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Final Approach
Today I finally made it down to KOEB to try out the new Prop Blast Cafe. The pluses:
1. The food seems to be very good. They have mostly standard diner fare, similar to the airport restaurant at KJXN but with one addition: they specialize in pizza. I had a small pizza and it was as good as any pizza I've had recently.
2. The service is superb and the restaurant staff are extremely friendly and courteous. An older gentleman who I suspect is the manager checked up on me twice.
3. In part because the seating is all tables, no booths, the atmosphere is very open and friendly among the patrons.
4. The FBO staff (Elite Air Services) are very helpful -- more on this below.
5. Fuel prices were $5.66/gal SS for 100LL. Yes that is nothing to write home about, but by today's standards in this area, it's not overpriced.
The minuses:
1. Given that the field is small, there is a lot of traffic including student pilots flying patterns with the usual resulting confusion. Example: with winds 270 at 10, someone entered downwind for 7 and kept announcing they were landing 7 despite the fact that several transients including the planes before and after me were all landing 25.
2. Runways 4/22 and 7/25 meet at the approach end of 25 and the signage directing you to 25 is rather confusing. This is one untowered field that needs a detailed taxi diagram.
3. There is limited parking space on the ramp in front of the diner. As a result, and seeing a Chieftain tied down in the grass on the other side of the taxiway, I tried to do the same after fueling, and got stuck in soft wet grass and needed to be towed out. A strong plus: the FBO guy who towed me out (an A&P I believe) refused any tip and insisted he just wanted to be a nice person.
4. The self serve system was slow in generating receipts. The last customer left his behind, and was the only one in the dispenser when I went to get mine. Since he had purchased exactly 10 times the fuel I had (and it was Jet-A lol), I thought the system was a tad buggy until I looked more closely.
Overall impression: very friendly little airport and a good cafe well worth trying out.
1. The food seems to be very good. They have mostly standard diner fare, similar to the airport restaurant at KJXN but with one addition: they specialize in pizza. I had a small pizza and it was as good as any pizza I've had recently.
2. The service is superb and the restaurant staff are extremely friendly and courteous. An older gentleman who I suspect is the manager checked up on me twice.
3. In part because the seating is all tables, no booths, the atmosphere is very open and friendly among the patrons.
4. The FBO staff (Elite Air Services) are very helpful -- more on this below.
5. Fuel prices were $5.66/gal SS for 100LL. Yes that is nothing to write home about, but by today's standards in this area, it's not overpriced.
The minuses:
1. Given that the field is small, there is a lot of traffic including student pilots flying patterns with the usual resulting confusion. Example: with winds 270 at 10, someone entered downwind for 7 and kept announcing they were landing 7 despite the fact that several transients including the planes before and after me were all landing 25.
2. Runways 4/22 and 7/25 meet at the approach end of 25 and the signage directing you to 25 is rather confusing. This is one untowered field that needs a detailed taxi diagram.
3. There is limited parking space on the ramp in front of the diner. As a result, and seeing a Chieftain tied down in the grass on the other side of the taxiway, I tried to do the same after fueling, and got stuck in soft wet grass and needed to be towed out. A strong plus: the FBO guy who towed me out (an A&P I believe) refused any tip and insisted he just wanted to be a nice person.
4. The self serve system was slow in generating receipts. The last customer left his behind, and was the only one in the dispenser when I went to get mine. Since he had purchased exactly 10 times the fuel I had (and it was Jet-A lol), I thought the system was a tad buggy until I looked more closely.
Overall impression: very friendly little airport and a good cafe well worth trying out.
