Ben's Mite Flight One Thousand

Ben Favrholdt usually goes flying whenever weather permits, which is quite often in Porterville, California. He goes up for maybe half an hour, maybe just a couple of circuits. But they all add up, and the other morning a rather special event took place. Ben made his 1000th flight in his M-18C Mite, N66MX.

His neighbour, Bill Vandersande, reported "Flight #1000 was a low key event. No champagne, no celebration. That's the way Ben does things. I had to be the one to tell our hangar neighbors about the flight. So, this event went quietly into history."

However, at our request Bill took some photos, and here they are. We've included a couple shots of Ben with one of his other airplanes which he is almost finished rebuilding, a very rare AA Cubette, designed and built by a group of American Airlines employees.

Congratulations, Ben! Here's hoping you have many more flights.

After the flight, Ben sat down at his computer and sent us these words:

[January 26, 2002] "This afternoon I flew flight number 1000 in the Mite since I bought it from Bill Clark in 1989. The weather here today is absolutely beautiful, bright sunshine and temperature about 14ºC, and no wind.... So now I am enjoying a double shot of the 'Dalwhinnie' scotch that David (his nephew David Favrholdt) gave me for the occasion. The Mite and I have become good friends over the years, and today it came through with another rewarding flight."

Incidentally, we've learned from David that Ben flew a total of 749 flights in his first Mite, N4092 over a period of 11 years. Too bad that plane was lost in a fire, or Ben would have been closing in on his 2000th flight in the same Mite.

Photos by Bill Vandersande, N4105

February, 2002