I have been quite busy lately I have had two trips to shows, Lumberton North Carolina and Tullahoma Tennessee, both were disappointing as far as crowds are concerned.

Lumberton is a second year show,  the Ultralight area had to be moved from the previous years layout, a new thirteen hundred feet of grass runway was great, but it was at the other end of where the main show was, and even though they had very frequent shuttle buses, spectators were few, they can alter that for other years with an Ultralights own entry and car park. Whether there is the interest anymore I am not sure, what interest there is at the moment is very depressing.

Twenty-five Ultralights and plenty of flying, no Powered parachutes, two paragliders who hadn’t a glue how to fly and only flew once. Only Phantom turned up to represent the Trades people, they were showing their genuine Ultralight, it still didn’t fly with the Wankel engine, though they ran the engine many times a day, they had not got the right propeller, it looked and sounded really good, and I think it is at a reasonable price.

In the main area there was plenty to see and some good forums. There was a C54 that was an actual relic from the Berlin Airlift now a flying museum. It was a great interest to me as I served with transport command, Hastings aircraft; our airplanes flew from Schleswig-Holstien to Gatow with coal.

I talked to the President Timothy Chopp he is also the pilot of the museum, and we talked about the Candy drop, I said we would film our next one at the Gator field for Gail Halverson imagine my surprise when in the hotel the phone rang and it was Gail my day was made. For those who do not know the story Captain Gail Halverson went to the barbed wire to talk to four children at Tempelhof Berlin and shared two pieces of Wrigley’s chewing gum between them, then when flying into Berlin he would parachute candy to the kids with hankerchiefs.

My next show is out at Arlington Washington State in July, If the crowd out there shows no interest I will call it a day except for Sun and Fun. Started there will finish there

I was looking through some old Banners since 1984 whoa, I wouldn’t have missed all times we had, they the growing years from the 20-20 program that nearly ruined Ultralights . To date and ask myself is there still a future for us I would need a crystal ball. One thing is for SURE it’s going to be different. The August edition of Kitplanes shows on page 54 an Arial of Paradise City this years Sun and Fun