This is a regular blog post, but you can listen to the episode that we recorded last night at Firebase Airspeed at http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedCamp.mp3.
Spent a lot of time at KidVenture with Cole and got our annual Bell 47G helicopter ride. Great weather for it. And one of the best places at AirVenture to kick up your feet. The scenery beyond them is truly cool!
Here’s the obligatory shot in the chopper. Whereas Cole hat some trepidation about crawling in last year, this year, he just scampered in with no problem. He was also heads-up and eyes-out the whole time and seemed to enjoy the ride a lot. I interviewed one of the volunteer pilots for EAA Radio and the sound quality was a lot better than I expected it to be considering that he was fairly soft-spoken and we had a helicopter landing outside the hangar every two or three minutes as we recorded.
One of the Volunteer helicopter pilots with the show grounds in the background. These guys fly a full of gas (about 1.5 hours) before taking a break. The EAA owns one of the choppers and the other two are leased. No problem with takeoff and landing currency for these guys. Assuming a six-hour flight-duty day, each probably gets something like 60 takeoffs and landings a day. But nobody seems to be counting.
Cole with Jackie the Koala Bear waiting for the helicopter flight.
I had Jason Miller, Rod Rakic, and Kent Shook, as well as others, to Firebase Airspeed last night to play a little guitar, sing a little, and record an episode. Actually, the episode was a little spur-of-the-moment and occurred somewhere between beers. Jason also recorded for his show and was kind enough to pass the phone around and let Rod, Kent, and I hold forth on how AirVenture is going.
Rod Rakic got to plug myTransponser.com’s beta a couple of times, which is great. The site is going to go huge when it launches. The community is already 130+ strong, and it’ll grow exponentially soon. I try to contribute often.
I think Jason has arrived at the pinnacle of early-21st-century rock stardom. Where Peter Frampton and Lemmy merely autographed fans’ body parts backstage, Jason transcended celebrity last night by recording the outgoing messages on two fans’ mobile phones. Jason Miller joins NPR’s/Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’s Carl Kasell in the new elite!
Listen to the audio at http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedCamp.mp3.
Stay tuned!