OWASCO - As four planes skirted the water's surface and then took off into the sky, B.J. Riester had the smile of a contented man.

“That's beautiful,” he said.

The fifth annual Wings Over Owasco Float Plane Fly In was held Sunday at Emerson Park, and both visitors and pilots enjoyed a perfect late-summer day.

Riester, the owner of Riester's Appliances in Aurelius, has been flying since he was just out of college in 1972. He's been the lead organizer for the event since its inception, and he loves to share his considerable enjoyment of flight with others, especially children.

For many years he would fly into areas in and around Cayuga Lake and children would invariably run up to see his plane. If permission was granted, he'd take them up for a short ride. There was, of course, a fair share of white knucklers.

Riester said one time there were 10-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. The girl was willing to go up immediately, but her brother was hesitant. He eventually agreed, if his sister would be with him. As they got up about into the air, Riester kept reassuring the boy about how safe it was, encouraging him to appreciate how beautiful it was.

At about 40 feet above the water, the boy asked, “You're not going to go up any higher, are you?” Riester did go steadily higher, and the boy got steadily calmer as he did so.

Three friends, all young teenagers - Christian Colella, Brandon Mack and Nikkia Borowski - were mightily impressed by the seaplanes at the park on Sunday.

“It was cool to watch them land on the water,” Borowski said, and while the three were uncertain whether flying was in their future, Colella and the others often play Microsoft's Flight Simulator game.

“I love that game,” Colella said.

Because of more focused pre-event publicity, the turnout Sunday was the best in its five-year history. More planes have participated in previous years, but the near perfect weather Sunday brought out many families with young children.�

There were two types of sea-worthy planes at the park - float planes, which can only be flown off water because they have no wheeled landing gear, and�flying boats, which are wheeled into the lake before going about 400 yards past the edge of the eastern pier and taking off.

Returning again this year to Auburn was Barry Holtz of Rochester, who owns an auto body shop when he's not in the air. His was the biggest plane brought in Sunday - a twin-engine 1946 Super Widgeon G44-A built by Grumman. Holtz used his experience with automobiles to fix the tail and to re-do the interior.

It is one of the most sought-after seaplanes in aviation.���

“I bought that thing without the approval of my wife. And, one year later, when she started talking to me again, we really started getting a lot of enjoyment out of it,” he said.

Holtz volunteered to fly people at $50 a piece, and took about 20 flights, to benefit the Curtiss museum.���

Mary Nickerson was helping Riester and the other volunteers Sunday. Her husband, Jerry, is a pilot. There is talk of trying to attract from a limited pool of seaplanes by adding another weekend in the fall, or not trying to piggyback on the day after a similar event on Keuka Lake.

Many of the pilots had been giving rides all through the morning at Seaplane Weekend in Hammondsport before heading northeast to Owasco Lake.

Organizers hope next summer the highly-anticipated reproduction of Glenn H. Curtiss' famed flying boat, America, will make the trip from Keuka Lake to Owasco Lake.

“It's a beautiful reproduction. But, unfortunately, the engines in it weren't quite big enough to get it out of the water,” Nickerson said. “But next year they're going to bring it up with new engines and it's going to go. It's really a piece of art.”

Both Nickerson and Holtz said a visit to the Curtiss museum is a must for everyone in Central New York, and that his legacy has for too long been neglected. Hammondsport is at the southern tip of Keuka Lake.

“The museum is first rate, and the people love us there,” Holtz said. “There's something there for everybody. It's not just about aviation. It's really worth the ride down there.”

Holtz agrees that Curtiss has gotten short shift in history textbooks.

“I think he got ripped off on that, in the scheme of things. (The Wright Brothers) got too much shine, I think.”

He's also impressed with the effort of Riester and others to make the mid-September Wings Over Owasco an annual attraction.

“I really support B.J. I think it's great he puts this on every year,” said Holtz. “I give him a lot of credit. It's hard to get the seaplane guys, there's not that many of us around and it's hard to get us together.”