On Wednesday, January 16, 2013 5:05:10 PM UTC-5, Jim wrote:
On Tuesday, January 15, 2013 3:09:53 PM UTC-5, son_of_flubber wrote:

On Tuesday, January 15, 2013 1:26:41 PM UTC-5, wrote:







You may ask - why now and not months ago? We were waiting for AOPA to resolve this at a higher level. It hasn't happened.







Jayne,







I support your efforts 100%. What is SSA "government relations" position?



I wrote my letter. Thanks Jane! It's interesting that the AOPA was on top of this and SSA apparently is silent about it...kinda sad.

Actually, they are not silent about it at all, they have asked if they could help in any way.

The past chairman (AL) was notified via e mail as things were unfolding that very night that Robin RF1 went missing. The next day or so he contacted the government liaison (Steve SN). Both have been in contact with us and with Robin.

The SSA was involved from the start but Robin’s choice was to work with AOPA since they have substantially more resources available. It was also his choice to minimize publicity until the issues were resolved.

All involved (including Robin"s friends and fellow pilots) and AOPA agreed, that the best thing was to get Robin out of jail, passed the bond hearing, get through his court and continually work to get the charges dropped. After the dust settled and their would be less chance for anything to go "haywire",
(as you can understand, we did not want to upset the apple cart, as the basket was a few short to begin with...ended that with a preposition, but you get my drift)

Then the AOPA, Frank Reid and Robin began to really start aggressively
pursuing the solution to this dilemma including working with the FAA and various lawyers. Robin eventually settled his bill with the Hartsville lawyer and is now working with the AOPA recommended aviation lawyer solely.

We choose to go through AOPA because they are so much larger than the
SSA "With 384,915 members in 2012, AOPA is the largest aviation association in
the world" (per wiki - I just looked it up)

They really wanted to get the story. They sent down 4 or 5 people in a corporate
jet to film the story. Pretty impressive. Frank and Robin spent hours and hours speaking with them on the phone and sending them all the information they needed. Frank and Robin researched the facts and sources. Frank spent countless hours trying to get it all clearly and factually stated. I think AOPA did a wonderful job explaining and illustrating the ordeal. They also worked on their end to come to a solution before the story went public. Robin wanted the situation to be resolved for all Soaring pilots. If this could happen to him, it could happen to any other pilot over any other Nuclear facility. The AOPA wrote a wonderful letter to Janet Napolitano, US Department of Homeland Security. The reply, however was very general and less than what we expected.

I think the AOPA did a wonderful job explaining the events and they tried to get it resolved. We are just not quite there yet.

Thanks all for your interest and support. As one of our fellow soaring pilots put it "Robin took the bullet for all of us"
We look forward to a positive resolution.
Warm Regards,
Jayne