k5083 wrote:
The Cub thing was in an earlier year. In 2021 he flew his DC-3 in, but the EAA dragged it out of showplane parking and told him to leave. He posted a short vid right after Oshkosh claiming that the guys towing his plane around the field had open beer cans, and adding some nonsense about EAA not having the right to drag his plane off a public airport, plus a general rant about EAA management and a promise to do a long vid blowing the lid off everything. I didn't think this would go well for him and was looking forward to the circus, but it seems like in a rare moment of prudence, he decided not to go through with it.
August
This is not the first time that he decided not to go through with a threat he made. If you remember, he uploaded a pretty scathing indictment against the TBM Avenger pilot that ditched off Florida. He published parts 1 and 2 of his rant and promised parts 3 and 4, but as far as I know parts 3 and 4 were never uploaded. Supposedly, parts 3 and 4 were going to "blow the lid off" of whatever incriminating evidence he managed to uncover about the incident. On one of his videos (not sure if it's still there), he said that someone (Valiant Air Command or someone associated with the Avenger) threatened legal action against him for his videos that he uploaded. I never saw parts 3 or 4 of that video series and he never carried through with his threat. Unfortunately, Gryder seems to always dig deeper and deeper holes and gets himself into trouble. At the most, he is completely alienating himself to most of the pilot/avation community (warbird or otherwise), at the very least, he may be opening himself up for legal action.
The problem I have is that he seems to be an advocate for aviation safety (very good thing!), but he doesn't practice what he preaches. I'm involved in warbird operations and safety and attend a lot of the nation-wide conferences at Oshkosh, NWOC, NATA, etc, but I've never seen him in person at any of these over the years. He seems to like to "air dirty laundry" for everything about avation (warbird or otherwise), but doesn't participate in any of those nation-wide conferences where he could affect real, positive change. He seems to like to be an "armchair critic" via his highly critical youtube videos, but doesn't do anything about it in real life. Because of that, he gives the perception, to me at least, that he likes to be inflammatory just to gain youtube views and/or become a social media hero. In my opinion, that is completely the wrong approach to take if he were truly concerned about aviation safety.