by
Darryl Phillips
Lakeland, Florida.....Sun'n Fun 95 is over. The weather was virtually perfect, attendance was excellent, and sales of kits, plans, products and services were high. Under the leadership of Bill Eickhoff, Duffy Thompson, and a multitude of hardworking people, this gathering has become the finest yearly event for many pilots.
An aviation event as huge as Sun'n Fun is rather like the fable of the blind men and the elephant. Everyone experiences a tiny portion of the beast, few get to see it all. As an exhibitor, I tend to concentrate on the part that comes through the exhibition hall. Every day brings a different crowd.
Like Oshkosh, the best group is there well before opening day. These are the pilots and families who consider EAA to be an extension of the family. The best airshow is Friday or Saturday, sitting alongside the runway as close as the law allows and listening to the arrival controllers as they sequence the constant flow of traffic. "White Cherokee on downwind turn base now and plan to land long you have a Baron behind you Baron extend your downwind a little thats good turn base now highwing taildragger behind the Baron keep your speed up go ahead and turn base Cherokee you're looking good Mooney on downwind rock your wings if you see the highwing in front of you he is your traffic OK thank you very much everyone is looking good Red biplane behind the Mooney rock your wings OK you're number four start your base now" (Period, inhale, and do it again!) This airshow is spontaneous and anything is possible. While it's serious business, the controllers are the best of the lot and they know that a little sense of humor doesn't hurt once in a while. We could use more of their spirit all the other days of the year.
Opening day at Sun'n Fun is Sunday. This crowd is the biggest, judging from the numbers surging through the hall on the way toward the flightline and straggling back toward the parking lot at the end of the day. Sunday brings the biggest proportion of non-flyers. These people have some interest in airplanes or they wouldn't have come, but they are not devotees. The great majority are young, college age or young marrieds, often with two or three kids in tow. They are a cross section of America, judging from the full gamut of tee-shirt messages. They are wearing one-day tickets, not passes good for the week. They came to take a look.
This is the group that represents the potential future of aviation. On this trip they'll spend a few bucks for soft drinks and trivia. They aren't going to drop $6000 for a GPS moving map or $600 for an altitude alerter. They don't know what these gadgets are and they don't care. But we should care, because they are our potential fellow flyers and customers in the years ahead. They are the consumers who will help keep the FBO in business, who will purchase the output of Cessna's new production line, who will form the lifeblood of aviation in the 21st century.
What do we show them of aviation? One of the first things is Hootch Village. Recessed in a dense stand of tall trees, the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Assn. has put together a diorama that looks and feels like the jungles of 'Nam. Bell UH-1 Huey and Hughes OH-6A helicopters in olive drab stand guard in front of shelters made of canvas and bamboo. More jungle foliage completes the scene, along with lots of GI green sandbags and the like. It looks like the real thing.
The pages of General Aviation News & Flyer are not the place to reopen the wounds of the VietNam war. Neither is Sun'n Fun. There are those who feel strongly on both sides of the issue. Debate has a proper place, but Sun'n Fun certainly is not that place. This dreary diorama admits no sun, and it would take a very sick mind to suggest that Viet Nam was fun.
Beyond Hootch Village, on the right, lies a variety of food vendors of every description. On the left (until this year) was the first chance for the arriving visitors to see and touch a real airplane. It's a choice display location, occupied this year by an inflatable display featuring a bunch of Buicks. Cars. Not airplanes. I understand why the auto merchants want to sell their wares, we all want to do that. I just wish the aviation community would concentrate on benefitting aviation, rather than selling out to the highest bidder.
All week long, I never saw any people looking at the automobiles. After all, everyone had already walked through several hundred acres of parked cars.
There are many paths toward the flight line. One is through the exhibit hall where the Airsport booth is located, so I get to see my share of eager attendees hurrying toward the airplanes. The kids are the most fun to watch, they have already caught sight of REAL AIRPLANES. They can't wait to see and touch. Especially touch!
The highlight of course is the airshow. Sunday and Monday it is mostly military, including massive bombing demonstrations that are so powerful the exhibit halls seem ready to collapse. We are situated well back from the flightline, a lot farther from the airshow than most of the spectators, but even inside the building we feel the heat from the explosions. As one powerful concussion bomb after another explodes, the announcer extolls the virtue of war.
At the end of the show, three points have certainly been made. Point one: Airplanes are very noisy. Point two: Airplanes are very dangerous. Point three: Airplanes are used to kill people.
What will the kids remember of this event? Will they recall the shape of a nicely carved propeller or the reflection of their face in a shiny spinner? Or will the lasting memory be one of searing heat from those red-black roiling towers of flame? When that little boy with the balsa glider goes home, will he search for the wing position that produces the best loop, or will he use his fighter plane to kill the enemy? What message do we give our children?
Perhaps next week the nearby attraction will be the boat show. Will this be an opportunity to show how boats are used in war? Perhaps demonstrations of LSTs coming ashore to capture the beach in the face of heavy casualties? Will the boat show feature World War II battleships and destroyers? I think not. Boat merchants will sell the message that it is fun to own a boat. They will sell the sizzle and the sex appeal. They will sell it to all comers, regardless of political preference. Boat merchants will not turn away those who share a different sense of morality, they're too savvy for that. They'll sell to anyone.
Aviation is so hung up on militarism that it would rather continue shrinking toward oblivion than welcome those who have differing beliefs. Is "shrinking toward oblivion" too strong a term? I think not. We used to produce 18,000 light aircraft a year in this country, last year it was 499. This year we may not make it to 400. How much more shrinking are we willing to endure? We must dump this militaristic stance and get back to selling flying because it is pure enjoyment, the most freedom-intensive activity ever invented by man.
In the exhibit buildings we're busy during the airshow. The pilots who own and operate aircraft are spending money. They didn't fly across the country to see the pyrotechnics, they came to see the latest avionics, engine modifications, and all the rest. The airshow is entertainment for the masses, not for those already immersed in flying. Entertainment would be fine if it weren't politically loaded with the message that airplanes and war are inseparable, you cannot love one without loving the other.
Do you think I overstate the case? Can you explain why we have an F-86 on the pole in front of the EAA Museum at Oshkosh? The Experimental Aircraft Association was founded to promote homebuilt aircraft. Fun planes. EAA is located at Wittman Field and we ought to have a replica of a Steve Wittman airplane on that pole. Perhaps his winning racer Bonzo, or maybe a Wittman Tailwind, many of which were powered by converted car engines. That would exemplify the EAA tradition. An F-86 is not an experimental aircraft, and it certainly is not a homebuilt. Yet we are so accustomed to the linking of militarism and aviation that we rarely question why a killing machine is the only aircraft in front of our world-class museum of civil aviation.
Sun'n Fun is many things to many people. The forums are a valuable source of information on many aviation topics. I wish I could spend all day in the forum tents instead of manning the Airsport booth. The FAA building is a source of amazement and exasperation. I'll do a future column on the Mode S/Datalink/TIS demonstration found therein.
There is much to be said for Sun'n Fun, those folks are doing a lot of things right, and I'll be going back every year. Maybe someday there will be a whole airshow as peaceful and beautiful as that act on Saturday that featured five colorful ultralights dancing a ballet above the runway.