This piece originally ran in the July 2024 issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine.
Gale Guilette, EAA 128629, is helping keep aviation history alive, one sheet of metal at a time. Once a week, Gale travels from his home in northern Wisconsin to volunteer in EAA’s maintenance and restoration hangar, the Kermit Weeks Hangar.
“I was one of those kids who never missed an airplane flying over but never thought I would ever fly an airplane,” Gale said. “Then when I was 29 years old, a friend of mine said, ‘They have an introductory flight at the airport. Why don’t we go take a flight?’” This introductory flight happened in December, and by February he found himself flight training. Come that June, Gale had already earned his private pilot certificate.
After earning his certificate, Gale was considering a career move into the aviation industry. He decided to visit EAA headquarters to seek advice from none other than EAA founder Paul Poberezny himself. Paul spent nearly two hours chatting with Gale and gave him a tour of the grounds. Paul suggested he volunteer at the Weeks Hangar to get acquainted with the field of aviation, and while this didn’t result in a career move, Gale clearly liked what he saw and has been volunteering for EAA ever since. He’s even made it to every fly-in convention in Oshkosh since his first in 1978.
Professionally, Gale worked in the medical field as a clinical engineer and in the industrial field as a controls engineer. This, coupled with his experience homebuilding an RV-4, has made him quite useful at the hangar. “One of the things you learn about working on airplanes is you have to have attention to detail because [of] the way that things are put together, and engineering is a good base for that,” he said. “Then the medical stuff that I did as a clinical engineer, I’ve always said there is probably nothing you can find in the mechanics that you can’t find a similar system in the body.”
Gale is happy to do just about anything that needs to get done at the hangar, but he has quite the knack for shaping sheet metal. His major projects include reskinning Cessna 150 wings and doing the floor section of EAA’s B-25 Berlin Express. It’s because of contributions like his that we can share aviation history with new generations. “It is kind of amazing that they’re still flying. When you look at the age of the B-25 and the B-17, they were made with the expectation that they would last for six months. Here we are 70 some years later, and they’re still flying. They’re a real tribute to engineering,” Gale said.
“One of the things you find volunteering here, like Weeks Hangar, is you always learn something new,” he said. “It’s always a learning experience whether it’s from staff or other volunteers. You always think you’re getting to the point where you know a lot about this stuff, and then you find out there’s all these things you don’t know. It’s like going to school every week.”
Volunteers make EAA AirVenture Oshkosh — and just about everything else EAA does — possible. This space in EAA Sport Aviation is dedicated to thanking and shining the spotlight on volunteers from the community. Sadly, it cannot capture all of the thousands of volunteers who give so much to the community every year. So, next time you see a volunteer at AirVenture or elsewhere, however they are pitching in to make EAA better, be sure to thank them for it. It’s the least we can do. Do you know a volunteer you’d like to nominate for Volunteer Spotlight? Visit EAA.org/Submissions.