Backcountry content creators

Backcountry flying has a renegade image that puts its future at risk. And those who create and distribute adventure flying videos and benefit from them should feel a responsibility to avoid conspicuous, potentially obnoxious, high-risk flying that antagonizes other, far larger groups of hikers, kayakers, rafters, and hunters who enjoy the same natural areas.

“Poor judgment in wild places jeopardizes everything,” said Bill McGlynn, president of the Recreational Aviation Foundation (RAF), a 14,000-member volunteer organization dedicated to expanding access to remote airstrips around the country.

“People in the U.S. Forest Service watch your videos,” he said. “Rafters on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River wait for years and pay thousands of dollars for float trips through the Frank Church Wilderness Area. We as pilots have access to wilderness areas that others don’t have—and we need to model good behavior. When trust disappears, the airfields are next.”

CubCrafters hosted the three-day event at the Nail Spring Ranch in rural Oregon, and about a dozen aviation content creators attended along with a contingent from AOPA.

Brad Damm, a CubCrafters vice president who helped organize the event, provided lots of open time for the content creators to fly, record video, and learn editing and production techniques from each other. Several CubCrafters airplanes and sponsored pilots such as Luke Czepiela, best known for the “Bullseye Landing” on a helipad atop a Dubai skyscraper, also participated.

Juan Browne of the Blancolirio channel, which specializes in timely and informative aviation accident videos, flew his Cessna 206 to the event from his home in Grass Valley, California, and led a roundtable discussion. Mark Patey, one of the original “Flying Cowboys” who, along with twin brother Mike Patey, helped popularize adventure flying channels on YouTube, brought his Pilatus PC–12 and gave a heartfelt talk about his own lessons learned.

Patey said his biggest regret about his early flying videos was failing to include the detailed preparation and contingency planning that went into each sortie.

“We took safety very seriously,” he said. “We practiced and practiced, and we only went ahead when conditions were ideal.”

Patey said he struggled to deal with criticism from viewers who found fault with him and his actions.

“We started making these videos because we wanted to share our passion for aviation and our excitement about some of the cool projects we were doing,” Patey said. “People responded to our videos because they were authentic. But we also got criticized—and some of that really stung because, truthfully, I care what other people think.”

Patey said it took him years to realize that some of the harshest comments were based on faulty assumptions about him and his motivations, and he urged other content creators not to be discouraged when others find fault in their work.

“They may think they know you, but they don’t,” he said.

One of the highlights of the event was an early look at the turboprop-powered Carbon Cub ULT which Damm brought from the CubCrafters factory in Yakima, Washington.

Several content creators produced videos about the $700,000 ULT right away, and those videos quickly produced massive numbers of online views leading up to the airplane’s public debut at EAA AirVenture. But Damm said the ULT was a last-minute addition, and the gathering wasn’t meant to promote CubCrafters or its new flagship (see “CubCrafters’ New Flagship,” AOPA Pilot, August 2026).

“We wanted to bring content creators together at a great location and let them do what they do best,” he said. “Hopefully, that leads to some good outcomes.”

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