Its Tuesday, the first day of Sun N Fun 2009. My schedule shows me going on Friday, but as I sit here at my desk in my Lakeland, FL home studying for finals, I can hear the airplanes flying overhead.
I am pretty confident that when all the dust clears, this year’s attendance is going to be way down. Even I am having a hard time with the idea of shelling out nearly $60 for a day at the event with my wife – AND they are charging for parking now! It is interesting to me that the organization that is Sun N Fun, Inc is in dire financial straits. They apparently lost their ass on last year’s event. Hiring the Air Force Thunderbirds couldn’t have been cheap. The original “pilot-friendly” concept has sort of been chiseled away over the years into an increasingly commercial venture. Most pilots that I know couldn’t care less about the airshow, but my guess is that that production encompasses most of their costs. Furthermore, the airshow is closing in on 5 hours in duration now, every day! But, as to costs, most everybody working the event is a volunteer and the vendors all pay to be there. I know their liability insurance has got to be through the roof. That probably accounts for most of the cost of the event.
I’ve lost count of how many Sun N Fun’s I’ve been to. I’ve been going ever since I can remember – I’ve been to at least twenty. Family photo albums contain pictures of me at five or six years old running around Sun N Fun with popsicles. Even now, I enjoy going every single year, but admittedly they are more or less the same every time. I do not have an agenda or to-do list when I go, I just like to go and enjoy the sunny day with my wife, look at some airplanes, and just soak it all in.
The negative side to it is that I do have a tendency to get jealous at the fly in. I am a pilot. As such, going to the fly in, in may ways, is like a young kid walking into a candy store and being told, “Just look, honey, don’t eat.” When I see all those war birds flying overhead, aerobatic airplanes galore, the sea of general aviation airplanes with tents pitched, immaculate Velocitys, and other airplanes, I can’t help but feel a bit “out of the loop” because I am not yet in a position to afford such fancy toys and didn’t take the military route where I would be able to fly the fighter jets or heavy lifts. However, as I get older, these feelings are subsiding. Not out of some overwhelming sense of apathy, but because I realize that nobody can do EVERYTHING, and furthermore, what I have done is considerable. At 27 years old, with nearly 1,900 hours TT, 1,000 hours of jet experience, and every airplane pilot rating the FAA can issue except for the ATP (could do it in two weeks if I wanted), isn’t a half bad accomplishment. Considering my youth and that all I know of aviation thus far has occurred in the last, really, 11 years, I’ve got another 40 years anyway (likely more) to continue to be involved with it in whatever capacity I so choose. It is through these eyes, that I am learning to shelf my feelings of inadequacy among so many giants at the fly-in and to embrace who I am, what I have done, and more importantly, what I will do with aviation throughout the rest of my life. Will I be able to do it ALL in the end? No. But I can do much of it and ENJOY myself along the way and it will have been worth it in the end.
Regardless of what political obstacles attempt to curtail aviation, user fees, class H, I, J, K, L airspace, etc, those who love it will figure out a way to keep doing it. However, I am of the opinion that as time goes on, it will become more and more a prerequisite that one be able to EARN LOTS OF MONEY, to be able to participate. I am in the midst of working on this last point right now!!