www.eaa.org 45 Pacer has proven to be a miserable
disappoint-ment. After viewing our breath in the cabin for the last three hours we are reluctant to leave the warmth of the FBO, but with only 211 miles to go we push on for Minneapolis.
NIGHTFALL
By now the day is getting long in the tooth, and a two-hour fl ight in darkness under a 1,500-foot overcast is not an appealing thought. But, we are fl ying into more heavily populated areas with a plethora of airports that report weather through ADS-B. I wouldn’t even consider such a fl ight at night without real-time weather information.
ForeFlight and the ADS-B receiver once again prove their worth as we divert south of our course to seek higher ceilings. Before long, two frozen pilots are on approach to Flying Cloud Airport after a long day having traveled 1,000 miles in what I would call very challenging conditions.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
ForeFlight can display a course over both sectional and IFR charts and also will fi le your fl ight plans and get weather briefi ngs based on the route you select. It will do your fl ight planning by calculating time, distance, and fuel burn, and it has many other useful screen overlays including obstacles and terrain information. A Stratus ADS-B receiver gives you the most current in-fl ight information, including weather radar, winds aloft, current and forecast weather, fuel prices, and NOTAMs, as well as providing a more reliable GPS receiver than is provided by the iPad’s internal sensor. While Sam and I were forced to fl y an extra 165 miles, we made it home safely in marginal conditions where we otherwise would have found dif culty.
DEBRIEFING THE FLIGHT
The next day I opened my app and found largely IFR ceilings across the route we had just traversed.
Without the iPad, ForeFlight, and the Stratus, we would still be sitting in Great Falls waiting for the fog to lift. The day and a half journey could have stretched into a week, but with the aid of modern technology we were able to fl y home in a purely VFR airplane and do so in complete safety.
Jeff Skiles, EAA Lifetime 336120, is an ATP and CFII-ME who has been an airline and light airplane pilot for almost 40 years. He previously owned a Cessna 140 and a Waco YOC and currently fl ies a Cessna 185. Jeff can be reached at Jeff [email protected].
46 Sport Aviation April 2015
Paul Poberezny fl ashes his trademark thumbs-up while working at Pioneer Airport in the early 1980s.
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF EAA ARCHIVE
www.eaa.org 47 WEEKEND WORK PARTIES HELP GET YOUR
CONVENTION READY
The frequent friendly greeting “Welcome to Oshkosh” is more than just a tag line; it’s a heartfelt salutation born of the camaraderie all EAAers share—many of whom have poured their hearts and souls into getting the 1,500-acre convention site at Wittman Regional Airport ready for July 20-26, the week of EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2015.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JASON TONEY
48 Sport Aviation April 2015
CONVENTION PREP IS LITERALLY a year-round proposition;
once we put the wraps on one convention, planning begins on the next. But as the harsh Wisconsin winter winds down, convention prep truly heats up.
The weeks and months leading up to opening day require an awful lot of work, far more than EAA staf could perform on its own. The scope and breadth of this iconic event requires an army of volunteers, willing to do what it takes so that when July 20 rolls around, they can of er an enthusiastic Welcome to Oshkosh! Without this volunteer support, the organization would not be where it is today.
There is nothing on earth quite like AirVenture, the annual event that celebrates all that is good about our shared passion for things that fl y. The same is true of the coordinated ef ort (some would say “controlled chaos”) that it takes to prepare for it. EAA is truly blessed, there-fore, to have such an involved and committed
membership, many of whom give freely of their precious time and amazing talents for the benefi t of their organi-zation—their extended family.
During the show, more than 5,000 volunteers band together within the convention’s myriad enclaves to make it work. But what about the ramp-up? Visitors, be they EAA members or the general public, are often blown away when they arrive and see the expansive grounds ready to accommodate hundreds of thousands of attendees who will pass through the main gate or land their airplane on a colored dot.
HISTORY
Weekend work parties, as Paul Poberezny called them, predate Oshkosh and even Rockford. They weren’t even related to the convention at the beginning. When EAA headquarters was in Hales Corners, Wisconsin, the fi rst weekend work parties were organized to help build the organization’s fi rst museum.
The 1953, 1954, and 1955 conventions were at Curtiss-Wright Airport in Milwaukee (now Timmerman Airport), and preparations were made—for the most part—by mem-bers of the Headquarters Chapter. As the event grew, it became increasingly clear that the fl edgling organization’s membership would all have to pitch in before, during, and after the fl y-in to make it successful.
George Hardie Jr., EAA 500, then managing editor of Experimenter magazine, wrote the following in 1956:
“Our organization cannot progress unless each of us is willing to do his part in helping to lay a fi rm foundation for future development. Some means must be found to develop a closer coordination of activities of all the chapters and mem-bers at large…It is not my intention here to slight the splendid cooperation he has received from many sincere members who have volunteered their help, but the fact remains that in the fi nal analysis all must pass through Paul’s hands before the job is completed. This was acceptable when the organization was small, but the task has become too big for such an arrangement. Something will have to be done to rectify it—and soon.”
George challenged members, “It’s up to each and every one of us to weld our scat-tered forces into a solid organization working in unison and harmony. It’s a challenge that will take the best that’s in us to meet. The future of EAA rests with the members.”
Well, members took that advice to heart. In 1956, the fourth annual EAA con-vention and fl y-in was held in Oshkosh at the invitation of air race legend and fellow homebuilt aircraft enthusiast Steve Wittman. Volunteers performed much of the burdensome but necessary work required to make the event successful.
After the EAA convention moved to Rockford, Illinois, in 1959, members of Rockford Chapter 101 and Chapter 60 in Beloit, Wisconsin, led preparations at the airport for the annual event. Later, members of other Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois chapters became key contributors, and many remain very involved today.
WEEKEND WORK PARTIES
When the fly-in relocated permanently to Oshkosh in 1970, the tradition of weekend work parties really took off. Early contributor Chapter 101 provided