AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2019 - 102

DETAILS

9,425

The number of visitors to the
2019 Tullahoma Fly-In.

News & Notes
MEMBERSHIP

Terrific time in
Tennessee
Tullahoma Fly-In ends
a year of celebration
BY MIKE COLLINS

AOPA WRAPPED UP ITS eightieth anniversary celebration
September 13 and 14 with
a return to a favorite location, holding its third and
final 2019 fly-in at Tullahoma
Regional Airport/ William
Northern Field in Tullahoma,
Tennessee. Although the
weather was hot, attendance
was even hotter. Friday saw
3,536 guests, with 5,889 visitors on Saturday, for a two-day
total of 9,425. The advisory
airboss and airside volunteers
handled 572 aircraft.
AOPA had visited Tullahoma
before, for its final 2015 fly-in,
which got off to a drenching
start but the weather improved
enough to tally 2,500 people and
more than 330 aircraft.
The Beechcraft Heritage
Museum, located on the
Tullahoma airport, was a popular stop for fly-in visitors.
It began as the Staggerwing
Museum Foundation in 1973,
and in 2007 expanded to
include the full Beechcraft lineage. Joey Gray of Decatur,
Alabama, visited the museum
for the first time in 30 years
and said that a lot had changed.
His favorite exhibit was a
mostly uncovered Staggerwing,
exposing the structure of the
fuselage and wings. "You don't
see that many Staggerwings
around these days, much less
the inside of one."

102 | AOPA PILOT November 2019

Friday evening and Saturday
afternoon saw the third STOL
demonstration of the year
with many aircraft participating, including AOPA President
Mark Baker in his Super Cub.
Wrangler Jimmy Gist masterfully manned the demonstration.
Dennis Harrington and
Keane Brown each received a
Lightspeed Zulu 3 headset, one
at each of the fly-in's two AOPA
Pilot Town Halls, for flying the
farthest distance to Tullahoma.
Harrington and Brown each
flew from New Mexico, where
it turns out they're based about
100 miles apart.
"Tullahoma once again
exceeded our expectations,"
said Chris Eads, AOPA senior
director of outreach and events.
"We are hard at work selecting our locations for next year
and anticipating another great
AOPA Fly-In season."
AOPA expects to announce
its 2020 Fly-In schedule later
this year.
EMAIL mike.collins@aopa.org

LIGHTING UP THE SKY

Drones lit the night sky over Tullahoma on September
13, delivering on a promise to celebrate AOPA's eightieth anniversary with a custom show. Bad weather in
Frederick, Maryland, had grounded the Great Lakes
Drone Company fleet of LED-toting unmanned aircraft.
Trouble with the custom software forced a fleetwide
overhaul that nixed the show in Livermore, California,
in June. But the persistence of the Great Lakes Drone
Company team paid off in Tullahoma, where more than
60 drones flew in digitally choreographed formations set
to music, creating airplanes and other shapes with points
of light in the night sky. The crowd clearly enjoyed the
show. They had a chance to see the power of the emerging technology to entertain-just one of the hundreds
of missions that drones are accomplishing or poised to
achieve as integration proceeds in the years to come.

SWIFTS FLY IN

The Swift Museum Foundation in Athens,
Tennessee, held its annual meeting the same
weekend as the fly-in so a group of Swifts-20 in
all-flew to THA in formation and displayed these
iconic aircraft on the flight line. The foundation
celebrated 50 years in 2018.
swiftmuseumfoundation.org

http://www.swiftmuseumfoundation.org

AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2019

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