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Keeping a team of people excited, interested, and busy

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  • Keeping a team of people excited, interested, and busy

    Hi everyone,

    If you're like many of us, you may belong to an EAA chapter that is filled with stories of "the way things used to be", "back when I was", "I remember when", and fairly short on activity. That's how the first few years of my local chapter experience was. And it got pretty boring pretty quickly. I've been the president of our chapter now going on my third term, and it's been a challenge to keep people engaged.

    Over the past couple few years, I've been shaking things up a bit, and we try to go on field trips to different places, visiting people's projects, and things along those lines. We go to the Kermit Weeks hangar in Oshkosh once or twice a year (I live less than two hours from OSH), and that's always a good time. A majority of our chapter membership are beyond their flying ages and can't keep medicals, so non-flying activities are the what I strive for. But I tell you what, nothing has gotten the membership going as much as working on my airplane project.

    Every Wednesday night, I host a "build night" at my house. Anyone who wants to come help cut metal, debur holes, or whatever is welcome to join in. Folks that rarely come to the chapter meetings are now showing up regularly, and of course, are at my house every week wondering what they can do to help. It's really helped to liven things up a bit, rather than sitting around BSing around the table.

    For a number of reasons, this isn't a chapter-sanctioned event. But I certainly encourage the chapter members to come and help out. And it's great to see how excited that they are when participating. We gather around the plans, talk about the things we're building, and it always brings up lots of good questions. Learning is a great motivator for a lot of people, and it certainly works with this group! Our chapter's youngest member is 16yo high school student whose dream is to be an Aero Engineer, so I'm happy he can see how these fancy flying contraptions go together. We also have our share of retired folks in our midst, and they have great skills from past life experiences. It's great to have them on the team as well. You always learn something!

    So, to make a long story longer, my airplane project is great,but not just for me. It makes other people happy, too! If you're in need of a hand doing anything on your plane, there's always a group of helping hands available closer than you think :-)

    ~Chris
    Christopher Owens
    Bearhawk 4-Place Scratch Built, Plans 991
    Bearhawk Patrol Scratch Built, Plans P313
    Germantown, Wisconsin, USA

  • #2
    Good work Chris!

    Question: I'm not a member of EAA, I know...shame on me, but I've been thinking about joining the local chapter. Do most chapters have membership fees? Are they typically just poorly organized social events? I'm not into being social and the fee really isn't a big deal but my reasoning for joining would be for the technical specialists. I talked to an IA friend and he is willing to come do occasional inspections and sign my build manual for a few bucks. For the about the same $ I could join the chapter that has a defunct website, meets randomly, and have technical specialists that are completely unknown to me come over inspect my project. Obviously I'm leaning towards joining EAA but not the local chapter. However, if I did join the local chapter maybe I would meet some cool local people.
    Scratch Built 4-place Bearhawk. Continental IO-360, 88" C203 McCauley prop.

    Comment


    • #3
      You know, it's a crap shoot. Every chapter is different. Our chapter is quite small and, for all intents and purposes, is a social club. A lot of chapters work like that. I've been trying to make it more technical/builder-centric, but we just don't have the technical people (or experience) in my local chapter.

      Every chapter has a "center of activity". Nearby we have a killer ultralight chapter that flies the heck out everything all the time. Nearby we also have a chapter filled with active experimental builders and fliers. Nearby we have a chapter that has "young people" and "old people" that are constantly at odds with one another over "stuff". So you'll always have that.

      If you have one or more chapters nearby, it doesn't hurt to stop by for a meeting and get a feel for the membership. See if they have any builders and fliers and technical people whose experience you might be able to leverage. If not, then nothing lost, and you can look for another.

      Regarding membership fees, most chapters have them. Ours is $10/year on top of national membership dues. We require you be a national EAA member before becoming a chapter member, as I believe most chapters do. Some chapters ask for more, but we have no facilities to maintain, and borrow the conference room at the local airport for our meetings. National dues are typically about $350 a year at the bottom end. We make that in our winter chili feed in donations, so we can keep our membership fees low.

      Hope that helps!
      Christopher Owens
      Bearhawk 4-Place Scratch Built, Plans 991
      Bearhawk Patrol Scratch Built, Plans P313
      Germantown, Wisconsin, USA

      Comment


      • #4
        Great idea Chris!

        Whee: it depends, and can change rapidly with the right people. I joined a local chapter that was dying due to becoming an old-timers' social club with few activities and little communication. There was an election that replaced most of the board of directors. The chapter gained over 100 members in the following years, the airport now has no empty hangars, and they are trying to hire an additional flight instructor, all because the chapter and the airport management and the FBO started working together to promote aviation and events at the airport.
        I would suggest going to a few chapter meetings to see how it is run, and see if there is more than one chapter within reasonable distance. Our chapter fee is $20 per year.

        You might want to do a combination of using the IA for major stages of your build, and members of the chapter for ongoing inspections. If nothing else they may just ask a lot of "why is this...?" types of questions that get you thinking from a different perspective and see things you might have missed. Or they could just waste a lot of your time, if it is allowed to become just a social event.

        Comment


        • Chris In Milwaukee
          Chris In Milwaukee commented
          Editing a comment
          You have enough people to have a board of directors? :-)

      • #5
        Thanks for the perspective. Local chapter fee is $24/yr so not a big deal. They say they have some technical guys in the chapter but I don't know them. My IA friend is kinda quirky but a good guy and did several annuals on my last airplane. I trust him but right or wrong he is very opinionated. The DAR that covers this area doesn't care about in-process inspections so I haven't worried about it thus far.
        Last edited by whee; 02-22-2016, 06:24 PM.
        Scratch Built 4-place Bearhawk. Continental IO-360, 88" C203 McCauley prop.

        Comment


        • stinger
          stinger commented
          Editing a comment
          We all have different circumstances and feelings about in- progress inspections , however I feel that any and all inspections save me money and time. I live in a airpark thus I have many inspections and opinions that I look forward to everyday . Yes, some are off the wall but I just weed them out . Stinger

      • #6
        Our local chapter comes and goes with the enthusiasm of the members and leaders. These days it seems to be dwindling. When I was involved in running it we found some reliable ways to keep membership engaged, such as having punctual and organized meetings with topics that folks were interested in, which we found out by surveying the members. I realized early on that the rest of the group wasn't always interested in same the topics that I was interested in. We'd strive to always send a meeting reminder four days prior, and try to do field trips or food whenever possible. Other things that worked: spending a few minutes for builder updates from everyone present who was building or working on anything, introductions for new people and guests at the beginning of the meeting (take this seriously), and a mini-presentation limited to 10 minutes on technical topics of the presenter's choice. You'd be surprised what you can cover in 10 minutes.
        Whee, if all of the active builders decide not to participate for one reason or another, then that's how it becomes an old folks social club. It might be that if you start going to the meetings, others will to. And besides, sometimes the old folks can be pretty handy too. Our oldest chapter member designed engines in his younger days, and even though he's over 90 now and not likely to be flying often, I've gotten value from his experience and friendship. You might have more influence than you think when it comes to making the chapter into what you want it to be. These kinds of things are maleable.

        Comment


        • #7
          My EAA chapter in Jackson, MI has a hanger, workshop, meeting room, and small museum of WWII artifacts. The workshop has a large variety of expensive tools we all wish we had in our shop that would get periodic use. It includes but is not limited to a lathe, Mill, Brake, Shear, table saw, band saw, English wheel, metal roller! Compressor, Paint equipment. All these acquisitions happen slowly over time when one guy who has a vision leads. The dues are $25/year. The only fund raiser we have is a pancake breakfast. We invite the entire city, and this year will have a Corsair, and a C-47 coming. I think an old car club might be involved too.
          Brooks Cone
          Southeast Michigan
          Patrol #303, Kit build

          Comment


          • patrickh99
            patrickh99 commented
            Editing a comment
            It sounds like I should move to Jackson. Sweet setup!
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