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Oregon180 wrote:Here's what really sealed the deal for little boy me: The Great Waldo Pepper, from 1975. Pure awesome. If they showed this movie a little more often, maybe we'd get some more new recruits:

...one of my favorite shows of all time. Another favorite is Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, from 1965.

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I hear ya Bhawk,

Couple years back my wife and I went to a work party and got shunned like we had the plague...have no idea why. It took quite a bit of coaxing to get my wife to go with me but i told her it would be fun and it would be nice to get out for the weekend. We flew in the day before and camped at a nearby hot spring. We got to the work party a little late but still did lots of work. Only one person talked to me, nobody spoke to my wife. On our way home she told me she would never go to a fly-in with me again. Bummer cuz the BCP fly-in is always too close to her b-day for me to go without her.

whee wrote: On our way home she told me she would never go to a fly-in with me again. Bummer cuz the BCP fly-in is always too close to her b-day for me to go without her.

Dude, bring her to JC. We are not those people.

Whee, bring the dog too!

Whee if there are those that are too cool to talk to you, let us know..we'll throw them in the crick and then they can feel real cool.....

Speaking of cool, those two movies..Waldo Pepper and the Mag Machines are my favorites also..I liked them both long before I became a pilot.

Bhawk - what you just described is something that only happens about two billion times a day .. an insulated, self-absorbed bunch of assholes treated you like dirt. That they were pilots is unfortunate, but people are people, even pilots.

I know that I have been treated great by nearly all the people I've ever met at GA gatherings. I think that's the standard.

I've done a lot of boating in years past, when I lived in Florida and also did some development work in the Bahamas. Lots of really nice people are boaters. But lots of them are assholes too. One big difference between boaters and flyers: in general, boaters are really into the social stratification thing. Big boat people only hang out with other big boat people ... and preferably, with bigger-boat people. You own an 80-foot boat, and the guy who ties up beside you at the marina only has a 60-foot boat, and you treat him like a wetback just crossed the border with a load of drugs. That's the way it is with a lot of boaters.

Pilots, on the other hand, almost invariably when I fly into a GA airport and walk into the FBO, chances are the other people in there fly everything from a 60-year old J3 or Stinson or whatever all the way up to a G-V. And both the owners and the pilots (if not the same person) will chat me up and treat me like an equal, even though I'm flying a 42-year old Cherokee 180. We get into fun conversations about airplanes, and the places we go, and I've never yet run into someone who treated my like the assholes that Bhawk described.

Not saying Bhawk didn't tell it like it was ... but that has to be the exception, not the rule, in general aviation.

My brotherinlaw lives in SE Idaho, and one day he was visiting a pilot friend of his in Driggs at the airport. They were farting around with his friend's biplane (not sure, maybe it was a Waco). Anyway, some guy comes walking up, and starts chatting them both up about the biplane, and how it flew and what engine it had etc. etc. etc. (typical ramp talk). Turns out, the visitor who chatted them up was none other than Harrison Ford. He has a place in nearby Jackson, Wyoming where he regularly flies SAR missions in his chopper to rescue dumb hikers on the Grand (Teton) or whatever ... he's a rich dude, one of the most famous Hollywood actors in the world, and being a pilot, he just naturally likes to talk to other pilots about their planes - whether it's a Waco or a Citation X.

THAT'S general aviation! It's one of the things I love best about flying, and being a flyer - hanging with other flyers.

Most people I have met in GA are really friendly. it just so happened that on the first group gathering that my wife and i attended she had a bad time. Was not a big deal to me, i don't really care for talking with people anyways. I'm trying to get her to come with me to JC after she gets done with her race on the 26th...would make it there by dinner. I keep telling her this group would be totally different.

mountainmatt wrote:Whee, bring the dog too!

I'd need a bigger plane to do that...unless we leave the camping gear home.

This came across AvWeb, very topical...

"Cessna CEO Jack Pelton has been necessarily concerned about a shortage of customers in the past 18 months but he's shifted his gaze to a new threat on the horizon and that's a shortage of pilots. Pelton told the Aero Club of Washington this week that the FAA estimates the number of student pilots will hit a 10-year low this year. "This is a problem for all of us in aviation, and all of us should be part of the solution," Pelton said. "Fewer pilots equate to less business for all of us, and it threatens the strong, sustainable aviation system our nation counts on." He said the military no longer trains enough pilots to fill airline cockpits and GI Bill-type incentives are a thing of the past. GA groups have created numerous programs to try to stimulate growth in pilot numbers but Pelton said now it's time the government stepped up. "Congress should give serious consideration to permitting flight training under the Post 9/11 GI Bill," he said. "We need legislation that fosters and stimulates our industry."

Pelton reiterated his belief that the recovery of the industry will be long and slow but he said there are some hopeful signs. Used aircraft inventories are falling and flight hours are up. The perception of aviation as a wasteful perk for the ultra rich has been turned around and the legitimate use of aviation as a business tool has been embraced in the form of general aviation appreciation days across the country. He said changing the perception was largely the result of aviation groups getting together to get that message out. The Department of Transportation has also formed a blue chip committee on the future of aviation, of which Pelton is a member. "This cooperation we've experienced in GA must span all areas of aviation," he said."

I don't know if they're already pursuing expanding the post-911 GI Bill to cover flight training, but that would be a huge boost for GA (much like the GI Bill did for GA following WWII).