President’s Corner

by Scott Thompson
Greetings from the new chapter president. I am taking over from Ron Wright’s capable hands as his 2016-2017 term concludes. Ron navigated our chapter through some hangar decisions and started some initiatives that continue to benefit the chapter. Many thanks to him for his dedicated service but, as an aside, he reassured me that he is not going anywhere. He plans on being just as involved as he was before…just not in an active leadership role.

For the 2018-2019 term, our chapter leadership team has some new faces. The new chapter Board of Directors has four newcomers adding to the four remaining from the past year, but we also enjoy some stability as Jim Hughes remains as Secretary/Treasurer and Tom Lieb moves from the board to the vice president position. Still, the chapter is in a bit of a transition.

For me, the transition is more than new people. Chapter 1541 has been around for five years and we have about 100 members, give or take a few. We want to build on what we have and take on a few new challenges, and the leadership team is currently working to put some muscle into the skeleton of some good ideas.

We want to expand the chapter’s Young Eagle program, and thus expect to set two Young Eagle events on the calendar for late spring and early fall. We are developing a Youth Scholarship program to promote aviation to local youth. We have some other ideas too that we will explore as the chapter moves forward.

We also want to do a good job on the basics which, for our chapter, takes the form of four events we try and hold each month: a member meeting on the third Wednesday, two Saturday program meetings, and a Saturday Pancake Breakfast with a Movie event. We’re flexible and can move things around as needed, but I think a vibrant chapter needs regular opportunities for flying, hangar flying, education, and eating, not necessarily in that order.

Elsewhere in this newsletter we have some information about some specific things of interest like the hangar situation, the Gold Membership option, and Village 5 and what it means to the future of the Lincoln Airport. Lots of stuff going on and lots of opportunities to get more involved.