Well, in less than 24 hours from now, I'll be at the Paul C. Miller Airport (8D4) running around like a 'chicken with his head cut off', most likely, or at least I hope, with a big smile on my face.

Tomorrow is "Operation:GO!" a Civil Air Patrol (West Michigan Group 703) Open House and 'Fly Day'. This event was a culmination of a few really great ideas that came together at light speed.

The idea, originally, from my end anyways, was to have an open house with a few other closer CAP squadrons and use our 'strength in numbers' to help raise awareness of each of our unit's; as in the past, trying to get anyone out to a unit level open house is like pulling teeth, especially with regards to the media.

At the same time, the group senior squadron was planning an O-Flight (orientation) day with the wing glider. From a planning perspective, both of these events were set to be on the same day. Coincidence? I think not.

Once we got our heads together, the ideas started flying, one thing let to another and this turned into an open house that involved all the squadrons in our group, included BOTH powered flights in our Cessna C-172 and C-182's (some with the G-1000 'Glass Cockpit'), as well as our wing glider. We also invited the United States Air Force recruiting office and many other emergency management folks from the area to join us in the day.

We solicited donations from Coca-Cola for drinks and a local charitable grocery store for hot dogs and buns, as well as other sources for other needed supplies. So we'll be feeding upwards of 200 people at least 2 hot dogs each with some chips and a 12 oz can of soda. Not bad eh? Especially for free.

At the start, I setup a website for the event and have been 'tweaking' it pretty much every day since I created it. Things have changed regarding the event nearly every day, all for the most part, for the better.

I've been on edge all week as the weather outlook hasn't been the best, but what else would you expect for early summer? In fact, I'm currently running on about 3 1/2 hours of sleep thanks to the storms that rattled the house from top to bottom, and from the looks of things, we're not out of the woods yet today, more storms on on the way. From what I can tell though, this all should move out of the way in the early AM hours of Saturday, leaving us with partly cloudy skies and high's in the 70's and some good sustained winds to keep the glider up quite nicely! (excuse me while I go find a piece of wood to knock on)

As this is our first time planning and working an event like this, I'm sure there will be a TON of lessons learned, but all in all, I'll be happy if I see just one cadet leave the airport with  a smile on their face like the one pictured above.

THAT my friends, is what it's truly all about!