I donate to the NTSB every year on 4/15!

robw56 wrote:But you need to be a donating member to see it...

The NTSB owns supercub.org?

Pics of the Bryant Buzz

http://www.backcountrypilot.org/me/my-p ... bumid=3617

The NTSB owns all of us!

mtv wrote:Great reason to remove Johnson Creek from the category of "Backcountry" airstrips.

Like many examples, it is possible to "love" a place so much you destroy it's character.

There are still a few actual remote airstrips out there where you can have an actual wilderness experience, but they're going away fast.

Why not hold your mega "fly ins" at a rural, rather than wilderness airport?

Oh, well.

MTV

I tend to agree with this, but I think it's a Catch 22. We're social creatures, and we want to meet and be with our kind, and it's fun to meet and visit with people you've only known from a website. However, that usually means a lot of airplanes in one spot. Johnson Creek has seemed like a great spot for this in the past, given its huge runway and relatively easy approach and facilities, and has been able to support the number of people attending these things. That is, until 3 or 4 different clubs/websites/groups do the same thing, have a few incidents or accidents, and suddenly the groups have really attracted the wrong kind of attention.

On the other hand, in my opinion, big fly-ins are the antithesis of the backcountry spirit, which is to escape and find solitude. Finding a larger rural spot makes more sense for accommodating a larger number of aircraft, but it's still an oxymoron-- a "backcountry pilot fly-in." We're lone wolves, cutting our own path where none exists, right? Guys? When arrival and departure procedures get published for a "backcountry" airport, you know Fonzie's jumped the shark.

I didn't start this site to be a club and have fly-ins, I started it to meet people and share information. In fact I try to not be involved with the fly-in planning because I don't want any responsibility for any kind of event. Fly-ins are a natural evolution of that social thing though, and damned if they aren't fun, even if they're a conflict of core interests.

Will I attend again? Probably, I don't care where it's located. Even if it's the most remote backcountry strip, if there are 75 planes there, it's no longer backcountry, so why not just concede and go rural with camping? I'm glad that it's being changed up this year to somewhere different. Due to scheduling conflicts I'll be elsewhere though, so pfffft.

@ ZZZ :

Great commentary on the JC situation.

I was thinking of American baseball player Yogi Berra and some of his "Yogisms", ie quotations that are just amazing. Among them, the following:

On why he no longer went to Ruggeri's, a St. Louis restaurant: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

Well said Z for sure. J.C. though is a special venue for what we do, and to be crowded with 90 birds really dont matter for a couple of days....! good grief its still a free frickin' country and meeting like that or anywhere for that matter is just OK.!

while last year was truly a bad crash on the approach end, hell that same thing happened in Mccall a couple years ago with a couple of local birds, with about the same results, unfortunately.

garden valley will be fun for all i am sure as well, so maybe just a tad safer as well...maybe...getting a bunch of us together for a couple of days wherever is really not a big damn deal. Idaho lends itself to it, and is one of the better places for it in my opinion. JC or GV both are fine. JC is truly a unique place and so quiet and untraveled as to auto traffic and such...

I think i'll be at the flyingB that weekend, so i hope everyone has a true blast! i am working on some killer raffle items if that is going on again, and if it is, ill drop them off on my way north for sure...here's hoping everyone has a kick-ass summer of flying and such, and here's hoping that we all get some recurrent training in our chosen enviroment...spend some damn $, u r worth it and so is the safety of all involved...! sincerely, JOMAC