From the Flight Deck
October 2025
By Marlon Gunderson

An Historic Accomplishment

Thanks to all of your efforts at our August Pancake Breakfast fundraiser, we are able for the first time to send 3 motivated and deserving young people to the EAA Air Academy next summer in pursuit of their aviation dreams: Ben Rehnelt (Forest Lake), Blake Karnuth (Woodbury), and David Phernetton (Hudson). All three of these candidates submitted compelling applications describing their hopes to pursue careers in aviation ahead of the September chapter board meeting where scholarships were awarded by vote.

Despite a foggy morning that limited fly-in aircraft attendance (see the photo gallery of the event), we had good drive-in attendance and served just over 550 breakfast meals. This was short of our hope to serve 800 meals, but net profits were still great, at about $3,500 thanks in part to additional income from sponsorships that Jay Schrankler had lined up including Lake Elmo Aero, Lake Elmo Bank, KwikTrip, St.Croix Sportplanes, and (Jay's own) Perceptive Avionics, and from donations that Craig Mueller's book table sale generated. The Mankato EAA Chapter 642 also helped us out by purchasing all of our left-over supplies (at our cost) for their breakfast the following weekend.

I'd like to offer special thanks to:

Bob Collins for his leadership in planning, PR, signage, setup, and leading the kitchen and serving line.

Jay Schrankler for his recruiting of sponsorships (and his own generosity) and recruitment of the return of the Hammarback Huey for our event, and for greeting arriving guests.

Barry Hammarback and his whole flight crew for bringing the Huey to our event, and for coming back as our program speaker at the Sept. member meeting. (Our hearts break at the crew loss he experienced shortly after our event).

Jim Pearsall for meal planning and procurement (at awesome prices) and leading the coffee & drinks team.

Ed Trudeau for planning and leading the auto parking team.

Craig Mueller for arranging the displays provided by, and presence of, state and local public service and fire department teams including Life Link & State Patrol choppers, DNR aircraft, Bayport firetruck, and Wash.Co. Sheriff's K9 demonstration, and for the aviation book sale.

Paul Evenson & Paul Rankin for leading the aircraft marshaling effort & ATC coordination.

Jeff Dale for leading the dining team.

Emma Hanson for leading the ticketing and sales team.

Dale Seitzer for leading the Chapter PR table team with Anna Chase, Woon Yi Hanson, and Elisha Redmann.

Chris Bliska and Jon Pierce-Ruhland for the use of their hangar for the event.

Al Kupferschmidt for delivering and returning the Lion's Club tables & chairs.

Jeff Hove for leading the teardown effort.

Scott Hanson for taking home equipment that needed handwashing.

Al Knutson of EAA Chapter 25 for supervising the use of his iconic rotating grill.

Bill Schanks and Gregg Adler for fetching and returning the rotary grill from Chapter 25.

Everyone on the grilling and serving teams and particularly those who pulled double/grill shifts like Bruce Olson and John Ostrem.

August Chapter BBQ

Thanks to grillmaster Bruce Olson and musical talent Dale Seitzer for helping to create a memorable and enjoyable sunny August evening at the Chapter House!

November Chapter Officer and Director Elections coming up

Board Officers and Class I Directors serve two-year terms that expire this year. An election at the November chapter meeting will select those to serve the 2026-2027 term. Thanks to Dan Theis and Mark Shanahan for accepting nominations as Facilities and Membership Directors. With these nominations there is now a full slate of candidates for seats that are up for election. Nominations remain open for additional candidates right up to the election during the November meeting. Please contact me if you are interested in throwing your hat in the ring for any of these positions. The current slate is:

President – Marlon Gunderson Vice President – Jay Schrankler
Secretary – Ed Trudeau Treasurer – Emma Hanson
Facilities Director – Dan Theis Young Eagles Director – Dale Seitzer
Education Director – Jeff Dale Membership Director – Mark Shanahan

Before you throw your vote away on me as president for another two years, I'll share with you here what I view as my chapter priorities:

1. Create and maintain a place of social connection for pilot and aviation minded people who live nearby and/or frequent the Lake Elmo Airport.

2. Provide educational and entertaining member meeting programs, including from our own members.

3. Support the EAA Young Eagles program locally at 21D.

4. Hold an annual fundraiser to leverage our 501c3 mission with the goal of making neighbors see the airport as something that contributes to the surrounding community and provide funds for our EAA Air Academy scholarships.

5. Enable members to contribute to specific missions of interest to them, e.g. Flying Start, Flyouts, AirVenture camping, educational outreach (e.g. Farnsworth), Webinars, VMC/IMC club, RC modeling, etc.

I'm not evangelical about aviation; it's not for everyone. It's expensive and can be dangerous. It competes for time and money that could be spent with or on your family for other purposes. I think of our chapter as being a support group for those who are afflicted with the illness of an addiction to aviation. If you're in need of that kind of support, we're here for you, but I'm not going to recruit you into this.

I have an admittedly simple and unambitious vision for our chapter. I invite anyone who wishes to do more with the chapter to step forward to lead in that direction.

Bylaws update

We will also be voting on the adoption of a few updates to our Bylaws at our November meeting. We'll review during the November meeting but reviewing them here beforehand will help speed the process.

2025 Charitable Giving

We're a registered 501c3 organization so we are able to accept donations from you that you can treat for tax purposes as a charitable donation. With the end of the calendar tax year coming up, please consider making a donation to the chapter if you have funds earmarked for giving and are looking for a good cause to support.

Members John & Nancy Ostrem are doing exactly that, providing a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) from a retirement fund (401K or IRA) of $1000, in partial satisfaction of their Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) this year, earmarked for clubhouse exterior / landscaping updates which they intend to provide the labor for as well. Thank you, John & Nancy!

We have plenty of purposes towards which to apply any such contributions. We have already purchased two used Blackstone style grills to improve our kitchen capability for future breakfast fundraisers. With enough of these we wouldn't need to borrow and transport the Chapter 25 grill every year. Given the number of high schoolers expressing interest in Ray Scholarships, we also are looking at doing Chapter sponsored Ray Scholarships where we provide 25% of the scholarship. This would give us a guaranteed scholarship and would potentially allow us to do multiple scholarships per year. There is no guarantee that our chapter will continue to get a free scholarship to administer from the EAA, so the chapter sponsored scholarship is a way to assure that we continue to provide that possibility for local youth.

Thanks for reading!

Marlon Gunderson