It Takes All Kinds To Repair All Kinds

by ANN Correspondent Jeremy King

It's happened to all of us, and it doesn't take much: a fouled plug, spongy brake, or a corroded electrical connection. It's enough to spoil a day of flying around the home field, but what happens when you're at AirVenture?

What Irony. For some pilots seemingly stranded at the convention, though, a group of volunteers is waiting to give a hand. The Emergency Aircraft Repair building is on the 18-36 taxiway in the antique/classic parking grounds, and it's not hard to spot the place -- look for a lot of orange-shirted volunteers, and a couple of airplanes with cowlings or other significant chunks removed.

"I could prepare three ways to Sunday, and I'd still not be right," said Cy Galley. "I rebuilt three nose struts yesterday, and the last one I touched before that was 10 years ago."

Galley is the hub of all activities in this area. Members from EAA chapter 75 from Quad Cities, Illinois and Indiana staff the area, although the members aren't all from that area; some are members of the Quad Cities chapter but reside in other corners of the country.

Their mechanical backgrounds are just as diverse as their geographic ones, Galley said.

Qualifications? "Our volunteers have built airplanes -- or own airplanes -- or like airplanes," he said. The volunteers range from Airframe and Powerplant mechanic examiners on down.

Galley ran a spreadsheet last year totaling the experience of his volunteers, and the total was 320 years' combined experience of working on airplanes. There's knowledge to spare in this group.

That's a good thing, too, because in this camp, chaos comes in droves.

"Yesterday, this RV-6 had brake problems. He taxied so long his brakes overheated. The plastic brake line on one side came in contact with the overheated parts and burned a pinhole."

The volunteers towed the stricken RV (shown above and below) back to the maintenance area. The line, which was too long to begin with, was a simple fix -- volunteers snipped the line off at the pinhole, and it was still long enough to still function.

While their versatility is unchallenged, the workers do have limits.

"We don't do insurance work," Galley said. "We also try and avoid late model aircraft. The classics and homebuilts are largely simple airplanes. We have a radio guy here, but we're really not equipped for that."

A shelf outside the shack houses half a dozen batteries, all charging. "We do lots of batteries and tires here," Galley (shown below) said.

The aircraft owners do pay for the parts needed for repairs, but there is no charge for labor. Gracious pilots who have a safe aircraft to fly home, however, frequent a donation bucket on a window ledge. Those donations filled a Snap-On toolbox... not bad for a shop that only opens for 10 days a year.

Surely there has to be an upper-end of the crew's capacity -- after all, the volunteers couldn't just go out there and knock out an annual, right?

Wrong.

Galley said some guy from California did that.

Twice.

FMI: www.airventure.org