2008 SOAPA Fly-In.

[rick bell]

ok !! it's at larry's house. plenty of grass
for camping. he's got six banos and an acre frontroom w/5 flat screens tv's.
two side by side fridges(fully stocked), a hangar for shop talk. what a guy!! think i'll show up a week early, just to ease into
this michigan lifestyle.

I look forward to MI, but wow, Canada may be a great adventure for 2009, eh?
________
BMW M73

[WebMaster]

Originally posted by rick bell
ok !! it's at larry's house. plenty of grass
for camping. he's got six banos and an acre frontroom w/5 flat screens tv's.
two side by side fridges(fully stocked), a hangar for shop talk. what a guy!! think i'll show up a week early, just to ease into
this michigan lifestyle.

Okay, some misconceptions are afoot.
Yes, I do have lots of grass for camping, but only 5 banos, the living room isn't THAT large. We also have some nice hotels in the area, in case you didn't really want to camp out. Rick, you forgot to mention the 18 hole golf course. It's across the street, not actually at my house. Should we plan a golf outing, as well?

If you show up a week early, you are more than welcome.

Keven, if we went to CA NA DA, we could fly over the Snake river on the way, eh?

[WebMaster]

The fly-in in Kalamazoo will be fabulous.
We are working hard to make it a memorable event.

We look forward to seeing lots of old friends and making lots of new friends.

[walt]

Great location. Jean and I will be there early if you need help
Walt

[Jerry De Santis]

Walt, your 336 is sure going to look pretty on the Kalamazoo ramp. Looking forward to seeing you folks again. We think this meeting is really going to bring a lot of Skymasters to Michigan and those that come will surely have a great time. The Air Zoo at Kalamazoo airport is one of the best air museums in the country. Get to fly an F-14 full 3D simulator. Fly it off a carrier and if your good land back on it. As for my experience evertime I flew it off I can never find the carrier again.Can't wait to see how you guys do.

Jerry

[WebMaster]

Registration is now open. It took a while to put it together, and get it on the web.
Please let us know as early as possible if you think you might be coming. If you think you would like to come, let us know so we can plan accordingly.

[hharney]

If you haven’t already registered please start the process so that we can see action from the members. It’s going to be a great event and you won’t want to miss it.



Our Keynote speaker, Thomas Van Hare, will knock your socks off. He has just finished his book about the real story of the “Brothers of Rescue” shot down over Cuban waters in Skymasters. This story that he has will raise the hair on your arms. It’s amazing!



We also have been in touch with the Director of the film “Shootdown”. This is the movie about the “Brothers of Rescue” and we will have the opportunity to have a special pre-release viewing of the film.

It’s all starting to come together, seminars and events like never before. SOAPA 2008, brought to you by your Michigan Flyers.

I really want to encourage folks to just relax about attending this event. For me the long distance to fly out to Las Vegas a few years ago for SOAPA just added stress to the agenda. Weather, fuel cost, etc. So I decided to just book a ticket on Northwest Airlines and forget about it. It made it so easy and I totally enjoyed the event without bringing the plane. This is completely OK. We all know what a Skymaster looks like but we don't know you as well as we could. That's the important part, getting to know each other. Learning together about our mutual interests. So don't be afraid to just book that flight and relax.



Sign Up Now!

[hharney]

Well as SOAPA 2008 continues to draw closer, the host Michigan Flyers have been hard working to bring you a great event. We have taken the 337 registration list and started to put phone numbers to each owner. I made over 20 calls last night to owners in WI and MN. I was really surprised that 8 of the calls, that I got through to someone without leaving a message, had not really heard of SOAPA and did not actively use the website. WOW! They were really excited about the idea of getting together with other 337 owners. I just assumed everyone was aware of the website and that we have completed 7 of the flyins.

So, if anyone wants to help in their area by finding phone numbers and calling these 337 owners please let me or Larry know. We really want to get the word out. Thanks

And if you are already joining us in Kzoo please send in your registration. It's going to be a blast!!!

[WebMaster]

The list of guest speakers is growing.
If you would like to talk about something, let us know. Adventures, maintenance, fuel management. Are you happy with your GAMI injectors?

This is who we tentatively have lined up to speak.
Don Nieser, Commodore Aerospace and The Prop Shop
Delta Hawk, diesel engine Skymaster.
L-3 will talk about StormScope and Skywatch.
Cristina Khuhly will show us the movie "The Shootdown".
Airwolf will talk about filters, air-oil seperators, and vacuum pumps.
SkyOx will talk about Oxygen systems.
C&D will talk about aircraft heaters
Thomas Van Hare

[WebMaster]

Our latest confirmed speaker is Grand Rapids Technologies, who, oddly enough are here in Michigan

They make stuff for experimental airplanes, but their equipment has been installed in certified aircraft as "Entertainment Systems". Now, personally, I'd rather have one of these in front of my wife to watch. She has quietly told me she doesn't like watching the fuel gages. This would help answer the age old question of "Where ARE WE".

And, incase my old wet vacuum pumps fail, it might also be handy. Of course, it's a bit more than a portable DVD player, but a lot more functional.

[WebMaster]

You know, we should have really made it for 3 days. Maurice Hovic, down at HovAir, wanted to show us his paint shop. They used to specialize in Piper Mirages, but now they are painting all kinds of things, including a Jet Ranger.

Anyway, the latest speaker to sign up, (boy the schedule is getting full), is Xerion. They make the Xerion AuRicle engine monitoring device. It's a fully electronic replacement for all the steam gages.

[WebMaster]

The attendee list is an excel file. I made one called attendee.xls, and one called attendees.xls. I have been updating attendees, while the website says attendee. It's fixed. I'll continue to update it.

[hharney]

Well with just 10 days until SOAPA 2008 starts, the Michigan Flyers are ready to host a fantastic meeting. If you haven't looked at the agenda recently you really should because we have a full menu of great information, entertainment and speakers like never before. Get your suitcases packed and we'll see you in Kalamazoo.

Come early and join us for the Mackinac Island (pre SOAPA event) on Wednesday morning June 11. We will be departing AZO promptly at 0800. If you want you can meet us in the air, Freq. 123.40.

[hharney]

Here is just a taste of the dynamic keynote speaker, Thomas Van Horn, scheduled for the 2008 SOAPA meeting in Kalamazoo next week. You can still register to come because you won't want to miss this great event. If you are close enough to KZoo and can come over for just the Friday night banquet please do join us at 6:00 PM Friday night at the Kalamazoo Air Museum "The AirZoo".


In the early afternoon hours of February 24th, 1996, three civilian, unarmed, twin-engine Cessna 337 aircraft from the group Brothers to the Rescue were flying what should have been just another search and rescue mission in international airspace off the coast of Cuba. It was a volunteer, humanitarian operation that had begun in 1991 and had averaged 450 flights a year. It was also a mission that had saved the lives of over 17,000 Cuban refugees, the so-called balseros or the Cuban rafters.



For years, the balseros had slipped away in the dead of night aboard tiny, makeshift rafts, rowing to liberty from Fidel Castro’s Cuba. It was a journey three out of four did not survive. Between Cuba and the United States, over 20,000 rafters have died trying to make it across to freedom in the USA. And for many years, their best hope was to be found by the Skymasters flown by the pilots of Brothers to the Rescue. For the Cessna 337, the mission of search and rescue over the Straits of Florida is probably the airplane’s finest hour, closely rivaled perhaps only by its extraordinary record as a Forward Air Controller over Vietnam.



That February day, however, no lives would be saved. Instead, Cuban Air Force MiGs shot two of the group’s Skymaster aircraft from the sky, killing four Americans. A third Brothers to the Rescue Skymaster, with four people aboard, fled northward and somehow escaped, despite being chased by two other Cuban MiG-23 fighters.



Many who watched the news of the day’s events unfold on CNN were shocked to see the video of a black smoke trail from the mid-air explosion of one of the planes, filmed by a tourist on board the cruise ship, Majesty of the Seas. On the decks of the ship people had been sunning themselves and enjoying afternoon cocktails in their deck chairs, and were now all unwitting witnesses to death.



The fiery wreckage of one plane crashed a few hundred yards from a small American fishing boat, Tri-Liner, whose captain quickly turned to search the last bits of wreckage on the sea for any survivors; then he watched as the other plane was struck by a missile and exploded nearby.



Yet the full story of what happened that day not only cost the lives of four Americans and the loss of two airplanes – it involved a tale of intrigue, at the highest levels of the governments on both sides of the Straits of Florida, and a ring of Cuban spies who had infiltrated not only Miami’s Cuban exile community, but even into the heart of the Defense Intelligence Agency where skewed intelligence reports carefully manipulated U.S. policies to Cuba’s benefit and, ultimately, set the stage for the shoot down itself.



Speaker Thomas Van Hare, a former SAR pilot with Brothers to the Rescue and its one-time director of operations, takes you from the pilot’s last meal in their hanger to their final seconds aloft. He dissects ten years of data from media coverage, court transcripts and testimony that bear witness to the infiltration by Cuban spies of U.S. military installations, the Brother’s flight organization and more – as new information is made available and released with every passing year.



Van Hare describes the inner workings of the Clinton Administration, as officials wrestled with the knowledge of what was coming in the days leading up to the shoot down – and yet issued no warning – a story that seems so incredible that it seems impossible, except that every conclusion is backed up by meticulous research, sworn testimony, radar plots and official records. He takes you behind the scenes into the planning of the shoot down itself and into the heart of Clinton Administration, detailing who knew, when they knew and what they knew at each critical juncture of the story, leading them to a choice that ultimately would be betrayal, death and a cover-up that has lasted 12 years.