AOPA Pilot Blog: Reporting Points

Those of you who liked the March AOPA Pilot’s story–and there were a lot, judging by my inbox–on the Virginia Beach, Virginia police helicopter unit may be interested to know that the pilot featured in the article (“Eyes in the Sky”) paid a visit to AOPA headquarters. David Cook was taking some time off, and flew from his home field in Norfolk to FDK. And no, he didn’t fly the Bell 407 he flies on duty. Instead, he flew his personal Cherokee 140.

MPO Dave Cook, Virginia Beach Police Dept. (center),
with ‘AOPA Pilot’ Editor in Chief Tom Haines (left) and
‘AOPA Pilot’ Editor at Large Tom Horne (right)

I gave Cook the “dollar” tour, which included the chance to meet with all the AOPA Pilot and Flight Training staffers, plus stops at each of AOPA’s divisions. He was an especially big hit in the Membership Department, where a few staffers postively swarmed Cook. “I’m not a celebrity!” Cook protested. But never mind. In the end, he lent his autograph to staffer Kim Lee’s copy of the March issue.

Then it was over to the “Airway Inn”, the airport restaurant. He had a club sandwich. I had a burger. Then he was off to Kentucky to meet his relatives, taking with him the extra magazines we gave him–and a couple of poster-sized covers of the March issue. A half-hour later I called up his N-number on Flightaware.com. He was over Martinsburg, WV, doing 107 knots and no doubt wearing a smile.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 10:52 am and is filed under Tom Horne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.