THIS is the event for which I joined the EAA last year. I will probably never build a plane, but I need to be a Young Eagles pilot for this event.
My wife and I missed your event this year, but we ground crewed for Neil Martin in 2004. We were sunburned and exhausted at the end of the day. But, this was the MOST rewarding thing I have ever done in my life to date.
How do we get advance notice of the date? Neil called us to crew this year, but he didn't think to ask until about 2 days before, and we already had something else scheduled. This is an even that we do not ever want to miss again if we can help it. The event is not particularly advertised, outside of the organizations that do it. Nonetheless, there were hundreds of kids, mostly special needs children, lined up all day that day for airplane rides. When not up in one of the planes, they got rides in really neat sports cars (many vettes, a Viper, several classic hot rods). There were also some carnival rides and other forms of entertainment to keep all those kids entertained in the long line for flights. The ground crew walked them out, helped sort out weight and balance, and took pictures. And smiled a lot. The pilots did more than a dozen flights apiece that day, and they smiled a lot too!
Several of the pilots are themselves special. Neil, who we crewed for, lost an arm in a motorcycle accident some years ago. I still get moist eyed when I think about our last flight of the day, with the little girl who had also lost an arm, absolutely enraptured at Neil, the pilot with the missing arm. If you don't believe in love at first sight, you didn't see that guy and the little girl look at each other. I think they adopted each other on the spot
EAA does some good things. This is the best of them. Shipoke, if there is a mailing list for this event, email me, please. I want to be on it. By next year, I will have the 300 hours one needs to fly. If I don't, I will gladly sunburn to be ground crew again.
Jim G
