Like our fly-in attendees - the same core passion diverging into endless expressions of flight |
Everything in life gels with each passing day. The more time you have to think the more things fall into place. The more things fall into place, the less worries you with with sharing them. Reality is a great debater. It has yet to lose.
I will never forget the reaction to a specific blog post a few years back. I’ve mentioned it
before and I’m about to mention it again.
It described my feelings of driving vs flying to an aviation
event. More specifically, it detailed the
overwhelming sensation of participation I get when I fly to Oshkosh
and how I feel nothing more than attendance when I drive. The point was this - there is a difference.
The post caused a stir.
What had been a simple observation of self-reflection turned into a
serious debate. In some places it almost
sounded like a fight. To say I was
humored by it all is a great understatement.
In a time of participation medals it struck a nerve. Of course, the nerve it struck was of those
who had always assumed they were participating and never once considered
otherwise. Those who have no problem
with being an attendee had nothing to lose.
So how does this all apply to the Lee B ottom
Fly-In?
One thing we’ve long attempted to convey to those who come
to the Lee B ottom Fly-In is that it isn’t
being done for us. The fly-in has always
been about having an event for the “other people”. They aren’t warbirds but they may love
warbirds, they aren’t antiquers but they may love antiques. They aren’t formation, light-sport, fat-tire,
alphabet group, or general aviation either.
They are aviators. Flying is
their passion and the other titles are merely a reflection of that. Not the other way around.
Now, about that so called profit. It’s no secret we’ve been “charging” for
“attendance” since 2007. It isn’t
new. What was new this year though was
an online ticketing service.
During past events, it was possible to visit, enjoy
yourself, and fly away without paying.
In fact, almost 30% of people did just that despite our constant
reminders of red ink. Why would pilots
do that?
Myself, having contemplated this for ages, witnessed the reaction to the attendance vs participation blog, and fielded questions from a few angry pilots
about the online ticketing system, I now feel I have a good understanding of
why. Through the years, aviation has
made pilots believe they were participating when they were actually flying
their planes to events and attending.
Organizers have coddled them, sucked up to them, kissed
butt, and often given them a free pass to everything. And yet, what was the purpose? Usually it was, and is, to get them there so
they could lay claim to the best collection, the largest crowd, most airplanes,
or some other meaningless talking point.
In turn, the public who attended were those drawn to titles and those
who flew to the events were those who were drawn to attention. And for a while, this became the predominant
model for all aviation gatherings.
Unfortunately, it also meant they turned into textbook sociological
displays of the big frog in a little pond syndrome.
Two decades later, a guy said stood tall, puffed his chest, and spoke words like these into the cameras, “I’ve
loved P-38s since I was a kid. I loved
their history, was fascinated by the pilots, and built model after model of
them. I guess it is because of this that
when I had the means, I decided to rescue this P-38 for future
generations. I’m not its owner I’m its
caretaker and I love sharing it with people”.
The same guy wouldn’t attend any event that didn’t pay his gas, give him
a hotel room, passes to the VIP tent, and
possibly a sexual favors. Clearly, he
had been enabled by other gatherings that had caved to his demands. That’s how it worked. They wanted that plane there and the owners knew it.
Event after event followed the lead and before long you
couldn’t get a Stinson Detroiter to an event without at least giving them gas
money. People holding airshows and
fly-ins were expected to roll out the red carpet for anyone in anything rare or
odd. If they didn’t, owners would pout,
stomp their feet, complain to their buddies who were planning to attend, and
generally try to sandbag the show.
When that behavior was challenged the common reaction from
pilots was to point to the event as a money making operation and claim the
planes as an operational expense. Of
course, for this notion to work, a huge amount of public attendance had to be achieved to put the event into the black. Yet
for the “other people” who attended, this became the nightmare of all
nightmares.
People with planes considered desirable were treated like
Gods and thus behaved in the same manner.
Their planes were roped off. B ut
when it came to the “other pilots”, the uneducated general public made a
nuisance of themselves. Pushing and
shoving and trashing the grounds they made their way through the unroped
areas. Plane to plane they went, often
allowing little Jimmy to do pull ups on pitot tubes. Then when something bad happened the parents
would scream at the owner for daring to address the situation.
If you were an enthusiast during this period it was a
nightmare. Where were you to go otherwise?
This was the impetus for the Lee B ottom
Fly-In; a place for “the others” to go.
Unfortunately, there’s a single characteristic that goes
hand in hand with any event; expenses.
There was a time this could have easily been addressed. Today though, the
citizens of the United States
have managed to get it in their heads that everything should be free, and God
forbid anyone make money. It’s the
damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.
Even proponents of charging for events add the disclaimer,
“It’s not like you’re in it for the money”. So what if we were? If we offered everything you ever wanted
what’s the problem with making money? B ut
I digress. We don’t have that problem.
This brings me back to the participation vs attendance
debate. What I’ve recently come to
realize is that this is what we’ve been trying to get people to understand
about the event. It’s not about us, it’s
about you. You are the event. And when you are the event, you carry your
part of the expense.
Unfortunately though, due to all those years
of other gatherings soft-programming people to believe events have no costs, most
have come to believe that when they arrive at a fly-in or airshow they are participating
when in fact they are just attending.
And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with attending. Often that’s the most fun. It’s just not what you do when you’re here.
Summarizing what I’ve just discussed, when it comes to
events like the Lee B ottom Fly-In, if you
choose to attend you are choosing to participate, and when you participate you
are agreeing to carry your part of the expense.
It’s that simple. And yet, there
are other implications to be drawn from this.
Holding an event at a remote location like Lee B ottom
is not easy. Everything has to be
brought in. Volunteers have to travel
good distances to volunteer, all support vehicles come from 15 miles away or greater, and anything we need has to be ordered and shipped in via DHL. B ut most
critical to the process is the food situation.
An event is only as strong as its weakest food. Without food you do not have a fly-in. Good food makes a bad airshow better and bad
food can kill a great fly-in. Talk to
anyone in the event planning industry and they’ll tell you the same. This brings us to the next fly-in talking
point.
Having food at the Lee B ottom
Fly-In is a logistical nightmare.
Planning for enough water and electricity, food, and facilities at any gathering is tough. Host an event beholden to weather and it gets exponentially worse. Given Mother Nature’s attitude, we’ve had as
little as 30 people for the Friday night dinner and as many as 480. Then of course there’s breakfast lunch and
dinner on Saturday; not to mention Sunday breakfast.
Here is a graph about the two things that make pilots go. |
Of course since some suppliers allow you to return unopened
items, you could keep the steaks in storage in a freezer. This would help. B ut
then you have to bring in a freezer trailer.
No matter what you do, the food represents the single biggest gamble of
the fly-in.
What all this amounts to is a Tuesday cut-off for cheap
tickets. The cheaper tickets are there as
a thank you for the people who understand participating in an event means accepting
a small part of the risk. By purchasing early they help us better plan for food and in return they get a discount. If a monsoon or swarm of locusts were
to blow through and the fly-in be cancelled, they would only be out
$15; an acceptable sum to be risked in order to keep their event alive. That’s all there is to it. If you don’t get it, then it is your choice
to stay away.
That brings me to the next topic of conversation,
attendance, err, participation.
Participation at the fly-in was quite a bit more than we
expected. It was great to see. Furthermore, the number of campers was
incredible. They are the real troopers
of aviation and it is good to know they’re still out there in large numbers
looking for places to go. Of course,
there were a lot of people who weren’t here for one reason or another.
Conflicts with other events, the aging pilot group, people
who don’t know how to use a printer, a sharp line of weather, and some people
who desire to be carried count among the reasons a few regulars were not on
hand. Although, when it comes to who was
here the story is equally interesting.
Pilots from all corners of the country were on hand yet
locals were largely absent. It’s hard to
believe we sit between UPS and DHL hubs. People camping with their planes
made up 25-30% of the total on hand. The aviators who made it were all obviously very happy to be here and complaints were
nearly non-existent. And finally,
perhaps the most interesting aspect of this event was that the crowd was
noticeably younger.
In a time when pilots have a hair trigger for user fees, often that emotion transfers to anything with a price. |
There are many possible reasons for this but, from
everything we know and experienced, we believe the online ticketing system was
largely responsible. Many attendees even
went out of their way to tell us they liked the system and how easy it
was. It seemed that the technology not
only made it easier, it also made the event more attractive to younger
participants. That’s an interesting
point for all of aviation to consume.
Of course there were a few older attendees who had trouble with
the system; not that age had anything to do with it. One guy called and admitted he was a little
befuddled. Instead of starting off on
the wrong foot, he asked if I could help and I personally walked him through
it. When he arrived at the fly-in we were like best
friends. Of course, he was a very
likable fellow. Yet, the main reason I
mention this is to point out some of the things we experienced with the "old
crowd".
The most common issue they had was with the printing of the
tickets. Rarely though did we hear this
first hand. We almost always heard of the problem from
someone else who told us they were talking to “such and such” and that they were
having an issue with the tickets. They had
spent time talking to the person, put some thought into it, and emailed or
called us to ask what we could do to help.
Well, this became so common it made me sad. Why didn’t the person who knew them, spent
time with them, and had taken the time to email us help the person with their
tickets? In fact, I’m now afraid that if
I were having a heart attack and called anyone around me they would call the
ambulance instead of driving me to the hospital. It takes a half-hour for the ambulance to get
here and a half-hour to drive to the nearest hospital.
Then there was the guy who was mad at us for requiring
pre-printed tickets because his group had a lot of “elderly” people in it. According to him the requirement would keep them from attending.
His sob story, combined with the attitude of what we should be doing for
him and his group, was incredible. If you
believed what he said, many in his group, for all practical purposes, didn’t
know what the internet was. Then he
demanded an answer before their meeting.
Wait a minute, what meeting?
You see, this guy emailed us from our website (no problems
with the internet there) to tell us his group is a bunch of motorcycle riders
and that they have scheduled meetings to plan long rides to different events or
gatherings. So what he really said was
he owned a Harley and knew his way around a computer but couldn’t bother himself
to buy the tickets for his buddies and let them pay him back when they met. He also unwittingly admitted they had monthly
planning meetings where they all get together to discuss long rides. So much for the feeble minded elderly. And then of course there was that point that
they all get together to organize their trips but they could not set aside a block of 20 minutes to print
all their tickets?
And finally there was the “antiquer” who sent me a message
so unbelievable and disappointing I couldn’t even bother to respond. Fortunately for me, when he attempted to feel
out the antique community by posting his toned down message online, another
antiquer described my feelings best, “That’s sad”. After that I knew that some people get it, some
people don’t, and others refuse to get it.
The rest of my time was spent on those who did.
Thanks to Ashe Archer for the photo. |
Don’t get me wrong.
I’d love to have everyone here. B ut,
I’d prefer to wait until they understand the difference between participation
and attendance.
_______________________________________________________________________
Thanks to all of you who made this one of the most enjoyable fly-ins in memory. We're sorry the weather front kept some of you away, but there's always next year. We hope to see you here.
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Thanks to all of you who made this one of the most enjoyable fly-ins in memory. We're sorry the weather front kept some of you away, but there's always next year. We hope to see you here.
_______________________________________________________________________
NOTE:
Often, when it’s 2 am
and your hammer a point onto paper, you understand what you were trying to say
but may have said it in a manner confusing to others. Ginger is
great for finding those sticking points.
This time she found one so good I wanted to discuss it briefly.
Her point was that some people would read about the P-38 guy
and say the same thing about us. We’ve
learned how people think and she was right, someone would surely read that exactly
the way she predicted.
Here’s what she believed some would read, “They say they're saving this field for future generations, that they love the place and love sharing
it with others but they want us to pay for holding the event”. What do you think? The same?
Just in case you do, we have a scenario to put it all into perspective.
Let’s say the P-38 guy had enough money to own the plane, keep up the annual maintenance, and fly it for 20 hours a year. Then out of the blue one day he said, “This
weekend I am going to allow everyone with the desire to fly a P-38 to fly mine”. When that page of the calendar was revealed
his hangar was flooded with people there to put it in their logbook. One after another they climbed in and flew
it. Then when the weekend was over and the
pilots were gone, there was a gas bill of $18,000, a leaking prop seal to fix, and
two engines approaching the limits for overhaul. Everyone had experienced a great time
but now the owner was out of options.
Nobody had left so much as a dime to cover the expense of their
fun. Had they each paid their way he
might have done it every year. B ut
people with the attitude of “anyone who owns a P-38 should be able to cover my
expenses” put an end to it all.
By the way, did I ever tell you one of my favorite models as a kid was a P-38?
7 comments:
Very well said Rich, your ability to put to words in writing has for along time now intrigued me.
I was unable to attend this year after realizing that my re-painting project on the Colt would take longer than I would have imagined, but I will be there next year for sure!
Your story brought to mind another event that started grass roots and ended up being overcomplicated with the needs and demands of attendees the Burning Man Festival in the desert.
My hat is off to yourself Ginger and all the volunteers that work so hard to make "our" fly-in such a great success.
Gary Holt
Rich - you are my kind of people. You can't please everyone so please the one's you can and like.
The on-line system worked great and anyone who can write e-mail or find and look at whatever sort of pictures they are into on the internet can certainly been able to handle that on-line system.
I appreciate the ticket you sent me out of the clear blue sky for volunteering. I wasn't expecting and had already bought all my tickets. When I landed with extra tickets, I just offered them back to the fly-in to help someone else attend.
My advice for next year, thanks, but no need to take the time to send me a ticket. I'll buy what I need, I'll be there if I can, and if I do I will volunteer. You see, I like to participate.
Well said. When my budget doesn't allow me to fly my plane, I certainly wouldn't expect someone else to fund my entertainment, the plane stays in the hangar. Weather prevented my participation this year, not the ticket system. Looking forward to next year. Always looking for a place to do a little air camping. :-)
William Willyard
Attended with the Pietenpol from Toledo but had to leave sooner than we wanted on Saturday due to the weather forecast for Sunday. It took a tag team of pilots and a chase car with camping gear, spare parts, tools and jerry cans of fuel but we managed to make it late on Friday. Hope we can repeat the adventure next year and with an extra week of vacation the year after next, maybe I can be "participant" too.
Personally I like the idea of preordering discounted tickets for the event. I don't remember if you had it setup this way, but maybe you can do the same thing with the food.... offer discounts for meals ordered prior to the event. Double the price for those that don't preorder. If the event is a blowout due to the weather, you are not left holding the bag.
Best Wishes
Andy Abreu
Toledo Pietenpol
I love the control you have over your domain.
I would love to participate at one of your fly-ins; but unfortunately, TODAY, I do not meet your qualifications to participate in that event - BUT THAT"S OK !!
After four airplanes, my financial position has left me with a powered parachute, a 7X12 covered trailer, and a van to pull it all with. It's sad to think that this would prevent me from participating (as per your view of "flying" v. "driving"); as us "Chutests" have to fly "out of the box", both figuratively and literary.
I understand your situation with campers mucking up the system - I am one; however, one should not throw out the baby (self-contained RV campers who are also GA savy) with the bathwater.
I'm not trying to open up a "pissing contest" here. I'm merely speaking my mind.
Ray DeForge, AC1, USN, ret; PPL/ASEL, CTO/KNJK, AD
Foggy,
You would be welcome. Your situation is a little different. You should have called. In fact,at several events, and to the joy of others, we've had powered parachutes flying near sunset while they waited in line for food.
I have been receiving NORDO news since 2009. I got my Private in 2010. I finally attained the means to attend in 2012, but alas it was not to be. When I found out 2014 was happening I immediately put it on my calendar and searched for the online registration. I think the online registration makes life for everyone a whole lot easier. I know I have a slot, you know I'm coming, you can plan for food vendors and the like. And if I don't make it then a donation to folks who support aviation is a drop in the bucket. $15 is cheap, so those who complain, got no business showing up to begin with. I mean, this is aviation for crying out loud.
I brought my daughter age 11. We arrived Friday evening, and camped with our plane. She met some new young friends, they had a great time, I met some cool folks, I had a great time, the food was great, the event was great in my book.
If you have another one, I would plan to participate.
Thanks for having the event, and know that we appreciate your efforts and hope to support the event again.
Thanks Again and Best Regards,
Jeff Laughrey & Alexandria Laughrey
Super Decathlon N400AB
1A0 - Chattanooga, TN
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