Volunteer for Ford Tri-Motor!
Volunteer sheets are up on our website for the four days of the Ford Tri-Motor visit, September 5-8, 2024: go to https://eaa186.org/participate/ to sign up!
The volunteer opportunities come in two flavors: Ramp and Terminal, and Food Concession Trailer. The Food Trailer shifts are only for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; Ramp and Terminal shifts run Thursday through Sunday. Except for Thursday, which has only a single long shift (noon to 5:30 PM) because we’re not expecting a big turnout that day, there are two shifts each day for each position, from 8:00 AM to 1:30 PM and from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM. Every morning shift includes some setup time, and every afternoon shift includes cleanup time.
There’s a small chance that there might be some make-up flights on Monday, September 9, 2024, before the plane heads off to its next stop. If you would be available to help out if that happens, please do sign up.
Finally, here’s the pot-sweetener: volunteers may have the chance to fly on the Tri-Motor, if there are unsold seats on a flight with enough paying customers to make it viable. That’s never guaranteed – we’ll sell every seat we can – but past experience says it’s likely. Interested? Come help!
Ramp and Terminal
Thursday through Sunday, we’re looking for six people on each shift to volunteer for Ramp and Terminal. Duties for these positions will include passenger, bench, and rope escorts to assist with assembling, briefing, and getting passengers safely on and off the airplane; a starter/fireguard to communicate with the pilot on taxi, parking, and ramp safety instructions; and general crowd control. Anyone wanting to work the ramp during the Tri- Motor visit MUST watch the 25-minute safety training video in advance; you’ll find it on YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=wfpu3PR1enA.
EAA requires a minimum of four volunteers per shift for these ramp duties. We’ve opened six slots per shift to give folk the chance to rotate duties. The folk not actively doing the ramp work at any given time would help staff our Chapter information table to talk to visitors about Chapter 186, Young Eagles, and EAA in general. The volunteer on that table could also assist the Ford crew with information about ticket and merchandise sales. The Tri-Motor travels with just hats and pins to sell but has information about Tin Goose merchandise available through the EAA website – and the Chapter gets a commission on all such sales for the period around our tour stop! The Tour Coordinator with the plane will handle all the ticket sales.
In each shift, there’s one position we won’t rotate: the starter/fireguard on each shift will work only that position, so they can establish good coordination and a level of comfort with the pilot.
While the Ford Tri-Motor doesn’t offer ground tours the way the bombers do, I do expect that in quiet times between flights we may be escorting visitors out onto the ramp to see the plane up close and take pictures of it. On Thursday, we may also have vintage cars out on the ramp with the plane, and escorting photographers should be an expected duty. Keeping all visitors away from the plane’s propellers will be paramount!
Food Concession Trailer
On Friday through Sunday, we’ll also be looking for cooks, servers, and cashiers to work our concession trailer, which will be parked on the concrete pad between the parking lot and the
Terminal building. We’re requesting one cashier, two cooks, and two servers each shift. Morning shifts include help setting up, and afternoon shift include cleanup. We’d likely stop cooking by around 4:00 PM each day, but continue selling drinks, chips, and ice cream.
The big challenge in our food trailer location is that we’ll have no access to electricity and will have to run a generator during the day to power the freezer and other electronics. Since it will take a few hours for the freezer to get cold, we’ll need to plan on making a run to the Chapter House in mid-morning to get ice cream to the trailer. The burgers and hot dogs can be kept cold in our coolers with ice, but the ice cream is another matter!
Please do sign up for the shift(s) you’d like to work, so we can plan good coverage for this event! It should be a lot of fun, and while we’re not expecting the turnout of visitors to be anywhere close to what we typically see for the bombers, we could be surprised.
I will be there all the time; come keep me company!
Mary Dominiak
