AviatorCast Episode 85: Sun ’N Fun 2016

Today’s Flight Plan

The journey from Alaska all the way to Florida is long, even on an airline. In fact, it’d be a shorter journey from most locations in Europe. Knowing full well the distance of the journey, nothing can keep me away from the wonderful people, memeries, and all things flying that things like Sun ’N Fun offer.

A smaller event than EAA Airventure in Oshkosh, Sun ’N Fun offers the opportunity to sit back and relax, spend more time getting to know people, and be able to catch most of the shows offerings.

It’s a great kickoff to the Summer flying season!

Useful Links

Mike Rushforth | Sendaero
Steve Thorne | FlightChops
Jason Miller | The Finer Points
Deon Mitton | Instagram Photographer
Sarina Houston | FlyTrueNorth
OpenAirplane
Dave Allen
Matt Guthmiller
David St George

Credits

Crew

Major thanks to the amazing Angle of Attack Crew for all their hard work over the years. Our team works incredibly hard, and they’re very passionate about what they do.

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Transcript

[transcript]

Smoke on and sun beaming. This is AviatorCast episode 85!

Calling all aviators, pilots, flight sim enthusiasts and aviation lovers, you’ve landed at AviatorCast! Join us weekly in our efforts to become better masters of the air through interviews, refreshers, lessons, training topics, simulator set-up, hangar talk, news and more! Buckle up and prepare yourself for this week’s episode of AviatorCast! Preflight complete, fuel on board and flight plan filed. Let’s kick the tires and light the fires! Here’s your humble host, Chris Palmer!

Chris: Welcome, welcome, welcome aviators, you’ve landed at AviatorCast. My name is Chris Palmer, I’m just a regular aviator like you trying my best to broaden my aviation perspectives and knowledge and also keeping my passion alive. Flying speaks to my soul like nothing else will. If I’m out of the air for too long I start to get a little grumpy, maybe that sounds familiar to you too. So welcome to this the 85th episode of AviatorCast, it is my pleasure to welcome you here. This podcast is brought to you by Angle of Attack, a flight training media production studio which I founded about 10 years ago.

So, first off if you haven’t been to AviatorCast before let me tell you a little bit about it. We are all about aviator passion here. This is where we come together to talk about training and things that we can learn better. We talk to inspiring aviators through different interviews that I go out and find. I try to keep my ear to the ground for those guys that are very compelling and interesting, guys and gals. So we get a lot of great interviews on the show, insight into the community, what’s going on, what’s changing. Maybe you’re looking to reignite the flame and you’ve been out of aviation for a while.

This is a place where you can get that passion back, we do several things to make sure that you can do that. And maybe you’re just actually getting the courage to fly for the first time that is something that we can do here too and even talk about some of the details that it takes to become a pilot. And sometimes we even talk about flight simulation and new technology and things that can help you while you’re not actually in the air burning very expensive gas to stay sharp and ready as a pilot. For when you do go in the air so you can be safer that way.

On today’s episode I just wanted to give you guys a quick rundown of what happened at Sun ‘N Fun. I was able to go to Sun ‘N Fun and meet some great listeners, some cool people. And of course you watch airplanes there it is an airshow, I got a little bit of a sunburn but not too bad even though I was out in the sun for a very long time. And then at the very end after the show was over I was able to go out and enjoy some full flying in a Cub so that was a lot of fun. I’m going to share with you guys some of the details of the show and what I experienced and hopefully you gain something useful from it. If not even just to shout out to some of you listeners that I met up with there. Here we go, let’s into Sun ‘N Fun 2016 here on AviatorCast.

Sun ‘N Fun 2016, what transpired there. Well first of all it is quite a journey to get down to Florida from Alaska so I had quite a trip heading down to Florida but it wasn’t too bad just kind of a redeye, got my rest as I could getting down there. And then quickly got set in, I rented a camera from a local place in Orlando there and was all set up for the show. If you’ve never been to Sun ‘N Fun, Sun ‘N Fun is a very cool airshow. This is the big kick off of the airshow season and one of the bigger air shows/conferences there is for general aviation.

This is generally a bunch of pilots that are really passionate about aviation, general aviation. Getting together flying in, driving in, coming in from all over the world and enjoying our passion for flight. This is again the big kickoff of the year for the whole season of air shows basically for the summer. I would say that Sun ‘N Fun is the frontend of that and the tail end of that kind of the last big show that everyone goes to is of course EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh. Those are the two bookends so Sun ‘N Fun kicks everything off, it’s obviously funny, definitely fun, kind of an appropriate name. It’s a laidback place, there’s great food there, good amount of vendors and displays and airplanes and things to do. It’s a lot like AirVenture just on a smaller scale. It’s a very enjoyable thing to go to almost because it is a little bit more laidback.

If you go to AirVenture in Oshkosh there is so much to do all the time that you don’t feel like you can sit down and have a drink with friends or just sit there and watch the airshow because there are too many other cool things going on where you’re simply competing with four different priorities on what you want to be doing. So the cool thing about Sun ‘N Fun is you do have time to do that sort of thing, time to get to know people better, so it ends up being a pretty good airshow.

The fun things, couple little fun details I like about Sun ‘N Fun is I talked about good food, really great food, they have vendors that come in and offer some different options. There’s this stand there called Wild Bill’s Mountain Root Beer or something like that. Where you get this aluminum mug and you pay basically for the mug the first time. You get refills all day long and then you can go around and refill at the different stations as long as you want all day. I don’t know, it’s just this cool little detail about this show that I kind of like, that I buy this mug it says Sun ‘N Fun on it. It’s this cool keepsake mug that I can bring back every single year by the way.
And I strap it to my backpack and I carry it around, when I get thirsty I can fill it up at one of the Wild Bill’s Station. I know that’s the funny detail, it’s just this personal thing that I like about this show. And that’s just a sign of how it’s personable and cool and little bit different than some of the other shows that are out there. Of course one of the other great things is simple meeting new people. Every time I go to one of these shows or airshows I end up meeting a lot of people that I wanted to meet in the past. I end up getting to know people better than I had in the past and it’s just all around, eventually that’s what matters to me. Again I’ll talk about that in the end here bit that’s what really matters to me is the time I spend with people at these airshows.

Of course the airplanes are cool, all of that stuff’s really cool, I’ll talk about that a little bit too. But eventually it’s the people that I end up caring about and that’s what I end up wanting to spend the most time doing. So yes, I’ll talk about that a little bit more. Of course for someone like me that is from very much North in the latitudes it’s nice to come down to somewhere like Florida and get some sun for a little fun. After Sun ‘N Fun my wife actually came in town and we went to Harry Potter World and we went to the Coast and we did some other cool things, just exploring the area and getting a little break. So of course that component of all this is really nice as well.

Those are a couple of the details that I like about Sun ‘N Fun just that it’s a little laidback, some time to spend with friends, creating deeper relationships that sort of stuff. But of course there are great airplanes too, so the F22 display as always, they go to several different air shows. The F22 just continues to amaze me and I’m just blown away by this airplane. A while back I had an F22 pilot on AviatorCast, his name is Rob Burgin and we talked about the F22 and what it was like going through the Airforce. And so I got a little bit of insight there. But Rob actually lives in Florida now and so when my wife came in town at the tail end of our trip we went to visit Rob and his family and got to know his family a little bit better.

And I was talking to him about this F22 display that they do at Sun ‘N Fun. I was saying, they probably don’t do all those manoeuvers on the airplane this is probably just for the airshow. He’s like, that’s totally not true, we actually do that all the time, that’s called this and that maneuver’s called this and we would do that to position ourselves on the enemy like this. So while it’s not low to the ground like they it on the airshow to impress people apparently they are using a lot of those maneuvers that they use the airshow in the actual combat. And while dogfighting combat is not, and these days there aren’t a lot of military powers that we’re fighting with in that way I guess it’s still something that they tactically learn and will execute if they have to in battle.

I thought that was really interesting that a lot of the things that you see in the airshow are things that we actually be used in the real world. Now, rewinding many, many years may be to the real beginning of combat aviation always some of the coolest airplanes that I see and what I really love to see is the historical value of airplanes like the B-17 and P 51 Mustangs of course and a lot of the other great, great aircraft that they bring to things like this. There was a B-17 there from the Texas Raiders, I barely missed the opportunity to be able to go up in that airplane, I would have loved to do that.

It’s on my bucket list to be able to fly and have B-17 but it was still cool to see from the outside, take some pictures of it. And what a beautiful airplane and what a time in history and what a visceral time to be a pilot. I mean, gosh, the challenges that those pilots face in those type of machinery that they were operating in and how new aviation still boggles my mind how on the edge those guys were flying and I was so impressed to see things like the B-17s and P 51 Mustangs. Of course the P 51 Mustang you can’t mistake the sound of the P 51 Mustang and walking around the grounds all day long at something like Sun ‘N Fun you hear this whistle come overhead. This high powered engine with this distinctive whistle come flying overhead you always know is a Mustang. So I find myself looking up in those situations and just loving to see that Mustang fly.

Wrapping the two together, they do this formation with the F 22 and the Mustang in some of these shows and that’s always so cool to see if those two generations, those two bookends if you will of aviation flying together. I just thought that was such a cool thing to see. Of course that’s not all the airplanes that are here they have some bigger military jets that they fly in for display. They have the Breitling Jets team which is really impressive, the Red Bull air race guys were out there doing their own little mockup demonstration which I am pretty sure is all staged but it’s still pretty cool to see that. Just a lot of other cool details down to the old Cessna 190’s and the Cubs that are sitting there that you are able to walk around and take pictures of.

These are private airplanes that people have that they fly in, they camp under the wing, they have some lawn chairs set out to me able to watch the airshow. I always just love seeing all the difference types of airplanes that are out there I am always interested in the different pieces. Of course I will spend a lot of time with each one because I’m always kind of moving on to the next thing. But it’s really impressive and fun to be around that for several days so I really enjoyed seeing all of that on top of, of course all the cool things that just kind of happen at Sun ‘N Fun. Or rather the environment that is Sun ‘N Fun.

To touch on a couple of new products that I got just while I was out there and things that have been on my list of items to get for my own flying, one being a new iPad Air. So I got an iPad Air 2 and since Apple recently released the iPad Pro the price of the iPad Air 2 went down about $100. So I thought it was a good time to jump in and get that new iPad ForeFlight and then I wanted to get a show special at Sun ‘N Fun so I ended up picking up Stratus 2 as well. And what that does is it allows you to hook that up to ForeFlight on your iPad and do things like synthetic vision, get some ADS-B the information and overall just offer a lot of tools that I can use in any cockpit that I fly in.

That was the big purchase that I made at Sun ‘N Fun and I’ve yet to really use it to its full extent. I’m excited to that but that will be coming up here in the near future. It’s all charged, I charged it over the weekend and everything is ready to go. And whenever the flying opportunity comes up I’m going to grab my bag and I am going to go and I’ll have all that stuff set up and ready to go. While the airplanes are cool, while it’s nice to go there and get some new products that I have been wanting, while it is great to be at Sun ‘N Fun it’s just a cool environment that’s there, the thing that matters most to me and what I really learned and took away from Sun ‘N Fun was that I just care about hanging out with people and getting to know people better.

And I don’t know if it’s, I don’t think its self-serving, I just find so much more value in being able to learn from others, to talk about their careers, their lives, their thoughts and impressions on the industry and flying in general and even their personal lives. I just find that I have so much more value in that than anything else. I wrote down several people that I want to name my name and even share a couple lines or a couple thoughts on each person that’s just crossed my mind or it’s a summary of what I experienced hanging out with these people. First one on my list is Mike Rushworth. We heard from Mike Rushworth a while back, he has a startup called Sendaero that does aviation mentoring for those people that are looking to get into aviation at any level. So they will line you up if you are a military pilot or an airline pilot, if you want to fly in the bush or whatever it is. They’ll find the right person to match you up with to help you through all of those questions and things that are a struggle getting through as a pilot.

Mike and I have been friends for a while now. We run a lot of ideas pass each other, we text and chats each and every day sending pictures back and forth of what we are doing in aviation and this and that. And we are both really busy with our respective projects. But Mike came in on a whim, he’s an airline pilot, he came in on a whim and was able to spend a couple of days at Sun ‘N Fun. It was just so awesome to spend time with him. He and I really hit it off well, in fact we hit it off so well that the last night we work together we shared a room at this big Airbnb that a lot of us had.

He and I stayed up till 5 AM, 5 AM like we were teenaged girls just talking all night long about this and that. And of course mostly about aviation and our thoughts about aviation but it was such a cool experience. And I really haven’t, I don’t feel, I don’t get those experiences with a lot of people. Mike and I just really connected, it was really cool and it was great to see him. And his message and the things that he was sharing about Sendaero at Sun ‘N Fun was also received very well just as it was received very well here on AviatorCast.

Mike, Steve Thorne from Flight Chops, Jason Miller, Steve Thorne’s friend Muran from Canada, we all stayed in this Airbnb about a ½ hour away from the show. At nighttime we would all get together and we would just have these long big chats about this thing in the industry and that thing. And what we thought about this and it was just so cool for all of us to be sitting around and sharing our ideas. And I found that that was my most valuable memory from the entire show was just being able to hang out with those guys every night, having dinner, learning from each other and it was just, there was a lot of great energy.

We’re going to be doing that same sort of thing coming up at AirVenture in Oshkosh. We’re going to be getting another place together and so I’m looking forward to that again. Although we’re not going to have as much downtime, we’re all going to be a lot more tired because that’s just the nature of AirVenture. I did spend a lot of time with Steve Thorne from Flight Chops, he and I bummed around a lot. Helped him out with some pictures and videos for Flight Chops. He actually did a video, I’ll tell you guys a little bit about that later, so I helped him out with the video.

Jason Miller if you haven’t heard of him before he runs the Finer Points podcast. He is the oldest or the first aviation podcast out there and just does a fantastic job. Jason is very much like me, he is of a mindset that we should always be improving aviators. He’s very safety focused, he’s a lifelong teacher and so I just really connected with Jason on a different level as well because he and I are in this industry for a lot of the same reasons. So I really enjoyed spending time with Jason. He and Steve are doing some wonderful things together I know that they are working with Sporty’s on their proficiency app that they just announced. They have some very cool stuff going on of course if you guys haven’t heard of either of those guys check out Steve Thorne, Flight Chops, you’ll love his videos he does these awesome YouTube videos.

Jason Miller, his podcast and some things he has his hands in, he’s an awesome guy. And of course we enjoyed having Muran there. Muran is this 52-year-old guy originally from Iran and he lives in Canada. He has a career in a completely unrelated field but he just loves aviation and he and Steve are buddies so they fight together and stuff. So it’s great to have him there too because he always had some great insights just one of the guys. So that was really fantastic and we all just enjoyed having our place together to be able to talk and have a good time. So that was the fun house that we had after hours at Sun ‘N Fun.

I met another really cool person and he’s actually become a quick friend, a very quick friend. In fact, he’s coming to Alaska this week to go to the Valdez Fly-In in which he and are going to be photography buddies and video buddies there and travel buddies. I really hit it off quickly with this guy, his name is Deon Mitton. That’s spelt D-E-O-N M-I-T-T-O-N and the reason you need to know the spelling of that is because he has an amazing Instagram channel, this guy is just awesome. He takes some awesome, awesome pictures, he got so much great stuff at Sun ‘N Fun while I was there. And he does it all on the run, I don’t know how he does it but he has such a great artistic eye for photography.

And above and beyond that he’s just a super cool guy so he learned to fly in South Africa and so he has some great stories along those lines. But now he is living in Southern California, he travels a whole lot, he loves aviation and goes and does different aviation things wherever he travels. And so he just has a lot of aviation travel photography if you will but he is also moving up in his flying. So right now he is working on his instrument rating. His dream is and this is how he and I met, his dream is to become a bush pilot in Alaska. And so he and I are hitting it off talking about how he can do that and he should go for it.

He is and it’s a bit older so he’s a bit behind the curve in some sense but it’s not really he can totally do it. I’m really excited that Deon is working forward on that stuff but if you guys haven’t seen his Instagram channel check it out. Again, Deon Mitton, just follow him, watch his stuff every day, he does some really cool photos. So there should be some good stuff coming from he and I on this Valdez Fly-In. If you haven’t heard of that that’s the short takeoff and landing competition up here in Alaska where all the pilots get together and basically barbecue and hangout and compete with their bush planes all weekend.

That’s the first time I’m going to go to that, that’s coming up you guys should enjoy that. Deon Mitton check him out on Instagram. I also had the opportunity of meeting Sarina Houston. Sarina is a fantastic aviation writer, she writes for a lot of different people, including, she’s doing some work for us here at Angle of Attack on our “Top Secret” project. But I’ve always just really enjoyed Sarina’s approach to aviation training. She is a mother and she’s a fulltime flight instructor so she’s just really loving what she’s doing in her career right now and pursuing, being able to break through to students and have students succeed.

And so we sat around or rather stood around and talked about how she just enjoys where she’s at. She’s enjoying the writing, she’s enjoying gaining a career there but she’s also just really enjoying instructing and I respect that so much. I really respect lifelong teachers in aviation and those are the type of people I want to learn from and the type of people I think should be pushing the knowledge forward in aviation in the future. I really connect with people like that and Jason Miller is in that same vein. Sarina had her friend George there, George is a much older guy in his sixties I’m assuming. And he is “her boss” or something like that but they are out of North Carolina and they have a flight school there and a pretty busy flight school from my understanding.

And George is really cool as well. So we all just sat around and talked around and talked about flight training. It was a fantastic time kind of at the end of the night on one of the night so I was there but that was really great. We had a good time meeting the Open Airplane guys so they had a barbecue there and we met up with them and I got a picture of them put it on my Instagram. But anyway those guys are cool, if you haven’t heard of Open Airplane before they’re basically they’re like a rental car market but for airplanes.

Where you can literally once you get your universal pilot checkout they call it. You can walk out to the airplane and take the keys and go sort of thing which I think is a very compelling thing because when I travel the only thing that really holds me back from being able to go up in an airplane is the fact that I have to get a checkout with every single school or FBO that I’m supposed to rent from. That’s always a little bit off putting when I have to go through that. So Open Airplane has a very cool startup check them out if you haven’t already, openair.com. I also met Dave Allen, Dave does some fantastic work. I watched this documentary that he did about the Tora Tora Airshow in Oshkosh.

And they just did such a great job so it’s cool to me Dave he’s got his hands on a lot of things from radio stuff, online media stuff to he’s working with a startup called the Pilot Partner who does a really great logbook app. They’re doing a good job so it’s great to meet Dave as well. He and I are both video guys so we hit it off there as well. We did a podcast at one time with another guy named Matt Guthmiller. He is the youngest pilot ever to circumnavigate the globe I think he was 18 when he did it. But I finally met him in person so it was cool to see Matt, I gave him a Fly or Die t-shirt, that was really cool I met Matt.

I also met David St. George who I have been becoming friends with. David St. George is a DPE, Designated Pilot Examiner in Northern New York who also works with an organization called SAFE, Society of Aviation and Flight Educators. Which is a great organization that have a lot of fantastic initiatives for everything from K through 12 to pilots now to flight schools, everything. They do a really good job pushing forward quality aviation education. I actually went to one of David’s seminars on Loss of Control Accidents and very interesting, very cool guy to watch. Definitely knows what he’s talking about but you don’t feel like you’re being schooled or anything you just feel like you’re learning something important. It’s really great to meet David and see what he’s doing. I think he’s actually getting his PC12 rating now so he’s enjoying going through that.

I met some listeners at Sun ‘N Fun. I have a really funny story, I was sitting, rather standing at the ForeFlight booth talking to some people there. And I looked down the aisle way and I see someone walking and I’m like wait a minute that’s a Fly or Die t-shirt. I’m like no kidding that’s a Fly or Die t-shirt. So I got all excited, walked up to the guy and this guy was Isaac Lamb, cool, cool guy. We hung out a little bit, we did a seminar together, well we attended the seminar building together and then we did lunch afterward. He is an ex-Army helicopter pilot that is now getting all his rating and hours and everything and getting through to the airlines.

He’s almost there, he has so many hours that he’s basically almost to the 1,500-hour mark and he’ll be getting an airline job pretty soon within a couple hundred hours. It was awesome to meet him, such a cool guy, he’s doing great stuff. He ended up flying down, I think he flew down from South Carolina if I’m not mistaken. Forgive me if I’m wrong Isaac but he flew his own airplane down or rather an airplane that he borrowed and just camped there just cool guy, just doing it. Just flew down there and camped and then hanging out and learning and growing and trying to get to that airline career.

I just so respect people that has served in the military before and all the sacrifice that they have made. And I really hope that that comes back and is paid back in spades for Isaac for all the work that he has done that this airline job can work out well for him. I also met a young man named Luke Shwetnik, I hope I pronounced that right but he was a Twitter follower that I met up with. He and his dad and his little brother flew down in their airplane from the Atlanta area from what I understand. And flew down to Sun ‘N Fun just kind of a group of boys and enjoyed it.

His father is a pilot for Delta on the MD80 I believe and apparently Luke is already leaning how to fly pretty well. I think he’s 14 or 15, I think he’s 15, pretty tall kid taller than I am. I posted a picture on my Twitter with him but great to meet him, gave he and his dad an AviatorCast t-shirt each. Overall it’s just good to meet them and see that flying is a part of their family and I can tell already that Luke is very far ahead in his training. I also met another guy named Craig Allison, I wanted to meet up with him last year at Sun ‘N Fun but wasn’t able to do so. Craig is building a full 737 cockpit in his garage.

And man what a project, he’s been after it for years. So he and I sat around a little bit and tried to talk to each other while the AeroShell Team was doing their demonstration so we’d have intermittent conversation between the roar of those engines. But it was great to meet Craig, he is a big flight sim enthusiast, he’s done some flying. I think he’s actually a private pilot if I remember correctly but just a cool guy. Of course even cooler is that his wife would support him in doing something like that and building a full-size 737 cockpit. I always respect that it’s something I couldn’t do, I couldn’t build something like that, I just wouldn’t have the patience. I certainly don’t have the mechanical know-how to do it. Anyway it’s great to meet those listeners.

That was a wrap on Sun ‘N Fun, at the end of the day the big thing that came up again was it was just all about people. I just really enjoyed spending time at our Airbnb at night with the guys. I look back on that, on staying up at night with Mike Rushworth and just talking all night. I look back on hanging out with Deon Mitton and what that friendship so far has mean to me. And all the other people that I’ve wanted to catch up with that I’ve gotten to know through various sources even just online. Meeting people online through social media and stuff and getting to meet them.

There’s so much value for me in getting to meet those people so I had a great time, enjoyed the food while I was there, enjoyed getting some sunshine, enjoyed the whole experience. And overall I came away ready to fly I just wanted to fly more. That came into the next portion which was right after Sun ‘N Fun Steve Thorne and I were kind of the last guys that hadn’t gone home yet then of course my wife was coming into town so it wasn’t quite time for me to go home anyway. But Steve and I had a day to burn to go and do whatever we wanted to do and Deon was in the area too. So we had this idea, or at least Deon did that hey, there’s this Jack Browns Seaplane Base, this flight school over here between where you guys are and where Sun ‘N Fun is.

And Deon said why don’t we go there and just check it out, I’m going to go in the morning I’ll see what’s going on. We didn’t really want to do any of the parks or anything like that, we didn’t want to go shopping so we ended up just bumming over to this Jack Browns Seaplane Base in Winter Haven, Florida. And it turns out that we could fly that day and we could get a flight so Steve and I would both get a ½ hour to go up with an instructor. And Deon was already basically going up. So we quickly helped Steve put together a production for his fantastic Flight Chops channel. You guys can actually see that now, that video on his Flight Chops channel, turned out really well.

We rolled video on all of Steve’s stuff, all of my stuff, some of Deon’s stuff and just had a great, great time. And after an entire week just sitting around looking at airplanes it was really great just to get in an airplane and go up for a ½ hour. I think we ended up spending just under $100 each to be able to do something like that and man it just polished it off right. And I even suggested to Steve, next year when we’re getting too busy or getting bogged down in the middle of the week for Sun ‘N Fun we just need to pop over here and fly for an hour and get our mojo back. So that may be what I do next year but it was just a lot of fun.

Steve and I flew with an instructor named Lou and Lou was in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot from what I remember him saying. And he’s done a lot of other aviation stuff over the years, he’s from the Pennsylvania area and he comes down to Florida during the winters to instruct and floats. He was just one of those old timer awesome instructors that was laidback, had all the cool acronyms and sayings and just let you fly the airplane. So I just really enjoyed flying with Lou my experience was very close to what you can see Steve’s experience was through his Flight Chops video and we just had a great time.

It was great to polish off the trip with flying so that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day and what I need to do more of myself I know that. So that’s the gist of it, I had a very fantastic time at Sun ‘N Fun, I had a good time afterward. Really enjoyed meeting people that I had known before, people that I hadn’t met in person yet and just brand new people. Had a great time, enjoyed it, if you ever have the chance to go to anything like this you won’t regret it. If you like aviation at all you will be inspired to get up in the air more, to experience aviation more and it was such a great time.

That is my report on Sun ‘N Fun, there will be more reports coming up. I just went this last weekend to the Great Alaska Aviation Gathering and although there isn’t much to report there I have some other thoughts and feelings that I want to share about that experience as well. Then there is the Valdez Fly-In which again is the short takeoff and landing competition in Valdez, Alaska so I’m really looking forward to that. That’s actually coming up here in a few days so I’m looking forward to getting through this work week so I can get there and then Deon and I will hang out and take some cool photos.

That’s my report, love to hear from you guys on your thoughts on what you think. Or if you ever go to Sun ‘N Fun or any of these things or you’re going to Oshkosh for example let’s meet up. Let’s talk, let’s hangout a little bit because that’s what I really enjoy. That’s it, I’m going to have a few messages here and then I’ll close out the show.

Join us next week for another exciting topic or interview with a great guest. Spread the AviatorCast message. Please review AviatorCast on iTunes or submit an audio question for the show at AviatorCast.com. All iTunes reviews and audio questions that are aired on the show will get an official AviatorCast t-shirt. You can write AviatorCast directly on AviatorCast.com where you can interact with the AviatorCast community or write AviatorCast at me@aviatorcast.com. We’d love to hear from you.
For more information on Angle of Attack simulation training videos for FSX, X-Plane and more, go to www.flyaoamedia.com. If you are looking for a professional aviation training video services and other media, inquire at www.angleofattackpro.com. Now, for the final release clearance, back to Chris Palmer.

Chris: To close out the show I just want to thank the Angle of Attack crew for what they do on the professional money-making side of the business to keep the doors open to work on all these projects that we’re working on. These guys are awesome, they allow me to step away and do things like this which I find infinitely important to do for the community and for myself and just for aviation in general. So those guys are awesome for allowing us to do that and of course you the listeners really the biggest value I get to going to airshows like this, the biggest value I get out of doing this podcast is hearing from you guys, knowing that what I’m sharing, what I’m thinking are things that you are thinking as well. And as I work through myself how to become a better pilot, how to fly more amidst a career and all of my careers in aviation I don’t fly as much as I’d like to.

Amidst all of that I hope that you guys are getting something from this show and it really matters to me that you guys are having a fantastic experience. If there’s anything I can ever do to help you to move forward or whatever it is or if you have any ideas feel free to write me, me@aviatorcast.com, I’d love to talk to you guys. And of course if we’re ever at an aviation event at the same time I’d love to meet you in person.
Join us next week on another episode of AviatorCast. Until next time, throttle on!

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