Say Hello To Rob Finfrock!

With the final days before the official start to EAA AirVenture 2007 counting down all too rapidly... and, not quickly enough... ANN's senior staff is all-too-aware of the Herculean task ahead of us in reporting EVERYTHING that's news at The World's Greatest Aviation Celebration.

Fortunately, this year we'll have some help... and some really GREAT help at that. As we've already told you, Aero-News is bringing its largest staff EVER to AirVenture this year, to not only increase our print and audio coverage of the greatest (air) show on Earth, but also to help us kick off Aero-TV. (Come to think of it... "Herculean" doesn't begin to cover it...)

Over the next several days, we thought we'd take the time to introduce you to the print stringers, video crews, and senior staffers who will be bringing our readers and listeners all the news that's fit to pixilate, modulate and videotape from Oshkosh this year.

And now, without further adieu...

Rob Finfrock

Something of a fluke introduced Managing Editor Rob Finfrock to the world of flight. Five years ago, Rob was working for an Albuquerque courier service when the company sent him up to Farmington to cover a route. To get there, he caught a lift on one of the company’s small Cessna twins... and Rob, who before that day had never flown on a plane smaller than a 737, was "hooked the moment the wheels lifted off Runway 3."

Turns out the pilot he flew with on that fateful day had a friend who’d just earned his CFI rating... and soon, Rob was looping across the skies in a 172 as a student pilot. He loved it... and he also loved writing about it, and all matters of flying.

That led Rob to respond to ANN’s call for stringers for Oshkosh in 2005 -– which gave him the chance to exercise his journalistic chops, as well as an opportunity to learn more about several aircraft... including the B-17s his grandfather flew on in the final days of WWII. Three months later, Rob decided to forego a 'promising career' in the building materials industry and cast his lot with the Aero-News staff full-time.

Recently relocated back home in New Mexico, Rob writes and edits the majority of material found on ANN throughout the week. Now that he has some LSA flight time under his belt, during his return to AirVenture this year Rob plans to learn all he can about Cessna's recently-announced light sport entry, to see how it measures up to other contenders in the field.

Stay tuned as we introduce more of our stringers and staffers in days to come!

FMI: www.aero-news.net