Notes from the Fly-In

[WebMaster]

The event was challenged by weather, weather to the east, weather to the west, and of couse weather to the south. Big T-Storms. Lots of red stuff on the Radar. In spite of this we had a very respectable turn out.
Day 0
Herb met several of the people at AZO, and went north to MCD, Mackinac Island. It was a great trip, and Tom Van Hare, our featured guest speaker, flew with Herb. At one time, 5 Skymasters were parked on the ramp at MCD. Herb got to practice low level search and rescue on the way back. Meanwhile, Jerry and Larry were watching the inbound aircraft on FlightAware, and Jerry met them at the airport, made sure they had transportation, and generally served as our airport greeter. Larry was stationed at the Radisson, to insure that the arrivees had their information packets, and were welcomed to Kalamazoo.
The convention and visitors bureau had welcoming packets, with maps, brochures, etc. Herb had created name tags, coupons for dinner, drinks, agendas, DVD's. It was great.
The first drink on us event was Mixer on the Mall, which was really far more crowded, and less fun, than I thought it would be.
Day 1
Day 1, Thursday started off with introductions all around, then our featured speaker was Kim from L-3 Electronics. She talked about Storm Scope, and had great pictures and information. She flies the company Mooney. That's pretty cool. She showed a picture they took, flying from TN, to GRR, where nexrad showed a lot of stuff to the right of the direct route, and nothing from Nexrad on the direct route. However, StormScope showed a very large number of lightning strikes on the direct route. You can see this at http://www.stormscope.com/

To be continued