Inspiration, Even In The Midst Of The Greatest Battles, Come From Those With Uncommon Courage

Analysis/Commentary/Opinion/Observation by Jim Campbell, ANN CEO/Editor-In-Chief

Goodness is about character - integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people.  --  Dennis Prager

Let me admit something right up front… in the very near future we’re going to be reaching out to the Aero-Verse in a really big way…

We have to.

No stranger to hard work, right now, we’re working our hearts out as never before. We’ve taken on more than we EVER have… and while things have been trending very nicely for us, of late… a number of our most recent efforts are starting to bear impressive fruit. Still; the LAST thing we needed, at the moment, was to take on the BIGGEST project we’ve ever undertaken with the massive Let Bob Fly documentary effort.

Then again… when Bob Hoover hands you a mission, you’re pretty much duty-bound to take it… and we have. And, mind you, I’m incredibly grateful to him for the faith he has in me… and the pride he speaks of as we discuss what we’ve done, the things we’ve already accomplished, and the long road ahead of us.

BUT… to accomplish the upcoming mission properly and professionally—to the very limit of our abilities -- we’re going to need to reach outside the ANN boundaries like we never have before. That means drafting as many of you as I can -- to not only create something that promises to be a game-changer but doing so on a scale we haven’t seen in decades.

Most important, there was an extraordinary aspect to what was asked for that has pushed us in a direction we haven’t quite had the heart for in quite some time… and we’re incredibly grateful for that.

Scary stuff, eh?

First, though, let me explain the circuitous mindset that has brought us to here and now… and why we’re taking on this latest mission with the very greatest of intent… and something of a sense of relief, believe it or not. Because this mission really matters... and we needed that.

And yeah… this missive is going to take me a while -- so grab a cold beverage and settle in for a few minutes.

To set the mood; I (personally) had been getting to a point where the many good things I knew to exist in the aero-world were being weighed against so many of the difficulties we’d seen and experienced… and the resultant balance was tilting in a direction that worried me.

And to properly explain, I need to preface all this with the note that it’s been a brutal few years for the ANN mission… and for the Aero-Verse, for that matter. As the aviation world took more and more flak from Washington and as the industry saw its fortunes decline at a brutal rate, it was not a good time to be a part of the Aero-World… especially when you were commercially involved in its fortunes or dependent on it, in whole or in part, to make your living.

But it wasn’t always that way… just a short time previously, aviation once appeared to be on the mend and ANN was setting the world on fire with innovation after innovation… and even though we were copied aggressively (and mostly without credit/attribution), we remained innovative enough that we stayed well ahead of the copycat curve and eked out a solid following that helped us keep aviation informed and (mostly) honest with forceful, solid, truthful coverage that was easily the most ‘on-point’ of any aviation journalistic effort of the time… or since. Better yet; most of the people we worked with were flyers of integrity and vision… who (for the most part) looked out for other flyers as well as for themselves.

Those were great times… and I miss them with all my heart… not just for what we were doing but for the positive way in which we were interfacing with the Aero-Verse.

Then… after a number of years of significant (and really enjoyable) prosperity, we got smacked HARD -- not by just one, but by a serious number of whammies that took our breath away and made our actuality more than problematic. The biggest struggle of these was solely mine when the most important person in my life, my former spouse Vicki, was lost in an aircraft accident while competing at the World Aerobatic Championships. I make no excuses… it was a loss that I was not remotely prepared for, and to be perfectly honest, it threw me off my game for well over a year (OK, WAY more than that). I’ve never known anything so painful… and I never felt anything for which I was so poorly equipped. It took more time than I would have imagined to shake it and make something of a recovery… but no sooner had I started to get back into a fully participatory attitude about all things aviation and business and such, then we got slammed by the cruel viciousness and indignity of what we dubbed as ‘the Cirrus war.’

When we caught the new management (first led by Brent Wouters and later by Dale Klapmeier) of Cirrus engaging in a whole host of fibs, received report after report of improper conduct, and began to note that the Cirrus crew that took over after Alan Klapmeier’s shameful mistreatment and forced exit often dealt ‘creatively’ with the truth and pushed back more and more aggressively at ANN as we asked tougher and tougher questions… things started going really bad.

We caught them, again and again, in serious outright lies and falsehoods. It came to a point where we believed that little to nothing Cirrus said could be believed on its face and we took a more and more aggressive attitude about questioning everything they did or said – and for pretty well-documented reasons. From there, we found ourselves the victims of a bizarre, sickening series of attacks that cost us more than we could reasonably afford and despite surviving it all, it cost us just about everything we had -- sucking away resources to a point where we really didn’t know how we were going to get through the next week/day.
And yet, we knew of others that were victimized as bad (or worse) than we … and so we fought on to seek the truth and a proper outcome… because that is what I have believed that good journalists were supposed to.

After some time, we were coming to a tipping point… but were determined to take the high road and not cave into the greed, viciousness and deceit that Cirrus spewed forth… at us… and others.

I felt there was no choice… that we had to fight. Cirrus used a lot of tools to hurt us… including refusing to pay us for outstanding bills for a contract we reached years before with Alan Klapmeier (and which we honored despite Cirrus dishonesty) – as well as another deal (also reached with Alan) when we undertook an aircraft purchase that started with nearly $100K in funds, as down payment—which were actually funds that were owed to us when Cirrus got WAY behind on their bills.

They used all kinds of 'scammery' on us. We came to the brutal conclusion that Cirrus wasn’t just interested in cheating us out of what they owed us (A LOT) for prior contracted business (IMO), but forcing/coercing/bludgeoning us into covering up for them. They attempted to force revisions of documented history/editorial and kept trying to exert vicious, brutal, un-American control over what we wrote in the future. The game plan appeared to develop aggressively -- from how to cheat us… to how to hurt us… to how to kill us off.

This went on for a while… and while there are too many bizarre permutations to list for the moment (but we will… via a forthcoming book and other works), each month brought new surprises, greater lows, incredible stresses, and truly disgusting attacks that I once thought anyone who loved aviation to be incapable of—until Cirrus stepped in.

But, yes, we survived… barely… because (we believe) Cirrus had much more to fear from further exposure and investigation. And they pretty moved proved it when they bailed out of the war when we were about to get their big bosses on the record.

Only minutes (literally) before we were to depose Dale Klapmeier about a number of questionable actions/behaviors and actions did this mess finally come to a costly and unsettling end. This occurred after watching two other Cirrus officials make statements, minutes before, that did NOT square with the truth we’d observed, documented, or experienced over the preceding years… but the upshot is that Cirrus finally threw in the towel… but not without bleeding us as dry as they could.

Still; in all this, they ultimately had to admit that we had the right to say and write what we did -- and that they would not try to control it any further -- and so they called off the war before we could get one of the most vicious people I’ve ever met on the record… but at a frightful financial cost to all involved (their attorney actually bragged about how many hours he was billing them… I have no idea how much it actually was, but judging by the way he acted in this case, it was likely to be a horrendous amount of dough, IMO).

I believe that we could have better won what we needed from the case with better resources (we had stunning evidence of their lies and falsehoods, as well as their many broken promises/breaches). After all, Alan Klapmeier had much of the same issues with Cirrus (and also testified bravely and honestly in support of our case – pretty much confirming all aspects of our major claims) -- eventually winning a case with them to the tune of $10 million bucks (which, of course, Cirrus is still appealing).

But in our case, we were struggling -- and had been doing so for way too long -- so I had no choice but to stop the hemorrhaging drain of legal costs and save my company, my mission, and my integrity once their attempts to kill us off were defeated… or be beat by the simple fact that they could outspend me to the point where I not only could no longer defend myself but also hurt all those I cared about who were working for/with me at ANN.

Let me reiterate; we’d won what really mattered… we defeated Cirrus demands to make us cover up/lie about them (no kidding… I still have the emails and applicable documents involved) and retract what we’d written and known to be true, as well as to give this malicious Communist Chinese government owned company the ability to dictate and control much of what we wrote about them in the future. I’d rather crawl through broken glass than let all of you down… and it was getting downright cruel by the time we worked our way clear of their machinations.

Mind you; I’d never have agreed to their journalistic demands under any circumstances -- though I’d like to make an important point -- at one point, I could have come out some $500K or so AHEAD of the game if I’d given into them.

This wiped out my retirement... I haven't owned a plane since (and certainly NOT a Cirrus), and I lost the chance to keep a home I truly loved -- and worse. We got hammered for fighting for our rights.

Please remember that… and then look around you and ask any so-called aviation journalist (of which there are precious few), especially those cashing Cirrus ad dollars every month, if (facing what we had) they’d have caved in, sold their integrity, and taken the hush money.

I’d love to hear their answers because so damned few of them stepped up and voiced opposition and a few were reported to have played their see-no-evil games quite willingly.

Folks… it’s a provable fact (IMO)… I took a half-million-dollar hit to maintain and ‘win’ my right to tell you the truth and resist their treacherous demands to turn me into a Cirrus-Puppet. I couldn’t live with that… I could live (barely) without the bucks… but not with the lack of integrity, as well as the anti-journalistic leash that would lead all the way to China. That would have choked the journalistic life out of me.

And yet… when all was said and done… few seemed to care (or take notice)… the state of the aviation industry had deteriorated to a point where the cons and lies no longer seemed all that unusual and those few of us that fought them didn’t seem to be worth the notice.

Look at all those Cirrus ads out there… and compare them to all the lies they told, all the falsehoods that became part of their PR drivel… and all the people who got hosed by them. Cirrus has been paying for a lot of positive press – and God help this myopic industry -- they’ve been getting it.

I actually took flak for the Cirrus war from some aviation writers… who thought my fight was a waste of time and who couldn’t be bothered to deal with the blatant issues brought about by numerous reports of Cirrus’ lies and lack of integrity – while their publications and organizations cashed check after check from Cirrus… blood money for turning the other way (IMO) as Cirrus went ahead and screwed way too many people and companies in the Aero-Verse, over and over again -- tarnishing aviation to a depressing dullness I would not have thought possible.

We’re not new to fact that there are aero-scammers amongst the Aero-Verse… God knows we’ve fought many of them – and were often the only ones doing so.

We’ve taken flak before and were fully aware of the fact that aviation, mostly composed of wonderful people, also contains some nasty buggers—some of them not so smart when expressing their displeasure. I’ve been dealing with that for years… especially when stepping out to defend those who were trying to simply survive in the aviation world against the occasional aero-nutball.

Remember the FlightPrep patent fight a few years back?

No sooner had we waded into that one than we started receiving threatening emails and harassing communications (see link above), with a ‘CC” list of people that were singularly connected by one fact… every single one of those contacted confirmed that they had communicated with FlightPrep, directly and it was hard to believe that FlightPrep didn’t have anything to do with the communications that threatened us so…

But sometimes the fight for righteous reporting became REALLY treacherous… Aviation Con Artist David Riggs, REALLY unhappy with our coverage of his many well-documented crimes and cons, claimed to be getting ‘damaging’ info and support from Cirrus that he shared with anyone that dared to question him about our stories (to defer attention from our having documented his many misdeeds) and also referred to two Northwestern clowns who seemed to take delight in doing their best to destroy ANN and its mission… even to the point of either advocating my death and/or harm to those I cared about – often making statements and accusations that were short on fact and long on viciousness. I truly wonder if some of the damage, if not one or more of the deaths attributed to Riggs’ actions, might have been avoided had jerks like these (and others) not given Riggs more excuses/incentives to escape scrutiny and attempt to shore up his con-man’s behavior. He tried everything (again and often gleefully implicating Cirrus and others as supporters and/or partners) -- extortion, threats of bodily harm, threats to my family, you name it.

I became a very careful guy… I often went out armed… and I was particularly careful about the well-being of those I loved and cared for -- especially my Wife -- who gave me unwavering strength and support I'm not sure I deserved.

But…we dealt with it… we stayed strong (if a little shaky)... we carried on… and for a variety of reasons -- Most of them revolving around men and women (my wife, in particular) of uncommon courage and integrity who let me know that they wanted me to succeed and maintain my integrity.

And God bless us… there were some amazing people that chimed in and allowed us to retain our faith in the inherent goodness of the aviation world.

A few stood out… Alan Klapmeier, most of all – a guy who just doesn’t back down, and was ALWAYS there with support, counsel and friendship.

I was amazed at the strength he carried with him, and the courage he exhibited, because all the while Cirrus was trying to decimate ANN and I, that was nothing compared to the vehemence they demonstrated towards Alan… I remember one vicious tirade with Brent Wouters… where he spent several minutes prior to an interview expressing profane hatred and some extreme ill will toward Alan… while I told him (again and again) that we had an interview to conduct and that Alan had never shown me anything but integrity—and that I would stop the interview if I heard another threatening word. I watched Alan stand up for us, and the truth, in a way no one else would, and put his own interests on the line testifying against Cirrus and backing up our claims against them, completely. He showed them to be liars… and they didn’t like that… at all. No matter what some of the nay-sayers may tell you… Alan Klapmeier is the real deal… an honest man, and a courageous one, to boot.

And then there was Paul Poberezny… who would call me out of the blue every few months, to tell me to stick it out, to do the right thing and that he wanted me to know that while we might not always agree on all things aero-political (though ‘arguments’ with Paul were always educational, if not fun), that he appreciated my courage and my willingness to ‘stick my neck out.’

But there was one day, at the 2009 Antique Aircraft Association Fly-In, I believe, when Paul came riding up in a trike of some sort and stopped right next to me. It had been but days since Vicki’s death and he simply stared at me for a few seconds, reached over to me, gave me a big hug, a kiss on the cheek and just gave me a sad smile, telling me life would someday make sense again. I’m glad I had the chance to tell him some time ago, shortly before he passed, just how much those few minutes meant to me. I hope there’s a really great heaven, with big grass runways, and lots of round engine airplanes (among others), for Paul Poberezny. He deserves all that… and more.

There was Kristy Graham… she was not a pilot, but many of her friends were… and as she came into contact with Aero-Conman, David Riggs, and began to comprehend the danger this man represented to every flyer, much less anyone who came into contact with him and his crimes, she took him on with aggressively accurate personal blog/reporting.

Her ‘Aviation Criminal’ blog was a masterpiece of blogger journalism… she was careful with her facts, held nothing back when she verified it, and took all manner of harassment for it all. She became a good friend, and if you ever come into contact with her and her flying friends at an airshow out West, please thank her for her courage and integrity in helping keep that psychopath as limited as possible before he finally pulled one stunt too many and killed himself as well as the poor little girl who was his last unfortunate passenger. It could all have been far worse. By the time it was all said and done, Riggs had a hand in incidents that resulted in the deaths of at least 5 five people, hazarded dozens more, and created millions of dollars in damage… much of it to fellow flyers. As noted; I can’t tell you how many times this guy threatened to kill me… or claimed to working with Cirrus or others (including the two previously mentioned NW nutballs who comprised the ‘I hate Campbell’ committee) to bring on my ruin, my death or injury to those I cared about… but I know that Kristy dealt with all that and more – probably MUCH more. She is an uncommonly daring human being… and one of too few people of uncommon courage and conviction.

There are more… Phil Boyer in particular, who impress and humble me and have stuck it out as a friend and mentor at times when it surely couldn’t have been easy.

I know that Phil has taken some flak for being a friend and mentor to yours truly… I have no idea why I’ve earned his support… but as I consider Phil to be one of the greatest leaders aviation has ever known, I also consider myself the benefactor of the respectful friendship we’ve maintained for decades while learning great lessons from his generous/patient counsel.

So many more… each so valuable in oh-so-many ways – XPRIZE’s Gregg Maryniak, Google’s Vern Raburn, Sporty’s Hal Shevers, Redbird’s Jerry Gregoire, Mikael Via, AEA's Paula Derks, ANN’s own Nathan Cremisino, and name after name (and I’m sorry for those MANY I've left out… but I really need to keep this story short-er) who have empowered me, encouraged me, tutored me, counseled me, argued with me, you name it. Someday, I’ll explain why each of these people, and others I need to mention, are so valuable to our future… but for now, I need to HELP build a future in which our fortunes are made greater than we once thought possible… because of the honor and integrity of those who have stood up for us all… and done the right thing.

And just so you know… I’m not worthy to be one of them… not yet, but I hope to be.

I hope to do great works, inspired by great people -- and give something back to an Aero-Verse that has meant so much to me… ever since that first plane droned overhead and allowed me to dream of being a pilot.

These people have kept me in the game and even when all seemed lost, it was their willingness to encourage and support me, that made it clear that I could eke out a life of submission OR strive to live a mission based on integrity and support for those I care about.

You know my choice.

And that leaves where I am right now… I can take the easy way out and continue on the lower-risk, profitable path we’ve established and get back to where were some years ago… proud, profitable and pushing a positive agenda. OR we can step it up and take on a mission spearheaded by relentless innovation, brutal honesty, and aggressive transformation for the Aero-Verse.

AND… we can ALSO take on Bob’s mission… to use the wonderful new tools of NewMedia and transform aviation, flyer by flyer, into a world even better than it once was (albeit much different than what we once knew). We need, collectively, to stand for something good and righteous and real and American… and to innovatively recraft our industry and our world in ways that allow us to feel good about our future and the community we are a part of.

The FAA must be forced to respect us (as we must learn to respect ourselves and not let such powers disrespect us) … not just as aviators but as aero-citizens… and we need to embrace a spirit based on our willingness to fight for what we believe in, what we know to be right and what men like Bob Hoover have literally put their lives on the line to allow for each and every one of us.

No matter what I have faced, no matter how hard it got to take the next step in our mission at ANN… it was the quiet courage of flyers like Bob Hoover that convinced that this was an ‘Aero-Verse’ taking risks for and a community worth the love and sacrifices it deserved from us each and every day. And so, because of my friendship with Bob (among others), and the knowledge I gained from working with him throughout the decades, I found the strength to face the scumbags, the liars, the cons and the crooks… be they (IMO), the powers that be at Cirrus or AVIC, a David Riggs, some anonymous coward trying to legitimize the greed of FlightPrep, or anyone of the dozens (literally) of other causes we have taken on when no one else would.

Bob stands, and has stood consistently, for all that is right and good in aviation… One of his ultimate battles, was fought not for himself, but for all us -- we’re incredibly proud, even blessed, to take on the biggest challenge we’ve ever accepted…

This is for Bob, for all of you, for each kid that peers out from behind the chain-link fences at airports all over the globe, and for anyone who dreams of flight, we accept the challenge… because it’s the right thing to do… and we know this because of the example set by Bob and all those many others whose courage and integrity teach us to be strong, even stronger, every day.

Finally, there’s this… Bob is 93 years old… he needs no more battles, he deserves to enjoy the applause and awards and commendations that have come this way for a life well-lived in service to America…and to we aviators. But the simple fact is this… Bob feels an obligation to fight on. He feels like he hasn’t finished what needs to be done… and in conversation after conversation, he talks about duty, patriotism, and integrity and the debt he owes to a country that allowed him a life of great service and even greater adventure…

Bob is not done doing the right thing… and God help me, neither am I.

Let Bob Fly… Let Us ALL Fly… Let Everyone who dreams of flight feel FREE to do so… because of the sacrifices made by the many who have taught us that freedom needs to be earned each and every day. Patriotism demands that we question authority, right wrongs, and build a better future for all those we care for... Bob says so.... and I believe him.

More to come…. Including a powerful call to action.

God Bless you all…

Jim Campbell
ANN CEO/Editor-In-Chief/Friend of Bob Hoover (The Greatest Title Any Flyer Could Wish For)

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