(May 2011) DID WE ACTUALLY MAKE a better pilot out of anybody, save any lives or keep any bent airplanes from littering the landscape? Who knows, but we sure had a good time putting on Wings Weekend at Hogan Field or, more properly, Butler County Regional Airport in Hamilton, Ohio. It started with me (and a chalkboard) on a Saturday morning at Blue Ash Airport, trading CFI renewals for donations of dual instruction, and it morphed into an annual 2½-day event with 70 to 80 instructors and up to 200 pilots earning their “wings.” For the next 13 years any pilot could “just show up” at the airport for one day on the last weekend in June to get the required three hours of dual flight instruction and attend the required safety seminar. Thus, he earned one of the 20 phases in FAA’s Pilot Proficiency Program and went home with a fancy certificate, pseudomilitary wings with stars, banners and phony gemstones and a genuine 61.56 flight review sign-off.
The idea of offering dual flight instruction and a seminar for free and all in one day wasn’t original. I’d heard about something like it in Kentucky, so I flew the 180 over to Owensboro on a covert spy mission. Sure enough, a chaotic mob of pilots and instructors were milling around, the CFIs holding up homemade signs advertising themselves (for free) and their airplanes (for rent). We could do this better by pairing up the pilots and CFIs in advance and giving the dual in two out-and-back sessions. And we’d have a bunch of rental airplanes available from local FBOs.
