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What is the dumbest (silliest, biggest waste of money, marketing propaganda influenced, overly enthusiastic, etc) thing you have bought for flying? Share it with us below.

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Our hearts go out to those impacted by the accident at Reno. Jimmy Leeward was a personal friend and a great pilot.  He flew my Ford Tri-motor in the movie "Amelia".  I flew with him in the movie as well as from Minneapoils to Toronto and return for filming.  We spent two weeks with him on the set.  Jimmy was wonderful.  This was a most unfortunate accident for everyone concerned. 

What's your favorite plane to fly on floats? Brag about it below.

Who as a pilot do you most admire?
Share them with us below.

Once in a while I get a bit contemplative when things change. This past several weeks is one of those occasions. I appreciate that everything changes, that people move on and life and organizations are dynamic. But that does not stop me from appreciating the good people who have contributed to our lives and who have brought us to where we are.

Take this recent AirVenture/Oshkosh for example. I was there all week. It was a great event that was punctuated by a couple of occurrences that gave me pause. One which occurred early in the week was news of the loss of Greg Poe, the airshow performer who I am proud to have called a friend. It was not an airshow accident that took him. It was a heart attack at the end of a long day of motorcycle riding. Greg was a wonderful person, a great performer and a True Gentleman. Thanks Greg, for all that you did.

A few days later I was asked to attend an announcement at the Brown Arch at the center of EAA AirVenture. There Tom Poberezny announced his retirement as Chairman of the EAA. As I listened to his words unfold, I was hoping that he would say that he was going to stay involved in some way. I was saddened when he made clear that his was a complete departure from the organization his father started and he had lead for decades.

Since the Wright brothers, there have been many great names associated with General Aviaiton. Lindbergh comes to mind immediately, Earhart is another. Then there are industry names like Boeing and Curtiss. But if I had to pick five family names that have meant the most for General Aviaiton for all of history, the Poberezny name would be in the top two or three, just below the Wright Brothers.

What Paul Poberezny did for General Aviation when he founded the EAA can not be overstated. It is my understanding that Paul will be honored at AirVenture next year. He certainly deserves all the accolades that can be given. Tom does as well.

When the EAA announced the search was on for an eventual successor to Tom Poberezny, I don’t think anyone was surprised. From my understanding, the short list from which Rod Hightower emerged consisted of an extraordinarily qualified group. I have met and talked with Rod in a number of circumstances. I am very pleased with how he is taking the organization forward. Rod is a great guy.

I only wish Tom had elected to stay more involved – at a minimum with the program that he founded: the Young Eagles. Tom Poberezny was involved, in one way or another, with the EAA for his entire lifetime. His ability to articulate the goals and vision of the EAA in general, and the Young Eagles in particular, is unparalleled. Tom is a great communicator and as the Young Eagles program demonstrates, a great visionary as well. His are really, really big shoes to fill.

The Young Eagles program absolutely works. In the interest of full disclosure, I am on the organizing committee for the annual fundraiser at AirVenture called “Gathering of Eagles”. For the last several years this has given me the opportunity to develop a solid understanding of what this program does for young people specifically and General Aviation in particular.

The EAA and FAA worked together on a study of the Young Eagles, the results of which were announced earlier this summer. The study showed that someone who took a Young Eagles ride was 5.4 times more likely to earn their pilot’s license than someone who did not get a ride. Taking seventeen year olds as an example, for every 100 kids that took a ride, 2 of them have ended up earning their pilot’s license. In the U.S. there are roughly 20,000,000 kids between the ages of 15 to 19 years – 2% of that number is 400,000. How would our industry look with 400,000 young new pilots? And that’s just for the 15 to 19 year age group. Young Eagle rides are given to kids between the ages of 15 and 34.

These, what I will call “conversion numbers”, will continue to increase as the program evolves. For example, the Young Eagles program has been give a significant boost by the recent introduction of the “Flight Plan” for young people. This program provides kids the opportunity to take Sporty’s Online Pilot Training Course — free of charge. And, after the online course is completed, the students receive a voucher for their first flight lesson, also free of charge. In just two short years more than 6,000 Young Eagles have taken the course. As well, EAA student memberships are available to all Young Eagles at no cost.

The older they were, the more likely a Young Eagle is to get their license. Dovetailing into this successful youth program is a new one launching in January 2012. It is a Young Eagles program for adults. This upcoming program was announced by Rod Hightower during an EAA AirVenture. According to Rod expanding the Young Eagles to include adults is something EAA members have been recommending for years. The new program will focus on the “one-on-one” flight experience, again driven by local chapters.

If one person had done nothing more than start the Young Eagles program, most of us would say: “that’s more than enough”. But Tom Poberezny has done much more than that. He took the organization his father started and built it into the General Aviation powerhouse that it is today. Under his leadership and vision the EAA grew dramatically in terms of membership, infrastructure, organization and stature. And certainly, none of this could have been accomplished without the countless volunteers, chapters and a dedicated staff. But as with most truly successful organizations, the leadership deserves a great deal of credit – that goes most recently to Tom Poberezny.

Thank you Greg and Paul and Tom. And thanks to everyone who have dedicates themselves to sharing our mutual passion for aviation.

In this month's Pilot, What's Your Story?, Ev Lake shared his dismay with the encroaching obsolescence of his instruments and the cost to the average aviator:
 
    "I have a concern about the future of aviation for those of us that use an older aircraft that may have a selling price of about $60,000.00 or less. Some of us feel a strong pressure to replace our ‘entry level avionics’ with very capable expensive avionics. The pressure comes from the decommissioning of many VOR and NDB navaids as more GPS based approaches are added. The loss of the VOR and NDB approaches makes it more difficult to justify a used Skyhawk, Warrior, etc. for a small business and/ or personal travel. But, it is difficult to justify spending $12,000.00 or more to install a WAAS capable GPS receiver in an older aircraft. (NextGen will likely be even more difficult to justify.)
    Certainly this pressure to use expensive equipment must drive the cost for training upwards. A $250,000.00 glass cockpit aircraft must be more expensive for private pilot certificate training than a $60,000.00 ‘steam gage’ aircraft. That cost is bound to discourage many potential students from even taking an introductory ride."
 
Pilots: what are your feelings about this? Do you share Ev's concerns?
Sound off below.

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Following the theme of last week, do you have a favorite story of your children and/or grandchildren flying? What about with your spouse or in-laws? Tell us about the flight(s) here.
If you have a video of it we would love to wach that too, post your video here.

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Who’s older: your kids, or your aircraft? Let us know below.

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Were you or was anyone you know or knew a pilot in WWII?
Please share your story here.

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The other day, we received some feedback from a reader stating his displeasure by the lack of pages in our online publication. We’d like to ask the rest of you, do you prefer quality or quantity? Is our recent focus on editorial an issue? Would you like to see more ads? Let us know below.

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