Suburban Aero Club of Chicago 2019 Year in Review
Established in 1962 and an AMA Gold Leader Club
Club Meetings, Members, and Meals
- 12 plane raffles $1500 value (12 x $125)
- 24 gift card raffles $600 (12 x 2 x $25 each)
- Info sessions: electrical, transmitter programming, new ideas, EDF afterburner, and new product info
- Scale Plane day which brought members out in full formation with 14+ aircraft on display with historical background (free gifts and $75 total in gift cards awarded to pilot participants!)
- Mary Jensen of Bestitched Embroidery Lifetime member award for the years of SAC support and donations provided to the club, she provides custom embroidery for club apparel, patches, etc.
- Banquet at Chef Klaus: Beer, Bratwurst, and Flyers, What else do you need!
- Club Family Picnic: great food, friendship, and our families seeing our hobby. There was Great flying entertainment including a death spiral of the flying lawn mower! Power on Rob!
Fun Flys
- 8 events / 11 participants, too many flights (and bounces) to count.
- Competitive flying at all levels with LOTS of “body language” to get better flight scores!
- $100 cash prize awards at the Turkey Shoot
- Over $100 in plaques for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and the Turkey Shoot winner!
- Participants are all entered in the year end ARF plane raffle
- Thanks to Greg, Al, Rob for the event ideas, Ann’s hard work, John York’s photos and all the volunteers!
Float fly’s: April thru September
- 12 Friday & Saturday events
- Special Memorial and Labor Day events with food
- 100+ participants from local clubs and states!
- Included planes, power boats, sail boats, cruise liners, and little
- Thanks Ron Wegrzyn for all your hard work to make these very successful events
Cub Scouts pack 237 aircraft display and flight demos at Meadow Creek Airpark
- over 100 Scouts, parents, siblings, and Meadow Creek residents
- 20 RC aircraft on display and included full scale planes
- RC flight demos including Tom Lustig’s great aerobatic flights
- Fantastic full scale Pitts acrobatic demonstration by Meadow Creek resident Pilot with full smoke (see the videos)!!!
VFW flight introduction
- Intro to Model Airplanes teaching families of VFW Post 311 - Benjamin O Davis
- 30+ VFW family members attended to get youth and families involved
- First Flight training to youth and adults which included lots of smiles!
- Small Drone raffled off
- Thanks to George Nichols for arranging the event which also included members from other local clubs
Public Relations
- Dolphin Lake Park Float Fly hosted by the with Homewood-Flossmoor park district
- Dailey Center: Represent SAC to public and government agencies which is more important than ever these days
- Food drive Nov / Dec: Over $300 in food donations help our local community people
- 1-on-1 flight training by SAC members to interested people and those just getting started
Auctions April & October
- 100+ attended on Thursday evenings
- Lots of RC hobby items sold during and after the auctions
- $100 total in raffle prizes ($50 cash each auction)
- Lots of bargains & laughs! Always a great time!
WARBIRD DAY!
- Veterans and Battle of Britain tribute
- Many great scale warbirds displayed and flown!!!
- Free food and leading fees this year!
- Many great and awesome flights from screaming warbirds including Tom Lustig’s P-51 and Zero! (See videos online Facebook and FLICKR)
- Great flying despite the rainy weather in the morning.
- Thanks to all who attended and helped including cook master Frank!
AeroSTEM Expo 2019 @ IIT 3/30/19
- Introduces inner-city youth to the aviation and aerospace fields and mentors career aspirations
- 100’s of youth and parents attended
- RC aircraft display
- Partnered with Chicago Model Masters members
Web Presence
- Website updated for content, events, information and links
- FLICKR photo sharing implementation now has over 2000 pics and Videos of this year’s activities! Thanks to all who contributed. More to come!
- Facebook SAC community and SAC group pages reinvigorated to included events, meetings, photos, club info, and more. It’s a great way to keep up to date quickly inside and outside the club.
- Thanks to Devin for restarting SAC’s on-line signature out there on the internet
And many other things which have made the Suburban Aero Club of Chicago a great organization. Thanks all the members who have helped in past, 2019, and years to come!
Now you know why you’re a SAC member!