Well 63 Mooneys and about 127 people flew into the Gold Country Fly-in for a fantastic weekend of Wine Tasting, a Wine Dinner at Sutter Ridge, Pancake Breakfast, Chicken & Tri-Tip BBQ and Band/Food/Beer on Saturday night..  It was hot in the sun, but nice in the shade.

We unveiled our new 3x5' banner, our first and biggest official banner with the announcement that we are now the Vintage Mooney Group of the entire Western USA!  Our members from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Texas are now officially included, although we have always welcomed them anyway.  Now they are card carrying.

We went to a bunch of wineries on Friday from 11am to about 3:30pm.  I went and cannot remember how many or when we actually got back, but it sure was fun.  We got barrel samples, tours and lots of great Amador County wine.  Don Luschar got us to go to 1 extra winery, Bray Vineyards, which was one of my favorites.  The we had a great dinner at Sutter Ridge Winery with some great appetizers including crab cakes and yes, more wine!  The main course was just fantastic including fresh salad, macaroni olive salad, chicken and pork.  We had about 25 planes show up for this on Friday.

Then it was onto Saturday and the balance of the 63 Mooneys arrived from all over the Western USA.  Winds were calm, the ride was smooth, and the visibility just incredible.  We had the most kids and the most dogs join us ever.  Pretty soon we will have to make badges for the dogs.

Checkout our Gold Country Fly-In Video.

Here we are for the Vintage Group Shot at Gold Country 2008!

We unveiled our new VMG Banner and announced to the attendees that we have doubled in size in a little over one year and have increased our geography to include the entire Western USA.  Here we have Gerry and Linda staffing our Mooney VIP registration hangar with our new banner!

On Friday, morning around 11am, we boarded 2 shuttles to go Wine Tasting in Amador County.  This was an amazing treat to wonderful people and great wines.  Jim & Gerry got a private tour of the fermentation tanks at our first stop.

Here are Mooniacs having lunch at Young's Winery and tasting at yet another.  It's kinda scary to see Mooney pilots and Wine Tasting in one room, the fastest wine tasters in the west!

Some people had just a little too much to drink as you can see Linda Corman did here.

So we all had to go back to the airport for misbehaving, freshened up, and then onto the Wine Dinner at Sutter Ridge.  They setup a tent in the vineyards for us with wine tasting, hors d'oeurves, and then a wonderful main course.  We all had a wonderful time, but can't remember much else about the dinner or the day.

Saturday morning found the balance of the 63 Mooneys arriving as well as a host of folks who drove because it was so close or their Mooneys were in the shop.  We got our own parking area on the north ramp near the VIP tent where we would be fed and enterained by FreezeOut, who played awesome Classical Rock!

Here's Dave, an M20A owner checking out an M20B.  He loves his wood wing.  And here's our Redding and Red Bluff connection (Ivan, Wilma, Pam, and Mike).

Finally lunch arrived!  Here's just a sample of some of the tables.  Gold Country is a lotta fun because we always get a lot of new people.

Chris Floyd really outdid himself this year with a fantastic fly-in.  He put together the best Gold Country Fly-In ever and that's saying a lot since they have always been one of the highlights of each year.  We welcomed back auctioneer and VMG Mooniac Al Richman who did a fun auction.  Al used to do these auctions at our Columbia fly-ins.  We auctioned off everything from wine, wheel covers, handmade jewelry, DVDs, headsets, hats, a medical physical, and more.

Safe Flying,
Phil Corman & Larry Palmer