MASSENA - The local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association will be serving up breakfast Sunday at the Massena International Airport to raise money for the organization.

For EAA Chapter 500, it’s their 35th annual Fly-In, Drive-In Pancake Breakfast, and it’s a popular event, according to the chapter’s secretary.

“Last year there were 200 breakfasts that we sold to the community. There’ll be people flying in if it’s decent. We have 20 to 25 active members that come periodically. They’ll be there Sunday,” Earl Schell said.

The breakfast, which runs from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Massena International Airport Hangar KMSS, includes pancakes, sausage, eggs, real maple syrup, milk, juice and coffee. The cost is $7 for adults and $4 for children under 12.

“It’s our annual fundraiser. We generally just have this once a year in June. We can’t have it on Father’s Day because Cornwall has theirs on Father’s Day. We try to avoid that. In the past it’s always been graduation weekend,” Mr. Schell said.

The breakfast is held in a hangar they built about 10 years ago from their pancake breakfast savings.

He said they’ve tried to keep the cost down over the years.

We like to try and keep the price down so the community can come out and see what the airport is like,” Mr. Schell said.

While the chapter advertises as much as possible, he said many people already have the date marked on their calendar as an annual event.

“People know about it and ask, ‘When’s the breakfast this year?’ We have the ones that come regularly. Some years it’s bad weather and we get a poor turnout. We generally have 150, up as high as 250 one year,” Mr. Schell said.

“We don’t care if we make a lot of money. We would like to break even,” he added.

The group starts their preparation on Friday and does most of the setup for the grill on Saturday, Mr. Schell said.

“They aren’t necessarily all members. They might be wives or teenage children cooking or parking cars. We probably have about 30 that are going around working on Sunday,” he said.

Money raised in part will help the local chapter “get the hangar a little bit better arranged,” according to Mr. Schell.

He said they’ve had flooding problems when it rains hard.

“We’ve been trying to save up money to work on that,” he said.

They also provide flights for youngsters as part of the Young Eagles program.

“We usually have three young children that ride along. They get to experience a small airport riding around in Massena and Potsdam,” Mr. Schell said.

The Experimental Aircraft Association is an international organization of aviation enthusiasts based in Oshkosh, Wisc.

For more information on the breakfast, contact Mr. Schell at (518) 358-4686 or danicafort@aol.com

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