Jack Grotewohl, of Lawrence, inspects a biplane Saturday, while looking around the All Kansas Air Tour at the Lawrence Municipal Airport. Grotewohl said he used to fly planes as a hobby.

“It’s an opportunity to promote our airport and the great things that we do for the city and the county and to promote aviation,” said Rick Bryant, chairman of the city’s Aviation Advisory Board.

The event recreated the 1928 tour by Gov. Ben Paulen to promote Kansas aviation.

The airport displayed its aviation equipment and services during the day. Several planes were on display, including a 1946 Beechcraft Staggerwing, the last factory-built of its kind.

Inside the Kansas University hangar, aeronautical displays were set up. Mark Ewing, chair of KU’s aerospace engineering department, was on hand to discuss equipment on display. The items included the molds used to make the fuselage for an unmanned aerial vehicle used for research by KU’s Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets. The design and construction of the unmanned aerial vehicles takes place on site, Ewing said.

“They’ll be doing some flight testing, and then they’ll take them to Antarctica and Greenland to actually measure the ice sheets,” he said.

There was a raffling for free aerial rides over Lawrence. Kids climbed into the cockpits of some open planes. They also learned how it feels to fly in a simulator.

“It was pretty cool,” 11-year-old Tyler O’Dell said of the experience. “It was a lot more realistic than the ones on PCs.”

Bryant said the airport has a long-standing history in the community.

“We have an economic impact of about $12 to $13 million a year to the city and the county, which most people don’t know,” he said. “If you were out here yesterday, you would have seen a lot of planes of all sizes and shapes leaving for San Antonio to go to the Final Four. We have a lot of activity out here.”