Sun 'n Fun

I, I had to really kind of think about this for a minute.

Is there any specific mission type of training that a, that a controller gets, um, that we can kinda compare this to? And I, I thought back to Sun 'n Fun or AirVenture.

Those-

Mm-hmm

Yeah.

That's sort of the accepted model.

So, uh, but the controllers that show up for those events, like Sun 'n Fun or AirVenture, they're capable, highly experienced, rated controllers, certificated, legally allowed to do the operation.

But they would have, they have no idea how this works here.

An airplane conceived in a California office building in 1940, still flying combat missions decades later, today there are roughly 170 airworthy Mustangs, more are in restoration.

Every summer you can find them on the Warbird flight line, at Oshkosh, at Sun-N-Fun, at Raiding, at every significant airshow in the country.

When you stand near one on the ramp, look at the wing that laminar flow profile.

Thin, clean, almost impossibly elegant.

Yeah

... yeah, I'm not gonna put you in the spot about Sun n Fun or Oshkosh next year, but we've talked about that.

I mean, I'm sure as our calendars sort out with family and other things going on in life, we'll, you'll probably talk about that later.

I can tell you for sure I'm not doing Oshkosh this next year.

We're trying to line some stuff up for that show, and everything will be ready by that show.

Sure.

I am likely going to be doing Sun n Fun this year.

Okay.

Yeah, together?

Outside of, um, the brief stint I did at Sun 'n Fun in '23, where that's-

Right

... part of the whole procedure, but, um, can two airplanes in a flight touch down at the same time? Let's just say that they had, they were, had gone through all sorts of training to make that safe, and they're GA, they've, it's at the 150-foot wide runway.

The love affair between rural America and small airplanes.

The love affair that shows up every July at Oshkosh, at Sun and Fun, at a thousand little fly-ins at a thousand little airports from Maine to Alaska.

That love affair started in a hayfield.

It started with a young veteran in a worn leather jacket, 90 horsepower of uncertain temper behind him, asking a stranger if he could land.

I mean, I know FlightRadar even said possibly below 40 feet above the top of that roof for the, for the one, so I don't know.

Yeah, my example of that is the, uh, uh, one year at Sun 'n Fun, maybe, I don't know, four years ago or something, uh, where the Blue Angels were performing.

Um, I had the, the pleasure of watching one day's performance by the Angels from the tower.

So I was watching from the other side of the field, uh, from the spectators, and at an elevation much higher than the spectators.

This is one heck of a huge piece of infrastructure for eVTOL testing.

You know, and it's interesting, Max, the location, because us aviation geeks know what else is located between Orlando and Tampa, and that's Lakeland, Florida, home of Sun and Fun and the Florida Aviation Technical Institute.

So I was wondering if that area is trying to consolidate or trying to become a location for aviation excellence locations.

But we've talked about drone spaces like Griffith Air Force Base in New York was converted to a drone center.

And here's the part that matters to anyone who loves airplanes for what they are and not just what they did.

If you have ever been to Oshkosh or Sun-N-Fun or any large air show, you have heard what a Packard Merlin sounds like at full power on a warm morning.

There is no mistaking it.

Not a roar exactly.