Scout Aviation Workshop - 05 October 2019

The Majors Flying Club, with a lot of help from friends of the club, tenants on the field, and the FBO, held their Fall Scout Aviation Workshop on Saturday, October 5, 2019. It was a beautiful fall day for forty-eight scouts to pre-flight airplanes, go on a discovery flight, build and fly model airplanes, get some lunch, and display their aviation knowledge to the folks who interviewed and quizzed them about the material they were taught during our onsite ground schools. To say it was a busy day it to put it mildly.

Thanks to the smooth talking club president, Mr. Dennis Mathis, there were around fourteen planes available for the scouts to use for the pre-flight event. The scouts get shown how to do a pre-flight inspection and then one by one they conduct the same pre-flight. It is very fun to wander around and listen in to the conversations between the pilots and the scouts. When all of the scouts had completed a pre-flight, the first round of discovery flight began. With five airplanes and fourteen seats per sortie, it took a few sorties to give all of the scouts there twenty minute tour of the area southeast of the airport. As you can see from the post flight pictures, there were a lot of grins and happy faces. As they finish their flight, the scouts transition to model airplane building hangar. The goal is to build and fly their plane a specified distance in order to get signed off. The next stop is the interview process where the scouts sit down and have a chat with other pilots to be certain they learned what they needed to learn from ground school to earn their merit badge. Mixed in was a nice Subway sandwich lunch and a demonstration by the Major Field Fire Department. They can shoot out a bunch of water through the water cannon in a hurry.

We enjoy the opportunity to introduce scouts to aviation. It is a labor of love and it would not be possible without the behind the scenes work of the coordinator, Jan Weatherbee and a slew of volunteers from our club, the local pilots, and friends of the club. For example, local pilots provide their airplanes and their time as well as a hangar (thank you Mr. Crumpton), the Sulphur Spring TX450 Composite Civil Air Patrol squadron provided their support for the event, the FBO guys were busy fueling planes and keeping the FBO clean, and our club members and friends of club helped in run smoothly by escorting scouts and helping with anything that needed to be done.

It was another, safe and successful event and we are looking forward to the next one!