Farewell to the Sun n' Fun Air Ops Shack
It was old, it was tired. It leaked when it rained, baked us during the show, froze us in the morning, and we often wondered if it would fall apart just being moved from storage to the flightline. And the more beat up it got the more we loved it, like a great old pair of favorite sneakers your companion kept trying to sneak into the trashcan when you weren't looking.
But for many years, The Shack was the home of our Air Ops crew at the Sun n' Fun Fly-in & Air Show, and you never knew who you'd run into inside. Here's a movie and a story of some of the good and bad times we went through.
As Jimmy once said: You had to be there.
Behind the Rope Line. A Day in the Life at Sun n' Fun Air Ops.
I Wish I Was Doing That. A pilot/writer at the end of the Shuttle program.
Long story, but I ended up covering the final two Shuttle missions as a full-on journalist, and by being a polite pain in the arse I ended up in the group standing near the VASI for the final landing of the program. I was told to stay out of the way of the real journalists, which I was happy to do, I just could not believe I was there. Thank you, NASA PAO and the NASA Security team for allowing me on the bus.
I was sweating bullets because my video camera would not focus, luckily it kicked in right at the last second. I kept looking up at the sky expecting to see the nav lights of Atlantis until I realized Duh... it doesn't have any. Kind of a bummer but understandable that NASA took the first landing opportunity in the pre-dawn, they just wanted to get it on the ground and over with, but it also robbed everyone of seeing that magnificent sight one final time.
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