Celebrate your Freedom to Fly

Several months ago, AOPA launched a program aimed at the general
public to improve the image of General Aviation. Harrison Ford agreed
to help us launch this program, and to date, it has proven very
successful. We started by focusing on GA's impact on the economy.

Now we're cahnging our focus to GA as a symbol of freedom. More than
half the pilots in the world are US citizens, a testament to freedom's
role in making the US a world leader in flight.

However, soaring remains underrepresented. Nearly 50% of Germany's
70,000 pilots hold glider ratings. In the US, only about 25,000 of our
more than 600,000 certificated pilots hold glider ratings.

AOPA and GA Serves America are running a campaign asking you to
"Celebrate your Freedom to Fly" this holiday weekend. To spread the
word, we want you to take a non-pilot up in an aircraft to experience
a new perspective - on the world and the freedoms we sometimes take
too much for granted.

This is a great opportunity to get soaring seen by the nearly 600,000
pilots who don't have a glider rating, and to show the beauty and
excitement of the sport to millions more who visit the GA Serves
America website. Take someone flying this weekend, then visit the
Freedom to Fly landing page and share your flight with a photo and a
brief description. After the holiday, an interactive map showing (we
hope) thousands of flights will become a part of the GA Serves America
website where all can see what flying looks like across America.

http://www.aopa.org/freedom2fly/

Thanks for sharing your flight, with a passenger and with us... I'll
be sharing mine, both in a Ventus 2bx (w/o passenger!) and Stemme S10
vt (w/ passenger!).

Chris O'Callaghan, Vice President of ePublishing
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmMIZX6YQYU

I ended up having some good glider flights for Independence Day. I joined
the club out at Sunflower yesterday so I decided to go out there. Got a
fam. flight in the 2-33 and then pulled the 2-22 down. Gave a friend and
my fiance a ride. Searching for lift both times and couldn't find
anything, in fact just major sink. So down we came. then a student
showed up so I gave him a couple instructional flights. Got a good intro
to forward slips since this was an old 2-22 with itty bitty airbrakes. not
like the airbrakes on the later 2-22's had really effective airbrakes
anyway...

After that we got a guy up for an intro flight. He had been out to the
airport the weekend before to check around so it was nice to get him
flying. Got him a little stick time and a bit of thermalling too.

Finally got the fiance back in the front seat for another flight hoping to
find a thermal but got shot down again so we put the 2-22 away and headed
back home.


-Tony Condon
Cherokee II N373Y