Larry Flesner and I flew our KR's to the first annual Wicks Forum Saturday morning. We departed from Larry's home airport at Marion to nearby 3K6, and had to leave early in the morning to be there in time for donuts. As usual, it was great flying weather early in the morning, and the colors were pretty nice too.

First order of business was a nice tour of Wicks Pipe Organ Company, hosted by President Mark Wick.

Here he explains details of a pipe and its special terminology.

Barbara Wick, Chairman of the Board, gives an excellent demonstration of how it's done.

The pipes are hand-formed, with critical detail at the "tongue".

Wicks Organ was established in 1906, and this building was built in 1910.

Much of the equipment is "period", but gets the job done.

Next was Wicks Aircraft, where the forums were about to begin.

First up was Ron Wagner, who gave us some insight into local EAA Chapter sucess, how to make things interesting, and how to grow membership.

Roy Beisswenger (left) then gave an excellent overview of the ultralight and Light Sport scene. He was introduced by host Scott Wick (right).

Next was the new EAA President, Ron Hightower. I was really impressed with this guy. He's definitely engaged, and is certainly fired up to do wonderful things for the EAA. He had a lot of great ideas, and solicited comments and suggestions from the crowd to get more feedback from "the field". He's a really funny guy, but quite serious about growing the EAA membership. He has some great ideas, such as leaving your old Sport Aviation magazines at the doctor's office to spread the word, and possible "next steps" for Young Eagles after that initial flight.

I really only disagreed with one of the points he made, which is Sport Aviation will be covering more of the factory-built aircraft, up to but not including jets. I think that segment is already well covered by Flying and AOPA's magazine, among others, and most of the guys that are interested in that stuff already get both of those magazines. Personally, I'd rather see that space in Sport Aviation devoted to more homebuilding tips, projects, and test reports of flying examples of the various homebuilts. My guess is that a lot of other "experimenters" will agree with that. He made the point that "scratchbuilding" has been on the decline in recent years, but my guess is given the current economy, building from scratch will see a resurgence, while expensive factory-built plane sales will not.

Of course I'm not sure if this was his idea or it the wheels were already in motion for this move when he came to EAA. I can't wait to get the next SA, while my AOPA magazines go into the pile for storage. I guess now they'll be going to the dentist's office instead!

There was still a lively discussion going when lunch was served, so he continued the dialogue while through lunch, even enlisting a few members of the audience to be part of his "think tank. I like a guy that'll skip lunch to get the job done.

Kitplanes Editor Marc Cook then presented a thorough discussion of where aviation fuel is going, or coming from, as the case may be. Kitplanes is one of two magazines (of the 10 or so I get each month) that I always read... Sport Aviation being the other. Between the two, Kitplanes wins, with content like the Jim Wier and Baranby Wanfan series that fortunately seem to have no end!

I needed to get back home before sundown, so Larry and I headed out a little early and missed the Dynon presentation and Paul Lupton's Summer Aviation Academy presentation, as well as the tour of Wicks Aircraft. When we got back to Schafer airport we found what will soon be a familiar T6 parked next to us...Ron Hightower's gorgeous work. I guess it says something about a guy that he'd park next to something as ugly as my KR!

Thanks a lot to Scott Wick for hosting this affair, and to those who participated. It was time well spent, and I plan to be there again next year to catch that Wicks Aircraft tour...

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