September 2022 Meeting and Triple Tree!
What a great month for flying here in Western NC! Well, after the first Saturday, anyway. We like to run over to Morristown TN for EAA 1494's First Saturday breakfast but mother nature intervened for most of us and the morning fog in and around the mountains was just too much ... spring and summer have a way of tricking us like that.
But ... there was a promise of adventure!
We were treated to a terrific regular monthly meeting program by Member Sid Tolchin. Sid helped build a LongEZ in 1987 ...
![](https://eaa1016.org/content/images/2022/09/Taxi-EZ-First-Flight-at-Brown-Field-1987.jpeg)
... and promptly took some time off from his day job as a Neurosurgeon to make a house call using the airplane for transportation. This is where the story gets really interesting. The airplane had just had its Phase I hours flown off, Sid and the airplane were in southern California and the patient was in Ireland!
Let's back up a bit. Sid (to us) is Dr. Sidney Tolchin, a retired Neurosurgeon and past President of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. A long time pilot, Sid used Cessna 210s to travel to his many speaking and professional engagements and flew a VariEZE several years before embarking on the LongEZ project with a friend.
Fast forward to 1987. Sid had removed a brain tumor from a patient from Ireland in a marathon, 18 hour operation and a checkup was due. A flashbulb went off and Sid decided to give the LongEZ a real shakedown by combining the follow up call on his patient with a trip across the North Atlantic Ocean!
![](https://eaa1016.org/content/images/2022/10/Screen-Shot-2022-09-30-at-4.02.38-PM.png)
You don't just kick the tires and hop in the old zoomer for a trip across the ocean. This, obviously, takes some planning. For one thing, there's a lot of water between fuel stops .. cold water .. so there are supplies, a raft, survival gear, and a few other things to consider.
![](https://eaa1016.org/content/images/2022/10/Stuffing-the-EZ-Shannon-Apt-1.jpg)
As it happened, Sid had some friends who wanted to fly their Cessna 182 around Europe so they joined forces and began their journey together.
![](https://eaa1016.org/content/images/2022/10/Paperwork-II.jpg)
The intrepid aviators decided to do the first part of their trip over the relatively safe route across the U.S. to Boston, then north to their jumping off point at Goose Bay, Labrador, in the Canadian Maritime Provinces. So far, so good. Then that mischievous Leprechaun, Murphy, had some fun.
More about Sid's trip in another post. Suffice to write that Sid and his friends made it home again after their North Atlantic adventure and had enough tales to tell to last a lifetime!
![](https://eaa1016.org/content/images/2022/10/Triple-Tree1.jpg)
![](https://eaa1016.org/content/images/2022/10/Triple-Tree2.jpg)
There are two airplanes new to the members: Matt Holsopple bought into a Mooney which is kept at Greenville (SC) Downtown Airport and Angelo Zollo picked up a Cygnet amphibian in New England which he has in Hendersonville.
![](https://eaa1016.org/content/images/2022/10/Cygnet.jpg)
October 11th's meeting is coming up: Steve Murray on Ignition systems, both Electronic and Magneto, Electronic Fuel Injection and electronic monitoring systems. With fuel prices as they are, these new systems dramatically improve the cost of operating our airplanes.