AirVenture 2024 Pictures

Airventure 2024 Pictures!

 

All female pilots

 

Bob’s MacGyver pose

 

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Ford Tri-Motor Volunteers from Mary Dominiak

 

 

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

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Ford Tri-Motor Volunteers from Mary Dominiak

 

 

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

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Ford Tri-Motor Volunteer Sign-up Sept. 2-9

 

The Ford Tri-Motor will be at Manassas airport Sept. 2-9. Volunteers are needed. Please sign up to participate and join in the fun!

Volunteer sign-up form available here.

Thank you and see you there!

 

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Ford Tri-Motor Volunteer Sign-up Sept. 2-9

 

The Ford Tri-Motor will be at Manassas airport Sept. 2-9. Volunteers are needed. Please sign up to participate and join in the fun!

Volunteer sign-up form available here.

Thank you and see you there!

 

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Member Gathering and Cookout This Saturday 8/24!

 

Upcoming EAA Chapter 186 Event!

 

August 24 Saturday 10:00 AM Member Gathering, coffee and doughnuts beforehand:

Our speaker is Chapter member Al Lawless presenting on the future of VTOL – vertical take-off and landing.  Al will give a high level talk about Urban Air Mobility and Verticraft. He’ll touch on various configurations, UAM service and vertiport concepts, and the challenges ahead. As usual, this will be a relaxed, interactive discussion.  Al is a flight test expert for Aurora Flight Sciences, Technical Fellow for Boeing, a Flight analyser DER for the FAA, and holds tickets for commercial instrument MEL, gliders, and motorgliders.  Al’s presentation promises to be as enthralling and captivating as his presentation in May regarding the Perlan 2 Project – the world record holding high altitude sailplane.

 

Cookout afterwards!!!

Stay with us as our gathering continues with a cookout; burgers, hot dogs and other goodies.  Email Judy Sparks jhsparks@comcast.net or Bob Prange rsp10000@aol.com if you can help with the cookout.

 

 

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Member Gathering and Cookout This Saturday 8/24!

 

Upcoming EAA Chapter 186 Event!

 

August 24 Saturday 10:00 AM Member Gathering, coffee and doughnuts beforehand:

Our speaker is Chapter member Al Lawless presenting on the future of VTOL – vertical take-off and landing.  Al will give a high level talk about Urban Air Mobility and Verticraft. He’ll touch on various configurations, UAM service and vertiport concepts, and the challenges ahead. As usual, this will be a relaxed, interactive discussion.  Al is a flight test expert for Aurora Flight Sciences, Technical Fellow for Boeing, a Flight analyser DER for the FAA, and holds tickets for commercial instrument MEL, gliders, and motorgliders.  Al’s presentation promises to be as enthralling and captivating as his presentation in May regarding the Perlan 2 Project – the world record holding high altitude sailplane.

 

Cookout afterwards!!!

Stay with us as our gathering continues with a cookout; burgers, hot dogs and other goodies.  Email Judy Sparks jhsparks@comcast.net or Bob Prange rsp10000@aol.com if you can help with the cookout.

 

 

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Young Eagles from Bob Prange

 

We flew 35 kids at the July 13 rally at Manassas and 47 kids at the August 10 rally at Warrenton. Many thanks go out to our ground and pilot volunteers for getting the job done. A special thank you goes to Warrenton-Fauquier Airport Manager Dave Huss and staff for the use of their facility for this month’s rally as well as the next rally on September 14.

Our next Young Eagles Rallies are:

Sept 14 – 9:00 AM at Warrenton

Oct 12 – 9:00 AM at Manassas Nov 9 – 12:00 Noon at Manassas

 

To become a Young Eagles volunteer, ground or pilot, proceed to yeday.org and use the “sign-up” feature. Let Bob know you have signed up so we can send you an invitation to volunteer. If you volunteer without being signed up, you will not get important changes/updates about the YE rally.

Ground and Pilot Volunteers: About two/three weeks prior to a Young Eagles Rally, we prompt the yeday.org system to send an email to everyone in our Young Eagles volunteer database, inviting you to click on “confirm” or “will not attend.” This helps us determine the staffing level so we can set the number of kids that can register for a ride. Expect an automatic reminder email on Wednesday three days prior to the Young Eagles Rally asking you to confirm again that you are still planning to volunteer. This gives us updated staffing level info.

Young Eagles flights are available to kids between ages 8 and 17. We normally hold our rallies on the second Saturday each month. We use two time slots, 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM for the summer months, 12:00 Noon and 2:00 PM in the winter months. Parents can register at yeday.org beginning at 8:00 AM on the 1st of each month.

To Young Eagles and Parents: The Sporty’s Learn -to-Fly course ($299 value) is available free after just one flight. The access code is on the back of your logbook. This will prepare you for the FAA Private Pilot Knowledge Test, “the written.” Every FAA written exam (private, instrument, commercial, etc.) requires an endorsement from an instructor stating you are prepared to take the exam. Passing this course with at least an 80% grade lets you skip that step and gives you the required endorsement to take the Private Pilot written test. For more details about the Sporty’s Learn-to-Fly course, click here.

Photo credit and thanks to Sam Bingham for photographs contained herein.

Chapter 186 Young Eagles Coordinators,

David Richards

Bob Prange

 

 

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From the President

 

After sharing the skies with a hundred or so other aircraft on their way into AirVenture, the first people encountered after landing are the volunteer marshallers on foot and scooter sorting out the arriving aircraft and sending them to their parking spot. The next encounter is with a volunteer flight operations arrival briefer, asking if we have turned off the mags and master switch, and reminding us to tie the aircraft down before we leave it. Next, to get from Vintage Aircraft Parking across the AirVenture grounds toward our lodging we ride a blue tram and a red tram; operated by, yes, volunteers. The tram takes us past forums and workshops led by volunteer instructors. Checking in at registration to get our admittance wristbands, we find several volunteers working that function. For weeks leading up to AirVenture, volunteers have prepared, landscaped, painted and repaired the grounds and facilities. Large cadres of volunteers keep the Ford Tri-Motor and B-25 Berlin Express rides going. The Vintage Red Barn, the Blue Barn, Homebuilders Headquarters, Warbirds and numerous other locations are powered by volunteers. Sure, there are paid employees at the food vendors and exhibitors and on the FBO fuel truck, but the engine of this great annual celebration is the thousands of EAA volunteers.

We have this same spirit of volunteerism right here at Chapter 186. Movie nights, IMC Club and VMC Club meetings, Tri-Motor and Bomber Air Tours, Young Eagles Rallies, membership renewals, cookouts, the directory, newsletter, website, Facebook page, tool crib, merchandise, Flight Advisors, Technical Counselors, the Chapter House and its repairs and many more functions are possible only because you make these Chapter functions possible. I often see 186 members helping each other with a tool or a part or advice, or an airplane or car ride to get one back into position.

Chapter 186 was again named earlier this year as a Gold Level Chapter. This is only because we do enough of the functions on the EAA checklist to attain that status. The new Gold Seal banner is on the wall in the Chapter House. Think of it as a thank you banner for our membership that keeps us going.

Speaking of keeping things going; every year at the Virginia Department of Aviation (DOAV) Meeting a “Top Eagles” award is given to the three Board pilots flown Young Virginia in the past 12 months. Here is an excerpt from the speech by Greg who have the most Eagles in Campbell, of the DOAV:

“Many pilots would tell you that one of the greatest gifts they could give in aviation is sharing their love of flying with the next generation. The EAA Young Eagles program is designed to do just that…Today I have the honor of introducing three individuals who truly went above and beyond the calling of this wonderful program. These three ‘Top Eagles’ flew the most children in Virginia during the past 12 months. They gave their time and skills to help introduce and inspire kids in the world of aviation. The Top Eagles Award program is a way for all of us to give our thanks to these selfless volunteers. Chris Berg flew 51 Young Eagles in the Commonwealth. Thank you, Chris, and congratulations.”

Chapter 186 member Chris Berg has been flying Young Eagles since the program began in 1992. He not only inspires kids with his flights, but he also inspires us to keep volunteering. Chris has also served as our Chapter 186 Secretary. Thank you Chris, and all of our selfless volunteers who keep our programs going.

Bob Prange

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Tonight– Movie Night at the Chapter House! September 16, 7PM

September 16, 7:00 PM. at the Chapter House! Movie will contain great aerial footage, daredevil flying stunts plus a requisite love story in the background. Please feel free to bring snacks to share. Popcorn, sodas, and water will be available!

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