Jay Honeck
Touchdown! Greaser!
...I present to you the culmination of three years' effort: the Iowa Children's Museum new, million-dollar aviation exhibit: http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009909170306
As I stood in the museum's new air traffic control tower last night, enjoying the grand opening party and gazing out over the vast array of fantastic new aviation displays, it was hard to remember that cold May morning, back in 2006, when my kids and I were the first ones at the airport at o-dark-thirty, wondering how the weekend's events would unfold...
Earlier that year I had been dragged, kicking and screaming, onto the board of directors of an on-airport charity event, the "Big Kids Toy Show". Running a small business (we own and operate an on-airport hotel) takes all your time, plus some, but here I was "volunteering" to help organize a three-day, on-airport event. My wife, Mary (who would shoulder the extra burden when I wasn't working) was filled with trepidation.
Still, I wanted to do SOMETHING to help our airport. Iowa City's populace was long-known to be hostile to (or, at best, grudgingly accepting of) our airport, and an on-airport, wide-appeal event like the "Big Kids Toy Show" would help to raise awareness of the good things happening at KIOW. This event seemed like a good place to start.
The first order was to decide on a charity to support. Some board members wanted the money raised to go to more traditional charities, but I argued vociferously that the money raised on the airport should benefit AVIATION. In my opinion, general aviation was dying a slow death, and any money raised at an airport event should go toward stemming the blood-letting that I'd witnessed in aviation since earning my ticket in 1994.
But how? What could we do to help build the pilot community? What could we, out here in the heartland, do to stop the loss of airports, FBOs, and pilots?
Kids were the key, in my opinion. We had to hit them before they got sucked into the "Playstation/X-Box/television/Facebook" world that was paralyzing so many of them. We couldn't just catch them at the airport -- heck, IF they were AT the airport, those kids were already hooked -- we had to find some way of reaching out to kids who would not otherwise experience general aviation... But how? Where?
Bingo! The Iowa Childrens Museum, a large, popular kids venue, located at Iowa's largest shopping mall just a few miles from the airport, seemed like the answer. If we could build an aviation exhibit there, we could expose kids from all over Iowa to the joys and wonder of flight, and maybe -- just maybe -- drive some of these kids out to our airport.
But there were problems. The museum was aimed at younger kids, with a pretend food store (where the little ones could pretend-shop) and a hospital display. Their audience topped out at about age 8 -- and what we were proposing was beyond anything they had ever done before.
Still, although I'm sure she thought we were just a bunch of crazy pilots, the museum director was more than happy to take whatever money we raised at the event. No fool, her! Not knowing how much we might raise, she was naturally non-commital about the exhibit, but we thought we might raise enough money to build a full-sized flight simulator and a few basic science displays. The game was on!
The show had three parts -- a Friday sponsor party, two fly-in pancake breakfasts (one on Saturday, one on Sunday), and the "toys for big kids" -- bulldozers, airplanes, helicopters, race cars, off-road vehicles, etc. -- that ran all three days. Any "toy" that middle-aged guys might dream of owning/driving/flying was fair game, and we managed to gather a very respectable collection of cool stuff at the airport, thanks to our sponsors. (Selling sponsorships was another major aspect of organizing an event like this; the car dealers proved to be fairly easy to sell, back in those pre-recession days.)
The pancake breakfasts were another nut to crack. We knew that we couldn't do the cooking ourselves -- so the idea was proposed to farm out the cooking to one or two non-profit groups. We lined up two of them, and took the incredible (at the time) risk of guaranteeing them $1500 apiece, rain or shine, plus half the pancake ticket proceeds beyond that amount.
This was incentive enough for them to do the work, but it took the organizational responsibility completely out of our hands. We would be relying on total strangers to show up and work, on griddles, tables and chairs that we provided (thanks to more donations) -- an uncomfortable situation at best, cuz you-know-who would take the blame if they didn't show up!
So, there we were at 5 AM, my kids and I, setting up a booth for our hotel, but also wondering if we would be making pancakes when the non-profit volunteers failed to materialize. The kids were naturally cranky, I had worked on last-minute details until late the night before (AFTER the sponsor party -- a huge undertaking in itself that had been thankfully spearheaded by another director) -- and it was cold, damp, and hazy. The future seemed uncertain, and my mood was black.
Anyone who has ever helped to organize anything like this knows that cold feeling in the pit of your stomach on "game day", when you wonder...
...will the volunteers show up?
...will the weather cooperate?
...will anyone fly in?
...what have we forgotten to do?
As the sun rose higher, people slowly started to trickle in. Soon, the head non-profit honcho showed up, with a van-full of helpers, and the griddle was fired up and tested. The Boy Scouts arrived, and placed themselves for car-parking duty. The CAP kids did the same for airplane duty. By 7 AM everyone was in place, and the arrivals started...
Soon, there was a line to get in, and the griddle was going full-bore. Parents and their kids came by the hundreds, and then by the thousands, to enjoy the "toys" and pancakes! Everything came together as planned, the skies cleared and were full of airplanes -- life was good. After a whirlwind day we shut down at 5 PM, knowing that tomorrow we would have to do it all over again -- with a different non-profit working the griddle. More worries...
When all was said and done, and all the bills and non-profits were paid, we cleared a whopping $9K for the Childrens Museum, while providing an event that served our airport with a great public relations boost. The show was a success, and there was talk of making it an annual event...
Now it was time to build the exhibit. Months went by with little word and no visible progress, and there was worry voiced that the money we had raised would simply be sucked into the maw of day-to-day museum operations. It seemed like the museum's interest in the exhibit -- never strong to begin with -- was waning. It was time to do something that would help show them what could be done for a reasonable amount of money.
So, I approached Keith Roof, my aircraft mechanic, for help. My thought was to build a prototype full-sized flight simulator in our hotel's meeting room, as a "proof-of-concept" demonstrator. To that end, Keith -- a grand champion home-builder -- welded up a framework utilitizing the seat out of my 2000 Mustang. He even made it so the electric seat still worked! We then added the CH yoke and rudder pedals, and voila! -- we had a flight simulator.
I then approached a local computer company to build the fastest computer possible (at their cost), and hooked it all up to a digital projector, shining "the world" on a brand-new 104" screen. "The Kiwi" was born, and, wow, was it cool! My total cost: <$4000. (See it here: http://www.alexisparkinn.com/flight_simulator.htm)
Then, it was time to invite the museum's board of directors out to the hotel for some "fun flying". We had snacks and refreshments, and the directors showed up, I'm sure not knowing what to expect. As I turned out the lights and demonstrated a flight, they were very quiet, and I wondered what they were thinking....
One by one I set them up in the Kiwi, and showed them how to "fly". Slowly, their enthusiasm grew, as it became apparent to them that "the Kiwi" would be a HUGE draw for kids and adults alike. By the time they left, the talk was about building SIX of them, and how such an exhibit could grow their paid attendance by leaps and bounds, expanding their age group appeal from 8 all the way through to age 18. The ball was rolling at last!
From that day to this, I've been able to mostly stand back and simply marvel at the progress the museum has made. The exhibit plan grew from a single flight simulator to many, from a few airplanes to dozens, and the budget has grown from $9,000 to over $1,000,000! Deb Dunkhase, the museum's director, earned an $840K grant from NASA that will fund the exhibit for at least the next five years, and Deb convinced Rockwell Collins -- Iowa's huge avionics company -- to jump on board as a major sponsor. With their help, the exhibit now includes ATC simulators, careers-in-aviation exhibits, and the aforementioned control tower, while my friends Keith (and his partner, Jim Delaney) have spent the last two years hand-crafting six flight simulators that look like historic aircraft! There is a real Cessna 150 for the kids to climb in, an enormous spiral slide coming down from the control tower -- and just too many science exhibits to list. It is truly the BEST aviation exhibit for kids in America, eclipsing everything I've seen, anywhere.
Finally, the last hurdle -- that big step from the museum to the airport -- has now been cleared. To that end, the museum has (with help from the local pilot community) created a "flight school", complete with instructors and an award that the kids earn when completed.
That award can be "cashed in" with Tim Busch, owner of Iowa Flight Training (Iowa City's REAL flight school) for a REAL flight lesson at the Iowa City Airport!
The circle is complete...
So, for those who say "it can't be done", I present this tale as living proof that -- with persistance, effort, and a little luck -- it CAN be done.
As I stood in the museum's new air traffic control tower last night, enjoying the grand opening party and gazing out over the vast array of fantastic new aviation displays, it was hard to remember that cold May morning, back in 2006, when my kids and I were the first ones at the airport at o-dark-thirty, wondering how the weekend's events would unfold...
Earlier that year I had been dragged, kicking and screaming, onto the board of directors of an on-airport charity event, the "Big Kids Toy Show". Running a small business (we own and operate an on-airport hotel) takes all your time, plus some, but here I was "volunteering" to help organize a three-day, on-airport event. My wife, Mary (who would shoulder the extra burden when I wasn't working) was filled with trepidation.
Still, I wanted to do SOMETHING to help our airport. Iowa City's populace was long-known to be hostile to (or, at best, grudgingly accepting of) our airport, and an on-airport, wide-appeal event like the "Big Kids Toy Show" would help to raise awareness of the good things happening at KIOW. This event seemed like a good place to start.
The first order was to decide on a charity to support. Some board members wanted the money raised to go to more traditional charities, but I argued vociferously that the money raised on the airport should benefit AVIATION. In my opinion, general aviation was dying a slow death, and any money raised at an airport event should go toward stemming the blood-letting that I'd witnessed in aviation since earning my ticket in 1994.
But how? What could we do to help build the pilot community? What could we, out here in the heartland, do to stop the loss of airports, FBOs, and pilots?
Kids were the key, in my opinion. We had to hit them before they got sucked into the "Playstation/X-Box/television/Facebook" world that was paralyzing so many of them. We couldn't just catch them at the airport -- heck, IF they were AT the airport, those kids were already hooked -- we had to find some way of reaching out to kids who would not otherwise experience general aviation... But how? Where?
Bingo! The Iowa Childrens Museum, a large, popular kids venue, located at Iowa's largest shopping mall just a few miles from the airport, seemed like the answer. If we could build an aviation exhibit there, we could expose kids from all over Iowa to the joys and wonder of flight, and maybe -- just maybe -- drive some of these kids out to our airport.
But there were problems. The museum was aimed at younger kids, with a pretend food store (where the little ones could pretend-shop) and a hospital display. Their audience topped out at about age 8 -- and what we were proposing was beyond anything they had ever done before.
Still, although I'm sure she thought we were just a bunch of crazy pilots, the museum director was more than happy to take whatever money we raised at the event. No fool, her! Not knowing how much we might raise, she was naturally non-commital about the exhibit, but we thought we might raise enough money to build a full-sized flight simulator and a few basic science displays. The game was on!
The show had three parts -- a Friday sponsor party, two fly-in pancake breakfasts (one on Saturday, one on Sunday), and the "toys for big kids" -- bulldozers, airplanes, helicopters, race cars, off-road vehicles, etc. -- that ran all three days. Any "toy" that middle-aged guys might dream of owning/driving/flying was fair game, and we managed to gather a very respectable collection of cool stuff at the airport, thanks to our sponsors. (Selling sponsorships was another major aspect of organizing an event like this; the car dealers proved to be fairly easy to sell, back in those pre-recession days.)
The pancake breakfasts were another nut to crack. We knew that we couldn't do the cooking ourselves -- so the idea was proposed to farm out the cooking to one or two non-profit groups. We lined up two of them, and took the incredible (at the time) risk of guaranteeing them $1500 apiece, rain or shine, plus half the pancake ticket proceeds beyond that amount.
This was incentive enough for them to do the work, but it took the organizational responsibility completely out of our hands. We would be relying on total strangers to show up and work, on griddles, tables and chairs that we provided (thanks to more donations) -- an uncomfortable situation at best, cuz you-know-who would take the blame if they didn't show up!
So, there we were at 5 AM, my kids and I, setting up a booth for our hotel, but also wondering if we would be making pancakes when the non-profit volunteers failed to materialize. The kids were naturally cranky, I had worked on last-minute details until late the night before (AFTER the sponsor party -- a huge undertaking in itself that had been thankfully spearheaded by another director) -- and it was cold, damp, and hazy. The future seemed uncertain, and my mood was black.
Anyone who has ever helped to organize anything like this knows that cold feeling in the pit of your stomach on "game day", when you wonder...
...will the volunteers show up?
...will the weather cooperate?
...will anyone fly in?
...what have we forgotten to do?
As the sun rose higher, people slowly started to trickle in. Soon, the head non-profit honcho showed up, with a van-full of helpers, and the griddle was fired up and tested. The Boy Scouts arrived, and placed themselves for car-parking duty. The CAP kids did the same for airplane duty. By 7 AM everyone was in place, and the arrivals started...
Soon, there was a line to get in, and the griddle was going full-bore. Parents and their kids came by the hundreds, and then by the thousands, to enjoy the "toys" and pancakes! Everything came together as planned, the skies cleared and were full of airplanes -- life was good. After a whirlwind day we shut down at 5 PM, knowing that tomorrow we would have to do it all over again -- with a different non-profit working the griddle. More worries...
When all was said and done, and all the bills and non-profits were paid, we cleared a whopping $9K for the Childrens Museum, while providing an event that served our airport with a great public relations boost. The show was a success, and there was talk of making it an annual event...
Now it was time to build the exhibit. Months went by with little word and no visible progress, and there was worry voiced that the money we had raised would simply be sucked into the maw of day-to-day museum operations. It seemed like the museum's interest in the exhibit -- never strong to begin with -- was waning. It was time to do something that would help show them what could be done for a reasonable amount of money.
So, I approached Keith Roof, my aircraft mechanic, for help. My thought was to build a prototype full-sized flight simulator in our hotel's meeting room, as a "proof-of-concept" demonstrator. To that end, Keith -- a grand champion home-builder -- welded up a framework utilitizing the seat out of my 2000 Mustang. He even made it so the electric seat still worked! We then added the CH yoke and rudder pedals, and voila! -- we had a flight simulator.
I then approached a local computer company to build the fastest computer possible (at their cost), and hooked it all up to a digital projector, shining "the world" on a brand-new 104" screen. "The Kiwi" was born, and, wow, was it cool! My total cost: <$4000. (See it here: http://www.alexisparkinn.com/flight_simulator.htm)
Then, it was time to invite the museum's board of directors out to the hotel for some "fun flying". We had snacks and refreshments, and the directors showed up, I'm sure not knowing what to expect. As I turned out the lights and demonstrated a flight, they were very quiet, and I wondered what they were thinking....
One by one I set them up in the Kiwi, and showed them how to "fly". Slowly, their enthusiasm grew, as it became apparent to them that "the Kiwi" would be a HUGE draw for kids and adults alike. By the time they left, the talk was about building SIX of them, and how such an exhibit could grow their paid attendance by leaps and bounds, expanding their age group appeal from 8 all the way through to age 18. The ball was rolling at last!
From that day to this, I've been able to mostly stand back and simply marvel at the progress the museum has made. The exhibit plan grew from a single flight simulator to many, from a few airplanes to dozens, and the budget has grown from $9,000 to over $1,000,000! Deb Dunkhase, the museum's director, earned an $840K grant from NASA that will fund the exhibit for at least the next five years, and Deb convinced Rockwell Collins -- Iowa's huge avionics company -- to jump on board as a major sponsor. With their help, the exhibit now includes ATC simulators, careers-in-aviation exhibits, and the aforementioned control tower, while my friends Keith (and his partner, Jim Delaney) have spent the last two years hand-crafting six flight simulators that look like historic aircraft! There is a real Cessna 150 for the kids to climb in, an enormous spiral slide coming down from the control tower -- and just too many science exhibits to list. It is truly the BEST aviation exhibit for kids in America, eclipsing everything I've seen, anywhere.
Finally, the last hurdle -- that big step from the museum to the airport -- has now been cleared. To that end, the museum has (with help from the local pilot community) created a "flight school", complete with instructors and an award that the kids earn when completed.
That award can be "cashed in" with Tim Busch, owner of Iowa Flight Training (Iowa City's REAL flight school) for a REAL flight lesson at the Iowa City Airport!
The circle is complete...
So, for those who say "it can't be done", I present this tale as living proof that -- with persistance, effort, and a little luck -- it CAN be done.
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