Peter KingLike most ingenious inventions, rock bands and revolutions, this story begins in a basement. In 1963, Carl Stage and seven others, “The Solid Eight,” formed the first chapter of Chattanooga’s Experimental Aircraft Association. The EAA is a group for those who love to build or restore aircrafts-in their living rooms, basements and garages-with hopes to see their handmade machine airborne. The Chattanooga chapter is part of an international organization founded in 1953 by Paul Poberenzy in Oshkosh, Wisconsin-in his basement.
These are the people who live to fly. They wear bomber jackets with patches, Oshkosh AirVenture caps and even use the sound of an airplane taking off as their phone ringtone. They meet at airports, help each other with home-builds and compare tools in their pockets while showing off kit planes and aircrafts in hangars at the local airport. They keep books of plane progress photos in their cars, carry old catalogs and are always, always, talking shop. And one of them even lives in a home attached to an airport-with a hangar in the backyard, always ready to take off.
In the early years, the local members met often on Saturday nights as they found out that aviation meant more to them than football. They held stag parties complete with beer and steak. Many of them, veteran pilots of the war years, devoted themselves to aviation with forged bonds of brotherhood.
But as the decades wore on, these meetings grew to be more family friendly, and as aviation changed in the modern age so did their interests and their abilities.
Now, 50 years after the group was founded, they still meet as the Rock City EAA, with the idea that