By Michael Friend, EAA 51201
Eight or nine years ago, your author and Joel Mapes of EAA Chapter 406 in Bremerton, Washington, had an idea to create something that went beyond EAA’s Young Eagles program. Young Eagles has been a tremendous success, with well over two million young people having their first flying experience through the national program. The problem is, what comes next? The thought was to create a program to involve those who were excited by the experience and wanted to learn more about aviation. At about that same time, a local aviator donated a large and complex desktop flight simulator to the chapter, which had no place to store or use it. A discussion was held with the Port of Bremerton, the operators of Bremerton National Airport (KPTW). What about the old airport firehouse, an aging structure that was being used for equipment storage? A deal was struck, and the Port decided to allow us to use the structure as a home base for a good rate, the caveat being that we had to share it with the local Civil Air Patrol squadron. After many hundreds of donated man hours and thousands of dollars from EAA 406 members, the dingy old building was transformed into a spacious workshop with a dedicated simulator room. It was named BACE, or Bremerton Aviation Center for Education. We have since had great support from the Port of Bremerton, whose management sees real public benefit in what we are doing. Soon, the roof of BACE will be covered in solar cells to be connected to an electric airplane charging vault that the Port installed on the ramp during a recent repaving project.
As the building neared completion, the search was on for a project for the center to focus on. At first, the idea was to design and build a single-seat electric motorglider that I had started designing called the Spark Solo. An article about this design appeared in Soaring magazine and in several other aviation magazines in the pre-Covid period. After the effort of getting the BACE building up and running, I realized that engaging kids in the design and prototyping phases of the aircraft development was going to be too difficult to manage, and that we should pivot to something easier to start with.
At the same time, I met Gabe DeVault, an enterprising Californian working for tech startup ZeroAvia. I was engaged as a consultant by ZeroAvia at that time and spent a week with Gabe helping him to build the first prototype of the eXenos, an electric-powered Sonex Xenos motorglider in Hollister, California. This experience convinced me that the Xenos, available as a kit with pre-punched aluminum skins, would make a great introductory project for BACE. Powered by a 60 kW Zero motorcycle motor and using its 14 kW-hr battery pack, the eXenos would make an interesting vehicle for giving kids their introductory flights with its advertised 23:1 glide ratio. A Xenos kit was found in northern California that had very little work done and was available for a good price, so one of our members drove down and packed it back to BACE. I convinced ZeroAvia that sponsoring the purchase of the Zero powertrain was a worthwhile charitable donation, so I then spent another week in Hollister breaking down an insurance wreck Zero motorcycle and harvesting its various bits to be assembled into a well-integrated power package.
So now we had a building and a project, and next were the people to work on it. A core of experienced builders, engineers, and A&P mechanics such as Bonanza pilot George Steed volunteered to be mentors for the kids who had started to filter in the door through word of mouth. About this time, 13-year-old Annika Pexton of Central Kitsap High School came into BACE during an airport outing with her younger brother Mataeus. They were at the airport for a Young Eagles flight, but signals got crossed and they showed up too early. A chance encounter with one of our mentors, Mark Donohue, led them to the door of BACE where they were warmly welcomed. One thing led to another, and soon Annika’s parents were regularly taking her to BACE for our twice-weekly build sessions to learn about everything related to building a sheet metal airplane. She proved to be an adept student and was soon competent enough to show other kids (and some newcomer adults as well) how to do the cutting, drilling, and riveting necessary to make 1,000 small pieces of metal into one airplane. Her enthusiasm and skill were such that we promised her that if she stuck with it, we would help her get the glider (self-launch) rating necessary to fly the airplane she had helped to build.
Several years later, with the eXenos nearing completion, Annika was old enough to apply for a Bremerton Pilot’s Association scholarship to help fund her glider certificate training. Her scholarship application was enthusiastically approved by the association, and I helped her apply for membership in Evergreen Soaring. I was more than a little dismayed when they showed reluctance to accept her as an ab initio student, as a faction of the club board wants to pivot away from flight training with primary ships and move more into cross-country flying with glass ships. Some arm twisting was required to get her membership accepted, but the now 15-year-old Annika soon started her primary training in the club’s LET L-23 Blaniks. Her flying skills developed rapidly, and she enthusiastically leaned into the peripheral skills required for club flying such as wing running, field managing, and golf cart glider retrieval. Annika managed to keep spirits up with the flight instruction staff when energy was flagging by baking up some very tasty snickerdoodle cookies and a new creation that I have branded Glider Girl Snickerdoodle Muffins.
On the eve of her 16th birthday, Annika was cleared to solo, and she performed a flawless flight. As a reward for this, BACE mentor Al Royal presented her with his U.S. Navy leather flying jacket which amazingly fit her slim frame! (Al was apparently a very svelte young attack pilot back in the day). Her post-solo training included participation in the SSA XC Junior Camp at Ephrata, Washington, during which she flew several cross-country flights with mentor pilots and showed great competence in thermaling and navigation tasks. She also developed a raft of new friendships with the other participants in the camp. As the end of the soaring season approached, an impediment appeared in the form of the sudden retirement of long-time Designated Pilot Examiner Neal Karman. Various ideas for Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D for taking her flight test were hatched, as there is now only one glider DPE in the Pacific Northwest. A nice winter surprise was Annika being awarded the Seattle Glider Council Youth Achievement Award for 2024. The combination of bad winter weather, schoolwork, and lack of a DPE delayed her final flight test prep flights until this March. At that time, CFIG-in-training Jim Dobberfuhl suggested that we join forces and hire DPE Robin Reid from Independence, Oregon, to fly up and administer both Annika’s and Jim’s flight tests into one trip. Everything came together, and on April 16, Robin flew his Citabria up from Oregon in miraculously clear weather for the test. Annika went first and managed the oral portion of the practical test without much difficulty. I was not surprised, as she is a 4.0 student and is taking college courses at Olympic College as a junior in high school. At that point, a howling cross wind had sprung up and soon peaked at 22 knots as a direct crosswind to runway 34. We discussed the possibility of operating into the wind on runway 29, but Annika displayed good aeronautical decision making by saying, “No, I’m not comfortable flying in this wind, so let’s stop here.” So, Robin terminated the test and moved on to the oral portion of Jim’s flight test. The next morning dawned crisp and clear, and Annika and I flew my RV-8 from Bremerton to Arlington at Oh-Dark-Thirty to get the Pawnee towplane and the Blanik out on the line. Robin restarted the test, and Annika took two tows, one to 3,000 feet and one to 250 feet. The first consisted of boxing the wake, steering the towplane, slack rope, thermaling, turning stalls with and without spoilers, and an approach to landing using slips. According to Robin, she flew all the maneuvers to commercial test standards and ended with a precision spot landing. The second was a simulated rope break from 250 feet which was skillfully executed. I climbed out of the towplane expecting another tow card, but Robin had decided that “darn, she’s good” and walked to the pilot lounge to print out her temporary private pilot certificate. Annika’s only disappointment in the process is that a bunch of the stuff we had studied for did not come up in the test! Jim Dobberfuhl followed this up by performing the flight portion of the practical test, and he also got Robin’s approval as a new CFIG.
The vision of BACE is close to coming full circle. Our eXenos is very close to completion, and with a bit more training Annika can be cleared to fly it by earning her self-launch endorsement. Several EAA members and I have purchased another Xenos, this one gas-powered, to provide the training necessary to get Annika and other BACE pilots the glider-self launch endorsement so they can fly the airplane they have worked so hard to build. The effort to get to this point has been exhausting, but the reward is in seeing Annika and others succeed. Her parents have been wonderfully supportive throughout the whole process, and I am always amazed at the trust they put in our EAA crew, allowing us to whisk her around in our experimental airplanes. Annika has plans to attend this year’s Junior XC camp at Ephrata again to hone her cross-country flying skills. BACE has produced several other success stories, as we have now facilitated three new pilots and two budding A&P mechanics from the roster of young people who have found their way into our building. In addition, BACE has taken on several side gigs such as repairing Evergreen Soaring’s L-33 after it suffered some fuselage damage in a hard landing at Ephrata. More to come, as BACE has now obtained our second project airplane and has a batch of kids who have graduated from our new Build & Fly program to build radio-controlled airplanes and a sheet metal toolbox. Those who graduate from this program will move to BACE to build airplane No. 2, a light-sport Panther single-seat aircraft from a kit donated by a local pilot impressed by what we have achieved so far.
Time flies when you are having fun.