There has been some movement in Washington in regard to the 2nd Pilot's Bill Of Rights on Aeromedical Reform. Be sure to go read the article that is posted on the main EAA web site at:

https://www.eaa.org

I would strongly urge all our Chapter Members to spread the word and utilize the link, included on the EAA web page, to send in your support of this Bill to your Congressmen and Representatives.

Thanks,
Mike Laney

We are all proud of our McKinney National Airport and the McKinney Air Center (KTKI). Last year they received the following awards from FltPlan.com in the 2014 Pilot's Choice Awards.

#1 U.S. FBO
#1 South Central U.S. FBO
#1 ATC Tower

The voting is now open for 2015. There are only 33 days left for us to vote in FltPlan.com's 2015 Pilot's Choice Awards. There are a number of categories. So please be sure to vote for KTKI in all of those categories. To participate in the 2015 Pilots' Choice Awards, you must have created an account with FltPlan.com before 1/26/2015. The address to FltPlan.com is:

www.FltPlan.com

This is a great way for us to show our support for KTKI, the McKinney Air Center and all of the wonderful staff that help and support our Chapter and members every day. It is a nice way to tell all of these folks "Thank You!"

So, please, go vote. Lets see if we can help keep KTKI #1 in all the categories.

Thanks,
Mike Laney
469-261-4938

Wow!!! Another great turnout to our monthly Chapter Coffee and Donuts Fly In/Meeting. Thank you Smitty for the video. I hope we continue to have the attendance seen over the past couple months. As Reilly stated in our February announcements, at our March Coffee & Donuts we will do a Plane Show & Tell with Mr. Jim Davis. Jim recently acquired a BD-4 and will be discussing the plane and his rebuild. This will be a real treat to see this project and hear what Jim has to share.

As promised, we have our 2015 Chapter calendar ready. So please mark these dates. We would really like to have a strong showing at all of these events this year. Each of you should have received a copy of this calendar in your email. If any of you have some other suggested activities, please feel free to contact one of the officers. We are always looking for some good suggestions.

At next months Coffee & Donuts meeting, we will take a little time to conduct some Chapter business. Since we took office, we have been unable to locate a signed version of our Chapter Bylaws. There are also a number of things in the Bylaws that were no longer accurate and needed amending. We have been working to update these and will be sending out an email with a link so you can look them over. We will need to take a few minutes to perform a simple majority vote of the members in attendance to approve the amended Bylaws. To vote, you must be a Member in Good Standing. Which means you must be a member of our Chapter having paid your 2015 dues, and you must be a member of the National EAA organization. So please be looking for this email. We will only discuss a summary of the Bylaw changes at the meeting.

This morning, Mel Asberry sent me an email indicating that Gladewater Airport runways and taxiways were recently salted by TxDot during an icing event in that area. We may want to avoid this airport for a while. Since one of our 2015 events is scheduled for that airport, I sent the past president of Chapter 972 an email inquiring whether their Runway Gumbo Fly In's would still be at Gladewater or at another location. We will keep you posted and thanks Mel for the heads up.

As always, thank you for your support.

Mike Laney
469-261-4938

We had a wonderful turnout at our First Saturday Coffee & Donuts Fly In / Chapter Meeting in January. There were close to 70 folks that showed up even with the wet and cold weather that day. It has been a long time since I have seen that many cars parked in front of the hangars. Everyone seemed to have a great time!!!!

In fact, that was so much fun, lets do it again on February 7th. This is our next scheduled First Saturday Coffee & Donut Fly In / Chapter Meeting date. No matter what the weather is, we will still have fun and fellowship. The agenda for this event is as follows:

09:00 Coffee and donuts in Chuck Roberts hangar (#2520) at TKI
10:00 Chapter Announcements and Raffle drawing
10:15 Chapter Program
10:45 Finish off the coffee and donuts in Chuck's hangar

We have a really neat video for the February 7th event. It is titled "WWII Cadet Training" with Jeff Skiles. This recent EAA video was very well done and shows Jeff going through some training and actually flying 4 different WWII airplanes. So be sure and not miss this 29 minute video!!!

I have a special "Thank You" for Brian Rutherford and others who were able to fix our PayPal link on this Chapter 1246 web page. So, if you have been waiting to pay your 2015 Chapter dues for PayPal to get fixed, your wait is officially over. However, should you wish to pay your dues in person, Brian will have a table set up, in Chuck's hangar, at our Coffee & Donuts Fly In / Chapter Meeting on February 7th.

One of the main items the Officers are currently working on is our 2015 Calendar of events. We want to get these out to all of our members for awareness and to help ensure maximum participation at these events. So stay tuned, we should have this out in the next few weeks.

This is going to be a great year!!!! We have had a number of folks give the Officers some very good suggestions for future videos, speakers, Show & Tell Airplanes, and other program ideas. So if you have a good program you feel everyone would enjoy, please do not hesitate to contact one of our Chapter Officers and let them know. Your help and assistance here is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike Laney

Here's Pat Long's Hatz Classic Experimental Aircraft. Here we've collected some pictures and video of his building adventure, right up to the first flight. Be sure and check back, as we will be posting some video of this beautiful bird in flight!