Bringing the airport to the community

The airport, its businesses, and local pilots invited the public to come and see how the airport serves the community and who and what kind of aircraft frequent it. It couldn’t have been a better day. After a passing drizzle cleared out, blue skies and sunshine framed the static display, some formation flights, exhibitors, food trucks, and plenty of entertainment for children.

AOPA’s National Aviation Community Center, housed in a large hangar on the field, was packed with kids playfully learning about the intricacies of thrust and other mechanisms that make aircraft fly. Offerings featured STEM-related activities, including flights in a drone cage, and staff members from the Smithsonian Explainers Program were on hand to educate eager attendees. In the neighboring hangar, younger children played with aircraft toys, happily racing along a “runway.”

AOPA sponsored a tent for seminars on topics including “How to Become a Pilot,” and a speaker from the FAA addressed the subject of “Air Traffic Control & the FDK Traffic Pattern,” which was of interest to the communities living in the vicinity of the airport.

Visitors had the opportunity to purchase rides in the Hagerstown Aviation Museum's Fairchild PT–19, which could be seen in the pattern.

On the field, a static display featuring local owners' aircraft showcased Cessnas, a Cirrus SR20 aircraft, a 2022 Hatz Classic, and a Piper Tri-Pacer, to name just a few. Pilots were on hand to talk to attendees, answering questions about aircraft and aviation. Adults and children alike patiently queued to get into a Boeing CH-47 Chinook and posed in front of it for pictures. It was equally busy around the Liberty Warbirds' Bell UH-1H Huey Iroquois helicopter. Crewmembers with the Maryland State Police Aviation Command, which operates one of its seven bases at the airport, demonstrated a hoist operation with its Leonardo AW139 “Trooper 3” helicopter. A gyrocopter demo and two radio control aircraft demonstrations drew the crowds to the flight line.

As if that’s not enough, it was “smoke on” between the flying demonstrations for formation flybys featuring two World War II-era Beechcraft T–6 Texans and two French military Socata TB 30 Epsilon aircraft.

Aviation geeks came in all sizes and ages. Leo and his parents drove all the way from Rockville, because the toddler “loves everything aviation.” He was appropriately dressed in a flight suit and looked like he felt totally at home. On the static display, Silas asked and was granted permission to sit in AOPA Senior Photographer David Tulis’s Piper Tri-Pacer.

“It is amazing how this event attracted predominantly families. There were strollers everywhere,” said Dave Roy, vice president of the AOPA Pilot Information Center. Organizers estimated a total of 10,000 visitors. Events like these go a long way to establish a peaceful coexistence of airports and their surrounding communities, all while fostering lots of fun.