Yep, another great Gathering. Joe, Mark Jones, Brad Stone, and I all left the Gathering yesterday to beat a weather system that will likely continue to dump rain on MVN through today and some of tonight.. It turns out I could have waited until early this morning and still made it fine, but that wasn't the recommendation of the weather briefer I talked to yesterday afternoon. Sorry we missed the banquet.
I noticed yesterday there are some folks in attendance who didn't do much mingling or talking, just stayed on the periphery at a distance. At the same time, the pilots and some of the "in" crowd spent a lot of time standing around joking and carrying on with each other, and I'm as guilty as anybody. On the flight back, it occurred to me that next year we should try to be better about mixing it up with folks who we don't recognize, and even some we recognize but don't know their names, what they're building, or what we can do to help them get their KRs in the air. That's one of the main reasons we hold the Gathering, right? I talked to Joe last night and he mentioned that we really should do more to promote the Gathering, such as publish it in Sport Aviation and other magazines and internet sites and lists, as well as local airport flyers, etc, with sufficient advance notice to let builders and pilots plan on attending. Mark Jones remarked at breakfast yesterday that next year was the fortieth anniversary of the KR, and we should strive for 40 KRs to fly in. There are a lot of KR builders and pilots out there somewhere... we need to find them and talk them into showing up next year. I was not surprised to hear that MVN was voted to host the Gathering again next year, and you have to admit it's difficult to imagine a place that's better set up to host it. Thanks again to Larry Flesner for doing a lot of the legwork, and Chris Collins providing the airport facilities and continuous support as well. Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com website at http://www.N56ML.com --------------------------------------------------------
