-
It seems like there would a couple of different ways to do this that would not run afoul of the EAA mother ship. The "Scrounge Dawgs" example above is one, where the separate group which just happens to be made up of chapter members builds and operates the aircraft.
I could also see the building project being an entirely chapter funded and conducted activity but then the completed aircraft being sold to a separate owners group or club which just happens to be made up of chapter members once completed. In both cases, as in dusterpilot's example, it's likely that only some of the members would want to own and operate the aircraft in any case.
I suppose it all comes down to whether or not the project is intended to be a purely educational and recreational project or a fundraiser for the chapter. If the latter, then you'd probably be better off with an auction or public sale of the chapter-build aircraft once airworthy.
One question I would have is, at what point does the aircraft have to leave the chapter? It's hard to sell an experimental aircraft that has not had it's basic flight testing and minimal flight hours for sign off.
-
Hello everyone. I am the new Chapters Director here at EAA and while I am coming up to speed I thought I’d share a resource we recently made available on this admittedly complicated subject.
EAA has created a “Flying Club Handbook” that actually answers a number of the questions posed here in the past few days. As I mentioned, this is a bit of a complicated topic (the handbook is 71 pages long), but well worth a careful read to come up to speed on the challenges. Please see the link below.
https://www.eaa.org/en/eaa/aviation-...es/flying-club
Thanks!
-
Well, I see this thread has gone off-topic :(
The flying club concept has been around for a long time, so the issue of how a chapter can operate an aircraft has been asked and answered.
However, before you can fly it, you need to build it, which was the original question asked in this post.
Since no one monitoring this forum has ever successfully executed a chapter building project, perhaps EAA HQ could ask Charlie Becker to do a webinar on how HQ successfully executed the build of the Zenith by the staff? This would be a great project to use as a template, because (I assume) there were many people on the build who were first-timers.
Thanks in Advance
-
Back to the original topic. My chapter has a project which we are making progress on, but we have many of the same questions. How to finance, how and WHEN to transfer/sell to probably a flying club, etc. Right now, the finance is the biggest question. We have applied for our 501(c)3, so we will soon be able to accept donations, like a C-65 (hint, hint).
-
Might ask on the homebuilder section of this forum. I suspect like a lot of other forums that not everyone watches all the different topics all the time.
Bill H.