Presidents Letter

 

EAA92 Members and Friends,

We had a fantastic success with our Brat Booth at the Planes of Fame Chino Airshow this year.  We sold more than half our brats by the end of the day Saturday, and finished them off by early afternoon on Sunday.  We still have hot dogs left, but they will get used in our Young Eagles events.

We want to thank all of the 45+ volunteers who came out to help with the brat booth, EAA92 recruiting table, transient aircraft parking and booth setup/teardown.  Hope you enjoyed yourselves, had plenty to eat, and didn’t get any serious sunburn.

All of this would not have gone so smoothly without the skilled and able efforts of our event chairman, Thom Steury, and his resourceful assistant, Debbie Cavanaugh.  There is a huge amount of preparation and logistics effort that goes into making this event run each year, and Thom has done a tremendous job in recent years in making this an enjoyable success for everyone.

Our new Young Eagles chairman, Zack Cavanaugh, presided over his first solo running of our May 18 Young Eagles event at Yanks Air Museum, and judging by the smiles on the faces of the Young Eagles, it was a resounding success.  The forecast for cloudy and deteriorating weather seems to have scared away some of the kids, but in the end we had 40 Young Eagles and 4 pilots, which worked out nicely.

Thanks to our YE pilots for the day: the team of Don Mikami and Ed Martell, Jay Steffenhagen, Steve Livingston, and Dave Prizio.

Jenee Steury ran the registration and orientation process on the front end, and Zack took care of running marshalling and matching up YE’s and pilots following their ground school activities.  Along with a crew of able volunteers on the grill and lunch table, and the ground school stations, everything went smoothly.

A special thanks to Yanks for pre-staging our tables and chairs for the ground school and parents, and also for providing some super large picnic tables for the parents and YE’s to use for lunch and plane watching.

We have also firmed up our Young Eagle event schedule for the rest of the year, with rallies scheduled for Sunday, September 22 at Planes of Fame / Cal Aero; and Saturday, October 19 at Yanks Air Museum.   EAA has a new web-based registration system for Young Eagles and pilots and volunteers that will be in use for our Sept and Oct events.  So stay tuned for instructions from Zack as to how to access and sign up on the system for future events.  The new system will speed up the registration and check-in process, and provide for fast transfer of Young Eagle ride info to EAA HQ.

We unfortunately had to vacate our Builder Center hangar space in February to make way for more maintenance space for Chino Aviation.  We continue to scout for a replacement hangar for our builders, so if you find a possible hangar, please let us know.

‘Til next time,

Jim Randall, President, EAA92

A Visitor from Far Off Oshkosh-Land

We don’t often get out-of-town visitors when our EAA Chapter 92 holds our Young Eagle rallies at Chino Airport. Mostly the ground volunteers and volunteer pilots come from our chapter, the local SoCal Pilots organization, other EAA chapters in the area, or friends and neighbors. But at our March 24 event at Planes of Fame / Cal Aero Country Club, we had an unexpected visitor from the still-wintery land of Wisconsin.

When I arrived at the Cal Aero hangar to help set up the ground school tables, there was a green-shirted stranger chatting with one of our volunteers. Turns out he was lost –well, sort of. He was in town for business the following week and had an idle day to explore Chino airport and the mu-seums. He was actually looking, at that very moment, for a restroom. He passed by Flo’s but was discouraged by the long line of people waiting to get in for Sunday breakfast and early lunch. So he drove down Cal Aero drive, past the Planes of Fame Museum parking lot, which was also packed and busy, and happened to notice the open pedestrian gate at the Cal Aero hanger. He parked and walked through the gate and around the corner -and surprise!! -happened into the middle of preparations for our Young Eagle rally.

But as it turned out, this guy was no stranger to Young Eagle rallies; he was Shane Baker, the president of EAA Chapter 93 in Madison, Wisconsin! So of course we did what any respectable EAA chapter would do –we put him to work.

We had a great rally with 45+ kids and 5 pilots, and Shane manned the Navigation ground school table. You could tell he had done this before, because he had the kids spellbound with his navigation lessons, as is evident in the photos.

After the rally, Shane managed to beg a ride in Jay Steffenhagen’s Bonanza, since he has a 1965 Cessna 172 at home, and had never experienced a Bonanza be-fore. When everyone headed home, I got his car through the gate so he could ex-plore the wonders of the Chino hangars.

His family came out for a holiday during his business meetings, and on Friday I got a call that he had a new, but unwanted printer that he offered to donate to the chapter. So I met them down near Orange County airport to transfer the printer, and then we went on a tour of the GA side of John Wayne airport.Shane has a 14-something year old son, Owen, who initially seemed pretty quiet. But on our tour of the GA tie downs, we came upon Bob Lange working on his new (to him) L-19 Birddog. Bob went through the full story on the L-19, and then Shane happened to notice Bob’s Army Mule. Bob fired it up and offered to teach Owen how to drive the stick shift. Owen hung back initially, not knowing how to drive a stick, plus it was much cruder that the John Deere he had at home, but Bob ORDERED him to jump on board –as only a Marine Lt. Col. can do. They took off up the tie-down row, and returned –with a HUGE smile on Owen’s face. I think Shane’s next job is to find Owen an Army Mule.

6of 12A Visitor From Far Off Oshkosh-LandWe continued our tour past the GA tie-downs and around to the east side of the field where the business jets live, and Owen, now energized, was suitably im-pressed. Madison’s Dane County airport is a Class C, similar to Orange County, with a mix of GA, airlines, and business jets, but due to the cold climate, most planes are hidden in hangars and not visible when you drive around.

Shane invited everyone to stop by Madison’s Dane County Airport, where Chapter 93 is based, the weekend before EAA AirVenture on their way to Oshkosh, be-cause the big bombers (including Doc) hang out there for Heavy Bomber Weekend, offering rides and exhibits. Click here for more details, and tell them EAA Chapter 92 sent you. They’ll put you to work.

 

Chapter 92 News

August Chapter BBQ

Sign up for our annual chapter BBQ coming up on Saturday, Aug 24 from 4 to 8 PM at Dave Prizio’s hangar at Chino Airport.  Check for details on our Events calendar.

Builder Center

We are still looking for a hangar at Chino Airport to use as a chapter Builder Center.  If you have a lead on one, contact Brad Rawls: eaa92buildercenter@gmail.com

Base Ops

Base Ops is looking for a new manager.  If you are out at the Chino Airport often, and can drop by Base Ops to make sure everything is OK and can call Maintenance if anything on the building or with the utilities needs fixed, then contact any of our officers or board members.

Membership Dues

We have decided to change our annual chapter dues cycle so that all dues are payable on Jan. 1.  This will simplify the dues collection process, and will also simplify the process for the members.