rogers@athena.UUCP (Roger Southwick) (08/19/85)
[ I'd rather be flying ] This past weekend here in Portland, Ore. I saw again the Pepsi Free commercial with the student pilot (with very frightened looking instructor) proceed to make us look like a bunch of bumbling novices. I for one am very tired of this. I'd like to get more people interested in flying, and as if high prices aren't bad enough, we get some bozo advertising which shows our hobby in a VERY bad light. I recently had an opportunity to take up 2 good friends, and they were scared (even though I spent quite a bit of time beforehand explaining everything) until we had flown around for 5 to 10 minutes. I wonder if this fear is triggered by such BAD advertising, even though the advertizers mean nothing by it. I have a suggestion that may put a stop to this: I am going to call (or write) A.O.P.A. and see what they can do. If a lot of us net-landers who are members do this (and maybe even non-members) they may get the idea. Talk to all your pilot buddies (who are not net-landers) and have them do the same. I am also going to call my state's Transportation Department and see if there's anything they can do. Maybe they'll direct me to someone who CAN help. If I find out who we can complain to in our state I'll let you know, and then all of you can do the same thing in your state. Maybe we can boycott Pepsi Free. Or protest. Media coverage about protests is a good way to get a message across. Any other ideas? Talk to all your pilot buddies who are not net-landers. See if they have any suggestions. Let's see if we can stop this! -Roger P.S. I'm doing this on a machine which is not my normal home, so if you want to send me mail (rather than posting to the net): UUCP: tektronix!dadla!rogers CSnet: rogers%dadla@tektronix ARPAnet: rogers%dadla%tektronix@csnet-relay BELLnet (phone): (503)-629-1911 SNAILnet (U.S. Mail): Roger Southwick Tektronix, Inc. P.O. Box 4600, D.S. 92-731 Beaverton, Oregon 97075