Jerry hit it on the head regarding our flyins. Having them spread out
does allow more people to participate. The problem as he so acurately
points out is if people don't support them they go away. We've had a
few people attend from the east and we are grateful but mainly wind up
with the regualars from here.

When we started at LVK over six years ago, I had plans to grow our
event with seminars and more events to rival FOD. Bob on the other
hand wanted to keep it more of a meet and greet thing and that is what
its turned into. That's fine but I think the participation level is
dwendling and as a result, we need to give serious consideration as to
whether we have another LVK fly in or not. Any suggestions?

Jim Patillo
N46JP Q200

Jim,
Since you asked ..........
I attended my first LVK a year ago, drove over on Saturday. One Dragonfly was there so I stuck my head in to look around and get some pictures. The owner introduced himself and took the time to answer a few of my questions. Then I walked to each of the other Qs and took pictures. Not one Q driver introduced himself/herself. I took some pictures and left as the call went out for lunch. Yes, I could've stayed for lunch, and yes I could have been more forward and introduced myself. Maybe if I had brought my Dragonfly I would have been assimilated into the group.
This year as the date for LVK rolled around, I wasn't even interested in attending.
Last weekend I attended my first Thorp T18 flyin at Porterville. Eighteen Thorps flew in, locals plus Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and three from AZ. I knew two people, but nearly everyone introduced themselves. There was a couple of seminars (short and to the point, legal stuff, aerobatics, maintenance, mods) and a few info-mercials from guys building parts. I was impressed. One of the companies supplying T18 parts is based at PTV and hosts the event. As with the TW group the Thorp group also has an eastern flyin at Kentucky Dam.

Terry Adams
N41521
N51079

Jim,
Your fly in is part of the reason I pursued the "Brainstorming". LVK
is set up so that pilots can get around easily for food and lodging.
The event is pretty laid back and open to pilots and builders going 1
on 1 for info. The size doesn't matter with these 3 attributes. It
can happen with 50 aircraft or 2. You are not strapped to
transportation and catering. I would love to come back out to your
event again sometime. The food was great Sat night by the way!!!
Joanne and I really enjoyed the time spent with you all at LVK.

Bruce Crain





________________________________________________________________________
Try Juno Platinum for Free! Then, only $9.95/month!
Unlimited Internet Access with 1GB of Email Storage.
Visit http://www.juno.com/value to sign up today!

Thanks for the input Terry,

Sorry you had a bad experience at LVK. I thought I talked with anyone
willing. As you know I was pretty busy flying people, sorry I couldn't
have gotten you in the air.

Give it another try!

Jim Patillo N46JP Q200

--- In Q-LIST@yahoogroups.com, <terrywadams@...> wrote:

Jim,
Since you asked ..........
I attended my first LVK a year ago, drove over on Saturday. One

Dragonfly was there so I stuck my head in to look around and get some
pictures. The owner introduced himself and took the time to answer a
few of my questions. Then I walked to each of the other Qs and took
pictures. Not one Q driver introduced himself/herself. I took some
pictures and left as the call went out for lunch. Yes, I could've
stayed for lunch, and yes I could have been more forward and
introduced myself. Maybe if I had brought my Dragonfly I would have
been assimilated into the group.

This year as the date for LVK rolled around, I wasn't even

interested in attending.

Last weekend I attended my first Thorp T18 flyin at Porterville.

Eighteen Thorps flew in, locals plus Oregon, Washington, Utah,
Colorado, Nevada, and three from AZ. I knew two people, but nearly
everyone introduced themselves. There was a couple of seminars (short
and to the point, legal stuff, aerobatics, maintenance, mods) and a
few info-mercials from guys building parts. I was impressed. One of
the companies supplying T18 parts is based at PTV and hosts the event.
As with the TW group the Thorp group also has an eastern flyin at
Kentucky Dam.

Terry Adams
N41521
N51079

----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Patillo
To: Q-LIST@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 12:23 PM
Subject: [Q-LIST] Comittment!


Jerry hit it on the head regarding our flyins. Having them spread out
does allow more people to participate. The problem as he so acurately
points out is if people don't support them they go away. We've had a
few people attend from the east and we are grateful but mainly

wind up

with the regualars from here.

When we started at LVK over six years ago, I had plans to grow our
event with seminars and more events to rival FOD. Bob on the other
hand wanted to keep it more of a meet and greet thing and that is

what

its turned into. That's fine but I think the participation level is
dwendling and as a result, we need to give serious consideration

as to

whether we have another LVK fly in or not. Any suggestions?

Jim Patillo
N46JP Q200





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Terry:

Sorry you had a bad experience at LVK. On the one hand, you could have had
bad luck, or maybe you weren't feeling 100% yourself (that's usually my
wife's comment about me when I say everyone else seemed quiet or
standoffish). On the other hand - - -

Guys, there is a message here. We can't expect the hosts (at LVK Jim and
Bob) to do everything. Everyone needs to pitch in with the chores, but
also with greeting folks and making them feel comfortable. Even if you
don't have a flying plane yet, you can say something to the person you
don't recognize, help them get oriented and feeling part of the group.

My 2 cents --

Mike Perry

Bruce,



FWIW, that is my philosophy for how the FOD TW fly-in should be conducted.
I feel that people come to type specific fly-ins to talk to other builders
and look at airplanes. From my perspective a perfect fly-in would be one
where it kicks off at about noon on Friday with forums intended to help the
builder with building his/her airplane. The Friday forum(s) would maybe be
an electrical or composite construction or engines or whatever the current
builders could use to better construct their airplanes. A welcome dinner at
a buffet place or truck stop on Friday evening where the organizer needs no
real hard numbers of money up front would be ideal.



Saturday would kick off with a performance run while it is still cool and
hopefully calm. There would be 2 forums on Saturday; one for the Q's and
one for the Dragonfly's. This would leave lots of time for looking at
airplanes and giving rides. The poker run was a great idea that I would
like to see developed as a means to encourage more flying at the fly-in.
The Saturday awards dinner would be at a restaurant where you could get a
private room and did not need to collect money up front or have real hard
numbers again. I REALLY ENJOYED having the dinner this year at the airport,
but Spud was still forced to collect money up front and provide the caterer
with hard numbers several days before the event. If someone happened to
show up at the last minute, how could you turn them away? You end up having
to add a few extra meals just in case and this increases the cost a little
for everyone. Money is not a significant issue for a fly-in like this; we
always do everything possible to keep the costs as low as possible. If
someone is going to drive or fly 1000 miles to come to the event, a few
extra $ is not a concern. An on-field restaurant large enough to
accommodate the dinner would be great, but they would probably want money up
front and firm numbers.



I am a big fan of the less is more concept. I probably spent 6+ hours
standing at my airplane on Saturday alone answering questions and talking
about how to do things. The Dragonfly forum was a great place for everyone
to get together for an hour or 2, but all the real serious questions were
asked at the airplane looking at pieces parts. The cowling off thing that
several Q guys did in the hangar while the Dragonfly forum was taking place
was GREAT.



Jeff



_____

From: Q-LIST@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Q-LIST@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
jcrain2@juno.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 9:02 PM
To: Q-LIST@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Q-LIST] Comittment!



Jim,
Your fly in is part of the reason I pursued the "Brainstorming". LVK
is set up so that pilots can get around easily for food and lodging.
The event is pretty laid back and open to pilots and builders going 1
on 1 for info. The size doesn't matter with these 3 attributes. It
can happen with 50 aircraft or 2. You are not strapped to
transportation and catering. I would love to come back out to your
event again sometime. The food was great Sat night by the way!!!
Joanne and I really enjoyed the time spent with you all at LVK.

Bruce Crain




.


<http://geo.yahoo.com/serv?s=97359714/grpId=2124158/grpspId=1600065618/msgId
=26366/stime=1160013826/nc1=3848644/nc2=3848528/nc3=3>

Jeff,
You and Spud have done wonderful jobs with the FOD Events! Thank you
so much! I hope I wasn't negative with any of my comments.
Brainstorming by definition is "all ideas are welcome and should be in
the positive direction. Nothing negative allowed." In asking for
ideas I had hoped to ease the burden of motel rides and cafe proximity.
I think some great ideas have surfaced from some of the "Tandem
Wingers" After Brainstorming perhaps someone should look closer and
decided which ideas are efficacious and which ones are "just wack' my
brotha'" ;o)

I still am stuck on the idea of the weekend before Oshkosh at an
airport that it close enough to Oshkosh field for a one hopper with
plenty of fuel.

You da' bes' my man
Bruski Crain
N96BJ








________________________________________________________________________
Try Juno Platinum for Free! Then, only $9.95/month!
Unlimited Internet Access with 1GB of Email Storage.
Visit http://www.juno.com/value to sign up today!

Hey Jeff when I clicked on the URL you sent I was able to get into the
web site but nothing I clicked on worked. I did sign in.
Bruce





________________________________________________________________________
Try Juno Platinum for Free! Then, only $9.95/month!
Unlimited Internet Access with 1GB of Email Storage.
Visit http://www.juno.com/value to sign up today!

For starters, I'd be happy to do a lot of legwork for the next LVK
fly-in. Sorry I haven't contributed more in the past.

It's hard to measure the value of participation. I doubt anyone
noticed me two years ago at LVK, but the experience certainly sealed
my committment to one of the biggest financial and time sinks I've
had. I think this year Mark King got enough to keep the fire lit even
with young children competing for his time.

One thing I'd like to do at a quickie fly-in is a sort of a
structured, deep inspection of the planes. That would mean checking
all the weights and angles (wings, alignment, engine offset), doing
bounce tests, perhaps setting up planes for videotaped tuft testing;
maybe having a couple extra props on hand or MAP sensors or other
easily-installed upgrades for the performance run; perhaps even having
a contest of sorts, where other people check out my plane and find
squawks, esp. those I didn't know I had and didn't know to ask. The
goal is to build tools and techniques for evaluation, to get the
benefits of lots of eyeballs, to know how exactly your plane differs
from others, and to get builders to look ahead to the end result in
some detail. I think it's a way to drive technical discussions from
fantasy into practice and make it clear what's the state of the art,
so it should attract all experience levels without committing to a
seminar's constrained audience/presentation format and narrow subjects.

Wes

--- In Q-LIST@yahoogroups.com, "Jim Patillo"
<logistics_engineering@...> wrote:

Jerry hit it on the head regarding our flyins. Having them spread out
does allow more people to participate. The problem as he so acurately
points out is if people don't support them they go away. We've had a
few people attend from the east and we are grateful but mainly wind up
with the regualars from here.

When we started at LVK over six years ago, I had plans to grow our
event with seminars and more events to rival FOD. Bob on the other
hand wanted to keep it more of a meet and greet thing and that is what
its turned into. That's fine but I think the participation level is
dwendling and as a result, we need to give serious consideration as to
whether we have another LVK fly in or not. Any suggestions?

Jim Patillo
N46JP Q200

One thing I'd like to do at a quickie fly-in is a sort of a
structured, deep inspection of the planes. That would mean checking
all the weights and angles (wings, alignment, engine offset), doing
bounce tests, perhaps setting up planes for videotaped tuft testing;
maybe having a couple extra props on hand or MAP sensors or other
easily-installed upgrades for the performance run; perhaps even having
a contest of sorts, where other people check out my plane and find
squawks, esp. those I didn't know I had and didn't know to ask. The
goal is to build tools and techniques for evaluation, to get the
benefits of lots of eyeballs, to know how exactly your plane differs
from others, and to get builders to look ahead to the end result in
some detail. I think it's a way to drive technical discussions from
fantasy into practice and make it clear what's the state of the art,
so it should attract all experience levels without committing to a
seminar's constrained audience/presentation format and narrow subjects.

I think that's an awesome idea.

We tried it a small bit of this few times at the Field of Dreams fly-in but
for the most part, the fly-ins are usually more about the social aspect of
our sport and a lot of people attend to hang out and relax, not wrench.

Something as hard-core (and I mean that in a GOOD way) as what's being
proposed should probably take place at a dedicated event, one where giving
rides, displaying for a photo shoot, introducing people to the planes in
general, as well as having some sort of dinner event, is not the focus.

This weekend at the Cloverdale CA airport, a group of 601 builders will be
getting together and witnessing (as well as participating in) an engine
installation. I'm sure there will be some socializing and camaraderie, but
it won't be the focus of the gathering like it was a few months back when
they had a similar, non nuts-and-bolts event.

Ideally the proposed event should happen at LVK, the Mecca of all things Q,
but it should be at a different time than the annual summer event.

My 2¢

Pat (Count me as being 100% onboard for any such endeavor)