Fox Valley Tech Pairs Pancakes & Future

By Scott Spangler on April 26th, 2009

Fly-in pancake breakfasts have been a grassroots aviation staple for nigh on a half century or more. Most of them are hosted by EAA chapters or local flying clubs, which is why the feast hosted by the Fox Valley Technical College at its aviation campus on the Wittman Regional Airport caught my eye, tickled my curiosity, and posed a question: Why?

JetWhine_FVTC_Breakfast Naturally, it was raining. Hard. But that didn’t deter the faithful from diving in. The traffic was steady from 0700 to 1200. Arriving first were the old guys who reminisce about flying days past over coffee and a $6 plate heaped high with griddle cakes, eggs, and sausage. Families started arriving around 0900, and the younger kids gravitated to the FVTC squishy planes piled on a table in the cafeteria of the S.J. Spanbauer Center.

JetWhine_FVTC_G1000 After breakfast people didn’t head back into the rain. They explored every corner of the facility and talked to students and faculty, each of them hard to miss in their fluorescent yellow t-shirts. Recruiting new students was clearly the motivation behind the meal, but it wasn’t a hard sell. In many cases seeds and good will were planted with show and tell and try this. A brother and sister, both under 10, shared the left seat of the Frasca sim with panoramic visuals. “Can we see our house?” asked the little girl as they careened across the sky. “No,” said the calm woman in the right seat, working the answer into her soothing how-to litany. Next to them, a young woman took her turn in the Garmin 1000 simulator, guided by her boyfriend.

JetWhine_FVTC-Avionics On the way to the hanger another G1000 panel parked in a doorway  lured passers-by into the the avionics lab, where LEDs and screens of many colors winked greetings. An instructor explained the workings of the airborne weather radar antenna that was doing its back-and-forth dance on the repair bench. At the back of the room, King and Garmin stacks glowed from their bench-top cases. A man whose jacket said he was a member of the EAA chapter in West Bend, Wisconsin, explained the Garmin 430 to a high schooler in shorts and sneakers. The boy’s face said he was interested.

JetWhine_FVTC_MechIn the hangar, clean and brightly lighted, a Cessna 150 used by the airframe and powerplant students framed the new Cessna 172 SP that teaches flight students the way of the sky. Next to it was the Beech Duchess, both with doors open and students standing by to answer any questions. By the 150 two bright t-shirted A&P students talked to an older gentleman who’d just been laid off and was considering a career change. He could earn this A&P in two years, they said, and for another year he could also earn his avionics certification because both share the same first-year classes.

JetWhine_FVTC-Seminar The crowd thinned a little bit just before 1000, when the hour-long safety seminar started: Using WSI Pilotbrief Online Weather System. Approximately 30 people filled the tables, mostly men intent on the image projected on the big screen before them. In the back corner, a wife was reading an aeronautical brochure; the daughter was quietly playing a handheld video game, occasionally looking at the screen, digital fertilization of an aeronautical seed, perhaps.

A towering stack of credit is due Fox Valley Tech for its grassroots outreach effort on behalf of aviation’s future. It is no small undertaking with, I’m sure, limited immediate returns, other than the good feelings that come with a full tummy. But given the challenges aviation now faces, the criticism heaped on it, maybe that’s enough. — Scott Spangler

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