Last weekend I attended the Aircraft Owners and Pilots annual convention in Palm Springs, Calif. It was my first time to this delightful, scenic, mountain-view oasis where many Hollywood stars reside.

Surrounded by mountains on all four sides, the valley is only 95 air miles from Los Angeles 75 from San Diego and 150 from Las Vegas.

I learned from aviation seminars, equipment exhibits and a display of 70 aircraft (which had taxied two miles from the airport to the convention center).

One of the seminars was on how to publish an aviation book. It included nuts-and-bolts information on self-publishing, vanity publishing, copywriting, getting your ISBN library bar-code number, marketing and so forth.

Another seminar included how to take aerial photographs. You had a choice of over 40 different seminars.

The advanced navigation equipment and turboprop engines are revolutionizing aviation, which has recently seen a major increase in student pilots and aircraft sales.

Government regulation and liability laws have stagnated aviation for years. JANE GARVEY, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, announced the first new general-aviation airplane certificate in over 15 years -- the CIRRUS -- at the convention. The Cirrus airplane features new moving-map, strong-visual avionics, composite construction and a unique aircraft parachute safety system.

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It was 36 years ago when it was proven wrong that we'd never put a man on the moon. In one month the first piece of the long-awaited space platform will be launched.

NASA's administrator, DICK GOLDIN, gave a speech of vision and goals for the future. He pointed out that there are 5,000 public-use airports (served by commercial airlines) but 18,000 small-airport facilities used by corporate and general aviation.

In 1997, general aviation celebrated its safest year in the last 60 ... but Goldin went on to point out that general aviation is rapidly changing (and improving). We now have basically 1940 engines with 1950 construction.

He noted that the automobile replaced the train because it was faster door to door. Today, major airlines are slowing down because of hub traffic (a la TWA at St. Louis Lambert Field). On 300-to-400-mile trips, a passenger averages 50 to 60 mph by the time one drives to the airport, checks in, flies to destination, gets his luggage and checks out a rental car.

That's why more corporations are using their own airplanes to fly to the smaller airports where they are locating factories amongst available, productive, non-urban workers.

It was also pointed out that "one mile of concrete gets you one mile ... while one mile of runway gets you anywhere."

Goldin also noted that automobile speeds have been basically flat for the last 10 years. He forecast the doubling of air transportation (commercial and private) in the next 10 to 15 years as especially smaller aircraft will increase speed and lower time from door to door.

Goldin concluded by stating that highways in the sky will redefine freedom and that his goals might be visionary, but "You don't make progress if you don't have failure, and if you don't have failure you haven't set your goals high enough."

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Please study the sample ballots and vote YES on BOTH ballots to support the RIVER CAMPUS development.

Low profile: Robert Samuelson of Newsweek is one member of the mainstream press who acknowledges the need for character in the presidency. He notes that President Clinton said in his State of the Union address this year, "I propose that we reserve 100 percent of the surplus ... until we have taken all the necessary measures to strengthen the Social Security system for the 21st century." But now the president boasts of the extra spending he engineered in last week's budget deal in violation of his earlier pledge. Samuelson writes, "Here is fresh evidence (in any were needed) that this president's truth is whatever he wants it to be and whatever he thinks will play. It doesn't matter whether the subject is his sex life, schools or Social Security.: Many members of the president's party are trying to use schools and Social Security as reasons to stop talking about adultery and lying under oath, but it is silly to pretend that a leader's character doesn't county.

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.