EAA Chapter 563
The Beacon
March, 2022
Chapter president Greg LePine has been grappling with Covid for a month now. He's mending slowly and is well enough for a previously scheduled trip to see relatives in Texas. He expects to be back in the hangar at the end of this month. With no business at hand, no board meetings were scheduled for February or March, and the chapter secretary has been leading the chapter meetings.
Both Clubs will meet in the hangar on their usual day of the month, the VMC this Sunday and the IMC the following Sunday. The VMC topic this month is handling an emergency while in the pattern of an airport with no control tower.
Bob Pegg organizes the chapter breakfasts but was ill ahead of the last one. Paul and Killian Madeley, the cooks, arrived to find not enough food available to prepare breakfast. They hurried to Kroger and had breakfast ready in time. Thanks go to both of them and to Dave Springer who helped with the pancakes.
Congratulations to Logan Turner for passing his checkride on February 12. Logan received his scholarship after headquarters decided to add a second round of scholarships in 2021. Already well into his flight training, he received a partial scholarship.
Jolene Miller is scheduled for her checkride this month. She was the original 2021 scholarship recipient at the chapter.
Congratulations! EAA Chapter 563 has been approved for a 2022 Ray Aviation Scholarship! Due to your chapter’s dedication to EAA, youth engagement, overall activities and chapter health, and the wonderful application you submitted, EAA and the Ray Aviation Scholarship Review Committee are excited to have your chapter onboard this year!
So wrote HQ to Rob Meyer, our chapter's Ray Scholarship coordinator. Rob already has a few candidates in mind, and the selection process will be proceeding this month.
At the first airplane build workshop
On Saturday February 19, the chapter's first airplane building workshop was held. Eight teenagers assembled aluminum three ring binder kits from Zenith, with Bill Larson, Andy Plouse, Ron Wright, and Karl Kleimenhagen teaching. Holes were improperly deburred and rivets incorrectly pulled (and drilled out), all part of the learning process leading up to the start of construction on the first kit from Zenith.
A second build session was held the following Tuesday afternoon for six teenagers schooled at home, coming from Morton, Princeville, and Metamora.
The next build session for the teenagers will have them working on Van's kit for a short section of an aileron.
The empennage kit for the Zenith Cruzer is already sitting under the workshop table. The table was assembled last month by Karl and his wife Kaimei, and Ron and Andy drove to Mexico, MO to pick up the kit. The fuselage kit is scheduled to be ready in May, so we should have plenty to keep us busy into the summer.
The Dunlap Flight Club has received the second of two packages from the radio control airplane kit we purchased from HQ. Teri Brandt, the teacher at DHS who leads the group, wrote in mid-February:
Didn't realize there were more boxes!
The RC team met this a.m. with our AMA mentor. They are finishing up our first project plane with him. Next Saturday a.m. the plan is to pull out the new plane from EAA and develop a plan to get started with it. There will be things the students can do on their own, and things they will need mentor help with.
Monday and Friday this week they were able to get into a gym and fly the little indoor plane that came with the EAA kit. That was fun.
Also this semester we have used some of the funds you gave us to update a donated computer so it will run our GAMA Aviation Challenge software. Senior Grandt Morris led that effort.
We just got the software for the GAMA Aviation Challenge, so next week we start training the new members on that team on X-Plane and Plane Maker in prep for the release of this year's challenge in March. It is so nice, thanks to donations from your members, to have the yokes and pedals to train with!
Flying the EAA microlight r/c
The Audit Committee report covering 2020 and 2021 is on the web site in the Members section.
Have you sent in your membership dues for 2022?
A donor has contributed money to pay for canopies for the three picnic tables which the chapter installed by the FBO. Midwest Awnings in Galesburg is making them and had the pattern for the type of table which the Culver's in Morton had donated. The canopies are expected to be in place come April, in time to prevent sunburn of the people enjoying lunch by the runway.
Mid-February found a homebuilt airplane from Massachusetts refueling at 3MY, a Zenair 250M. Zenair is the late Chris Heintz's original operation, located in southern Canada. He later expanded into the US, locating in Missouri under the name Zenith Aircraft. It is from Zenith that the current chapter build project has come.