My Young Eagles Day

Oct 2012 My Young Eagles Day

Have you ever given a Young Eagles flight? I’m guessing some pilots would say “Never” but just as many can say “Dozens” of times or more. This is about the coolest, most fun thing you can do to share your passion for flying. I’m tickled to report that Saturday was EAA Young Eagles Days for 2 of the 3 EAA chapters I’m a member of. Luckily the groups are based only 20 miles apart so I could give S7 rides at both events on an absolutely beautiful Saturday.

The first was a group of five 11 & 12 year old Chinese students, 3 girls and 2 boys, visiting for 3 months. 5 Planes (with me being the only female pilot) and you can bet I was going to give one of the girls a ride!

All the pilots and their Young Eagles

The Chinese students are from Zhangjiagang Foreign Language School in Zhangjiagang City which is located on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, China’s golden waterway.  The students arrived in August and will be staying until the end of October and have stayed with host families that are connected with St. Michael School or Parish. 

Now that’s the kind of enthusiasm I love to see!

This is “Anna” (her American name) and she loved two things – taking pictures with my iphone and holding onto the stick while we did turns!

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This Young Eagle flight was a “flight of 5” light sport aircraft and the kids all got a great ride. We did an in-trail, cross-country over-flying 2 other airports then back to our home base for the landing. Apparently, the EAA prefers that Young Eagle flights depart and return to the same airport with no stops in between. Even though we could not lane, my Anna got a kick out of our low approach to one of the other fields and LOVED the stick time instruction I gave her.

At our 2nd Young Eagle event, this next little girl heard about the airplane rides at school and kept telling her parents she wanted to come and fly. She and her mom got there and registered then she patiently waited for about an hour for her dad to get there so he could watch the big event.  She was one happy little kido who could not believe how “tiny, little bitty & funny” everything looked from 1800′.

All the instructions I gave the kids about where to find the sick-sack were a moot point. They were all pretty much fearless and loved their rides. AND the music to my ears was hearing “Can I go again?!”