SKYBIRD: Dale Brown’s Ops Report July 2003 Copyright © 2003, TDPI

Some notes about the book tour:

I had an incredible time, and I thank the folks at Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers for a very well orchestrated tour and for their great support while on the road.

Highlights of the tour:

Signing about 500 copies of Air Battle Force for the Costco in San Diego.

Very pleasurable evening talks about current and future military issues with visitors at M Is For Mystery in San Mateo, CA; Book & Co. in Dayton, Ohio; and the Vero Beach Book Center in Vero Beach, FL

Finally meeting my Webmaster, Bill Parker, and his wife, for the very first time, in Houston, Texas.

An incredible booksigning at the Book Expo America event in Los Angeles, with Carl Reiner on one side of me, Jane Seymour on the other, and a very LONG line of fans in front of me. I stayed an extra 30 minutes past my allotted time because I had so many fans waiting for signed books.

A visit to the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills, including a tour of the mansion and the incredible estate by Hugh Hefner's friend and my publicist Warren Cowan; meeting Hef himself; and celebrating Marilyn Monroe's 77th birthday with Hef's friends, girlfriends, and Bunnies.

Cracking a cylinder in my C-421 on my way to Albuquerque, NM. Fortunately I was able to land at my planned destination without having to shut down the engine. The folks at Cutter Aviation at Albuquerque International Sunport had me back in the air in 4 business days. I proceeded to complete the East Coast phase of the tour by commercial airlines. I picked up the 421 after my events in Florida and was able to successfully complete the rest of the tour in it.

Dodging thunderstorms trying to get into Houston, Texas. I started diverting around thunderstorms around Little Rock, Arkansas, but by Shreveport, Louisiana it was obvious I wasn't going to land at Sugar Land Airport near Houston, even if I was able to safely go around all the cells in my flight path. But what surprised me was the next morning--the thunderstorms were still hanging around. It wasn't until Saturday morning that I was able to get in.

Big surprises turning into pleasant experiences:

I filed an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) flight plan leaving Springdale, Arkansas, with a planned fuel stop at Alamosa, Colorado, on my way back to Lake Tahoe. The briefing I received before the flight included weather and NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen) for the route of flight…

… but somehow did not include the NOTAM that told me that Alamosa Airport was closed due to runway resurfacing, a fact that I did not find out about until about 45 minutes from landing. This was not a new NOTAM either--Alamosa had been closed for the preceeding 4 weeks!

Fortunately the weather was good, but with building thunderstorms all around that hopefully wouldn't become a factor until later in the day. I pulled out my charts and Flight Guide and found Stevens Field at Pagosa Springs, Colorado, only twenty minutes or so farther west.

Pagosa Springs looks like an outdoorsman's Paradise: skiing, golfing, hiking, biking, and plenty of open skies, open countryside, and fresh air. I was met by Tylor Hall, the new owner of Wind Dancer Aviation Services, and I had a very pleasant chat with him and an overall good experience. Stevens Field is just beginning a massive $16 million airfield renovation project, including lengthening and strengthening the runways and adding instrument approach and automated weather equipment. Wind Dancer Aviation is part of a company called Energy & Engine Technologies Inc., which purchased a number of STCs for turbonormalizing piston engines and is involved with future innovations in general aviation engine technology.

Despite cracking steel and Mother Nature's roadblocks, I was late for just one event (B. Dalton's Booksellers at The Galleria in Houston), which I did Saturday afternoon instead of Friday. If you would like to have a book signed and we missed each other at this event, please write to me at hq@megafortress.com and we'll make arrangements.

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Air Battle Force (MAY 2003) Maverick Pilot Patrick McLanahan Takes aerial warfare into unknown territory in a heart racing new adventure. Still smarting from recent losses, the brilliant but unpredictable former USAF Major General is accepted back into the fold and assigned a simple task: devise and build the air combat unit of the future. McLanahan's answer: the Air Battle Force - a rapid-response team of elite commandos protected by state-of-the-art body armour and supported by an armada of anmanned planes. His idea is soon put to the test when the oil rich Republic of Turkmenistan becomes a battleground between Taliban insurgents, former Soviet overlords, Iranian opportunists and American oil companies and politicians. But can a handful of commandos half a world away, aided by an unproven force of robot warplanes, fight and win a war in which semingly everyone - even 'friendly' forces at home - want them to fail? 'Whe a former pilot turns his hand to thrillers you can take their authenticity for granted. His writing is exceptional and the dialogue, plots and characters are first-class... far too good to be missed.' --Sunday Mirror ‘Dale Brown is a superb storyteller’ --WASHINGTON POST ‘Dale Brown is the best military adventure writer in the country’ --CLIVE CUSSLER

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