How can your airport fill up its empty hangars? Perhaps the most effective method would be to send a pilot or two into the local middle schools and high schools to tell a few stories, pop a slideshow up on the smartboard, and invite a whole bunch of the kids out to the airport. Let […]
Politics for Pilots
Back ups, understudies, and substitutes
Politics shares at least a little bit with baseball — at least in the sense that to get something done politically, you’ll occasionally need to rely on your backup. You see this in the theater, as well. Eventually you’ll find that the main player isn’t available for some reason, so an understudy will step into […]
Malcolm, Heather, and you
Consider this brain-teaser if you will. What do Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Locklear, and you all have in common? Malcolm is, of course, the author of a bestseller “The Tipping Point.” Heather Locklear leapt into the national consciousness as a perky, blonde, ever-smiling actress in the 80s, and you’re already pretty familiar with yourself. So what’s […]
Mind your manners
Years ago when I was writing a weekly column for a local newspaper, a reporter asked me, innocently enough, “Where do you get your ideas from?” He meant well. As a reporter he wasn’t paid to be creative. His bread and butter came from being accurate. That was his comfort level and he did his […]
There are plans afoot
On Friday afternoon I enjoyed an interesting conversation with a big deal muckity-muck from one of the major aviation entities in the business. One of the things we talked about was how we can work together to get more people involved in aviation. We both had ideas, and we both saw merit in what the […]
The big dogs came to town
As the political season heats up with candidates on the stump and spokesmen backing them or tearing them down on television, there is one message that is clear to many of us. We will never personally meet or have a substantive conversation with the individuals at the top of the ticket — not unless we […]
The unavoidable nature of ‘No’
If you’re going to advocate for general aviation, or pretty much anything else for that matter, you should probably get comfortable with the notion that you’re going to hear the word “no” from time to time. Frankly, you’re probably going to hear it a lot, so get used to it. Hate it. Get frustrated, annoyed, […]
Airshows, spectators, and the inimitable Fred Rogers
If you’re reading this post, you can be fairly sure that you’re an aviation enthusiast. You might be a pilot, but you might not be, too. Believe it or not, there are massive numbers of people scattered across the globe who are aviation enthusiasts, yet who don’t personally feel the need to grasp the controls […]
The conundrum of community
We who write about general aviation have a tendency to use a particular term to describe the lot of us. It is fairly common for us to describe the collective bunch as “the aviation community.” The intent is to bond us together, at least in the reader’s mind. And in many cases the term is […]