From the Flight Deck
June 2024

Summer has arrived, which means great event destinations are available every weekend (see our website’s Regional FlyIn Calendar maintained by director Paul Hove). On June 9th, I headed to the Rush City Flight Breakfast in my Cozy, despite high and gusty winds, to enjoy the free breakfast offered to visiting PICs. A squadron of CAP Cadets from ANE were doing a fantastic job of marshaling aircraft there, and on their recommendation I’ve reached out to our local 21D CAP wing to see if they could do the same for us at our August 11th Flight Breakfast. The parking squad saw fit to park me at show center between the B-25 and the SkyRaider (flown by a veteran and farmer from eastern Iowa).

Other than some uncommanded roll excursions on final due to turbulence, I fared OK at Rush City.  It didn’t go so well for my brother, who flew in from Mora in his Emeraude, a light taildragger, when the high wind flipped his tail up while preparing to taxi for departure. Taxiing in any taildragger, but particularly those with a light tail, is a challenge on windy days. He’ll be looking for a new propeller, which appears to be the only casualty.  A number of folks hoping to fly out from 21D for that event scrubbed due to the winds, and that was definitely the safe call.  Our Flyout director, Bill Schanks managed to get his Acrosport (also a taildragger) to the event and back safely.

Low ceilings prevented me from making it to the Lakeville Father’s Day Fly In, but Bob Collins drove down to check out their newly constructed round rotating EAA designed grill in action.  As if Bob isn’t doing enough for the Chapter, he’s also volunteered to be the Kitchen manager for the Ch.54 Flight Breakfast in August and he wanted to see how to staff and operate the grill we hope to borrow for our event. 

We as a chapter, and I as President, are so lucky to have Bob Collins talents and energies volunteered to our chapter.  After a winter of remodeling and painting the clubhouse interior, Bob has re-stained the observation area furniture and the clubhouse deck just in time for the June Chapter picnic where Bob arranged tables and seating in the tent that was erected and then worked well into the night to clean up, store tables and chairs, and write up a report on the event to share with the membership. Thank you Bob!  Your energy and generosity is a gift to all of us.

That June picnic was awesome!  The tent crew made quick work of erecting the tent with the new center poles that Jim Pearsall had procured since it was last used (thanks for those who showed up early to put it up – Gregg Adler, Jim Pearsall, Al Kupferschmidt, Jeff Hove, Dan Bergstrom, Ed Trudeau, Steve and Joseph Brown, and Roger Westerberg).  That was our trial run for the August flight breakfast where we’ll make use of it again. The weather was perfect for the picnic and Dale Seitzer’s music set a cool and mellow vibe going that was enjoyed by a large turnout (94 served!) spread out from the clubhouse and deck to the tent across the road. 

Bruce Olson grilled juicy ⅓ lb ground sirloin burgers and brats to perfection, and the ice cream cones sealed the deal for anyone who wasn’t already blissed out.  The four post-meal hangar tours that VP Jay Schrankler had arranged were well attended and well presented by their owners with great Q&A sessions at each (Jim Pearsall, Dave Syverson, Al Kupferschmidt, and Donovan Chase).  A balloon landing at Donovan’s hangar was the perfect finale for the evening; a few folks who weren’t ready to call it quits just yet took an unscheduled fifth tour at Neil Schoenheider’s hangar to see his Acroduster II and exotic car collection.  Thanks also to Gregg Adler and Jeff Hove for coming back to strike the tent the next afternoon!

Planning for the Aug.11th Ch.54 Flight Breakfast is in full swing.  Based on our airport manager's recommendation, and possibly due to a single taxiway bottleneck into the FBO with the new taxiway layout, we are shifting the aircraft parking to the south side of the airport in the grass off of taxiways opposite from the MAC maintenance building and extending to the NW and SW.  We're looking for breakfast siting options among the new large hangars on Foxtrot lane to keep the venue near the aircraft parking. The FAA has approved our event of qualifying for a temporary tower, and they are looking for a volunteer from local ATC personnel.  MAC has confirmed they will provide the porta-potties for the event.  Thanks to those who have volunteered to be leader/planners for the FlyIn, including Jim Pearsall as Chef and Food supplies and equipment manager, Emma Gaustad as Finance/Ticket manager, Ed Trudeau as Auto Parking Manager, Bruce Olson & Al Kupfershmidt as table/chair procurers, Bob Collins as Kitchen manager, Paul Rankin as Operations and Safety manager, Tom Gibbons as aircraft parking manager, Leif Erikson as Publicity Manager, and Gregg Adler as tent captain.  I'll act as Setup Manager and will transport the grill to and from our event, and I'll manage a table that the chapter will have to highlight our Ray Scholarship and Young Eagles efforts and how they benefit the community.  We're still looking for a Teardown Manager—please see me if you're willing to take this role; there will be plenty who are willing to stick around after the event to pack up tables and chairs, strike the tent, and such, but we need someone to manage all the little details involved, such as washing and stowing all the equipment.  Thanks to the many of you who have said you'll be happy to placed on one of the teams.  We'll find team assignments for you (and others) in these last 8 weeks prior to the event.

Thanks to Jay Schrankler, and help from Scott Hanson, in creating and compiling the chapter survey results.  The survey results have been shared on the website and were discussed by the board and presented by Jay at the May chapter meeting.  My biggest takeaways were that chapter members value the chapter mostly for it's social outlet and meeting programming (aircraft and experimental education related and member presentations), and are looking for chapter events to get involved with.  The pancake breakfast was the most suggested event for involvement, with a corn feed as a close second), and we're going to act on that this year by resurrecting the breakfast fly in.  One identified challenge is to make sure all members and guests feel fully welcomed; this is a challenge for the full membership as well as the officers and directors: reaching out to those who haven't found someone to speak to during the pre-meeting social time and including our new members and visitors in our conversations and activities.  

May was an busy month for activity at Ch.54.  We had an amazing membership meeting with Jeff Dale's talk and presentation about his background and interest in aircraft Digital Combat Simulation in specialty Sim Pits.  Gregg Adler arranged a great itinerary for a Farnsworth Elementary class tour of the airport but unfortunately the weather conspired to scuttle that event. Evangelos Savvas organized a great in-person local Flying Start event at our clubhouse to cap off the otherwise virtual webinar based national 'Learn to Fly Week'.  It was attended by 10 very engaged and interested participants from all over the Twin Cities, including western suburbs, an indication that Ch.54 was the only metro chapter to provide a Flying Start Day for EAA, a fact that will be rewarded in our chapter's continued gold standing with EAA.  The May Young Eagle rally started our season off strong with 10 pilots and 32 YE flown on a spectacular morning, several sharing a ride with their parents (newly allowed by the EAA).  It was fun and huge success thanks to our YE coordinator Dale Seitzer  with the help of Vicky Moore expertly handling the check-in table and printing the certificates in real-time, and our stable of dedicated volunteer pilots and ground volunteers.  We're batting 50% on the YE rallies this season now with the June Rally called off for rain and low ceilings that were present for the first half of the morning – a difficult call that the pilots concurred with and were grateful for.  Our Ray Scholar Anna Chase was busy pursuing her dual instruction during May and one of our Young Eagles from last summer, Isaac Knutsen, was accepted into EAA Air Academy summer camp (having applied on time last fall) and the board voted at the May meeting to fund Isaac's tuition balance using our $995 of available YE credits plus $105 of chapter scholarship funds.  We hope to have both Anna and Isaac available to talk to community visitors at the August Fly In breakfast about our Chapter's Ray and Air Academy scholarships and Young Eagles activities as a way to represent what our fundraiser supports.

The presentation from the May Lake Elmo Airport Advisory Committee meeting are available at MAC's LEAAC webpage.  The agenda included 

• an update of the LEAAC Bylaws to standardize terms and roles across the multiple advisory committees organized within MAC
• a community spotlight on Baytown by that community's LEAAC representative, Rick Weyrauch
• a 21D user spotlight on Zach who flies a Pitts S1C biplane and a tailwheel converted Cessna 172
• the usual quarterly data on number of operations and noise complaints
• a historical look at number of aircraft operations per year at 21D
  
  
  
  (it was twice as busy 45 years ago than now!)
• Community member comments, mostly airing of noise grievances

The June Reliever Airport Advisory Commission (RAAC) included Airport Managers updates, which for 21D included notice that construction will be taking place on the airport's north access road from June 17th through July 3rd, which will not close that road but will reduce it to one lane during that time period.  We also learned that ANE (Anoka) EAA Ch.237 will host a Fly In breakfast on June 29th.  Reliever Airports Associate Director Kelly Gerads shared Reliever Airport General Aviation financial information for recent years.  MAC will be sharing this information with all airport tenants, plus a forward looking plan out to 2030, in context with the currently proposed updates to tenant rates and charges, which all tenants should have already received via US mail by now.  The updates for storage tenants amounts to simply a reduction of the yearly rate escalator to 3% and an elimination of sublease registration and charges for hangar owners who rent space.  Discussion among tenant representatives showed unanimous support for the update and some concern that RAAC could potentially get pushback on the proposed update from the non-reliever MAC stakeholders who might think GA tenants aren't paying enough for Capital Improvement projects at the reliever airports with the lower escalator. 

Enjoy your summer! I hope it involves some aviating.  I hope I'll see you at the clubhouse or, even better, at Oshkosh.

Marlon