Valkaria Airport
The Story of Valkaria Bob
 | Valkaria Bob
Valkaria Airport's Official Mascot | Valkaria Bob is our airport's official mascot. For a friendly neighborhood airplane, Valkaria Bob certainly has had an interesting life! He's one of our favorite airport residents and represents many of the ideals of our airport. If there is anyone around who truly represents the face of recreational aviation, it's Valkaria Bob. Always considerate of others and willing to help out with whatever needs to be done, Bob constantly strives to set a good example for the entire airport community.
Bob first came to Valkaria as a mere babe, probably sometime in the early 1990s. He was briefly involved in the airport but spent the next few years quietly buzzing around, out of the limelight. But like most airplanes, he never lost his dream of soaring to greater heights.
 | | Valkaria Bob as a baby | In 2005, Bob's fortunes began to change as rumblings of a desperately-needed update of the Airport Master Plan began to be heard throughout the community. At a Brevard County Commission meeting discussing the possibility of a Master Plan study, Commissioner Ron Pritchard began to grow increasingly tired of the attempts by anti-airport activists to confuse the issue by comparing the term "Airport Master Plan" with other, completely unrelated "Plans" being used for other County projects. Speaking to the barrage of viciously personal and obviously false rhetoric by folks in the meeting who kept claiming that studying a "Master Plan" would trigger a bunch of FAA actions and such, Mr. Pritchard stated "You could call this plan a Master Plan, or you could choose to call it 'Bob' if you want, but whatever you call it, we don't have to do anything just because we conduct a study."
During the next few months, several members of the public, responding positively to the growing interest in the airport, approached the Valkaria Airport Advisory Board concerning a logo for the airport. The VAAB asked for the public's input, and a rough portrait of the "happy airplane" was rediscovered, which was believed to have once been used in an informal manner as a logo.
 | | Valkaria Bob is featured on the official logo of Valkaria Airport | Once it was established that there weren't any copyright issues, and after more public input and suggestions at following VAAB meetings (not to mention getting an "extreme makeover" of sorts, including a wing lift, airflow smoothing, fuel injection and a Mach tuck), our hero was finally officially adopted as part of Valkaria Airport's logo. Commissioner Pritchard's statement was remembered, our friendly neighborhood airplane agreed that he liked the name, and Valkaria Bob was reborn. This all happened in conjunction with the rebirth of the airport that has gone along with the new Master Plan, approved in September 2007.
The next time you're hanging out at the airport, be on the lookout for Valkaria Bob and be sure to say hello!
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