Kermit’s Blog

Last year I joined an Internet Marketing Group called AM 2.0 headed my Armand Morin.  Realizing the potential of the Internet, I have been trying to learn all I can to utilize it in the promotion of Fantasy of Flight and the products I am creating. 

 With the help of my IT department I have been working diligently to check off a 114-point list of items relating to our first promotional effort - my new illustrated children’s book “All of Life is a School”.  Once accomplished, we will be eligible to join a Platinum Group of Internet Marketers that are on the cutting edge of the business.

Well, while our athletes have been winning Gold at the Olympics in China this summer, we just got the annoucement this morning that we have completed our requirements and have now gone Platinum!  We have been invited to our first meeting in in Raleigh, NC early September.  As part of the two-day meetings, we will be given the opportunity to bring to the best minds in the business our ideas about what we would like to get input about.  And since we have a plan in place for the Gee Bee Book, I hope to bring to the group the concept we have for the song I wrote called “Daddy’s Little Girl!”

The instrumental tune was written by a friend of mine, Mark Johnson about three years ago and it’s on his second album called Acoustic Rising.  He is a renowned banjo player with a unique style and named the tune “Katie Weeks” after my little girl.  The album went up for the International Bluegrass Music Awards “Instrumental Album of the Year”.  And while it didn’t win, it is one of the most requested songs off that album on Bluegrass XM Radio.

 After we heard him play it at a music festival several years ago and got the CD, words and visuals began to come to me.  I realized I was supposed to write words to his music!  I have completed a rough recording but will be back in the studio for the final version.  Every father with a daughter I have played it to has been teary eyed by the end of the song.  It has great potential to be put to a short music video and we hope to find a way to bypass the “difficult to deal with music industry” and promote in via the Internet.

Stay tuned as we head towards a June of 2009 release!

Kermit

I just learned how to put pictures up on my Blog so check them out.One is of a new friend that came for a tour of Fantasy of Flight that I met at the Living Legends of Aviation Dinner I attended last January in Beverly Hills. I was inducted several years ago and my new friend was inducted this year. He had his private Boeing 707 up at the Oshkosh Fly-In.

The other friend is a well-known film director from New Zealand. He did a couple of films about “Rings” and another recent one featuring a very Big Gorrilla! I got a chance to fly in one of his absolutely gorgeous SE-5 reproductions with another friend of mine outside of Wellington, NZ while he stood in the middle of the airfield with an HD Camera. I was very fortuante to spend my Birthday at his house with his family on my last round the world trip. They gave me a signed statue of the Big Gorilla grabbing an airplane on the top of the Empire State Building!

 Kermit

Having traveled around the world, then to Oshkosh and then to the west coast, I am finally home for awhile!

I just returned from San Francisco where I acquired a reproduction aircraft of the ”Miss Los Angeles” Racer that is one of the characters featured in my book “All of Life is a School”.  This new addition of “Missy”  will bring the total number of characters I will have on display at Fantasy of Flight to five of ten!  I am working on a plan to display the aircraft at the Reno Air Races Septemeber 10 - 14 to help promote the book sales and have it home sometime after.

By the end of my trip I also hit a major milestone in my book “The Journey Never Ends!”  I have completed semi-final drafts of the ten main chapters that describe my experiences during the ten Monroe Insitute Programs I attended beginning in January of 2006 and ending in November 2007.  It was an unbelieveable experience  that was basically  exploration of consciousness that was nothing short of profound, phenomenol and at times unbelievable.  I have a rough Introduction and Summary as well.  I will continue to edit and proof read as time allows and hope to publish the book sometime in 2009.

 Kermit

It’s Thursday, August 31st and we’ve passed the halfway mark of AirVenture 2008. In just three and a half days I completely sold out of the 420 books shipped up and of those, I personally signed over 300!

EAA had me set up in the “Wearhouse” by Aeroshell Square in the Author’s corner and also had the books for sale in two other locations including the Museum. It was a lot of work but I really enjoyed meeting and talking to everyone. Fantasy of Flight has a lot of supporters out there.

Thanks!

Kermit

As most of you know Hurricane Andrew devastated the Weeks Air Museum in Miami in August of 1992. As we were digging out of the rubble in Miami and rebuilding the Museum down there we slowly began the development of Fantasy of Flight here in Central Florida. Many of the airplanes were either sent out for repair or slowly moved to Central Florida. A new group of enthusiasts continued on with the Miami facility as the Wings Over Miami Museum.

My last flyable airplane on display in Miami was a Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bomber. Over the years, the Hurricane damage was repaired with the intention of flying it to Fantasy of Flight. Well, last week was the big date to test fly the aircraft and hopefully bring it up. I had last flown the TBM since just before the Hurricane over 15 years ago and needed to get recurrent at the same time I was test flying the airplane as the FAA requires a re-currency check on any airplanes over 12,500 lbs. The first flight went great and my only concern was I had recently been flying my little Grumman Wildcat fighter and when I got the TBM off the ground I thought the control stick had somehow been set in concrete! I couldn’t believe how heavy the controls were compared to the Wildcat. It all slowly came back to me and I became comfortable very quickly.

While I got my recurrency check complete, I was not able to fly the airplane home as it developed some ignition problems. We had to take the magnetos off as well and order a new set of spark plugs. As soon as that is fixed, we will get the airplane up to Fantasy of Flight! I drove home with the check-pilot and we then jumped into the Ford Tri-Motor and I got recurrent in that. So, if you come to visit in the future there is a chance you may see the Grumman Wildcat, the Grumman TBM or the Ford Tri-Motor in the pattern!

I am also about to head off around the world with a first top in Maui to work on a book about my 10-Program experience at the Monroe Institute. If you think you might be interested in exploring Inner Consciousness and Out of Body experiences, check out www.monroeinstitute.org. I hope to have most the book, “The Journey Never Ends!”, edited by the end of this year.

I’m then off to New Zealand to spend some time with Peter Jackson (director of Lord of the Rings and King Kong). He is a WWI airplane nut like me and has an amazing bunch of airplanes being built up. I loaned him 3 WWI German Mercedes engines and will get to see the first one running on the stand while I’m down there. He is using them for patterns and is in process of building engines from SCRATCH! We also just send him a crankshaft for a Hisso for one of his SE-5’s he built. I hope to get to fly one while I’m there. I had also loaned him the front and rear turrets off my Lancaster Project as he is under development to redo the “Dambuster” film! He had about eight full-size Lancs built out of fiberglass. I am sure he will do a great job and can’t wait to see the film!

Then I’m off to Australia for some business meetings, but not before I stop in and look at my Kingfisher and P-39 projects in Wangaretta, north of Melbourne. I continue on to London to check on the final stages of my Hawker Tempest V project, which we are bringing up to displayable condition. Everything has been rebuilt to airworthy standards but we are currently just trying to get it displayable for Fantasy of Flight. I have two Napier Sabre engines for it and one day hope to make it fly!

I get home just in time to catch up for a few days and then head to Oshkosh to promote my book, “All of Life is a School!” It’s all about the Journey so enjoy what you love to do!

Kermit

I have been working with the EAA Merchandising Department for the Oshkosh Fly-In and they are excited that I will be at Oshkosh promoting my new book “All of Life is a School”. They have signed me up for the Author’s Corner in the main EAA Merchandising Building everyday at 1:00pm Monday through Saturday of the Fly-In (July 28th to August 2nd) to autograph books!

I understand they will also offer the book at several other merchandising locations including the EAA Museum where they plan to set up special displays for the books as well as kids Gee Bee clothing. We’ve got some cute T-shirts and dresses with Zee, Puff and Jimmy G. on them. They have asked for several life-size displays of me holding Gee Bee Zee to help promote the book, similar to what we currently have in the Fantasy of Flight Gift Shop.

I have also been in touch with the Reno Air Race people as well. They are interested in selling the book at the Air Races this year in Reno, NV September 10th - 14th. I plan to meet with them at the Oshkosh Fly-In at their display booth near Aeroshell Square to sort out the details. If it looks promising enough, I just may head out to the Races to meet and greet people and autograph books. We’ll see!

Hope to see you at Oshkosh!

Kermit

The show came about when I was approached last summer by some film people out of Orlando with the idea to create a TV show. We did about five days of filming at Fantasy of Flight that showed who we are, what we are, and where we are headed. It mainly focused on myself, the Aircraft Department and what we do with the airplanes at Fantasy of Flight. It also showed a bit of my vision of what I think we can create as well.

It has to potential to serve two purposes. First, it is at a minimum a one-hour stand-alone show. Secondly, it could be seen a a possible pilot for a “reality” series. We certainly have a lot of exciting stuff happening at Fantasy of Flight, that’s for sure. I think the production value of the aircraft collection and the facility combined with my vision for what I hope to create, someone could make for an interesting show.

The WIZARD OF ORLAMPA title was actually suggested by the production company after spending a lot of time with me discussing Fantasy of Flight and what I hoped to create with it.

Many years ago there was an article in the Orlando Sentinel about me called “The Mayor of Orlampa!” I originally coined the phrase Orlampa and actually trademarked it. It is an obvious combination of Orlando and Tampa and describes our location perfectly as we are exactly halfway between. While I am the Mayor by default because I own all the property, I am striving to become a Wizard! When you see the show you will understand the metaphor.

We premiered the “Wizard of Orlampa” for the Fantasy of Flight employees and it was a big hit. We then began sending out copies to various cable networks. There has been interest but nothing conclusive yet. We’ve had some good comments from directors and producers and have no problem easily tweaking the show in the studio to make it better. Not ever having done this before, I couldn’t tell you when we might see it on the air but if something doesn’t happen soon, I will at least start selling DVD’s of it in the Gift Shop!

I wrote the theme song for the show and had it recorded at a local Florida Studio and it sounds great!

Hope you get to see it soon!

Kermit

I am so excited the Gee Bee Books are finally in! The initial order was for 5000 books and they are now on sale in the Fantasy of Flight Gift Shop as well as on www.amazon.com. They should also be up shortly on our own www.geebee.com website.

The book is called ALL OF LIFE IS A SCHOOL and is a 64-page illustrated children’s book based on REAL HISTORY, REALY AIRPLANES and REAL CHARACTERS! It takes place at a mythical airfield called “Fantasy of Flight” where everyone pushes their boundaries and strives to become all they can be. I came up with the idea four years ago and it has been a very interesting, fun, and educational experience. Not only about how to go about doing a book but learning copyright laws, self-publishing, marketing, distribution, grammar, punctuation and what teachers want to see in a book for 3-8 year olds! All that I have learned from this experience will make any future projects a lot easier.

We are also working on a separate kid-friendly website that will have fun and games as well as information about the characters. We will soon be recording some character voices for the site so, I think we might have as much fun creating as the kids will visiting it. Later, I plan to add a cute Gee Bee theme song I wrote so, check watch for the site announcement in future posts.

If you are fortunate to purchase the book at Fantasy of Flight we also have some really cute kids shirts and dresses for sale with the main characters on them: Gee Bee Zee, Jimmy G. Gee Bee and Puff. If you see me around Fantasy of Flight, don’t be shy about asking me to autograph the book for you!

Hope to see you soon.

Kermit

I pulled the trigger on the final proofs for the Book. It is at the printer and hopefully soon I will get a delivery date. I would suspect sometime in March. We have a great stand-up poster in the Fantasy of Flight entrance that is a full size picture of me in a flight suit holding “Zee!” We are working on getting some great shirts for the kids of Zee, Puff and Jimmy as well as some cute baby blankets and other embroidered items.

It’s been a long time coming and I am glad that we should have product soon!

Kermit

Hey everybody!

 I am just getting my first ever blog site going and plan to keep everyone up to date as to all the exciting things I am up to!

 Kermit