Pilots give youngsters a lift

Area pilots lined up their crafts Saturday on the hanger skirts at the Carson City Airport, taking turns giving free airplane rides to youngsters.

It was Young Eagles Day, an effort by the Experimental Aircraft Association to expose children to aviation by giving them their first airplane rides.

The chapter gave 32 rides Saturday and has seven scheduled for rides today.

Most of the young passengers reacted like Christine Jorgensen, 17, who had a big grin plastered to her face when Ron Johnson brought her back to earth in his RV-6, built from a kit made by Van's Aircraft in Oregon.

Participating aircraft ranged from home builts like Johnson's to a retired tandem-seat Beechcraft T-34 Mentor Navy trainer or commercially produced crafts like a Cessna Skyhawk.

"We're also giving the kids a chance to see there's a number of careers available in aviation, not only becoming pilots," EAA chapter 403 president John Grub said.

The association started the Young Eagles program with the goal of giving one million children worldwide their first plane rides by 2003, when powered flight reaches the century mark, Dorothy Barden said. She said 600,000 of those rides have already been given since the program's inauguration in 1992.

Former astronaut Gen. Chuck Yeager, honorary chairman of the Young Eagles Program, has personally flown more than 100 young people since becoming honorary chairman in January 1994.

The EAA chapter has its own building at the airport, while the worldwide association is headquartered at Oshkosh, Wis. Carson members visit air shows in the area with a mower engine-powered toy airplane called Ground Bound to give rides, as well. The chapter also supports other programs financially, including a recent $500 donation to the World War II memorial drive.

For information on EAA, call John or Edie Grub at 885-1945.

ON THE NET

www.youngeagles.org

www.eaa.org