GAS TAG REMINDER!!
Did you know that Club members are reimbursed for fuel purchased for Club aircraft? To receive reimbursement, however, you must provide the original receipt. Copies are not accepted, and credit card statements are only accepted if the fuel machine did not print a receipt. The following information must be included on each gas tag receipt submitted: Receipts not having this information will be held in accounting, but will not be posted to your account. Don't miss out on your reimbursement!! Make sure that all your inf ormation is there.
STAFF MEMBER OF THE MONTH
Congratulations to Mechanic Jim Mikkelson, our March Staff Member of the Month! Jim's a great team player, who manages to put a lot of planes in the air every week, and always with a terrific attitude. Jim's a second generation A&P, and has spent a good part of March working nearly every day, including weekends, to keep our planes flying. He's made sure that the same number of parts that came out of the plane go back in. More importantly, Jim's positive attitude, team spirit, and dedication have helped make the Maintenance Department the close group that it is. Thanks Jim!
THANKS & RECOGNITION
Thanks to member Alan Eustace for donating sets of his very useful IFR Holding Pattern Entry Flashcards to the Club. Alan made up the flashcards 10 years ago, with great encouragement from Marc Gunderson, his CFII at WVFC, and has donated over a hundred sets to WVFC IFR students and instructors since then. Although all the original flashcards have been sold or donated, he still keeps a box at home to replenish the WVFC supply. He did this recently, so you'll see them in the front desk area of each location. Please feel free to take a set. Thanks very much Alan!
ACHIEVEMENTS
Solo
Private
100% on IFR Written
CFI
Commercial
Instrument
Congratulations to all of you and to your wonderful instructors:
NEW MEMBERS
Muni Perzov
DID YOU KNOW???
Did you know that the photographer who shot the assignment for AOPA Flight Training's March cover is WVFC member Scott Highton? His aviation photography appears regularly in AOPA and Air & Space Smithsonian magazines. See more at: http://www.highton.com.
The West Valley CFI who participated in the University of Illinois experiments in instrument training was Linton (Kyp) Kypta. And Kyp is still involved in aviation-related research projects through his work at NASA Ames Research Center. He's worked with a full-scale LAX Tower simulator, and is currently working on a 747 sim project. In fact, Kyp once had the unique opportunity to fly (and crash) the space shuttle sim! Earlier this year he delivered a series of talks on Air Traffic Control to NASA researchers.
LEASEBACK SPREADSHEET
Ever think about owning an airplane and leasing it back to the Club? Linton Kypta (aka Kyp), CFI and WV ground school instructor has revised his leaseback spreadsheet. The spreadsheet, version 4.12, is to be used to project cash flow and investment growth before entering into a leaseback agreement. It is essentially a "decision aid" to be used in deciding whether to buy an airplane for leaseback or not. For more information, or a copy of the spreadsheet, please email him at lkypta@earthlink.net.
FROM THE OPTIMA PUBLICATIONS WEBSITE
Revision 102 for the Pilots Guide to California Airports was mailed during the week of March 4-8. If you haven't received your copy and you believe your subscription to be current, please contact Optima by email: service@pilotsguide.com.
NEW WIRELESS ROUTER @ SQL
Tom Wise arranged for the donation of a wireless router that is now installed at SQL. The router allows members to access DSL online services through their own laptop computers.
SUGGESTION BOX
Do you have a suggestion or a bit of feedback for the club? Send it to whatsup@wvfc.org.
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by Mike Latzky, Interim General Manager
Every year about this time, the Club prepares for Board of Director elections. The process may be a bit vague to many of you, so this month's column is devoted to explaining the process and how you can take part. Since the Board represents the membership and is your elected voice, it's important to understand the process and take part in it. Election to the Board is a commitment of time and responsibility to the Club. Voting is just as important.
First of all, the Board is composed of 7 Directors. 1 seat is reserved for the General Manager and is ex oficio (or automatically appointed by whoever fills the GM seat), 1 seat is reserved for an owner, 1 seat is reserved for a CFI, and there are 4 general or at-large seats. There are 3 officers, elected by the Board at the first meeting after each year's election. These officers are Chairman, Treasurer, and Secretary. To ensure basic controls and separation, the Chairman cannot be the GM, owner, or CFI Directors of the Board. The same is true of the Treasurer. Any Director except the GM can occupy the Secretary position. All of this is spelled out in the Club's Bylaws.
All Directors are elected to a 2-year term. There is a clause in the Bylaws limiting a Director to 2 consecutive terms maximum. Every year, 3 of the seats are up for election. In even numbered years, the owner Director seat and 2 general seats are up for election. In odd numbered years, the CFI seat and 2 general seats are up for election. Both the CFI and owner Directors are elected by the full membership, not just those particular constituents.
The purpose of the Board is to act in an oversight capacity, rather than being directly involved in operational issues. The Board is involved with legal, financial and other types of oversight activities, and acts as advisor to the GM in long-range planning and directional issues. The GM reports directly to the Chairman, technically, not directly to the Board as a whole. There are other specific responsibilities of Directors, such as the Treasurer's responsibility for the integrity of the financial records, and the Secretary's responsibility for ensuring that a record of members is kept. While these are mostly formalities, they are a part of the Directors' fiduciary responsibility to all of you--the membership. In short, the Board is your elected senior management of the Club.
Currently the Board is made up of the following:
This time around, the three seats up for election are: mine, Dave Alden's (due to term limits, Dave cannot run again), and Martin Michaud's owner seat. The process works like this:
During the month of April, nominations will be accepted by emailing nominations@wvfc.org. This will go directly to the Board. You can nominate yourself or another member. All nominees must be Regular members (not Associate, Inactive or Terminated members), and not staff members or Contractors. All nominations should specify whether for an at-large seat or the owner seat (you must be a current owner of a plane on line with the Club to qualify for this seat). If nominated, you should submit a write-up for the newsletter and website, describing why you'd make a great Director. You might want to view back issues of the Flyer to see what others have written. As a note-the write-up is not required, but it's the best way to let members know what you can do to represent them well.
From May 1 through May 20, you will be able to vote online at the Club website or in person at Palo Alto or San Carlos by submitting a sealed envelope with your votes. You will be able to vote for a single choice of all nominees for the owner seat, and any 2 nominees for the at-large seats.
On or before June 1, the new Directors will be announced. If there is a tie, a runoff will occur, and will be announced and open to the membership for voting.
Because the seat occupied by the Chairman is up for reelection, I will not take part in the election process. To do so would raise the specter of impropriety. The election process will be managed by the Treasurer, Secretary, and Bill Caswell, none of whom are up for reelection.
Finally, there are two very important parts to this process--the responsibility implied and required of any candidate for the Board, and the responsibility of voting. While many of you are probably not familiar with the workings of the Board, it is NOT as simple as a once a quarter meeting--many meetings and closed sessions take place as needed to provide the oversight necessary to ensure the Club's continuity. This is a commitment of time, and of planning and vision. As for the voting side of the equation--this is your opportunity to voice your opinion on who is elected by the membership to represent them. Not voting is an abdication of your right to choose.
This probably covers the bulk of the process. If you have any questions or would like to run, please email nominations@wvfc.org; gm@wvfc.org, or call me at the Club to discuss this.
The flying has been absolutely spectacular over the last month. With the weather improving, there have been many clear, beautiful days and nights, and even a surprising day of snow capped mountains surrounding the Bay. As for the month of March, there are no major incidents or accidents to report, which is sweet music, I am sure, to all our ears.
One particular subject that has grabbed my personal attention, however, is proper communication within the air traffic system, specifically focusing on air work within the pattern.
The lack of proper communication, particularly in the traffic pattern, is a huge issue. Several times in the past few weeks there have been issues of near misses, airspace incursions, improper communication failure procedures, and incorrect pattern entry. Many of these occurrences I have personally observed. In all they seemed to be mostly stemming from one of the following:
Improper communication and/or getting confused in the air is one of those problems that inevitably has a far reaching effect, possibly creating havoc for all of those in the pattern. Here are some hints that I use:
1. Always include in your response the directional information provided by the controller. This is your opportunity to make sure you have the instruction correct.
2. Try not to get too wordy. Everyone is competing for time on the radio. Brevity will be rewarded by the controller, trust me.
3. Try to know what you are going to say before you get on the radio. Sitting on the radio doing a lot of Hmmm Er Ah EHHHHHHHH will get you nowhere.
4. Ask for clarification. If you caught your N numbers but did not hear what the controller was asking, ask. Example: "PAO tower 33 Tango could you repeat?" Or simply, "Say again." No one wants you to guess--not the tower, not the other planes in the pattern. No one!
5. Preparation is everything. Familiarize yourself with the airport, the surrounding area, and the procedures. For example: Do they use clearance delivery? Are they using geographical departures or standardized?
6. When in doubt, search the Club for an instructor and ask a few questions if you feel that you are unfamiliar with a particular airport or pattern procedure. We are all aviation nuts and love the opportunity to help.
7. By keeping up with the plane you will allow yourself the extra mental capacity to deal with the communication process.
Stay Current, Stay Safe.
It started as an idea with a friend of mine, and it went something like this:
You all know how it is from there. The idea is to find a place far enough away to make the trip exciting, but close enough to make our non-flying friends OK with the idea. But there are two critical components missing. First, we pilots need the skills to fly to the kinds of high altitude destinations we'd like to camp at; and second, we need to know about those destinations where camping is possible.
I talked to a CFI about getting a mountain checkout. The mountain checkout is required for landing at any airport with an elevation of 2,000' or higher, or when planning flight over terrain higher than 8,000'.
Basically, each instructor has their own way of training prospective mountain fliers in the concepts of high altitude airport operations. You'll go through some ground work, and talk about some of the differences between sea level operations and operations at altitude, as well as in-flight considerations. Once your CFI is confident that you understand the theories and cautions of that subject matter, it's time to fly. Though there are no exact requirements per club rules on where to train or how many landings are required before the CFI can give you the sign-off, a prospective check ride might go like this:
However many airports you and your CFI decide to visit during your training, you should select places you think you'll be visiting. It doesn't do much good to go to Tahoe for mountain operations if your plan is to visit Mt. Shasta, for example.
The sample above gives you a chance to experience multiple airports and it makes the training more interesting. Of course, a single airport will do, but more experience with a CFI is better.
Now that we have the sign-off, where do we go from here? Tune in next month for information about where to fly for good camping!
Need to get to LA, Portland or Las Vegas in a hurry? Conventional aircraft are cheaper, but are also slower and will probably need a stop along the way. High performance aircraft are more expensive, but will probably get you there non-stop. Surprisingly, all things considered, the costs are nearly the same.
Following the 2-hour class, eight hearty souls walked out to 231EE (tied down near the maintenance hangar) for a look under the hood and inside the cockpit, and a brief discussion.
As the owner of Mooney 231EE, I would like to note that, for qualified WVFC pilots, a check-out incentive is available for a limited time. Interested pilots should contact me at paul_brunemeier@yahoo.com, or contact Paul Kling, pkling@xpedion.com.
WVFC member Matt Hendricks wrote about this flight when it occurred last November. He passed his private pilot checkride at the end of January after six months of training in Cessna 172s with West Valley instructor Ken Gottfredson.
Today I finally did what I have long looked forward to: walking out to a plane, preflighting it, hopping in, firing it up, and leaving the pattern, all with no instructor! It was the weekend, and I wasn't expecting to solo again till Monday, but when I came in my instructor said, "You ought to just solo today; you don't need me." Well, okee dokee then.
I did a left Dumbarton departure from Palo Alto. I was alert for traffic like I'd never been before. It felt kind of spooky to be way up there on my own! I wanted to go out over the coast, but alas, it was fogged in. So I turned southeast toward SLAC and Los Altos Hills at 3500 feet, did a 180 degree clearing turn, and started to set up for slow flight. With two notches of flaps in at 65 kts, I saw another Cessna at my altitude, 12:00, heading my way, maybe half a mile away. "Screw this!" I raised the flaps and dived, while the other plane did a steep right turn. There was no real collision danger, but we both reacted quickly to keep a good safety buffer between us.
I took a deep breath, looked up the SQL frequencies, got the ATIS, and called the tower from Crystal Springs at 3200 feet. They cleared me to do the usual 1200 foot crossing over the tower. On the descent I suddenly thought to myself, 'Wait a minute, am I in Bravo right now????" Turned out I wasn't, of course, but I shoved the wheel forward anyway to get well below 2500 feet. Better safe than sorry.
I was a little haphazard getting things set up on that first landing, but the landing itself was fine. I felt good. When I got onto the taxiway it hit me... "Dang! I just flew somewhere!!!" I decided to hang around for some takeoffs and landings at SQL, which was pretty busy, then head back. By the time I got back to PAO I felt like I'd really hit some kind of groove. The peace of just flying the plane alone was indescribable. Somehow without my instructor sitting next to me, I was able to feel the plane in a new way for the first time. Doing the pattern turns, floating down final, flaring, climbing, it all felt like some kind of aerial ballet. I became much less forceful on the controls and the plane seemed happy to fly itself. The rate of climb was outrageous. At one point I departed behind a Cessna 152 and could see him still climbing into his crosswind turn ahead of me after I'd already leveled off. Another time I pulled back to hit Vx and looked at the runway drop away below like I was
It was fairly busy at PAO at first, but after a while the pattern cleared out and it was just me and a Citabria up there for long stretches. That's when the feeling of total peace kicked in. I was doing everything I needed to do, when I needed to do it, but not thinking about it really-not worrying about screwing up. Kind of like when you're driving somewhere... you don't spend all your time thinking "I'd better not hit that guardrail."
It started getting dusky so I decided to do just one more landing. I was number two, but the tower wanted to get a departure out. I said I'd slow down, so with a couple of notches of flaps in I went down to 60 knots and did a bunch of fun S-turns. The departure got out, I stabilized my final approach, and wheelied it onto the runway. By the time I tied the plane down, the western sky was aflame with an orange sunset. Dang, it was a fun day!
During April, the Club will be converting over to a new accounting system. Since the 1980s, the Club has been living on a system which was custom written for it by Marg Pratt. It's evolved over the past 14-15 years, and has served the Club well for these many years. But all good things come to an end. We're converting from the "FoxPro" system (that's the language it was written in), over to a commercially written system--PeachTree software--yes, kicking and screaming into the new century.
This conversion will mean many things:
There are several other important advantages to the membership and Club, and we'll be communicating them to you. The most important thing to realize is that while we have planned this well, and used consultants and experts to make this as smooth as possible, any conversion will mean some upheaval. We ask for your patience as we work through this. Should you notice anything missing, anything that's there that shouldn't be, or incorrect information, please let us know. You can reach the office during business hours--Colleen Dyer is the Member Services Manager. You can reach Colleen at memberinfo@wvfc.org.
The great news is that once we get through this, we'll have a much more reliable system, better information to operate on, and a more manageable workload. This represents a great step forward for the Club, and it's long overdue.
* Wed. April 10, 7-8:30 PM, PAO. Under the cowling: Discover the work of engine operation. Things to look out for during pre-flight - areas operation - Bring those engine related questions you have always wondered about. Clarence Olesko.
* Wed. April 17, 7-8:30 PM, SQL. The Mysteries of Landing. Discover helpful hints in maintaining approach angles, and easy to follow steps in making precision X-wind and no flap landings. Josh Smith.
* Tues. April 2, 7:30 PM, West Valley Meeting Room, PAO. Palo Alto Airport Association. PAAA Board Member Martin Litton will talk about his experiences as a WWII GLIDER PILOT. Were these suicide missions? How many troops were carried this way? And how were gliders returned? Don't miss this opportunity to hear a fascinating story from a pilot who flew several missions in France and Belgium.
* April 11, 6:30 PM. PRIVATE PILOT GROUND SCHOOL starts a new session at PAO.
* Saturday Seminar: HAYWARD AIR RACE TIPS. Sat. April 13, 1 PM, PAO Training Room. Gary Waldeck will present the last of two seminars on competing in the Hayward Air Race.
(By the way, if you missed Paul Kling's excellent Saturday Seminar on HIGH PERFORMANCE AIRCRAFT last month, you can still get the notes. The 25-page PowerPoint presentation is full of great information, and has been converted to a 1/2 megabyte Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) file for easy downloading from www.airbandit.com.)
* PANCAKE BREAKFAST. Sun. April 21, 9-11 AM. Mount Diablo Pilots Association clubhouse @ Concord Airport (CCR). MDPA will host this event as a welcome to aviation students from Pacific Angwin College. Ask CCR ground for progressive taxi instructions to the MDPA clubhouse. $5 for adults; $2 for children 12 and under. Contact Dennis Byron, dbyron@mindspring.com, or see www.mdpa.org.
* WVFC BOARD MEETINGS for the remainder of 2002 will take place on April 23, July 23, and October 22, all at 7 PM at WVFC, PAO. It's your club! Don't miss the chance to participate!
* Annual FLYING COMPANION SEMINAR. Sat. April 27, 8 AM - 5 PM. San Jose International Airport (SJC). This popular all-day seminar, hosted by the Santa Clara Valley Ninety-Nines, is for right seat passengers who would like to learn more about general aviation airplanes, be more comfortable in the cockpit, and want to contribute to the planning and safety of the flight. Preregistration is required. More info at www.pilotsguide.com/scv99s/flycomp2.html, or email, flyingc@softhome.net.
* The GREAT VINTAGE FLYING WEEKEND! Fri.-Sun. May 10-12, Kemble Airfield, Cotswolds, England. It's a LONG downwind leg from Palo Alto, but if any members are planning to be in the UK at this time, then the Great Vintage Flying Weekend is not to be missed. Quite simply, it is one of the best aviation events in Europe. Further details by email from airshowconsultants@usa.net.
* RUSH FOR GOLD AIR RALLY. Sat.-Sun. July 13-14, San Carlos (SQL) to Columbia (o22). An old-fashioned aviation treasure hunt... clues will guide you along your route of flight, ending in the Gold Rush town of Columbia. There, the savviest crew will find the treasure bag of gold coins, and all crews will enjoy a hearty Miner's Meal put together by your hosts Stacy Clark (former SQL ATC) and Patti Andrews. Those who wish to stay the night can camp at the Columbia Airport campgrounds, or get a room in town. Entry fee of $25 per plane includes dinner, prizes, and in-flight snacks. Stay tuned for more info.
THE SAFE ZONE
by Josh Smith, DFS
COOL DESTINATIONS: MOUNTAIN AIR CAMPING, PART I
by Mark Racicot
Me: So, what have you been up to lately?
Friend: Not much. Looking at new camping equipment at REI.
M: Really? Hmmmmm, it's been too long since I've been camping.
F: Yeah. They have lots of cool stuff. I want to go, but I don't know where.
M: Well, I'd like to go, too. When are we going? Heheheh.
F: Any time you can find a place to go and a few days to do it.
M: You know, driving to a campsite is fun. By definition, though, flying would be more fun.
F: Yeah! OK, and I have a friend who'd love to go, too! We can hunt and fish and...
GETTING THERE IN A HURRY: 3/9/02 GROUND FAMILIARIZATION CLASS ON HIGH PERFORMANCE AIRCRAFT
by Paul Brunemeier
In recognition of the significant fleet of high performance aircraft at WVFC, a special ground familiarization class was held on March 9. The course was organized by Paul Brunemeier (owner of Mooney 231EE), and taught by Paul Kling This free class was attended by about 18 enthusiasts at a wide variety of experience levels. The purpose of the class was to convey basic information on the differences between conventional and HPA, and to raise awareness of the club's uniquely large high-performance fleet, which includes a T-210, a P-210, a Bonanza, a Dakota, a Trinidad, and a Mooney 231. Paul's course took the group through:
(Notes from this presentation are available in .pdf format on www.airbandit.com.)
by Matt Hendricks
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Reproduction in whole or in part in any form without the express written permission
of an officer of the club is strictly prohibited.