Firebase Airspeed - OSH 2011

It’s Friday here at Oshkosh and FOD and I have checked off several of our traditional activities. Most important is the annual Bell 47 helicopter ride from Pioneer Airport. This is FOD’s fifth AirVenture. I first brought him when he was five.

We like to get an aerial shot of the campground each year and mark the campsite in a photo like this. We’re again camping with the myTransponder crew and lots of other social media mavens from both hemispheres. I’m very grateful again this year to have access to Home Sweet Road, myTransponder’s Class A motor home, which is providing the electricity to power the laptop for this post and the air conditioning that makes conscious thought possible. We’re at Lindbergh and 48th this year, kitty-corner from the WiFi hut. If you’re so inclined, please stop by and say hello!

Second Day at Sun 'N Fun

This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for show notes or links to show audio, please check out the other posts.

Day two here at Sun ‘N Fun in Lakeland, Florida. We got up at 4:30 a.m. yesterday to make the flight to Orlando and didn’t get to the hotel until around 10:00, so no blog post yesterday.

But we’re back at a reasonable time tonight, so here are a few views of the day.

Rod Rakic, the mastermind behind www.mytransponder.com, got to hold Sean Tucker’s pole (at least one of them) for one of the ribbon cuts at the show today. Ella and I talked our way up onto the announcer’s stand and shot this picture of the moment. That’s Rod in the orange shirt holding the near pole.

Yesterday, we hit the Splash-In at the Fantasy of Flight museum on the way to Lakepand. We hooked up with Will Hawkins and Rico Sharqawi of Wilco Films and got to help set up for Kermit Weeks’ interview for A Pilot’s Story. Ella was the stand-in for Kermit during the setup phase.

The Viper East Demo Team was there with a single-ship F-16 demonstration. I shot what I could of the demo, but this was the first time I could get really close to the announcer end of the presentation. Here, the major is handling the communications with the aircraft during the demo while the chief did the announcing.

Be sure to join me on the Sun ‘N Fun Radio porch tomorrow right after the airshow (approx. 5:30) for the very first live rendition of Airspeed! I’ll tweet as we get close to airtime. See you there!

You Can Fly Ace!

This is a regular blog post. Show notes and links to audio are in other entries.

You can fly Ace! Ace is the iconic mascot of the soon-to-launch myTransponder.com, a social media site for pilots and aviation enthusiasts. Facebook and MySpace too clunky and non-pilot-oriented for you? You need to get on myTransponder.com! When’s the last time you saw a space for type ratings in a social media profile? That and a lot more at myTransponder.com.

myTransponder.com has laminated Ace to the cover of his very own logbook and will be casting him to the winds at AirVenture Oshkosh this week. Pilots take Ace up for a flight, log the flight in Ace’s logbook, and then pass him along to another pilot. The idea is to have Ace flown in as many different aircraft, by as many people, and under as many different circumstances, as possible. And, under the right circumstances, you can give Ace an endorsement (if you’re a CFI/CFII/MEI, etc. and he has the requisite experience) or even a rating (if he accompanies you on your checkride). See more details in the inside cover of his logbook above.

Look for Ace in your neck of the woods. And, if you fly him, please sign the logbook and then pass Ace on as quickly as possible! And then put an entry in the “Where’s Ace?” group at myTransponder.com so they can track him.

Want an invite to the myTransponder.com beta? E-mail rod@myTransponder.com.