Since I'm no longer flying full-scale, Don's ability within AOPA has limited interest to me. While it may be reasuring to see unrelated successes elsewhere to indicate that the guy is not a total loser, I actually care only about what he is able to get done within the AMA.

I recall watching a TV series in the UK, in which an extremely experienced and talented "troubleshooter / turn-around guy" would go to a company or organization that was having difficulties, analyze the problems, and turn the companies around. He did a fantastic job in numerous companies, and then he went to the Morgan motor car company (makers of hand-built sports cars) ; despite him quickly determining what the various problems were, and trying his best to resolve them, he was continuously hampered by the efforts of the existing head-honcho who seemed to spend much of his time & effort deliberately undermining the expert and working to prejudice the rest of work-force against the improvement plans. Result - total failure ; all of the well thought out improvements were ignored and instead the company fell back on its "maybe if we just keep hoping, we might be able to turn out 9.5 cars per week instead of the 9 that we manage now" approach - totaly ignoring the fact that those exact same hopes alone had not worked in the past. Depending on how DB behaves and who he manages to influence, the AMA could be Koranda's "Morgan".

So, when I said I was looking for firm results, I'm talking about seeing results of Koranda achieving useful change at the AMA, not at AOPA or NAA etc., because even if he is a really smart guy, the support or otherwise that he gets from DB and others can make a very big difference to the outcome.

Yes, I'm a cynic when it comes to the AMA, but I didn't used to be that way ... the AMA itself caused the transformation in my attitude to them. While there is always some hope, any hope & expectations that I may have are always tempered with the recollection that any time in the past when I've gotten my hopes up about anything to do with the AMA, such hopes have proven to be misplaced. If we had Don Koranda without DB in the picture at all then my hopes would be higher - but with DB still in he picture I can only expect more of the same old nonsense that his leadership has brought us in the past, and be pleasantly surprised if Don is able to make improvemets despite DB.

Gordon