A letter last week decried the broad definition of General Aviation (AVmail, Oct. 31).Any group larger than one will have compromises (ask any married couple). However, the larger and more unified the voice, the greater its strength. For example, I recently spoke to an official from the U.S. Forestry Service, and he said one of the big problems in getting trails made in the woods is that every trail user (hiker, biker, motorcyclist, horse-back rider, etc.) seeks their own agenda and complains about the others. As he put it, Congress hates being yelled at; they approve one trail construction, and all the other groups fight it. If all the trail-users hashed out their differences beforehand and presented a unified message, the desired trails would speed through Congress.The same is true of aircraft. There is enough similarity of interests between a Citation and Cirrus to warrant a single, unified, big voice in Congress to protect those interests. To allow the various sub-groups to start squabbling amongst themselves would break that unity. Our message would be a raucous noise and nothing would get done.We're already pretty fractious as it is. Look at all the "alphabet groups" that exist already: AOPA, EAA, NBAA, ALPA, USHGA, USPPA, USPA, SSA, etc.Furthermore, the assertion that AOPA is wasting resources on the DC-3 airports when most pilots have no desire to go there is selfish. The time to complain about airport restrictions is now, not when they finally get around to one's local field. By then it's too late. That's like complaining about the expense of a robbery investigation of someone else's home because they didn't rob mine.As Benjamin Franklin said, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." The ADIZ comment period has been extended; let's all 600,000 of us take the time to "hang together" and write!Kirk Wennerstrom
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/reader-mail/avmail-nov-14-2005