It is 10 years since the tornado hit Sun ‘N Fun and took Alan Davis airborne with the SAFE Tent. A few years later a windstorm at OSH collapsed the SAFE Tent in College Park display area. John Dorcey created our beautiful show display (with Chris Palmer) and we have been displaying more safely inside metal hangars at shows, 
meeting our members and joining up new people. This year we are just pulling out or the COVID pandemic. Life goes on and pilots are very resilient. We had an amazing show – thanks to our great members! The spring sweepstakes continues through May 15th with prizes still being added.
The SAFE show booth was set up by Dr. Donna Wilt and her husband Dennis. Both teach aviation at the Florida Institue of Technology and they store our SAFE exhibit in their hangar at Sebastion every year. Cres Wise and his wife as well as Mike Garrison stopped by each day to help at the SAFE booth. This gave me time to see the show a little and eat some lunch. Cres serves as our SAFE board secretary and also served in the U.S. Air Force for 20+ years. He is an Assistant Professor of Aviation and check pilot at Middle Georgia State University and flies his own Cessna 337. Mike is a DPE in Port St. Lucie, FL.
SAFE member Rob Dumavic helped create a FaceBook Live with Dr. Scott Dennsteadt to help publicize his new weather interface EZWXBrief.com Both Scott and Rob are long-time members. When the background noise was interfering with the audio, Andy Chan and Rob Lindstrom and a bunch of other members moved tables and chairs seamlessly to get us to a quieter location.
What I am trying to say with all this is SAFE is a member organization. Any success we have had is thanks to our amazing members. As I am writing this Lee Lauderback stopped by the booth. He runs Stallion 51 and just passed 10K hours safe flying the Mustang. He was a charter member and did an early sweepstakes to raise money for us. You can still join/renew or donate and get a shot at the Lightspeed Zulu Headsets or the Sporty’s Handheld radio. (We just added a 1/2 hour gyroplane intro flight as a prize) Expect great things from SAFE in the next year!
Thanks for all you do, fly SAFE out there (and often)!
Visit us at Sun’N Fun booth B22. If you join SAFE (even from home) you get a shot at a new Lightspeed Zulu headset or a Sporty’s handheld! ASA is offering a free FAR/AIM app to the first 25 new CFIs signing up at the show (and all the other show benefits apply). We have “Ninja CFI” T-shirts and hats for volunteers: register here on Doodle!
There is unique Sun’N Fun show content on the SAFE Toolkit App and if you “enable notifications,” we will be posting exciting events and specials during the show.
