We too, attended Arlington this year - flying in from CYBW (Springbank near
Calgary, Alberta). We have been at the show several times over the past few
years, and were also somewhat disappointed with this year's offering.

I've been to Oshkosh and Sun & Fun, and I've always seen the Arlington show
as a more accessible and friendlier evernt, with more of a concentration on
the affordable and homebuilt/experimental side of aviation. We arrived on
Friday morning and had the usual competent assistance from the ground
controllers at Green Valley in touching down safely.

After landing and parking we took a tour of the grounds.The layout was a
little different from our last visit a couple years ago, but we did see most
of the regular vendors - Van's, Cirrus, New Glasair/Glastar, Murphy, etc.
Eggenfellner was there with a couple examples of the 4 and 6 cylinder Subaru
conversions in flying airframes, which was new from our last visit. Some
great Republic Seabees there, especially an award winning example with a
Corvette powerplant. Among the few warbirds were a couple of Alphajets and
a couple of Thunder Mustang scale replicas.

The first thing that struck me was the RV section of fly-in aircraft was
substantially down on plane count from previous years - normally a huge
turonout of RV's at Arlington. We heard that the weather had been poor
earlier in the week, which may explain part of that (along with the lesser
number of other fly-in traffic parked on the field) - but Friday was perfect
flying weather, and we didn't arrive until almost mid day. There were a few
examples of LSA aircraft manufacturers in a new lineup across from the
Ultralight area, probably less than 10. You could have fired a cannon
through the middle of the Ultralight section and not hit a plane - where in
the past there has been a lot of aircraft and exhibits, this year it was
pretty sparse.

We were considering staying on Saturday as well, but other than new planes
flying in Saturday there just wasn't any more that we needed to see. We
were able to flag down the fuel truck on Friday night, so we headed out on
Saturday morning. Based on this year's showing, we most likely won't be
back next year - I hope that this event was an abberation and not an
indication of a downward trend for the NWEAA show.

"Ken Finney" wrote in message
...
This will be a negative post, but hopefully, constructive criticism. I've
been to Oshkosh once, lots of small fly-ins, and every year for the past
eight years to the Arlington Fly-In (www.nweaa.org). Oshkosh is SO big,
it is difficult to take away a lot of lessons that are applicable to
smaller fly-ins, but I regard Arlington as the way things should be done.
Not this year. This year I spent a lot of time building up Arlington to
the non-aviation people I work with, and hopefully, several of them
attended. I hope they weren't disappointed. Below I've listed some of my
observations.

1. Where were the signs? Maybe the person that puts up the signs on the
freeway and all the intersections on the way over-slept. But on my way
in, the normal signs weren't there. I even missed a turn and had to
backtrack a mile or so.

2. I got there about 30 minutes after the gates opened on Saturday, and
there were less cars than when I normally get there 15 minutes before the
gates opened.

3, Walked through the gates, and "Where are the Warbirds???" Last year,
the Warbirds and Arlington had a public falling out, but supposedly had
made up. I guess someone forgot to tell the Warbirds. I hadn't realized
it, but the WWII "stagedoor canteen" display was put on by the warbirds
folks, and a lot of people noticed it wasn't there. (I guess it wasn't
there last year either, and I didn't notice?)

4. Noticed a lot of empty airplane spaces. Was told that they had been
occupied on Friday, but that those airplanes had already left. I don't
know if in previous years the closer spots were allocated to planes that
were going to be there for a longer period of time or what. Maybe they
back-filled those spots when the previous airplanes left. Maybe it was
just luck. But it makes a bad impression when the spaces closest to the
public are largely empty.

5. Where was the Civil Air Patrol??? Normally, there are about 180-200
Cadets in attendance, doing outstanding duty. One of the Senior members
told me that he showed up and was shocked to not find any Cadets. Someone
else told me that it was a known thing that Cadets wouldn't be there.
About 17 Cadets were there, but it was a disaster. The Arlington
organizers went nuts trying to find any warm bodies to backfill, but it
was a losing proposition. Those volunteers in attendance did a yeoman's
duty, but were over-whelmed.

6. Information was hard to obtain. Were the winds too high for a balloon
glow or not?

7. I don't know the attendance figures (it did pick up quite a bit on
Saturday afternoon), but several exhibitors said their foot traffic was
down by 50% from last year.

8. The exhibition tent was HOT, and the tables weren't being manned with
any regularity. This isn't the organizers fault; exhibitors, if you are
going to spend the money for space, make sure someone is there the whole
time! If you can't tag team and have to take a break, leave a sign that
says when you'll be back, not "Back in 15 minutes", because the shoppers
won't know when the 15 minutes started. This applies to the exhibitors
outside the tent, too.

9. Not everything was negative. The food was great as always (but a
little more expensive, I think). The shuttles were running all the time.
The antique tractor people were there with a good display, as always.
Good airshow. Good runway movies, which leads to #10 below.

10. The runway movie on Saturday night was "One Six Right". Good movie,
also a good movie for boring the kids to sleep! One thing that was
stressed over and over again in the movie was the need for aviation people
to involve non-aviation people. Aviation people talk to each other about
how great aviation is, but their outreach to others is very poor. This is
biggest problem I saw this year. There were radio commercials, but the
url they gave to get more information was long, I couldn't remember it.
The newspaper "things to do this weekend" didn't list the Fly-In. (I have
a pet peeve against the term "fly-in" itself; why would a non-aviation
person be interested in a fly-in? I much prefer the terms "aviation
fair", "aviation celebration", "air fair", "air show", etc.) If I was
going for the first time, I don't know how long it would have taken me to
find it; the first time I went (1998?), there were lots of signs, it would
have been impossible NOT to find it.

Arlington is planning on building a convention center, which will cause
the destruction of many hangers (they will be replaced), and I think this
contributed to "taking their eyes off the ball" and letting the fly-in
proceed on momentum. In the past years, Arlington has gotten better with
each year; not this year. A fly-in (sic) is an organic thing, and it
needs constant care and nurturing or it will decline. I hope this was
just a one year thing, and that next year will be the biggest and best
yet. AND FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, GET THE CIVIL AIR PATROL BACK!!!