History
The EAA was founded in 1953 by veteran aviator Paul Poberezny along with other aviation enthusiasts. The organization began as more or less a flying club. Paul Poberenzy explains the nature of the organization's name, "Because the planes we flew were modified or built from scratch, they were required to display an EXPERIMENTAL placard where it could be seen on the door or cockpit, so it was quite natural that we call ourselves the "Experimental Aircraft Association". Homebuilding is still a large part of EAA, but the organization has grown over the years to include almost every aspect of aviation and aeronautics.
EAA's first home was in the basement of the Poberezny home. In the early 1960s, the association's first headquarters was built in the Milwaukee suburb of Franklin. That was the headquarters for the organization until 1983, when EAA combined its headquarters and fly-in site in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The EAA Aviation Center also includes the EAA AirVenture Museum, with more than 100 aircraft on display.
In 1953 the Experimental Aircraft Association released a two page newsletter named "The Experimenter". The newsletter was written and published by founding members Paul and Audrey Poberezny along with other volunteers. The newsletter transitioned to a magazine format and was renamed Sport Aviation and became a membership benefit. The Experimeter name lives on, however, in an online magazine specifically for amateur-built and light plane enthusiasts that debuted in 2012.
In 2010, the United States' national aeromodeling organization, the Academy of Model Aeronautics, was involved in negotiations with the EAA homebuilt aviation organization, that resulted in a "memorandum of understanding" that is intended to encourage collaboration between the two American-based sport aviation organizations, in developing, in the words of the AMA's then-President Dave Mathewson, "the creation of new concepts that will promote aviation, both full-scale and modeling, as a perfect family recreational and educational activity".
Read more about this topic: Experimental Aircraft Association
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