Organised by Dominique Covre & Henri Faivre

June was a lovely month in northern Europe. The early part of it was particularly decent. If you had taken the trouble to pop your head out of your windows, you would have heard the gentle warbling birds and Lycomings.

The more astute of you would have noticed that those very same Lycomings all appeared to be heading south and west. And the really clever of you would have deduced that those very same Lycomings were pulling a variety of Grumman chariots across the skies from all parts of Europe. Yes! Any educated aviator would have instantly recognised the gathering of the massed AYAers starting off on their trek to attend the 2006 AYA European annual fly-in.

This year was our third annual gathering to be held at Marmande (LFDM), and it didn’t disappoint. It had been gloriously organised by the stalwarts of the Escadrille Orion of Marmande and more especially Dominique Covre and the Escadrille team, all ably assisted by the language skills of Henri “I live in Morocco now” Faivre.

The event covered the first weekend of June, and we had to cope with beautiful weather. People had come from all over Europe and once more the perennial pseudo Europhiles, The Ed and Pat Manning, also graced us with their presence.