OUR GOAL IS 50 BIRDDOGS FOR THE 50TH, "50/50th"
As most of you know, the Birddog will celebrate its 50th anniversary of initial production in December 2000. The prototype was designed in late 1949 and the fly-off competition was held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio in the spring of 1950.
The International Bird Dog Association is organizing a three-day event to celebrate the 50th year anniversary. The event is planned for July 17-19, 2000 and will be held at the Kansas Aviation Museum, Wichita, Kansas.
There are a number of reasons for the location and the dates of the event.
1. The Kansas Aviation Museum is within a half-mile of the Pawnee Plant, where 97% of the Birddogs were manufactured and they are located on the edge of McConnell Air Force Base. Both the Museum and the Air Force are excited about us coming to Wichita for this event. The Wichita Chamber of Commerce is also assisting us in preparing for this once-in-a-lifetime event.
2. Many of the retired employees of the Cessna Aircraft Company that designed and produced the Birddog are still living in the Wichita area.
3. The dates (July 17-19, 2000) allow the pilots and guests attending the "50/50" to also attend the ILPA/IBDA annual fly-in at Keokuk, Iowa which begins on July 21. If your vacation time is extensive, you can then continue on to Oshkosh if you desire. However, the primary focus this year (2000) is on the 50/50 event and then Keokuk.
While our basic planning goal is for at least 50 Birddogs to attend this celebration we are hoping that the actual number would be closer to 100 Birddogs. This number is certainly possible, as there are over 300 Birddogs currently listed on the FAA's aircraft register. While not all of the aircraft are currently airworthy, there are well over100 airworthy Birddogs around the US and Canada.
At this moment we have the following items on our planning table and as time goes on this winter we'll modify and fine-tune the schedule of events.
1. Arrival day will be celebrated with a free pizza feed.
2. Cessna is providing a noon luncheon at the Museum for the attending Birddog pilots and their passenger.
3. Our evening banquet will be held at one of the local hotels, and our guest speaker will be a former USAF Birddog pilot, Ken Hughey. Ken flew Birddogs during his first tour of duty in Vietnam, and on his second tour he flew the mighty F-4 Phantom. During one of his F-4 missions to the north he occupied the same airspace as a surface-to-air missile, consequently Ken spent the next five years as a POW in Hanoi.
4. You will have the opportunity to view a vast variety of Birddogs on the flightline, and to tour the Kansas Aviation Museum.
5. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to speak with the people that designed and produced the Birddog that you are flying.
6. Major Bung Ly, the Vietnamese Air Force Major that saved his wife and five children during the fall of Vietnam by landing his Birddog on the deck of an aircraft carrier.
7. A color poster, suitable for framing, designed by an award-winning artist will be available for purchase. This poster will have photographs from the Birddog's historical past and you can have the poster signed by those people attending.
8. Throughout the event, door prizes will be awarded to those attending. The door prizes that we have now are all aviation related, and most of them are new old stock Birddog parts. All you have to do is attend and you will have the opportunity to receive a prize of substantial value. Cash value of the parts and prizes will be substantial, so come get the freebies!
9. Aviation fuel will be quite inexpensive, as Yingling Aircraft has offered us a 75 cent per gallon discount on avgas for all of the Birddogs that attend the event.
10. We still need additional corporate sponsors who will donate a quality wall plaque for each attending aircraft, more info to follow on this.
11. Coverage of the event will be on the local TV and radio stations. Three US aviation newspapers have agreed to cover the event and we are hoping that at least three national aviation magazines will do the same.
Flying the Birddog across the US or Canada is a long project, I know, as I've done it three times. However, the fun part is in picking up additional Birddogs along the way to an event. To assist in this department, we hope to design a page on the Bowwow web site that will allow the pilots in each area of the country and Canada to see who is planning on attending the event and where they will be departing from and on what day.
As you all know the IBDA Board of Directors is made up of volunteers, and to make this event the success we hope it will be, we need some more volunteers from the membership. No one volunteer will be saddled with multiple tasks, but if we all chip in and coordinate our efforts the event will be a greater success than we are hoping for.
What can you do right now? Start planning your vacation around the 50/50 event. Involve your significant other. Talk up the event at your hanger events or fly-ins. Send the IBDA an email or drop a note in the mail if you plan on attending the 50/50 and if you can continue on to the Keokuk fly-in. If you have any experience in planning large-scale events, PLEASE contact us and provide us with input. If you have any surplus new old stock Birddog parts that you would like to donate to the event, please provide me with a list of what you have available. Donations to an IRS 501 (C) 3 organization are tax-deductible in most situations. The IBDA can supply you with a letter stating what you donated.
For those of you interested in the formation-flying clinic, which is held every year at the Keokuk fly-in, if we have a suitable number of pilots interested in this event we might be able to accomplish some of the training in Wichita. If you are attending the 50/50 and also had plans to get your formation flying qualification completed next year, please advise the IBDA as soon as possible. This will allow us the time to coordinate this additional program into the schedule.
Requirements for attendance are quite minimal:
1. You want to have a good time.
2. You like free gifts and cheap avgas
3. You must have liability insurance ($1,000.000) for landing at McConnell Air Force Base. This must be documented in writing from your insurance carrier before you will be allowed to land at McConnell. Very simple thing to do. My insurance company (Avemco) does it for me all the time.
Advance planning will make this event a success, so let us know as soon as you can if you plan to attend. More information on the hotels available and the costs will be forthcoming this fall.
Minard Thompson, Chairman/Director of the 50/50th Reunion