Our mailing address is:
EAA Chapter 563
1320 W. Bird Blvd.
Peoria, IL 61615
By phone, the chapter president, J.J. Hoevelmann, is available at (309)303-7200. By e-mail, use info@eaa563.org, which is handled by the chapter secretary, Karl Kleimenhagen. For Young Eagles inquiries in particular, there is eagles@eaa563.org, which routes to Todd Moore, the chapter's coordinator.
Chapter members can access the directory of phone numbers and e-mail addresses stored in the Members section of this site.
To join a local chapter of the EAA, you must hold the corresponding membership category (individual or family) in the national EAA. Chapter dues are $40, individual or family. Our application form can be mailed to the address above or brought to the next chapter meeting.
To park by the chapter hangar, members can request a gate card. Print the Access Card form, fill it out, and leave it in the mailbox next to the bathroom door in the hangar. For legibility, please use block letters. Be sure to sign and date your form in the space just above the Office Use Only section. The middle section ("As the leaseholder...") will be filled out by a chapter officer. The Airport Authority will mail the card to your house, and you will usually have it within two weeks. You might also send a note to the chapter e-mail (above) to let us know your form is in the mailbox.
The chapter is a 501(c)(3) public charity, and donations to it are tax deductible.
Caterpillar employees and retirees who make a donation to the chapter are eligible for a matching gift from the Caterpillar Foundation. When applying for the match, the chapter's entry can be found by searching for "Experimental Aircraft" in Illinois and then selecting Chapter 563. Alternately, our tax ID can be used: 371404957
The chapter is also set up with Benevity, a company used by many large corporations for gift matching, including a number of companies in the Peoria area.
While HQ offers free site hosting for chapters, it is cumbersome. This site is hosted at Hostinger, although the author has also used WebHostingPad with equal success (and at the same low cost). Squarespace (which acquired Google Domains) is used for the domain name server, but either hosting service mentioned can also do this. Pages are coded in HTML and CSS by hand, for which W3schools is a fine reference. Through CSS, an effort has been made to make pages render well on phones, desktops, and printers. Images are reduced at Compress or Die, although Web Resizer was originally used. WinSCP synchronizes the internet site with the editor's copy as kept on a PC. Once set up, this is much easier to maintain than HQ's Sitecore platform.