by Scott Thompson
Chapter President

Lots of stuff going on these days and it seems a bit hard to keep up, at least for me. But it has been a productive few weeks for our chapter. We held a very successful Young Eagle Rally on Saturday, October 6, that saw seventy-two young people experience aviation up close and personal. Ten pilots and a bunch of chapter volunteer help and a Jr. ROTC group pitched in to make the day fun and safe. Our chapter’s Young Eagle Coordinator, Cheryl Andrade, did a great job of organizing things and it showed. Thanks much to Cheryl and the team of volunteers that made it possible.

Also, as you wander into the chapter hangar these days you might see a few changes in the audio-visual department. Our big screen is now mounted on the south wall of the hangar along with two speakers. And, our AV projector is suspended from the ceiling. This works very well for both sound and picture quality. We can thank Darren Coomier for leading the design and fabrication team that did this work.

Now the last piece of the audio-visual puzzle needs to be completed. Members and visitors may have noticed that every time we have a program we also usually have a crowd of perplexed individuals huddled around our audio-visual table scratching heads and silently cursing. I’m usually in the middle of that group as we try and figure out how to blend digital and analog electrons together with a confusing mixing board.

Well, those days may be coming to an end as we have now have actually read the mixing board instruction manual. Who knew? Yes, we now have a glimmer of understanding and with the addition of a yet one more black box and remote control,
we may have our audio-visual problems sorted out. This could well save me a frustrating hour at every meeting. It’s not that difficult but there seem to be a lot of buttons and none of them seem to do anything. But, we are on the verge of gaining control, something that is good for both airplanes and audio-visual.

Finally, exciting news on our scholarship front as you can see elsewhere in this newsletter. Our chapter is sponsoring two young people, yet to be selected, to the EAA Aviation Academy at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, next summer. This is the first fruit of our initiative to take advantage of the funds we have in our Richard and Susan Bristow Memorial Scholarship Program. It’s a great start.