Experimenter is a magazine created by EAA for people who build airplanes. We will report on amateur-built aircraft as well as ultralights and other light aircraft.
Issue link: http://experimenter.epubxp.com/i/142883
To w e r Fr e q u e n c y Oshkosh Is Our Classroom By Jack Pelton EAA's mission statement is "To Grow Participation in Aviation." It is an ambitious but essential goal. And the primary means of achieving our objective is education. When you read the word education I'm sure you picture a classroom full of students being lectured by an instructor. A classroom is an effective way to teach many subjects, but it's not the method we use in EAA. Our most effective teaching tool is experiential, and our greatest experience every year is AirVenture in Oshkosh. At Oshkosh you can get hands-on instruction in the entire range of skills and techniques you need to build, restore, or maintain an aircraft. In one building experts are demonstrating how to weld, both with gas-fired torches and electrical arc welding equipment. In another pavilion people are covering airframe parts in fabric and learning the art of rib stitching and fabric shrinking. In still another building people are working with wood, even carving a propeller. The opportunities to learn are almost endless. But there is a much larger, and even more important, educational effort at Oshkosh, and it's all around us. It is Oshkosh and AirVenture itself that is our most important teaching tool. When people come to Oshkosh they can see every type of aircraft imaginable. There are homebuilts, of course, but there is also a greater range of antique, classic, warbird, and standard category airplanes than can be found at any other gathering. There are people flying powered parachutes, very light airplanes of all sorts, and rotary-wing aircraft. And every year I see a flying machine or two that defy being categorized, other than to say they are the product of some very imaginative people. What this vast array of flying machines shows a visitor is that personal aviation is possible. No matter what your On the cover: James Redmon's Berkut Tirteen (Photography by Jim Koepnick) 2 Vol.2 N o.7 / July 2013 interest, or skill level, or budget, there is a flying activity on display at Oshkosh that can interest you. This is education in its most fundamental form. Oshkosh shows anyone who attends that private aviation is possible, available, and you can do it, too. At Oshkosh you will meet people from all walks of life who are involved in private aviation of some sort. You will learn that flying is not reserved for any special group of people with eagle-eyed vision, crooked smiles, and straight teeth. Oshkosh first fires an interest in flying, and then shows you how you can become involved. That is education in its purest form. Our incredibly successful Young Eagles program is educational in the same sense. When an EAAer takes a youngster for an airplane ride, he or she is not teaching the kid how to fly. What is happening is that the youngster is learning that private flying is available and possible for him or her. That is the first lesson we must teach to achieve our goal of growing participation in aviation. Other crucial but not obvious lessons that Oshkosh and Young Eagles flights teach is that personal aviation is exciting, it's fun, and it's a challenge. No classroom or lecturing teacher is required to see the smiles everywhere at Oshkosh and to learn that you, too, can be a part of something that brings so much satisfaction and fun. EAA can't literally teach the whole world to fly, or to build an airplane, or to restore an antique, but we can show hundreds of thousands of people that all of that is possible for them. When we show off our love and passion for all things flying every year at Oshkosh we are teaching others they can do it, too. EAA was founded to teach and share the skills needed to participate in personal aviation, and we are very good at it. Every year we educate many, many thousands of people at Oshkosh without anyone ever having to sit at a desk. Oshkosh is summer school everyone can love.