EAA Chapter 528 - Meeting the "Local" Builders

 When I first started planning everyone told me to talk to local EAA Chapters.  I joined EAA and the resources online are quite helpful.  I reached out to the local two chapters and came to find one chapter is essentially dead.  All of the top members moved south and no one took over.  Lucky for me, the East End chapter, Chapter 528 is still functioning.  I reached out and got in touch with Rich who is one of the administrators.  He was nice enough to get me in touch with the single RV-10 in my area's owner.  I got to speak with both gentlemen over the course of the winter, but no meetings were on the table due to COVID.  

Luckily, the weather began to warm and both had invited me out to their hangars, located 10 minutes away at KFOK (Gabreski Airport in Westhampton).  Rich has a RV-6 which is beautiful and was his second home built that he completed with his father.  The aircraft was nice but I unfortunately had a short window to visit and didn't have a chance to go up with Rich.  That's still on the agenda one of these days. 

David who owns the RV-10 is actually working on his Instrument Rating like me.  We had chatted a few times already over the phone about our training and the build process.  I eventually was able to find a day where David was heading upstate for his Pitot Static check and wanted a safety pilot so he could fly under the hood.  It made a perfect situation where I could tag along and check out his plane and get to fly in it.  ?Unfortunately, the day came and the airport was fogged in with the morning fog.  We hung around for about 90 minutes and their was no sign of it lifting in sight.  The nice part was David graciously let me check out and see his aircraft and hangar.  I was amazed by the size and beauty of it, and it really reinforced my desire to build myself a 10.  Hopefully I will get to go up at a later date with him.

I continued to wait and hope the weather would improve, and finally NY let up a lot of the Mask and gathering requirements in the middle of May.  Shortly thereafter, Rich sent out a blast about a gathering at his hangar.  I immediately went into planning mode to insure I could make it.  It was a mostly informal gathering where the members BBQ'd and conversed about flying and building.  It was nice to meet other builders as well, many were building or had built Sonex aircraft.  There was another smaller RV builder present who also had a nice aircraft.  I came to realize a bunch of these builders had electrical backgrounds and were willing to help me when I got to that point.  That is probably one of the most worrisome areas of building for me.  If I can save some money by not doing a full service panel build, that would be a home run.  But I have a lot of steps before I get close to that.  It was a great afternoon and made me eager to see some other builds and get to know these guys better.  I am looking forward to the next meeting which may be held in a Sonex builders garage, which would be nice to see a build in progress.  

Back to the garage reorganization and build planning.  Until my next update.