We had a good turnout!
Jeff Skiles talked about the goings-on at EAA, now that he's on board as the VP for youth education, chapters, and (as of Wednesday), the Museum. As he put it, if it's a money-losing venture, he's got it in his portfolio!
Apparently Rod Hightower is bringing his business experience to the organization. Until last year, they had never even had a budget for AirVenture!
They had things like a Youth DJ tent, for which they were allocating $1200/yr, and no one even realized it. Even the volunteer who was running it, when they figured out who it was, said "You've got to kill this program"
The guy they hired to run AirVenture has previously run some of the Red Bull Air Races. It sounded like in 2013 we might see some jumbotrons on the grounds! The airshows this year will be a bit lighter on some of the typical GA acts from what I understand. Sounds like Goulian and Tucker and their ilk are still in (they were mentioned by name), but others (I
think he said "things like Stearmans" might be on their way out. Scott, Mike, Jeff, your recollections?)
They're going to do a revamp of the museum to make it more attractive to people who don't already know all about the exhibits. In other words, non-pilots.
Sam talked about Aeronautical Decision Making. To be honest, I thought that is what Jeff was going to discuss, and regale us with tales from the cockpit, so I was a little disappointed. Sam did a good job, though. He did a recap of the material and numerous acronyms in AC 60-22 (Aeronautical Decision Making) and FAA H-8083-2 (Risk Management Handbook) and then gave a couple of examples, including the Corey Lidle accident. It would probably have been a little more effective had he included some examples from his 17K hours of experience.
After the seminar, Scott, Jeff, Mike and I headed over to Village Squire in McHenry. As we're walking out, who should call, but Bruce! He was going to fly in from Peoria to join us for lunch. Using ADM, he decided that taking a Cherokee into Galt with the winds wasn't a smart choice, so he opted to come in the Apache, where he would have differential thrust available! He tempted Sue along with the promise that Leslie would be there, only to learn when they arrived that Leslie didn't join me on this trek.
BTW, the iPad2 has a crappy camera. If that's important to you, consider the iPad3.
Thanks to Bruce Schottland (HolySchott) and EAA Chapter 932 for putting this on and posting here! And thanks to JB Aviation for hosting it in their hangar! I have to say that it was nice and warm and, even more impressively, the sound system was good enough that we could hear!