won $100."
But when cameraman Walt Meziere of Lavon, Texas, walked up, the gig was up.
The "old man" named Floville Henderson was really 40-year old Wayne Spring from Albany, La.
The younger man was Kerry Kerwin, a film editor from Burbank, Ca.
Kerwin said he just picked up the mosquito helicopter, inches wider than his body, in Trenton, Fla.
Then the camera started rolling again.
Kerwin got out of his home-built helicopter, walked toward "Henderson" sitting in his car and handed him $100.
"You won't mess with this old geyser again, will you," Henderson said. "I can beat you on my bike."
So apparently the next filming was scheduled at that time.
When the cameras stopped, Kerwin said he is filming the scene for youtube. Right now the title is "Uncle Floville Redneck Fly-in," but that could change.
"We flew into a fly-in in Florida and everyone just stopped and looked," Kerwin said.
The video will be one of several on youtube featuring "Uncle Floville."
The helicopter race was just one of the attractions at the fly-in.
There was also a shrimp and crab boil on Saturday night along with a magic show.
Power parachutes (PPC) dotted the landscape along the Mississippi River during the weekend.
"It was great," Spring said. "Forty rednecks without one accident is nothing short of a miracle. Three years ago I decided to host a fly-in. I used Google Earth and started panning out from my house in Albany looking for a place with plenty of open fields. When I got to Vidalia, I was like, 'Wow, where is this?' So, I zoomed in and found it to be Vidalia. I said to myself, this would be a great place since it also had the attractions of Natchez."
Spring said he then did research on the area airports.
"Craig Gaspard, also known as Crazy, and myself took the -hour drive the next weekend to meet the airport manager, Carl Sayers, unannounced. There we meet a very nice gentleman on a bicycle, Jerry Stallings. He welcomed us with open arms along with Carl. We explained we wanted to have a powered parachute fly-in. They cautiously agreed to let us after we told them it would only be 8-to-15 pilots coming. By the second day of the first annual Redneck Fly-In we had over 100 people there with motor homes invested all over the airport grounds I could see the concern in Carl and Jerry's eyes as the event continued to grow with redneck pilot wannabes coming out the woodworks. The event was a accident-free blast. The weather was just awesome. By the end of the event, we were being asked to come back next year."
And they did.
"It's rumored by the PPC community the Redneck Fly-In is one of the funniest fly-in's for ultralight aircraft," Spring said. "The crowd was also entertained by a jet-powered bicycle. We're looking forward to the 4th annual Redneck Fly-In scheduled for the second weekend in June 2012." |
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