Newsletter - July 2026

Message from the President

I hope everyone is taking advantage of these beautiful summer flying days! As we dive into the heart of the flying season, I want to take a moment to reflect on what makes our chapter so incredibly special: our shared passion for building, flying, and sharing the magic of general aviation.

Our June project tour was a huge success, and it looks like we doubled our last year’s numbers. I believe that high attendance rate can be directly attributed to our new website and the
advertising generated by it within the community. I personally want to thank every one of the individuals that opened their hangars and garages and showed off your work. I know personally it takes a tremendous amount of discipline and stubbornness to keep working on these projects. So, if you need any support, please reach out. There are plenty of us in the chapter that are ready

to step up and assist you with whatever obstacle you may be experiencing.

If you haven’t seen our Ray Scholarship results, then let me be the first to tell you that Emalie Parker and Ben McKillip were selected by our scholarship committee back at the end of May. The latest news is that both individuals have been accepted by the Ray Foundation and funds should be arriving any time now. The Chapter is responsible for $3k each, so those funds will be sent to their training partners immediately. We look forward to progress reports on their new adventure, and we want to assure them we’re there to support them in this endeavor. Final shoutout to George Sciss for managing the scholarship committee and getting this across the finish line, thank you!

For July, our chapter is going to be busy at Oshkosh hosting the Pancake breakfast on the 21st. A huge thank you goes to Zoe Erhart for coordinating this event and for getting our application submitted. We already have the required 21 volunteers for this event, but we can always use a few more. We will also be picking up our Young Eagles banner from the Blue Barn for reaching a significant milestone. The chapter has flown 5,000 Young Eagles so far. We passed this milestone back in October 2025 but just received notice of it a couple of weeks ago. We will also begin scheduling interviews for our upcoming A&P scholarship. Get those applications ready because the Chapter will be awarding $5k to a very deserving individual. Stay tuned for interview schedules.

Here are a few reminders for August. There’s the Pancake fly-in to Kelly Airpark on August 1st; our normal coffee and donuts combined with the Young Eagles flights on the second Saturday, Aug. 8th; our normal third Saturday meeting is going to be pushed out a week due to a couple of critical members not being in town. We’re going to be having a fly-in movie night because the weather is great, it’s summer and it’s going to be a lot of fun! So, get ready for 22 Aug 2026 (4th Saturday), starting at 6PM for our second ever movie night. We need volunteers to pull this off and make it a success. We look forward to seeing you all there. You’ll be seeing advertising for this soon.

Our September monthly meeting occurs during the Pikes Peak Reginal Airshow. We’re supporting this, so stay tuned for more information. We will need several volunteers if we can get this arranged. We will also be having our annual pancake breakfast and fly-in on 17 Oct 2026 starting at 8 – 11am. This is a combination event with the Pikes Peak 99s. If you’ve never heard of them, go check out their website and search them out a bit. https://www.pikespeak99s.org/ We’re going to need several volunteers for this event as well.

Blue skies and tailwinds,
Bill Epperson Jr.
President, EAA Bruce McCombs Chapter 72

Young Eagles

We were able to fly 31 Young Eagles on Saturday, July 11. The weather could not have been better. Our chapter will receive a banner this year from EAA National in recognition of flying 5,000 Young Eagles since the program began. The National goal is to fly 2.5 million Young Eagles by this year’s Airventure. We are very close to reaching that goal.

Adam Pendleton, Young Eagles Coordinator
Young Eagles | EAA Chapter 72

Pancake breakfast in Oshkosh

This is a big opportunity this year to raise money for Chapter 72. We are hosting the Pancake Breakfast at Airventure Oshkosh, on Tuesday morning, July 21, 2026. We have over 20 volunteers in support of this effort, including some who are not members of Chapter 72. We accept all the help we can gather. Photos will follow in next month’s Newsletter.