One of my flying and jump buddies has Fridays off this summer and invited me to join him on their “Lunch on the Fly ” where he and other fellow aviators fly to a different airport every Friday for lunch rotating among five different airports.

This is about the same thing as doing the  $100 hamburger trip. Now that  typically involves flying a short distance (less than two hours), eating at an airport restaurant, and flying home.

“$100” originally referred to the approximate cost of renting or operating a light general aviation aircraft, such as a Cessna 172, for the time it took to fly round-trip to a nearby airport. However, increasing fuel prices have since caused an increase in hourly operating costs for most airplanes, and a Cessna 172 now costs $100–$130 per Hobbs hour to rent, including fuel.

A Hobbs meter, by the way,  is a device used in aviation to measure the time that an aircraft is in use. The meters typically display hours and tenths of an hour, but there are several ways in which the meter may be activated:

So my buddy  and another pilot flew their cub’s over to Southwest Michigan Regional Airport which is in Benton Harbor, Mi.  We had some clouds on the way to Goshen and felt bump or two  but it lightened up and brightened up just as we got to the airport and stayed that way the remainder of the fly day.

Here are a few pictures of some of the planes that flew in.  After a great lunch, we left Goshen and I got a little stick time in the Cub going to Michigan City Municipal Airport – Phillips Field (KMGC).

After landing and helping to put that bird in his hanger I went over to check out the skydiving plane at “Skydive Windy City Chicago” and took a few pictures.  Then Dave gassed up his Cessna 182  and  let me fly it  that back to Benton Harbor.

It was a great day for flying or jumping made even better when your friends are letting  you fly their planes 🙂