by Scott Thompson

As the weather turns nicer we look forward to springtime flying activities and several important chapter events occurring in the next month.

Besides our normal programs, we have added a Chapter Community Open Hangar that’s coming up very quickly…it is set for Saturday, April 28. The goal of the Open Hangar is to allow you, our members, to reach out to friends and families and invite them out to the airport to see what is going on. We’ll have several airplanes on static display and have some aviation-themed activities available in the hangar between 09:00 am and 11:00 am. At 11:00 we’ll offer a $6 BBQ lunch for some social time. At 12:00 pm we are happy to present Beth Stanton, a local aerobatic pilot, writer, and speaker to present on a subject that reaches beyond the cockpit to life in general. I hope you take the opportunity to invite those around you out to airport for the morning.

Also coming up quickly is our first Young Eagles Rally of 2018. Our chapter has set the date of Saturday, May 12, for the opportunity to introduce aviation to young people aged 8 through 17 years. We are participating in this national EAA program that has flown over 2 million young people since its inception in 1992.

Our chapter is offering online sign ups at https://eaa1541.org/ye but space is limited. We are going to fly a maximum of 75 kids starting at 08:00 am that morning.

As I write this, we have eight pilots signed up online to participate in the event, but I know there are others who are interested in offering their time and airplanes to the event. Please let me know if you are and I will let you know how to sign yourself up as a Young Eagle pilot for our event.

We will also offer another $6 BBQ lunch beginning at 10:30 that morning. We are looking for some chapter member participation so please make yourself available on Saturday, May 12, to help make our first Young Eagles Rally a success.

We have some other things going on, some more obvious and other not so. Among the obvious are some hangar improvements. If you attended our “Pancake Breakfast and A Movie” on April 7, you may have noticed the hangar was in a bit of a disarrayed condition. We have an able team of volunteers from our chapter who have been working to water seal the base rails of the hangar with the intent of making it watertight. In the next weeks we hope to apply a seal coating to the hangar floor and assemble some new storage racks at the back of the hangar. We will then be able to organize and efficiently store our chapter stuff. Weather permitting, we hope to have this work mostly completed by our hangar open house. The weather so far has only cooperated by providing some significant rainfall that allows the water sealing to be checked. Some dry weekends would now be appreciated.

Not so obvious is that the chapter board of directors has established a Learning and Development Program being guided by one of our board members, Erika Wallin. Under this umbrella program our chapter has the goal of widening our scholarship offerings, establish learning grants, enabling a mentorship program, and much more. If you as a chapter member have particular gifts or passion for widening the world of aviation, please contact me or Erika and we can get you plugged in. Don’t be too surprised if you get a tap on the shoulder with a direct face-to-face request to join our chapter’s new initiative. We need a few good folks.