I Love This Place: Greene County Airport

Greene County Flying Club is aiming for the sky!

It‘s another perfect day for flying at the Greene County Airport – sunny and cold. The air is denser when it’s cold, Greene County Flying Club member Dan Smith tells me. And on a sunny day like this, Leonardo DaVinci’s words sparkle: “For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you long to return.”

We’re standing on the tarmac of what was once George Worley’s farm, a mile from Waynesburg on State Route 21. The door of the newest hanger is open. Inside, the club’s handsome 1973 Piper Cherokee sits tethered, its prop framing the blue sky beyond the runway. It looks like it’s raring to go – ready to give a new pilot a taste of the sky.

How to give new pilots that taste is the challenge this club has taken on – a mission to find that next generation of pilots here at home. It’s a challenge nearly 100 years in the making.

Greene County Airport has been here since 1928, when the fever for passenger airlines first swept the nation and the world. The community pitched in to join the 20th century and by 1930, volunteers, including Company K had cleared away the weeds and painted a big white circle on the field that pilots could see to land. By 1936, Federal WPA funding helped finish the first runway and Greene County took to the sky. When World War II asked for pilots, civilian pilot training programs sprang up at small airports nationwide. Students from Waynesburg College could take training along with their other classes. 

Fast forward to a sunny winter morning in 2021 and prepare to fall in love with what the professional and amateur pilots of Greene County have done with Leonardo DiVinci’s dream.

Dan Smith, one of the flying club’s founders, is giving me a tour of the fleet of aircraft that have been donated to the club to help with its mission “To provide access to safe and affordable flight and flight instruction to club members and to promote and support aviation in all forms including drones, electric aircraft, ultra-lights and alternative airborne vehicles.”

What makes Greene County Flying Club unique is its mission to make flying affordable for families and especially for kids.  As a nonprofit 501c3, the club can take planes as donations, thus saving members the shared cost of purchasing them.

Flying Clubs are member-run organizations, with members sharing the cost of hanger rent, fuel, aircrafts, flight training and maintenance? Those costs can be pretty substantial. 

A young beginner might expect to pay $10,000 to obtain a private pilot certification. Getting those numbers down is a big part of the mission. Thanks to donated planes, private donations and government grants, the cost is coming down.

Dan’s eyes sparkle when he tells me the club’s most ambitious cost saver plan yet – to retrofit a plane for electric power, retooling the engine and replacing fuel tanks with batteries. Low-lead fuel is more than five dollars a gallon and can add 50 dollars to the price of a lesson. That same airtime running on electricity would be about three dollars. With that happy thought we continue the tour.

Tucked away in one hanger is a handmade experimental aircraft that was donated with the stipulation that it not be flown. It sits with its wings clipped and stacked against wall but not to worry – the club has plans to take the body of this futuristic aircraft to Touch a Truck events so that kids can get their hands on a real airplane.

The pilot club fleet is a case study in the evolution of aviation – and horsepower. The jaunty 65 horsepower 1945 Ercoupe is perfect for beginners to get their air legs, with simple rudder steering that teaches a new pilot how to ride the wind.  It shares hanger space with five colorful “planes” built by pilot-in-training Garard Schliecher and his family, using 50 gallon barrels decked out with wings, props and a bathroom plunger for a joystick. This plane train will be filled with kids and pulled by a lawn tractor during upcoming August Airport Days.

In another hanger sits a rare bird – a 1991, 119 horsepower Taylorcraft F22A, with a nose wheel instead of a tail. Taylorcraft made only six of these planes before going bankrupt and all are still flying.

And then over to the edge of the runway, to the new hanger with its electric door and birds eye view of the wind sock by the gateway to the pilots terminal. 

The Piper Cherokee 180 – as in horsepower- bought when the club was just getting off the ground in 2017, is the Cadillac of the fleet, with seating for four passengers and space for cargo. There’s plenty of elbowroom for rusty pilots who haven’t flown in years and student pilots, to fly together with an instructor and get the training needed for recertification and licensing. It’s also available for members to fly for the joy of flying. Plans are being made for upcoming events when it is safe to gather, to promote aviation and eventually get students back in the cockpit.

The Greene County Flying Club is an offshoot of S.O.A.R. (Save Our Aviation Resources). This group of local pilots, both active and retired, banded together in 2007 to find that next generation of new pilots who might someday reach for the stars. Members of S.O.A.R. have a mission to keep the spirit of learning to fly alive in the county by sponsoring an annual Aviation Day the third weekend in August and holding fly-in pancake breakfasts to raise funds in lieu of dues. S.O.A.R. sponsored its first flight training scholarship to Gerard Schliecher when he was seventeen and directed the scholarship funds through the Greene County Flying Club for training and airtime. Gerard, now 19, is attending Community College, Beaver County and is well on his way to getting his private pilot certificate. As a club member, Gerard built the handsome brick gateway that now leads to the pilot terminal entrance as his Eagle Scout project in 2019.

I return on another winter morning – this time in squalling snow, to visit the terminal’s flight training classroom and meet up with the real deal – recently retired pilot Chris Polhemus, who has a home with its own landing strip on Rutters Lane, Carmichaels. Today he’s wearing a jacket with the logo of the National War Plane Museum featuring the historic “Whisky 7” Douglas C47 that he flew over Washington DC, in formation with planes from every era of aerial combat, for Independence Day 2020. “We came over the White House at 800 feet Chris tells me with a big grin.  He’s brought his ace student, 15-year-old Jacob Fordyce of Carmichaels, who has every intention of soloing on his sixteenth birthday on March 1. By the looks of the hefty Private Pilot book Jacob has with him, there’s plenty to master besides steering when it comes to flying solo.

The walls are lined with faded maps. Some have been up since pilots first started using the airport to hanger their planes, train students, run flight schools and finally organize as S.O.A.R., then expand into the non profit world of the flying club to bring affordable training to the community. But those maps are now on smart phones and tablets and weather reports can be live when linked to websites like Intelicast. 

Chris points to a lit spot on the weather map on his tablet. That’s us, he tells me. “See, it’s clear behind the band of snow. It should let up in about five minutes.” And it did.

There’s plenty more to learn if you visit these two aviation stations online. It’s all there, including the application form to join Greene County Flying Club. Are you ready to learn to fly like an eagle? Both groups are on Facebook, as Greene County Flying Club and Support Our Aviation Resources.