January (2006) Meeting Minutes

EAA Chapter 704 held the regular monthly meeting on 1-9-06 at the Sparta Paul C Miller Airport pilot's lounge with about 2 dozen persons in attendance.

President John Gill called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. and held a short business meeting.

Under "old business", Ron Fritz held a discussion relative to a chapter banquet in February. This is planned to be held on Saturday. February 25th at Roger and Marilyn Doanes' mobile home park activity building. The park is called Cedar Fields and is located at 17 mile Rd. and Highway 131 near Cedar Springs. The event is planned to be a pot luck dinner with program of some sort. More details will be available at the February 704 meeting.

EAA headquarters is requesting an up to date roster of our membership to include the members EAA numbers and expiration date. Members will be contacted for this information. It is hoped this data can be collected at the next meeting.

Under new business: Airport manager, Vie Johnston called attention to the activities going on at the Clare, Michigan airport and told how the manager was posting these activities in a publication called the Michigan Flying Times so that the whole flying community can be aware of the happenings at their airport. He is suggesting we could have a person designated to feed information about activities at Sparta to this publication and make the area more aware of our existence and generate interest in attending some of them (I.e. Fly-ins etc.)

President Gill emphasized the importance of reactivating our membership with phone calls and personal invitations to some who haven't been attending lately. He would like to see our group be fully active with lots of things going on. He asked everyone's support in getting this done.

Tech Counselor, Dan Bauman. Held a discussion on Swaging cable ends and demonstrated a new swaging tool he has obtained. He created a cable end loop with a swage tool showing the proper way it should be done. He also had a cable cutting tool which does a real neat job of cutting cable --not easily done Without this tool.

Dan also told of the progress he is making on the P A 12 Super Cub he is building and hinted at the complexity of the project and the problems he has had since much of the project is customized and he had to fabricated many of the parts as he went along. He has been working lately one the Skylight installation.

Larry Bauer commented on the "Family Cruiser" he is building and Dave DuPerron spoke of his Super Cub project.

Jay Dean, acting secretary, was collecting dues and four members paid.

After a break for refreshments, Gary Kremers gave a program on his RV project showing slides of the building process and finally the finished product. It turned out to be a beautiful class A plus airplane with an electronics package to be the envy of all who want a fully IFR machine with the latest in sophistication. Gary had previously built and flown a Pulsar which was also a pristine flying machine. He is to commended for his knowledge and building skills --he is obviously dedicated to excellence.

Meeting adjourned at 8:45 p.m.
Jay Dean, Substitute Secretary