Happy June 14th, Dear Chapter Members and Friends!

What is June 14th? Larry, our B-17 director just told me that June 14th is the EAA International Young Eagles Day. Maybe, we can plan some activity next year to coincide with this day.

I just came back from Japan visiting my mother the first time in three years. She just turned 90.

This trip was long. I took off on Tuesday from Austin for Dallas and onto Las Vegas where I had to stay overnight. Took off from Las Vegas to Honolulu and to Osaka, Japan on Thursday. Since I told my family that I was coming on Wednesday (I forgot about the Date Line), they stayed up till 1:00 a.m. and decided that I had messed up the date. Coming back home was also long, but the good part of this trip was that it was free except the hotels. During this trip, I thought of the aircraft that we build. It takes some a couple of years and some 17 years. During the construction, we encounter difficulties, interesting work, boredom, frustration, confusion, and meet all sorts of people who share the stories of their journey, and it seems like a never-ending battle. My trip was just like that. At the end, you will get to the destination as far as you are moving on. Don’t stay in Las Vegas or Honolulu too long, builders!

We had a great time at the Chapter 187 Annual Picnic and Hangar Hop #1 this year at Georgetown Municipal Airport. There were 25 plus people turned out and many of us just sat and chatted for a long time in the nice breeze just relaxing with full tummies. It was truly enjoyable.

Socializing one another is a great opportunity to get to know people in the chapter. Thank you for coming out and make the event successful! Many thanks go to John Nunn for accommodating us in his hangar for his Steen Skybolt, also to William Bennett, Rob Reese, Barry Gould, Dan Badwey and Fi Dot Fomichev to pitch in setting up and cook our fabulous BBQ lunch. The Chapter banners looked so good against the blue, blue sky!

By the way, it was very nice to be recognized in the EAA ChapterGram May issue about our volunteers’ hard work at the “Aluminum Overcast” B-17 Tour at San Marcos. We can pat our shoulders, folks!

Now we can look forward to Oshkosh AirVenture in July. We will have an interesting presentation about AirVenture in July meeting. If you want to share your Oshkosh experiences attending classes, please contact William Bennett to be a part of the presentation. I hope many members can attend. We are thinking wearing our chapter shirts there at Oshkosh. Give us some ideas on the design and we will come up with something fun to wear. What do you think?

The new Japanese Aviation word for this month is “so-ju-kan” meaning a control stick and is pronounced as “so-jew-kahn”. ‘Soju’ is drive, pilot, control, manipulate, fly, etc. and ‘kan’ is stick or yoke.

Please ‘soju’ safely!

Haruko Reese
EAA Chapter 187 President