August 2006

Hello, Members!
I wish it wasn’t so, but we are now back from Oshkosh. We had a great time, Henny and I, each pursuing our own interests there. We found our old friends, and we made new friends. We refined our camping skills for the climate, and didn’t leave the tent open to the rain when we left it, but it leaked through the fabric anyway. Oh, well. We also relied less on foods that need to be in a cooler, and ate single-serving prepackaged things with nothing left over. It’s only a week, you know. Guess what, powdered milk isn’t too bad. And you get used to needing a shower ten minutes after taking a shower.

Oshkosh Highlights
The new hit at Oshkosh is the nightly aviation-theme movie at an outdoor theater in Camp Scholler. Bring your own seating. We saw five of the seven movies. The popcorn is free, all you can carry.

But the most cool thing was the arrival of the F-22 Raptors, just like at Sun ’n Fun. They arrived in the middle of the week and stayed around after that. You never knew when they were coming until you saw them. The enemy doesn’t have a chance! They can do a dance in place high up in the air, or swoop low along the runway and create visible shock waves—in the right atmospheric conditions. Some people said, “It looked like a butterfly,” others, “like a hummingbird.” Whatever it was, it was great, and I was in just the right place to see it best.

The seaplane base held a special fascination for me this year. It seems that just about anything that flies can be put on floats, and I went there twice to look at airplanes landing and taking off, and watch the handling of the airplanes in the lagoon.

Aeronca 15AC	Cessna 185	Aviat Husky	Piper Cub
Nord 262-A	GlaStar	Rans S-6S	An ultralight
Photographs by Sue Kalhoefer

Other highlights were the dedication of the SpaceShipOne exhibit, an exact full-scale replica, at the AirVenture Museum, with talks by Mike Melville about his experience piloting the craft. During the flight, he released handfuls of M&Ms in the cockpit and watched them float weightlessly. He later gave some of the M&Ms to a couple of soldiers, who promptly ate them! Well, guys, just one of those M&Ms brought $4000 for the benefit of the Young Eagles program at the auction held during this year’s Convention.

Crowd gathers for Mike Melville	Mike tells the story of the flight	SpaceShipOne
Photographs by Sue Kalhoefer

I also paid another visit to Pioneer Field, where all the earliest airplanes are housed in a series of old restored hangars.

Again this year, Maggie Beth Estes appeared at Theater in the Woods, playing the fiddle and dancing Irish jigs. She is just great, and she is also adding some classical pieces to her repertoire. Her connection to EAA is her father, who is a pilot and longtime AirVenture attendee.

Breezy	B-1 Bomber	Bonanzas
T-6s	P-51s and a Corsair	P-51 and Corsair
Photographs by Sue Kalhoefer

July Meeting
We had a big turnout for the July meeting. The “short meeting” grew to a long meeting as we addressed a number of upcoming needs and activities, principally the planning for what is now to be the hangar dedication this fall, with our first fly-in some time next year. We have enough to do to plan the dedication and a lot of attention to details to get the hangar ready for it. There will be workdays every Wednesday and Saturday until then. There is a lot of painting to be done, according to Ron. A “shower list” of needs to supply the hangar kitchen is in this issue. Take it shopping with you and bring your finds to the meeting.

We really want to thank Kay White for taking on the job of starting work on organizing the library. This is a very important responsibility.

South Central MPA Chapter 20 will be calling the EAA Chapter 1218 hangar its home, too. Welcome to all members. This will open up some new possibilities for the MPA chapter. Good decision.

We were very happy to see Mark Kelsey at the meeting. He flew the Tomahawk to Willow Springs solo. Good job, Mark. It was also nice to see Kent Nichols again. He has a long way to drive, all the way from Salem. He brought an RC model with him.

Hokie gave a short demonstration of Super Flite application and rib stitching in the open hangar after the meeting, which was of interest to several members.

Doc Openshaw debuted his new acquisition, a beautiful V-tail Bonanza.

Ron’s hangar was open and the Cessna 170A posed in her new paint.

Doc Openshaw’s V-Tail Bonanza	The Cessna 170A in new paint
Kent Nichols readies his RC model	Mark Kelsey’s Tomahawk
Photographs by Sue Kalhoefer

Newsletter Notes
Some of you have been saying you are not getting the printed edition of the newsletter before the meeting. There is a balancing act here. We try to get the latest things into the newsletter, so it can’t be done too early. On the other hand, we want everyone to get a copy, so it can’t wait too late. Then there is the problem of my work schedule, which gums everything up. The post office continually assures me that everyone who is served out of the distribution center in Springfield (which is all of us) gets their mail the very next day. Most of us find that to be true, but there seems to be certain consistent exceptions, the most noticeable one being Willow Springs. If you are not getting your copy before the meeting, please contact your local post office and encourage them to be more timely.

We also send out e-mails to update members on various Chapter activities and news, and to announce the online edition of the newsletter each month. If you don’t have an Internet connection at home, you can usually get a free Hotmail or Yahoo e-mail account at the local library, and check it every few days. (Not computer savvy? Librarians are supposed to assist you with this.) If you do this, please let me know your e-mail address so it can be added to the Chapter mailing list.

We are still trying to get a complete list of birthdays, including those of spouses, and anniversaries for everyone in the Chapter. It’s just a nice sociable thing to do. We don’t want the year—unless you want to give it—just the month and day. If you’ve never signed the list when it makes its way around, just send me an e-mail or hand me a scrap of paper with the info. Approximately half of the members and/or spouses are not on the list.

Beginning with this issue, we will include the minutes from the previous meeting in the printed edition of the newsletter. They will be presented in a reduced-size font to conserve space. Get out your magnifying glass!

Member News
John Zook writes: “Dear Friends: I need to bring you up to date on Jean. She had a mild stroke (# 3) along with seizures. She is at the Health Care Center in Gainesville, Missouri, in their re-hab program. She is unable to stand up, but is responding to therapy. We hope to be able to bring her home around the end of August.” Please pray for both Jean and John.

Getting to Know You
This month we have a “bio” from Jim McCord:

Jim McCord	“My first interest in flying? That would have to be in 1948 when I put together the balsa airplane kit I received for my seventh birthday. After losing the motor, a rubber band, I discovered that by moving a weight—changing the CG—it would become a fairly good glider. “Six or seven years later, while visiting my aunt and uncle, my uncle invited me to go flying with him. I didn’t know much about airplanes at that time, but now know it was a Piper J-3 Cub. That was really neat, being above the cars and houses. I remember him asking me if I’d ever been upside down in an airplane. This was the first time I’d ever been IN an airplane so the answer was no. He asked, “Do ya want to be?” Not wanting to disappoint him my reply was, “Sure…I guess so.” He instructed me to make sure my seat belt was secure and that there was nothing loose laying around. He then did a slow roll and all the loose maps and pencils just floated up…or was it down? Oh well, it was fun. “I’d always had my eyes to the sky and really wanted to learn to fly. After leaving the Navy I decided it was time to do it, so I took my first introductory Cessna flight in 1972. Cost for the first hour was $10.00 in a Cessna 150. I bought a logbook and logged my first hour. I was hooked. I earned my private pilot license in 1973 at Sugar Land, Texas. The GI bill was funding continuing education at 90% and it applied to earning a commercial pilot’s license, so I entered a school and was on my way to becoming a commercial pilot. “I’ve flown mostly Cessnas, and along the way have accumulated time in the Cessna 150, 170, 172, 180, 182, and 210. I’ve also flown the Mooney M20, Piper Cherokee 6-300, Citabria, and Beech Duke, a light twin. I’ve also flown with friends in a Maule, a Super Cub on wheel/skis, a Beaver on floats and a Cessna 185 on floats. “I owned the Cessna 210 that I flew extensively in Alaska. When learning to fly in Texas, especially instrument training, we’d always climb to around 3000 feet and fly to/from VORs and get on vectors when making cross-country flights. This mind set stuck with me while flying in Alaska. Then one day I was flying my brother-in-law to one of the villages out of Fairbanks. I was climbing up to around 3000 feet as there was a mountain I needed to get above in order to be able to receive the VOR signal. He had lived in Alaska all his life and flown with many “bush” pilots in his time. He politely asked, “Why are you flying so high?” I started to explain about VORs and radio reception in mountains. He said, “Could I make a suggestion?” Of course, I said, “Sure!” He said, “You see that mountain up there?” The village we were flying to was about 100 miles away and you could clearly see the only mountain on the horizon. “Yep, I see that.” He said, “You see how it curves down to the horizon again?” “Yep, I see that.” “The village we’re flying to is just at the base of that mountain.” So I dropped down to about 100 feet AGL and flew to that mountain, which was exactly where we wanted to go. From then on, most of my flying was done by going to the first mountain and turning left, to follow the river till seeing the bridge, and the strip was off to the right. “I decided I wanted to build and fly my own airplane so I purchased a project Dragonfly (90% complete) last year. Pictures are at dragonjocky.com. It has a VW 1835 cc. H.A.P.I. engine. At present I’m mostly working on getting the intake manifold fabricated and installing the carburetor. “My wife, Susan, and I moved to Cabool in December and really enjoy the area—except no one ever told us about the ticks! We enjoy traveling and camping out in our RV. We are going to Oshkosh this year, stay for four or five days, and then we will also visit friends and family in other parts of Wisconsin before returning home.”
Jim, thank you for telling your flying story so we will be better acquainted with you, our newest Chapter member. By the way, the ticks are always the worst when you are a “newcomer;” after that, they’ll go on to welcome someone else!

August Meeting
This month’s meeting will be on Saturday, August 12, at 4:00 p.m. After the meeting, about 5:00 p.m., we will feast on barbecued ribs and side dishes. The Chapter is providing the ribs out of donations, and you all bring the sides. It ought to be a fun afternoon. We’ll see you there.

Till then, tailwinds!

We Celebrate

August Meeting Announcement