On 2008-05-23, xyzzy wrote:
Our flying club's monthly cookouts and bi-monthly safety meetings are
open to the public and attendance has been increasing, with several
....

The secret, as such, absolutely is community. We had that at Houston
Gulf airport - I'd often go there just for a bit of hangar flying (note:
the f is silent in hangar flying) because people would hang out there.
Inevitably, although we'd go there to socialise a bit, aviating would
ultimately break out - with perhaps a few plane loads going down to
Brazoria for dinner (once we had a bizarre formation flight - a Cessna
140 as lead, mixed in with an Arrow, a C170, a Bonanza(!) and a Grumman
Cheetah. Going on a short cross country at 85 knots in a Bonanza is
....well, different.

That's why it was such a tragedy when developers bought Houston Gulf to
put McMansions there - it wasn't the loss of an airport, it was the
destruction of a community because it scattered the club and the
aircraft owners around several airfields, basically breaking it all up.

If you get a proper community going, then people go to the airport to go
to the airport and see their friends, rather than thinking 'well, I
can't be bothered to go and do a local flight in the FBO's spam can'.
When you get a group of pilots socializing at an airport, aviating tends
to spontaneously occur at some point.

--
From the sunny Isle of Man.
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