RE: .
Admittedly, I too was surprised to see a jet event having been held at this club. 2009 was indeed a "debacle" and gave our community a well deserved "black eye" at the time, as well as losing the use of a wonderful flying site. However, there is an old saying 'Some times it's not what you say, but how you say it" followed closely by "It's not always what you do, but how you do it". The reintroduction of a turbine event of any type at this particular locale, is, and should have been see as a positive and hopeful occurrence. Unfortunately THE WAY it was presented to the jet community, after the fact, was, based on the obvious responses posted, not particularly effective in a positive way.
Without going into detail of all that was wrong, lets just say a more positive approach would have been to simply announce the event ahead of time, as a limited re-introduction of turbines to the field, considering the issues had with the 2009 event. The 25 pilot limit will clearly force some great pilots to be excluded, but some sacrifices have to be made to insure the success of this first re-attempt. Please bear with us while we work out the details, but, hey JETS ARE BACK IN INDIO!
I honestly don't believe there would have been a single objection to this approach. As it is, due to the unfortunately negative way in which this was presented(judged by the comments posted) a positive additional sponsor has been caught up in issues they had nothing to do with and, potentially been lost to the community. (based on the deleting of all of his posts) Hopefully the club will take an honest look on the "how" this event transpired and look to a better way, in the future to handle it's continuation. And maybe it's time for the jet community to give the organizers a break. The mistake was in the telling, not the doing. There was no "ill will". An apparently great event was held and enjoyed by those in attendance. Their efforts are to be applauded.
My two cents. Just for the record: I wasn't invited either.
David S