Game Time

What day is it boys and girls? That's right! It's the last day of the month! You know what that means? Yes...billing! You know, that time when you get to hunt down who put fuel in their plane forgetting to write it down so that we're missing a few hundred bucks worth of fuel, or when you get to hunt down who forgot to write their info down in the time sheets at all, or figuring up why you are an hour off on total times on the sheet meaning people added wrong again, who gets charged what for fuel and rental. All that fun stuff. :) We'll be doing that for a few days here-after I get stuff entered, Steve has the hard end of it. Once he's done, he'll print them and I'll get them prepped and in the mail all over again.

The problem is, of course, that we have an event coming up in two days with an air show in three days, and we have run into several obstacles with the show. Sound system, Young Eagle pilots, air show participants, Steve spending an hour on the phone tonight at 9 p.m. with the FAA...though at least he was laughing and things were friendly. So finishing up the billing in a timely manner may prove to be a challenge.

Fifteen years ago or so, when I first came to this area, we'd do a fly-in event, and it was simple. You get the hog and the side dishes, you'd get a nice day, set up a tent or get a building ready, maybe set up a raffle, and people would fly in. You might give rides, you might have some locals come by, and that was it. Then we started doing them at Glenndale, and they got bigger. Then they got big enough that we suddenly had people doing spur-of-the-moment aerobatics low to the ground and people doing buzz jobs that shouldn't be. So we had to cut off people's ability to do that stuff, and had enough traffic we initiated an "Air Boss". Now days you can't give rides without meeting 14 FAA regulations and a ton of red tape. You can't have an air show without waivers and permission and meeting more criteria than you would possibly believe. The planning is huge, involved, and tiring. Traffic and the crowd has to be a certain distance. There's a safety plan, a ground plan, an airshow plan, a parking plan, an egress plan, an emergency plan, a rides plan, a food plan. That road can't be open if you're going to use that runway. So how do you shut down a road for 2 hours, anyway? Oh, right, more agencies and red tape and stonewalls. Let's talk about insurance. For the rides. For the crowd. For the air show itself. For the airport grounds and the city. Do you know how many separate policies are necessary and what EACH of them has set up as mandatory requirements? Me either, but Steve is becoming an expert on it. How about setting up the waiver itself. Or getting the people organized to take care of trash, parking, and safety. Or the radio ads, advertising and promo. Getting sponsors to help cover the costs so we can keep it a free show for the community. It honestly gives me a headache to even contemplate, and if Steve didn't do it, I would never have the patience or probably the ability to pull it off.

So if anyone out there has a good sound system to project an air show announcer and music to a crowd, and if all you dozens of pilots out there around the country who read this (insert sarcasm here) can donate your time and airplane to give Young Eagles rides for a few hundred children, just for starters, just come on over...