Oshkosh

I’m making plans for AirVenture2008, or “Oshkosh,” as it is more commonly known, to be held this year from July 28 to August 3. I went to Oshkosh last year at the invitation of my old buddy from high school, Rusty Sachs, who, at the time, was Director of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI). (NAFI is a part of EAA, the Experimental Aircraft Association. EAA is the sponsor of AirVenture.) Several of my previous blog entries were based on that visit (“Catania,” for one) as where many of the photos. I was also one of many presenters there, and the talk I gave can be found under Articles (right hand column, second group). It was called “CPR for DR: Breathing Life into Dead Reckoning.”

I have agreed to be a presenter again this year, and my topic will be “Air Navigation, Past, Present, and Future.” I hope it goes better than last year. Probably the best part of my talk last year was the title, and the rest was downhill. I was nervous about talking for almost a full hour without a prepared text, but the result was, I am afraid, pretty boring. It’s hard to read a talk outdoors, with temperatures in the 80’s, at 2 in the afternoon after everyone has had lunch and is feeling a little sleepy, and not be boring. It didn’t help a bit that I couldn’t get the installed AV system to work and my backup, my own laptop, didn’t work either. (Actually, I think it did, I just didn’t know what button to push to direct the output to a remote screen instead of the computer’s. And there wasn’t enough time to trouble shoot it.) So I had to do without illustrations, a real disaster. I’ll be much better prepared this time and will make sure I find time to check it all out ahead of time.

But there was one really good thing that happened. At the end I said I would hang around a little bit if anyone wanted to talk to me, and a few did, nice, patient people that most AirVenture participants are. Then, after almost everyone else had gone, a young man came up to me and said, “Did you write Fly Like a Pro?” And I said, “Yes, yes I did. That was my first book, in fact.”

He said, “That book is the reason I am in aviation now. I read it and it made my want to be a pilot.”

I was overwhelmed. I really didn’t know what to say except “Thank you, that’s really great to hear. That’s what every author wants to hear.”

And then he left. Made my day. I hope he comes back and gives me another chance.