Could All Events Seen As Risky Be At Risk?

Commentary By Paul Plack, Senior E-Media Editor

As soon as I complete today's ANN Aero-Cast and turn the mic off, I'm headed off to the El Mirage dry lake in southern California to enjoy the only aviation event I attend each year where I'm not working in some capacity. I'll spend the weekend relaxing with some of the most fun and interesting people I know, and do a little gyroplane and gyroglider flying while I'm there.

Sometimes, there are movie or commercial sets on the dry lake when we arrive, and we also get to see a wide variety of off-road machines being thoroughly enjoyed. The Southern California Timing Association has a groomed course for speed runs. There's also a Mad Max reenactment group that holds events there. It can be a wild place, and in years past it could also get pretty dangerous.

The Ken Brock Freedom Fly-In is named for the late gyroplane pioneer who died a few years ago in a freak ground accident in a fixed-wing plane, and whose family still has a ranch bordering the lake. It got its name, in part, because there's no admission fee. But the "Freedom Fly-In" isn't as "free" as it used to be. A few years ago, the US Bureau of Land Management announced it would be fencing in the famous off-road-vehicle recreation area to tame things down.

So now, it's $15 a day or $30 a week per-vehicle to get in, and as far as anyone can tell, it must all go into paying off the fence, because the bad apples still tear up the surface during the wet season. Maybe the fee is part of the deficit reduction program. Wherever the money is going, it's killed off the more casual attendance by guys from the local area who'd bring their sons out just for Saturday morning to see the unusual machines fly.

The BLM's fencing in of the El Mirage dry lake looks to me like a metaphor for what's happening to general aviation. It's being increasingly fenced off, literally and figuratively, and now our president wants to hit some of us with a $100 fee every time we take off. That fee will almost certainly spread to Saturday morning recreational flights if it gets started, and will keep us from sharing the joy of flight with our kids and grandkids.

So I'm heading for El Mirage this year with a sense that I'd better enjoy this unique place while I can. Especially in light of what may come out of the tragedy in Reno, I'm concerned that our freedoms to take part in activities which involve risk, whether as participants or spectators, could be much more limited soon. The writing has been on the wall for years.

Don't let a dumb recession stop you. Go fly this weekend. While you still can.

(Pictured: Legendary gyroplane CFI and movie stunt pilot Marion Springer, 82, (at left in orange flight suit,) readies her Bensen Gyrocopter for flight at the El Mirage dry lake in 2009.)

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