Friday

Friday began with a surprisingly data filled presentation from Bob Hart of Eastern Avionics. I was surprised because Bob's job is to sell avionics for Eastern, and I was expecting the usual sales pitch.

Instead, Bob offered an hour chock full of information, a thick booklet with brochures and other data, and useful comparisions of equipment from various manufacturers designed for the same purpose, such as cockpit weather, thunderstorm avoidance, GPS navigators, handheld GPS, etc.

Bob says he is an intentionally opinionated sales/tech rep, and he has the advantage of working for a company that sells and services most things on the market. Bob offered his opinions on which manufacturer's gear was better in which situation, and the hour went fast.

Next came a presentation from Peter Walseth of Adam Aircraft on the A500 and A700. Pete showed us a video of the aircraft, factory, and manufacturing process. (We apologize to him, due to AV problems with our equipment, his DVD played very poorly and was difficult to hear.) He also gave a presentation on both the A500 pistion twin just certified by the FAA, and the A700 light jet.

Unfortunately, somebody else trumped us on getting to see the actual airplane, it did not arrive due to a "scheduling conflict". (What could be more important than us?). Pete offered us Adam Aircraft ball caps as a consolation prize, which was kind of him. We were disappointed in not being able to spend time with the actual airplane though.

Next came a bull session/panel discussion of subjects suggested by the audience. The panel consisted of Ray Torres of RT Aerospace, Bob Hart of Eastern Avionics, and Owen Bell of Aviation Enterprises, moderated by Paul Rooy.

All sorts of avionics and aircraft maintenance subjects were covered, and I think everyone likely learned something new to take home with them.

Next, Paul took time to acknowledge the contributions of all the speakers, and the committee that organized the fly-in. The group also acknowledged Paul and Mary for all the work they had done to bring the meeting off in such a professional and enjoyable way.

(Click here for an audio recording of this portion of the meeting ;-).

Because Paul (for some reason) felt he needed to attend his child's graduation (rather than spend the time with us), he and Mary made their exit at this point. The photo at right shows all the gear they packed in to help save SOAPA money. (See previous audio recording.)

With Ernie Martin performing the introductions, Peyton McCool and I finished off (possibly literally) the meeting portion of the event with a presentation on Single Pilot IFR in your Skymaster. As Peyton and I have never been accused of saying anything with 5 words when 50 will do, and without Paul's TASR in place to restrict us, our one hour presentation balloned to 2 hours, filling the time that had been allocated to Tom Tennehill who neither canceled nor showed up for some reason.

Peyton I talked about the gamut of single pilot IFR issues: cockpit organization, checklists, procedures, radio communications, and more. The audience was either polite or interested, as they twice voted to extend our time to our ultimate finish at about 3:30, although a few less hard souls left earlier.

We then headed for the airport to take a look at each other's aircraft and modifications, and say our good-byes. I'll close this article with a link to the pictures I took of the aircraft that attended SOAPA 2005.

(Click here for the aircraft pictures.)

Liza and I were really glad we went, and we hope that even more folks will take advantage of the opportunity to attend next year. Nominations for next years location are now open...

"But I haven't taken pictures of ALL the airplanes yet..."
Kevin and Liza Mackenzie
Picture by Mary Lightfine

     Previous Page