To honor the founding of EAA Chapter One and the people who have designed and built aircraft at Flabob Airport's facilities in Riverside (CA), the EAA provided a significant piece of real estate at Wittman Airport for an exhibit. The Thomas W. Wathen Foundation, which is headquartered at Flabob, charged Rafe Tomsett (right) with the responsibility to tell the Flabob/Chapter One story at Oshkosh.  Tomsett deserves kudos for a job very well done.

Tomsett created a miniature replica of Flabob's runway and lined both sides of it with some of the significant aircraft that were designed, built or which reside there. These included airworthy replicas of the famous Golden Age of Air Racing era speedsters, the de Havilland DH88 Comet (pictured below) and Roscoe Turner's Miss Champion.

Both aircraft were built at Flabob for Tom Wathen. There were also copies of some of the famous designs that have emerged from Flabob: the Stits Playboy and Playmate, the Marquart Charger and Stolp Staduster.

However, it was really the founding of EAA Chapter One, so eloquently told in a series of illustrated panels, that drew crowd attention. Ray Stits, who was responsible for the creation of Chapter One in 1953, was on hand to discuss what that first chapter has meant to the sport aviation movement, as well as the 15 aircraft he designed.

In the course of AirVenture, tens of thousands of people stopped to admire the aircraft and read the displays about Flabob and Chapter One.

Representatives of that first chapter handed out over 23,000 Flabob buttons. Since the founding of EAA�s Chapter One, over a thousand other chapters in more than 100 countries have been added to the list. At this time, EAA Chapter One, with nearly 700 members, is the world's largest EAA Chapter.

FMI: www.eaach1.org