Whenever pilot Carlton Green raises his hand at a meeting of the Friedman Memorial Airport Authority, the board and Airport Manager Rick Baird brace for a testy challenge to airport operations and policies.
Green, who identifies himself as president of the Blaine County Pilots Association, has been an off and on critic of Baird's since the airport began cracking down on toolboxes and other personal items left where small aircraft are tied down on a parking ramp. Green owns a small aircraft and was required to move a toolbox.
And so, Wednesday night Green arrived with a new complaint: the airport's onetime orange wind sock—the mounted cone-shaped device made of nylon that shows wind direction along the runway—was too faded to be seen by pilots landing or taking off.
He was there to make a case for a new wind sock that could be seen.
"We don't want to come back with the same problem over and over," Green said, his face noticeably redder as he spoke to the board but glanced at Baird sitting nearby at the L-shaped meeting table.
That prompted Baird's rejoinder, rejecting Green's allegation that the windsock hadn't been changed in five years and saying Green could've stopped by his office with the complaint and the wind sock would've been replaced.
Thereupon, a small drama began.
While the board moved on to other agenda matters, airport operations manager Peter Kramer left the room, and returned to the Old County Courthouse conference room well under an hour later with the faded wind sock bundled under his arms.
Baird interrupted proceedings to point out that the old wind sock was removed and replaced by Kramer (wind socks are provided by the Idaho Transportation Department's aviation division at no cost to the airport) in a jiffy.
Unsatisfied, Green fired back that "this is why pilots don't speak out—this is the kind of treatment they get" from the airport manager.
Green spent the rest of the meeting reading a book.
