October (2007) Meeting Minutes

EAA Chapter 704 met for its regular monthly meeting on October 8, 2007 at the Sparta Paul C. Miller Airport pilot’s lounge with 25 members and guests present.

President Vie Johnston called the meeting to order at 7:00 pm. The minutes of the previous meeting were approved as printed in the news letter. The treasurer reported $1888.07 in the checkbook with all bills paid.

President Johnston reported on the recent Fly Out to the Double J Ranch. He said that 8 airplanes went on the flight and 7 returned. One aircraft, belonging to our president, failed to start and had to be have some spark plug work done to get it started. Fortunately we have some very helpful AP mechanics in our group that come in mighty handy at times.

Steve Zelle flew in from Plymouth Mettetal airport near Detroit (EAA Chapter 113) to talk to us about a project he has worked on for the last 3 ½ years. He became interested in the fact that there are a goodly number of private uncharted landing strips located all over our state. He began making a list of them and contacted the owners to get the approval for listing them in a book to be made available to pilots. He stated that the Michigan Airport Directory lists 233 registered airports. He has identified 545 uncharted landing strips making a total of 778 places to land here in the state of Michigan.

He now has printed and is selling a book listing these landing strips complete with location and phone numbers of owners. He suggested that, if possible, a phone call to the owner would be appropriated if you find such a landing place close to where you want to go and would like to take advantage of that convenience.

He stated that he had had some very interesting experiences in the process of collecting this data —met and talked with some very interesting people. The chapter (707) purchased a copy of the book and it is on display in the lounge. Several chapter members purchased copies for themselves as well.

President Johnston stated that the project of photographing members airplanes is a little behind schedule —there was still time to get it don. See Dave Meinke about this.

Bill Fish, John Gill and Dan Bauman gave project reports with progress being made by all three. Scott Richmond told of his flying trip to the U.P. and ran into oil leak problems —had a gasket problem. It appears that there are some airplanes that like to go places but don’t like to come home.

Meeting adjourned

Jay Dean Sec/Treas EAA Chapter 704