Meet My Friend Steven....

EppyGA

EppyGA

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Jan 6, 2009
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Hoschton, GA
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Let's Fly
I want you to meet Steven Agudelo. Steven is a part of our youth program at EAA 690. I cannot tell you how proud I am that Steven is a part of our group. Steven recently started his flight training with the credits he has earned from working in our build program. We are pleased to be able to help Steven work toward his dream and look forward to continuing to help,him in any way we can.

 
Time for an update. Steven soloed on July 20th. Alex (bottom picture) soloed this morning. Both young men are part of our youth build program and have been working in that program for almost two years. Alex took his first GA ride with as a Young Eagle. He is also very active and quite accomplished as an RC pilot. Alex had five hours in his logbook when he soloed. He's had a lot of stick time though with some of us in the chapter. We have a young lady that is getting close to her solo also. We also had a young man solo back on April 1st. Steven.jpg Alex.jpg
 
EppyGA said:
Time for an update. Steven soloed on July 20th. Alex (bottom picture) soloed this morning. Both young men are part of our youth build program and have been working in that program for almost two years. Alex took his first GA ride with as a Young Eagle. He is also very active and quite accomplished as an RC pilot. Alex had five hours in his logbook when he soloed. He's had a lot of stick time though with some of us in the chapter. We have a young lady that is getting close to her solo also. We also had a young man solo back on April 1st. View attachment 55415 View attachment 55416
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Congratulations! Nice looking 150 too!
 
One of the things I'm most proud of our chapter is our youth program at EAA 690. We got it started two years ago when we acquired the use of a second hangar. We have young folks age 14 and up coming out nearly every weekend to work on the aircraft we are building. The youth earn credits for each hour they work and those credits can be applied against flight training with a local flying club.

Our most recent solo was a young man that has been deeply involved in RC modeling for some time. He came in 2014 and took his first Young Eagle flight with me in my Warrior. He's had many Young Eagle flights. In 2015 one of my partners took the Warrior to RDU and had a fuel pump failure. The plane sat at RDU for a week or two and one Sunday I got a friend to fly me up there in his Comanche. I put a call out for two youth to come along. Alex responded and he got to fly the Comanche up to RDU and flew with me in the Warrior back to LZU. he picked up 5 hours of stick time that day which helped to be able to solo with 5 hours in his log book.

He got to do some solo T&G work today and put together this little video. BTW the youth are building an Ultra-Lite Pietenpol, a full size Pietenpol and a BD-6. The BD-6 kit was donated to our program by the Bede Family Foundation. We hope to have solo number 4 coming up soon, she just got her medical signed off today. You can see pictures at youth.eaa690.net

 
I wish we had something like that here. I would've been SOL if my family wasn't in a position to buy a plane for me to get my ratings in. There's literally nothing to rent within an hour of here, and there are no youth programs or anything to draw kids into aviation. The FBO here used to be a mom & pop type setup, but got bought by a bigger company that sold off the rentals and jacks up fees to push piston traffic away. The reality is they're numb to the fact piston traffic is what keeps GA alive, and if it weren't for fuel contracts with the EAS airline and the guard choppers, they would already be out of business.
 
Nice,you keep aviation alive,by bringing in the young.
 
Great program you are running over there. You have a lot to be proud of, Randy.
 
Dave Theisen said:
Great program you are running over there. You have a lot to be proud of, Randy.
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Thanks Dave. It has gotten so popular we've had to cap the total number of kids and limit each session so we don't end up with kids standing around. We need to get Pat to turn loose of some money to help fund us :)
 
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