EAA Chapter 1541’s Fourth Saturday BBQ Lunch and Program will be held on Saturday, January 27, from 11:00 am until 1:00 pm. The BBQ Lunch starts at 11:00 at our hangar at the Lincoln Regional Airport. If you are not familiar with our hangar’s location, come to the airport and just follow the “EAA” signs.
The grill is hot from 11:00 a.m. until 11:45 a.m. when it shuts down, so come early. BBQ Lunch is $10.00 for adults, $5.00 for kids 17 or under (yep, we changed the age range to 17 and under), and $25 for families.
There will be a short business meeting at 11:45, followed by our program beginning at 12:00 noon.
Our program for January will be presented by chapter member Cris Ferguson. He will speak on designing, building, and flying the LR1 biplane air racer. Cris flew the LR1 when he won the 2007 National Champion Air Race for the Biplane Class.
Cris has been flying since he was 12 years old. Since then, he has accumulated more than 5,000 flight hours in 75 different aircraft ranging from a 1918 Jenny bi-plane to a Grumman US-2C Tracker. He has flown competitive aerobatics, performed in more than 80 air shows, and raced at the Reno National Championship Air Races in the Bi-Plan class and Formula One class for 20 years. Besides this, he also holds an Airframe and Powerplant mechanics certificate With Inspection Authorization.
He owned an S1-C Pitts for 22 years which he rebuilt from the wheels up. It had a highly modified engine capable of generating 230+ horsepower and he used this for airshows and air racing for many years.
His passion is building and designing experimental aircraft and race planes. This led him into the aircraft restoration business after he rebuilt a fellow racer’s aircraft after it was damaged in a runway accident.
In 2000, he moved to Arkansas to help start C & H Aircraft Restoration, Inc. Projects he worked on included an AQC-6 Cabin Waco and Meyers 145 (one of only 20 in existence). Plus, he designed and built a new race plane, the LR1, for fellow race pilot Jeff Lo; it debuted at the Reno Air Races in 2003. Chris later flew the LR1 himself at Reno and won the National Championship in the Biplane class.
Additionally in years past he worked for All Coast Aircraft Recovery. In moving various types of military aircraft across the United States for museums, he gained a wealth of knowledge and expertise.
In 2011 he and his wife Margret moved to California where he worked as the Service Manager for Selway Machine Tool Company in Hayward and retired from them in 2022.
Today he lives in Yuba City and joined Chapter 1541 last fall.
The IMC/VMC club meeting for January will be held Thursday, January 4th beginning at 7 pm Pacific time. The program will include discussion of two “What Would You Do?” video scenarios. The VMC scenario involves a flight to a remote airport in the desert east of San Diego, where you bounce twice trying to land and are unsure of what to do next. The IMC scenario involves an IFR training flight where communications become garbled at a critical time.