Although there are more aviation clubs in the Bay area, my favorite aviation club is EAA Chapter 62 of which I have been a member for the past 30 years. Today the membership is about 92 and we organize great events such as fly-outs to points of interest, hold monthly meetings and parties.

This years EAA Chapter 62s Christmas party was held on Dec. 6 and about 92 people, who included EAA Chapter 338 members, attended. Our past two-year president, Terri Gorman spent much time together with Dottie Morality and Barbara War drip setting up this great party. Terri did a fantastic job guiding Chapter 62 for the past two years. For 2008, she will be working as vice president and secretary and our new president is Andy Wrack who is a pilot and aircraft builder. He built and flies his Lancer Legacy and is presently building a Sky bolt. In charge of the Young Eagles program is Jeff West.

It is important to interest the next generation of pilots to learn to fly and there is no better way of doing that than taking young kids for rides in an airplane. Many great aviators such as William Boeing, founder of the Boeing Aircraft Co., became interested in aviation because of a single airplane ride. Under West’s direction, with EAA Chapter 62 pilots volunteering, many free aircraft rides will be given to young people.

Wolfgang Polka set up and is in charge of our web site, which received an award for being third best from the Experimental Aircraft Association at Air Venture in Oshkosh, Wisc. this year. There are many other members who have devoted their time, giving EAA Chapters 62 and 338 the reputation they have.

Of course what makes the organizations function are its members. One of the most prolific aircraft designers and EAA Chapter 62 members is Stanley Hall. Following is Hall’s story and a list of some of his many contributions to aviation.

Inside Stan Hall’s DNA chain is a gene called aviation. Inside that gene is a sub-gene called soaring. Together, they’ve been blueprinting a life dedicated to machines that fly – and that life began at age four, when, sitting in his mother’s lap, he went aloft in a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny”. Seventy-seven years later he still recalls the name of that pilot. It was Seely Blythe.

But Charles A. Lindbergh, the patron saint of all aviation, overshadowed pilot Blythe’s influence. Stan was 12 that night in 1927 when Lindbergh hit the runway at Le Bourget. The following day Stan started putting together what he called a glider. Well, it wasn’t really a glider so much as a contraption – which, thanks to alert parents, never got finished. Getting a real glider completed and into the air had to wait until 1931.

The ensuing four years saw three more gliders and it was crash and build, crash and build. A defining moment came in 1936 when it became apparent to Stan he needed more smarts if he was to get out of this discouraging cycle. That was the year fate intervened to prevent his attending college. That fate was the year WWII started.

In Los Angeles, North American Aviation was busily building up its engineering staff. Stan landed a job as an engineering draftsman. He had no engineering training. What got him the job was his experience as an “aircraft builder” (read “gliders”) and the fact that he got top grades in high school drafting.

From then on, the on-the-job engineering training came fast and furious. In the five years he worked at North American, he became involved in the design of the company’s AT-6 trainer, the B-25 bomber and the P-51 Mustang fighter. Under the pressure of wartime, and working under some brilliant if harried engineers, Stan soaked up technical know-how like a sponge. He picked their brains without letup.

Then the military gliders came, gliders capable of carrying up to 15 soldiers. Douglas Aircraft hired Stan away from North American to help design the XCG-8 and XCG- 15 cargo gliders conceived by the great Hawley Bowlus.

Near completion of the glider program at Douglas, Stan left the company to join a new civilian contract flying school in Wickenburg, Arizona. He wanted to fly for a change. Here, he taught young staff sergeants to fly training gliders preparatory to flying the huge cargo gliders Douglas and others were building. Later, as Flight Commander, he taught aviation cadets to fly the Stearman PT- 17 airplane. It was here that he and his new bride, Doris, set up housekeeping, and it was here their son, Roger was born. Eight years later, in Los Angeles, daughter Denise was born. (After 55 years of marriage, Stan still refers to Doris as his “bride”).

The war had to end sometime, and it did. The Hall family moved back to Los Angeles, where Stan took a position with Northrop as engineering designer. With his flight experience he also served as an on-call, corporate pilot, flying a military, twin-engine UC-78 bailed to the company and a company-owned Bellanca Skyrocket.

He spent five years at Northrop, the last one as Manager of Experimental Design at the company’s Snark missile installation at Cape Canaveral, Florida. A few months after returning to home base in Hawthorne, California, Stan left to join the Lockheed Missiles and Space Division in Van Nuys, California. In 1957 the company moved to Sunnyvale, and Stan moved with them. He spent 20 years with Lockheed, managing technical programs. It was here he supervised the design of the biologically-oriented payload on Discoverer 13, the first payload ever recovered from space. And it was here that Stan later conceived and had patented the Lockheed/Army YO-3A Quiet Reconnaissance airplane, which saw outstanding service in Vietnam. Stan was Manager of Airframe Design on the YO-3A program and later, Manager of Engineering Flight Test.

In all, Stan served as an engineer for four major aircraft manufacturers over a period of 37 years. After retiring from Lockheed he was called back as a freelance engineering consultant. It was in this service that he did the conceptual design and stress analyses for the sailplane-like Solar Happ, an unmanned, solar powered, long endurance, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft. Working on his own drafting board at home, he also did conceptual designs and engineering analyses of remotely piloted aircraft for Lockheed’s facility in Austin, Texas.

Since 1931, and during Stan’s long tenure as a professional engineer, he found time to engage in more personal pursuits such as: design and construction of ten gliders (including the famous Cherokee 11), direct the 1958 National Soaring Contest at Bishop, California, win an appointment to the prestigious SSA Hall of Fame, deliver the 1994 Ralph Stanton Barnaby Lecture, write “Homebuilders’ Hall”, a column devoted to glider homebuilding which was voted by SSA’s membership as the most popular column in Soaring Magazine during the years it appeared, receive an Outstanding Achievement award from the EAA, earned a Commercial pilot’s certificate with single- and multi-engine, instrument and glider ratings, and flew some 5,000 hours as Pilot in Command. He also found time to act as a major influence in the formation of the Sailplane Homebuilders Association, of which he is an Honorary Life Member.

At present, when he’s not hitting the books, researching subjects which interest him, doing structural testing, writing or researching articles for Sailplane Builder, Sport Aviation, or other publications, or not delivering lectures and talks to various aviation groups, he serves as Technical Counselor, Engineering for the local EAA Chapter 62, where he helps new designers and builders with their engineering problems.

Apparently, the DNA is still working. Stan himself states, it’s been a “helluva ride!”

You do not have to be a Stanley Hall to join EAA Chapter 62. If you are interested in aviation and are not a pilot yet, come to our meetings and learn more about aviation and talk to pilots, aircraft designers and aircraft builders who may be of help to you. You can find more information on our web site at www.eaa62.org. If you like what you see or if you are just interested, come to our monthly meetings, which are held in San Jose, California.

Martin Hollmann is a mechanical engineer and aircraft designer with 30 years experience. He has worked for Convair Aerospace, Martin Marietta, Lockheed Missiles and Space Co., Ford Aerospace and Communications, Westinghouse Electric, FMC, and Kaiser Electronics. Currently he is President of Aircraft Designs, Inc., located in Monterey, CA. Martin has published over 200 technical articles and 13 books on the subjects of aircraft design, advanced composites, aerodynamics, and gyroplanes. He has taught engineering classes at San Jose State University and at Aircraft Designs, Inc. A private pilot, rated for fixed wing and rotorcraft, Martin is also a Senior Member of the AIAA, member of the EAA, and an FAA Designated Engineering Representative for Structures, Design and Flutter.