The AOPA fly-in was a success! Special huge thanks to Ray Burton, and his family (this was their 15th anniversary and they supported ICS!), Pete Morse, Bernie Stumpf, and the many ICS people who stopped by to say hello and stayed to talk. We even had a surprise visit from a very supportive FSDO official (even if it made Ray a bit nervous to see a guy standing next to his open cowling with an FAA badge in plain sight)! It was a long but productive 2 days.
As you can see from the location, the management at Groton was very supportive of the Comanche type! The airport manager and AOPA fly-in coordinator also stopped by several times to thank us for our past support and also to ask us if we liked our nice location.
“AOPA fly-in coordinator stopped by several times to thank us for our past support”
The AOPA gathering was extremely well-run and had a huge attendance, we think we had over 100 visitors the first day and more the next. Everyone looked at Ray’s handily rescued and well-flown bird and learned about why they are great and why we love them.
Two suggestions:
1) I’d recommend a sign-in book such as Oshkosh has that can go with the materials. That way we can track results and people will have a place to write requests for more info or followup as well as suggestions.
2) I’d request the committee to reconsider its refusal to provide cards to the volunteers and not just the display owner. The current situation causes confusion. I looked back in my notes and the basic cards are $5!
3) we found the website to be unusable for signing up new members. The northeast version demands payment info without ever even asking for their contact and airplane information. This means we missed some new members who wanted to sign up. For the last new member, mystic jet center was kind enough to print me out a sign-up form. There I found another problem: we are using a different annual price on the form versus the website. Hope we can resolve these things ASAP.
