The Tribe of Homebuilders Gather

The EAA Homebuilders Dinner gathers homebuilders of all types together under one roof each Thursday night of AirVenture. Unlike the “type” gatherings that take place during the week, like the Van’s Banquet, these dinners have a stronger EAA emphasis and celebrate all sorts of homebuilding. The evening was hosted by a combination of EAA’s homebuilt lead, Charlie Becker, and the Homebuilt Council Chair, Vic Syracuse.

After dinner, the first award of the evening was a plaque presented by Vic Syracuse to frequent KITPLANES contributor Dave Prizio for his years of service on the EAA Homebuilt Council. He recently retired after many years of significant contributions to the EAA homebuilt community. Almost as soon as he had sat down, Charlie Becker called Prizio back up to receive the EAA’s Tony Bingelis Award for dedicated service as a Technical Counselor. The last award came from the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and was presented to the EAA Homebuilt Council for their work in developing the EAA Flight Test Manual.

KITPLANES’ own Paul Dye was the evening’s guest speaker. His free-form presentation covered his years in aviation, the American human space flight program, and his experiences as KITPLANES’ Editor-in-Chief. It concluded with an overview of his most recent project, the SubSonex jet Loki.