Next Meeting: November 2, 2004

Tuesday 7 pm

Place: Airpark Terminal Building
Annual Business Meeting

Inside this Issue:

www.eaa.org

I would like to pass on a little something that happened toward the end of their tour of the airpark. There was one young fellow by the name of Matthew, who is autistic, who caught my eye.

He would have nothing to do with the airplane at first, but still showed that curiosity. He circled the plane from a distance, each time getting a little closer as if he was studying its every detail. The aide who was with him said he was always a little hard to reach as he would talk so little. So we let him slowly move closer to the open door of the plane until eventually he was looking in. The aide and I walked over to the plane and she asked him if he would like to sit in the pilot’s seat. Matthew nodded yes, so she slowly put him in.

Then he did something that amazed his aide, he asked questions on just about everything, what this did and what that did. He stayed in that plane for almost ten minutes until it was time to get out. After he got out, the flame of excitement that ignited for those ten minutes went dim. I got a call from Matthew’s aide the other night and I asked how he was doing. She said they gave him a book about airplanes at school and to my amazement she said he remembers and pointed out everything I showed him about the control panel.

It is not often we get a rare opportunity to reach out and touch someone, sometimes maybe just once in our lifetime. I guess I just had mine.

At our October meeting, Mother Nature gave us a nice day but with a little twist.
We had the two Powered Parachute pilots come to the meeting with the intentions of flying and giving rides. But the wind was just a little too much for them to go up. It would have been a lot more flying backwards than forward for them. Lloyd Barett of Rogers Ohio, who was the instructor who came, gave a nice presentation on the basics of Powered Parachute flying. I must say, if you like slow and I do mean slow flight this is for you. The machines were state of the art with all the bells and whistles. One nice thing is when you lose an engine you don’t have to worry about pulling the ballistic parachute; you’ve already got one deployed. If you’re interested in that sort of flying I have his number.

After Lloyd finished talking, we fired up the grill, ate a bunch of burnt dogs (by yours truly) and had a lot of good side dishes and deserts to choose from. Thanks to all the members and their wives for such a feast. Even though there was no flying going on there were a lot of good stories to go around.

At about the same time we had a group of 15 kids show up from Colliers United Methodist Church to see the Powered Parachutes and possibly get a Young Eagle ride. But, unfortunately, a lot of the parents did not come with the kids to sign the necessary forms. Also the wind would not have given a good first time ride although I think they would have gone up anyway. But not was all lost, we were able to show the kids the Prop Buster plane and were able to let them sit in it. Thanks to Don Green and Rick Ramsey for being the chapter aviation ambassadors. We are going to re-schedule them for another Saturday flight with signed forms. To make things work out even better we had a refueling stop of a Life Flight Helicopter on its way to a demonstration at Wal-Mart. The pilots and the flight nurse gave the kids a tour of the helicopter. The kids really flooded them with questions. We had a lot of hot dogs and drinks left so we invited them to join us.

November Annual Chapter Business Meeting
The November meeting will be the Chapter’s Annual meeting, I urge all members to try to attend. Over the past year, with the help of fellow members, their ideas and suggestions have been able to make our monthly meetings more interesting, informative and fun. We have tried to keep the business part of it to a bare minimum. Letting the Board of Directors do the month-to-month running of business for the Chapter. And they have done it quite well, stream lining the Chapter budget and providing the leadership that is needed. It is time for the Annual Business meeting, so there will not be a guest speaker for the meeting.

Airpark News “New Entrance to Airpark”
When you come to the airpark in the future, you’ll notice that the new entrance has been opened just pass the Church on Fernwood Road. With the opening of this new roadway, the planning can now start for the runway extension, giving the airpark another 1000’ to it existing runway.