I’ve been donating rides in my airplane and helicopter to charities with good results (between $400 and $1200 raised for each ride). I’m wondering if anyone among the readers has a local Boston charity and would like to auction some rides in my aircraft. If so, please contact me via email. I have prepared some pages that explain the rides to donors:
- http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/charity (for the airplane)
- http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/charity-helicopter (for the two-seat helicopter)
- http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/charity-helicopter-r44 (four-seat helicopter; not available until June)
Thanks.
I think that is amazingly generous. Would you actually consider taking people up for a fee without an auction??
The part where you mention trying your hands at the controls sounds like a lot of fun. Another question, in the link for the Cirrus the plane had a parachute, does your plane have one?
Chris: My plane supposedly has a parachute, but I have not verified this by pulling the big red handle! I’m an instructor at East Coast Aero Club and anyone can rent a plane and me by the hour (a little over $100 for the Katanas, which are fun airplanes, and $225/hour for the Robinson). I need to build 50 extra hours of non-instructional helicopter time ASAP. Maybe I will do a Dutch auction among the readers of this Weblog who live in Boston!
For both the charity and Dutch auctions, you might mention that people could make “gift-certificate” donations, if they lived far from Boston but had family/friends in New England.
To spur donations (and rides), what can you say about making photos from an R22? Angles/altitudes, quality of light, haze, composition, lenses, vibration, example images, etc? Or perhaps you can recommend some great links for aerial/helocopter photography? Relatedly, sorta, perhaps you could “rent” your new Canon 5D for an extra $100 donation.
I agree with Chris, this is wonderfully generous, and a great win-win-win proposition.
A charity flight gone wrong:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-plane14mar14,0,4941626.story?coll=la-home-local
I’m curious to learn how all three occupants ended up dead. Looks very surviveable.
Excellent Blog. Very informative. Online Auctions are really looking up with more and more people interested in buying and selling product online.
Keep it up. We need more such blogs which provide quality information.
Thank you