Reflections from Airfest 2004

If you had asked me Saturday afternoon how things went I would have said  "not that well".  Though we did have the 2 - F-16’s, a T-28 , and the FedEx 727, we only had about 20 other planes fly-in which was far fewer than I had expected. The wind made it impossible for the balloon to fly and the Pitts, Lancair and Skydive Tallahassee didn't show up. We only cleared about $100.00 after expenses.  I knew Sunday would be even slower and was trying to think of a way to shut it down so we wouldn't have to spend all day just hanging around wondering what went wrong.  I was worried that many of the people who signed up to help would not show up after the disappointing day we had on Saturday.  If I could have crawled in a hole I would have.

 Sunday started out badly -  I overslept and didn't wake up till 7am.  I had told Marc Dupuis that I would be there at  7 so I was in a panic. I jumped out of bed, threw on my clothes and raced to the airport.  But when I got there an amazing thing happened. A man and his young son were waiting outside the gate.  I asked if he was here for the fly-in.   He said yes that he had read the article in the Democrat and was anxious to see the airplanes.  He said it was about a half page spread on the front page of the local section.  I had remembered talking to the reporter but I didn't think we would get much coverage.

Now we could have a bigger problem.  The publicity might get a bunch of people to come out but there wouldn’t be many airplanes to see and what if most of the other volunteers don't show up?   Ed Copes told folks at the gate that things were slow but they were welcome to come in and have a look around. We decided that if anyone complained we would give them their money back. (No one seemed to mind)

My spirits began to lift when all the volunteers showed up.  Then Jim Fessler who had spent all day Saturday baking in the hot sun came back over in his twin Comanche. The new Mooney and Diamond flew in from Auburn, Flightline opened their hangar back up, Fran Copes flew in from Quincy  and  several local folks taxied their planes over to give the people more to look at. At around 10am two T-6's flew in formation from Destin. Terry Fregly flew some awe inspiring low passes in his l-39 and Eagle's 172 was busy the whole day providing airplane rides to the public.  

All in all we cleared almost $2k after expenses.  That's twice what we got from Quincy last year. But more importantly we had what Jim Pierce said was “The best participation from members and other volunteers that I have seen in 30 years of this Chapters fly-ins”.  Many of them stayed late to help clean up and made the work easier for everyone.

I just want to say thank you again to all the people who helped make this event possible.  Many worked all day both days and I never heard anyone complain.  Most said they want to do it again next year.(Click here for post mortem Minutes) 

A special thanks to Bob VanRiper and all the folks from Flightline.  Without their help this event never would have happened.  Also a big thanks to John Hauser from FedEx who not only put their 727 on display but also allowed us to use their ramp to park airplanes.  Finally hats off to David Pollard with airport operations.  He went out of his way to help us hold it at TLH.

Marc Dupuis will be serving up free food at our next meeting June the 8th to say Thank You to all who helped out. We will talk a little more about next years event.

I hope to see you there,.

John

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