The holiday season is approaching quickly and we left daylight savings behind a week ago. Our hours of operation for the fall and winter months will be M-Sat 8:30-5:00, Sundays 8:30-4:00. The Club will be closed on Thanksgiving day, but open Friday, Saturday and Sunday of that weekend.

West Valley received more tiedowns at PAO with our new MX facility and we have been shuffling A/C around. Please check the tiedown listed on the book when you pick up the A/C and confirm it is in the correct spot. If you notice a discrepancy inform the front desk right away.

Many members have responded online giving us new phone numbers. Thanks to all of you.

All members will receive a mid-month email on the release and use of CASSi v3. You will notice some small differences, but the process for scheduling will be very close to the original CASSi. If you are in need of some help just give us a call and the desk staff can help you.

Pride in ownership. How do we equate this terms in the flying world? In the case of WVFC I feel its relevance is most striking. As members of this club we are all, in fact, owners. The energy and effort, support and enthusiasm that we afford this club will directly affect its success. This includes everything from participation in social events within the club, to the time we take for training and currency, to the care that we each put into all aircraft that are online. It includes the care and respect we show each other as members, and as fellow pilots.

Please be careful in the use of the aircraft. Report any items that look to be damaged on the squawk sheet, and get them initialed by the front desk or personnel in maintenance. Use a member observation form if necessary.

Feel free to fill out an aircraft condition report. This form goes to the owner of the aircraft, and allows owners to improve aircraft usability based on the feedback they get from the users themselves.

WVFC maintenance will now be taking on the washing of aircraft. This will allow us to better control the quality and scheduling of the aircraft washes. I apologize that it took us so long to bring this to fruition, but I think the results will speak for themselves. The planes are on a monthly wash schedule again, and the planes that have been completed to date look astronomically better.

Please participate in the club as much as possible. Feel free to email, stop by, call and chat about any suggestions you may have for making the club an easier place to fly. The bottom line is, we must all take pride in the ownership of this club, for its success over the last 30 years has truly ridden on the strength of its membership. (Off the soap box.)

A quick note on training. As Chief I get to do a lot of phase checks and pilot evaluations. One of the trends I've been noticing lately is on testing the engine out sequence. After I pull the engine power I'll see a quick and responsive movement of the pilot to trim the plane for best glide (good), and then the inevitable "looking for a landing spot." The question in the back of my mind is, " why are we not just turning to a landing spot that we have already chosen?" A sage pilot once told me, "it is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when your engine will fail." (By the way he has survived multiple engine failures.) I guess I feel pilots should be planning for an engine failure just like they plan to level off. The goal is to constantly look for new spots as the land travels below us to our destination. This way, if for some reason the unfortunate does strike, it will not be a surprise but an expectation that was met with a safe and planned outcome. (Definitely expect it on a phase check.)

Finally, please taxi slowly. The expectation from the Chief's office is that we taxi at a speed at which we could lose our brakes and not lose control of the plane. I have noticed too many people taxiing way too fast.

Stay current, stay safe.

So far we've covered the first two of the following basic ingredients of a positive flying attitude:
     1. A realistic appraisal of our skills
     2. An unbiased assessment of our flight practices
     3. A real-time assessment of the wisdom of an act that is different from what we've assessed as proper, and which we've practiced
     4. An analysis of good practices and actions we hear about.

This installment is about real-time assessments of actions that are different from our normal practices. It makes no difference whether the different actions are the result of our own actions, or responses to outside factors. In fact, most of the time we do something significantly different from our normal practices, we do it in response to the current or the anticipated situation.

During a phase check the student had flown through the Sunol gap into the Livermore Valley, and had demonstrated the required private pilot maneuvers within standard. On the way back to PAO, I pulled the power at a point where the only realistic emergency field was the turf farm near Sunol. Following a successfully demonstrated emergency procedure, I asked him to return to PAO. While we had been out, clouds had come into the gap at about 2500 feet, perhaps a bit lower.

Without prompting, he looked at the relatively narrow gap between the hills and the cloud bases, judged that it was smaller than he felt comfortable with, and looked at the cloud tops. They would have put us near, if not into, the SFO Bravo airspace. On his own initiative, he climbed up to verify the height (while maintaining the appropriate cloud clearance), called Bay and asked for a VFR Bravo transition to PAO.

Could he have flown under the clouds safely? Probably. Was the choice to fly over the tops and into the Bravo safer? Absolutely! What process do we use to make the type of mature decision the student made here? The FAA recommends the DECIDE model.

     Detect
     Evaluate
     Choose
     Identify
     Do
     Evaluate

DETECT: The first part of the process is DETECT the fact that a change needs to be made, or that the previously assumed situation has changed. And the key here is situational awareness. Where am I? What is the weather here, and where I'm going? How is the plane behaving? What is my fuel status? What is my objective? How are my passengers doing? In addition to the actual situation, what are the trends of these factors? Are they improving, or getting worse?

Collectively, these and other factors comprise situational awareness, and allow us to detect that a change has occurred.

ESTIMATE: Not all changes are bad, and many require no action to be taken, but that determination needs to be made. Once a change is detected, we need to ESTIMATE the need to react to the change. If the reported ceiling at SQL has dropped from 5000 to 4000 feet, there is probably little we need to do if we're at 1500 feet over Coyote Hills landing at SQL. If, on the other hand, the wind has changed from 300 at 10 to 240 at 15, we might want to review our crosswind technique, and assess whether that's within our capability as well as that of the plane we're flying. At this point, the process gets a bit more complex, and begins to fall back to the previous installments of this topic. Some changes fall within our current skills, training, and procedures. Others require us to change our plans. If the field is nearly IFR and we're not instrument rated, it might be wise to fly to another field. So, it's important to understand and have a realistic assessment of our skills and practices so we can know if a change is required.

CHOOSE: After determining that a change is needed, the pilot needs to CHOOSE among the possible objectives (the FAA uses the term "outcome"). If landing at another airport is one option, which one should you land at? Do you have the fuel to get there? What are the conditions at that airport? Frequently folks who find themselves at this point in the process (particularly if they haven't actually followed the first two steps) limit their options too much. The extreme form of this is "get-home-itis." If you have another knowledgeable pilot aboard this would be a great time for a conversation, or even a brainstorming session. There may be perfectly acceptable alternatives that you haven't considered. And if you don't consider them, how can you choose the right one? Additional help in identifying choices may be available from ATC in its various forms.

IDENTIFY: Now that you know your objective, you need to IDENTIFY the actions that are required to accomplish the objective. Some are pretty straightforward, such as simply diverting VFR to the selected alternative. In other cases, the diversion may not be so simple. Under IFR, ATC needs to be notified, new approach procedures need to be reviewed, new clearances copied, and perhaps entered into the GPS. You may have to go into holding while ATC sorts out a clearance, which means power reductions, airspeed and trim changes... However, if you know ahead of time what will be expected, it's so much easier to do it and stay ahead of the plane. Reacting to stressful situations is a recipe for more stress and possible disaster. Staying ahead of the plane by identifying the required actions is the way to avoid much of the stress.

DO: Most of the hard work is finished at this point. Now, you simply have to DO the actions you've identified.

EVALUATE: Once the action has been taken, we often think the process is over, but there is another important step. We must EVALUATE the result of our actions and revise our sense of situational awareness to include the new plans and objectives. Did we really accomplish what we intended? Is the current plan safe under the current and anticipated conditions? All of which gets us back to the situational awareness to detect changes that we may need to respond to.

About the student at the beginning of the article: Obviously he passed the phase check, with glowing commentary. That level of maturity would make me feel comfortable in the back of an airplane with him flying. Which, of course, is an instructor's ultimate compliment.

(Mane is a member whose medical was only valid for student pilot operations due to a "lazy eye." No-one noticed the restriction until months after he'd passed his checkride--not even his examiner!--and then he had to set in motion the long process of obtaining a waiver from the FAA, culminating in this special flight exam he took a few weeks ago.)

Finally, after 6 months of waiting, I got my Medical Flight Test done, and I made it! Due to a condition with my left eye I had a restriction on my Medical Certificate saying "Valid For Student Pilot Purposes Only." This restriction applied even after I got my private pilot license last year. For six months I was not able to carry passengers on my own.

I applied to the FAA for a waiver to get a SODA (Statement of Demonstrated Ability), and then I was authorized to take a Medical Flight Test through a San Jose FSDO Medical Examiner. The morning of the test I flew my powerful C-152 to San Jose and met Jim Friel, the examiner, at the FSDO. He checked all the aircraft logs, and explained to me how he would be conducting the test. It was not really a checkride, but he wanted to test my vision in the air to make sure that my right eye could compensate for the left.

I knew I would have to do the following things well to pass the vision check:

• Watching for traffic and telling the examiner about every one I saw
• Reading the instrument panel and details on the sectional chart
• Reading runway markings and colors
• Judging flare and landing
• Choosing a proper emergency landing spot
• Reading frequencies on the chart and tuning them in minimum time
• Estimating distances for landmarks or airports visually

I'd only been to an airshow once, 25 years ago. In my memory it was hot, dusty, and incredibly boring... nothing to look at without craning your neck into the sky. The sun was strong, so my dad poured Tab soda all over my legs to keep them from burning, revealing the wisdom that had made him the non-custodial parent.

But in October I decided to give airshows another try. Now that I'm a pilot, I figured, maybe it would be more fun, so I booked a room, hopped in the car, and headed for Salinas.

Things started off a little shaky. By the time I got there it was dark, and most of the airplanes were already done. The announcer was just introducing a big flame-breathing rocket truck that was supposed to propel itself down the runway at some astonishing speed. It seemed like a good time to go scrounge up a piece of pizza. Twenty minutes later, pizza in hand, I got back to my seat in time to hear about the next feature... synchronized kite flying. Beautiful, I'm sure, but I'd just spent a couple hours in the car to watch airplanes. Not trucks, not kites... airplanes! Things were not going well.

At this point I needed some solace so I called my friend Rick, a former SQL controller and now tower manager at Salinas. At least, I thought, he might be in the crowd somewhere and could keep me company. Even better, he and the rest of the off-duty controllers were up in the tower watching the show. (Tower responsibilities had been handed over to the show's "airboss.") By the time the kites were finishing their aerial ballet we were all out on the catwalk with the best view in the house, and the next thing on the program was actually an airplane!

The following day, more airplanes... bold new kids on the block performing amazing aerobatic routines, and airshow veterans like Eddie Andreini in his Stearman and Sean Tucker in his Pitts. Having done the Don Styles 2-flight intro to spins and other strange things, I felt like I had a fraction of a sense of what it must be like in those cockpits. Those guys were amazing, doing inverted ribbon cutting passes with their tails just feet away from the ground! I wasn't sure who was crazier, the pilots, or the people lining the runway holding up the ribbons. Some surprise flyovers by the Stealth Bomber were really cool, and then, of course, the Blue Angels capped off the day with a spectacular demonstration.

It was hot and dusty in the bleachers, like I'd remembered, but it was far from boring. Nobody poured soda on my legs. There were West Valley people there, and West Valley planes, which made the whole thing seem more friendly. After the show there was a big hangar party on the field. Meeting some of the daredevil pilots who live this stuff every day was really exciting. Two of next year's Blue Angels were there (a few beers into the party we dubbed them the Apprentice Angels, which they seemed to like) talking about what it was like to do those opposing passes for the first time, passing just off each other's wingtips at closing speeds of something like 1,000 miles per hour. It was nice to hear that they had normal human reactions to such things, like momentary twinges of fear, and a healthy dose of respect for all the things that had to come together to make it work out just right.

With all that talent around I was a little embarrassed when they asked me what kinds of planes I fly... until I realized that the only reason I'd found the whole weekend so enjoyable was because of those slow and simple Cessnas. After 25 years I'd tried another airshow, and being a pilot, whatever the plane, being someone who's come to enjoy hanging around an airport, had made all the difference.

I visited Genoa last month and dropped by the local "AeroClub" for a view of the Riviera and to learn how things are done away from home.

Genoa is on the sea, 70 NM east of Monaco, 17 NM west of Portofino, 40 NM west of Cinque Terre and 65 NM south of Milan, an ideal location for brief sightseeing flights. Genoa airport has a 9,500 foot runway, with ILS and VOR/DME approaches. The "Aeroclub di Genova" has 85 pilots and 5 aircraft.

Fabrizio Martini, Chief Instructor, earned his Commercial license in Florida and outlined the differences and similarities between flying in the US and Italy. First and foremost, to put everything in perspective, a gallon of 100LL costs $5. This explains the popularity in Europe of ultralight aircraft powered with regular automotive gas as well as the SMA aviation diesel engines (www.smaengines.com) that run on either JetA or regular diesel fuel.

European General Aviation regulations are far more restrictive than in the US. Harmonization of rules and regulations within the European Union is still a work in progress, with individual countries still applying rules of their own. For example, VFR flying in Italy is limited to 1500 feet AGL, flying higher requires an IFR clearance or ATC authorization. Holders of Italian pilot licenses have to fly a minimum number of hours annually to prevent their licenses from expiring.

However, validating a US private license to fly an Italian registered aircraft on a temporary basis is a simple and straightforward process. US pilots have to present to a local office of ENAC -- the Italian equivalent of the FAA -- their airman certificate, medical certificate, passport, a form, and a $20 fee. Processing may take one or two days, and the validation is good for one year. Although the process is quick and easy, unless you plan to stay in Italy for a few months it is by far simpler to fly with a club CFI that knows the area and local regs well.

Flying abroad is fun and full of interesting quirks. For example, at the Genoa Aeroclub you do not pay for the aircraft based on the Hobbs meter. You pay for the time you are actually airborne. The tower records the times you lift off and touch down, and communicates them to the club. So if you sit holding short, waiting for that 737 on a 20 mile final, you don't pay for the engine running. Go figure.

If a business trip takes you far from home, take the time to visit the local club, you will find the experience worth your time. If business or holidays take you to the Italian Riviera, make sure you visit the "Aeroclub di Genova." You can reach the club at www.aecgenova.it/italian/index.html.

When designers develop a new aircraft they are essentially balancing a series of competing factors. Stronger planes can withstand more forces but, in general, are heavier and thus require more power or have less range. Strong positive stability makes a plane easy to fly, but much more difficult to maneuver aggressively should need arise. All this adds up to an envelope of capabilities for the aircraft. There are actually many envelopes if you measure them in terms of two dimensions, graphing pairs such as max/min airspeeds versus altitude. Taken altogether they add up to just how aggressively you can fly the airplane before it either departs from normal flight, or normal parts depart from the airplane due to stress.

In your flying, how close to the edges of the envelope have you come? Or how much of the envelope have you used? It's all there for the asking; the plane is designed to provide safe and reliable service right up to that edge. It's usually a legal or club restriction that prevents you from really seeing what you can do. Anecdotally, I'm guessing that most 500 hour private pilots have seen about 15-20% of what the plane can do, and that other 80% is a gray zone that either inspires fear or wonder.

This weekend I succumbed to the wonder and took an aerobatics course at Sean Tucker's School of Aerobatic Flight (www.poweraerobatics.com). I've been thinking about going to an unusual attitudes course, and had received good reports from a friend who attended one in New Mexico. Looking around our area there are a number of candidates, and this was the best choice I found.

A bit about them...
Sean doesn't actually teach the course; he's usually out flying his airshow circuit. He does, however, take an active interest in the curriculum and quality of training, and that attention shows. So don't go expecting to get his autograph. That said, he may be around the hanger in the winter time when the airshow circuit takes a break.

The primary instructor is Ken Erickson, himself an airshow competitor and self-described as "growing up in aviation." Ken was my handler for the first blocks of instruction, and I found his style to be that remarkably rare combination of competence and empathy for a student's style and rate of learning. He found out precisely what I was there to learn, and proceeded to do it (and then some).

Their facility is in King City (KIC), midway between Salinas and Paso Robles. They use Pitts S2B or S2C aircraft for the training, and do their own maintenance, so you know things are in order. Salinas is a VFR airport, but they are working on getting a GPS approach. King City is a classic American highway way station, with plenty of inexpensive motels and restaurants.

About the Course
They have two prepackaged courses - Executive Pilot Awareness Training (E-PAT) which is four flights and could be done in a weekend (you'll be tired, trust me); and a 10-block introduction to aerobatics (the syllabus for both is at the end of this article).

My goal for this training was twofold: everything I can learn about an airplane, every new corner of the envelope, every unusual attitude that I've flown into and out of, all adds up to an personal insurance policy. I take people's kids flying for their first flight, and that demands the highest possible level of safety. The second reason is I am working on the CFI rating, and this instruction will allow me to explain the importance of unusual flight to students, as well as identify and foster any additional interest they may have. Plus it's a cool way to get your spin endorsement for the rating!

I originally wanted to do the E-PAT course with some bit of aerobatics thrown in for good measure. After discussing with Ken, we went straight into the 10-block course since that was a superset and it was clear that I already understood much of what was taught in the E-PAT course.

The basic pattern is an hour or so of ground school followed by an hour of flight time. The ground sessions are longer at first because much of the information and methods are very new to the student so it takes a bit more verbal description. The sequence of lessons is fairly well set, but any modifications you desire are encouraged. I was interested in trying Chandelles in the Pitts, and that was a good constructive lesson (you really have to haul back on the stick to get to the stall at the 180 point). It's not part of the syllabus, but they are pleased to teach you anything you ask for.

The first block is about coordinated maneuvers and spins. You learn in profound detail just how important the rudder is, and how dynamic its use is based on the orientation of the lateral axis (on knife edge the rudder is the only thing to keep the nose from dropping through the horizon. You learn that all the control surfaces can either work independently or together, based on your orientation and objective. What was most enlightening to me was realizing that the only constant is the source of gravity. As you move the aircraft around the center of gravity (move relative to the source of gravity) the controls start to blur from their original objective and become something new. Pulling back on the stick still makes the nose come toward your head, but it doesn't always make the nose move away from the earth.

The other powerful lesson is the notion of unloading the controls and managing the g-load of flying. As you read this you are experiencing 1-g acceleration toward the center of the earth. It's the same in straight and level flight. If you invert the plane in a roll you experience 1g at all times from the force of gravity, but the direction of the gravity varies through 360 degrees. Understanding this you can then trim the plane to fly at a particular g-load based on whatever is "neutral."

You also do a number of spins in the first block, to get used to them being a procedure, not an emergency. You also learn that spins rarely occur because of an irrational pull-back on the yoke; they most often occur due to crossed controls at high angles of attack (e.g. landing). It's unbelievable how fast the stall/spin happens. The Pitts definitely contributes with a clean break; there is no hesitation, it just goes. We did a lot of spins in the first two blocks, learning to count the rotations, and to manage the recovery with minimum altitude loss. The toughest thing to learn is you are not going to break the plane by pulling back aggressively on the stick. At first I was a bit tentative because it is a remarkable load, but after a while you start to combine pull back and power-on to make a quick and expeditious recovery.

In Block 2 you start in with rolls, and learn that you can use one control or a combination of controls to create a variety of rolls around the longitudinal axis. The most challenging is the competition roll (or slow roll) where you keep the center of gravity moving along a line parallel to the surface of the earth. The means you use bank to roll the wings, opposite rudder to prevent a turn, top rudder to keep the nose up, *way* forward on the stick when inverted to keep the nose up, top rudder to keep the nose up, and back to wings level. You transcribe a circle above the horizon during the maneuver. When done well this is a great accomplishment.

I'll be going back for Blocks 3-10 as weekends permit. The price is extremely reasonable - you pay only for airtime of $250/hour. Ground time is as you require, and Ken is more than pleased to discuss just about anything related to flying. I asked if they would be interested in coming to WVFC to perhaps do some low-cost demo flights to see if folks would be interested in going to a more in-depth session. If that's of interest to any members, please contact me (richard@email.net) and we'll get that arranged. A few suggestions if you go ahead with this course (all of you should):

• If you have no time in a conventional plane, schedule a flight or two in a Citabria so you know what it feels like. At Sean's school you'll get the controls as much as you ask, and if you don't know what to expect on takeoff (the Pitts with 265HP literally stampedes down the runway when you hit the go button), you might be so surprised by this that you'll miss out on the aerobatic instruction
• Schedule a dual flight in the Decathlon with an aerobatic CFI. This will acquaint you with the sensations you can expect, and if you have any concerns about wearing a parachute or turning upside on purpose, this will help allay those fears.
• Read up on basic flight controls. You need to absolutely understand about adverse yaw, P-factor, coordination, angle-of-attack and all the other details to get the most out of the course. You could simply go to say you have flown upside down, but if you spend some time brushing up on the basics you'll actually be able to understand what you are doing, not just respond to commands.
• Leave your experience, hours, ratings and ego at the door. It's rare to get the chance to just be a student who is allowed to not know everything, so take advantage of it. There are no heroes, this is not a competition, it's about learning. This is true of any aviation instruction, but even more so with aerobatic flight.

The Syllabi

Executive Pilot Awareness Training (E-PAT) Program Ground Training:

• The development of E-PAT habit patterns that effectively transfers classroom knowledge to inflight capabilities.
• A review of aircraft incidents and accidents from the records of the of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS).
• Exploring flight situations that lead to unusual attitudes, such as wind shear and micro-burst awareness, windflow patterns around mountain waves, understanding clear air turbulence and wingtip vortices and determining control limitations due to aircraft configuration or equipment failure.
• A basic aerodynamic review including adverse yaw, angle of attack during all phases of flight, how turbulence affects aircraft controllability plus, airflow patterns at the stall and during spins.

Flight Training:

• BLOCK 1 -- Coordination Exercises, Misapplied Controls, Stalls, Wing Overs, Steep Climb Angle/Low Airspeed Recoveries.
• BLOCK 2 -- Rolling Upright from Climbs, Descents and Level Flight Attitudes, Extended Inverted Flight, Spin Entries from Level Flight with an emphasis on Minimum Altitude Loss and Spiraling Descents.
• BLOCK 3 -- High Altitude Aircraft Upset, Spin Entries from Climbs, Descents and Level Flight Attitudes, Spins with an emphasis on Correct and Incorrect Control Application and Inverted Spins.
• BLOCK 4 -- Basic Aerobatics with an emphasis on Attitude Orientation and Unusual Attitude Recoveries.

Introduction to Aerobatics Program:

• BLOCK 1 -- Coordination Maneuvers and Upright Spins.
• BLOCK 2 -- Rolls, Competition Turns, Upright Spins.
• BLOCK 3 -- Loops, Upright Accelerated Spins.
• BLOCK 4 -- Loop/Roll Combinations, Hammerheads, Upright Aileron Spins.
• BLOCK 5 -- Snap Rolls, Inverted Turns, Upright Flat Spins.
• BLOCK 6 -- Inverted Spins, Outside Loops.
• BLOCK 7 -- Tail Slides, Inverted Accelerated Spins.
• BLOCK 8 -- Vertical Rolls, Inverted Aileron Spins.
• BLOCK 9 -- Rolling Turns, Inverted Flat Spins.
• BLOCK 10 -- Proficiency Maneuvers, Graduation Flight.

* Wednesday, November 13, 7-8:30 PM, PAO
Collision Avoidance. Learn techniques for sharing the sky without getting too close. Gordon Reade.

Wednesday, November 20, 7-8:30 PM, SQL
Weather. The mysteries of weather deciphered. Speaker TBD