WVFC will begin to beta test a new website development for the club. The new website will be called West Valley Flying Club Airspace. This new site will allow members to share information and create user groups. It will look and feel similar to a “my space’ type of account but will be geared towards GA and will only be accessible to WVFC members. No information will be shared outside of the club. We are still working out some kinks. As soon as it is up and running, the link will be added to the home page.

Another new addition is the airport pages. The link for these pages is in the upper left corner of the home page. These are designed to put out more information regarding the specific sites, issues, concerns, and/or fun events that are specific to that location.

There are several interesting events coming up. Steve Blonstein, who is both a CFI with the club as well as a current owner of two aircraft online, is spending a great deal of time and effort investigating the Light Sport Aircraft. Please read his article for more details. Additionally, there are going to be a lot of interesting seminars coming up over the next several weeks. These are great seminars to find out more information on aircraft and will hopefully lead to new horizons in your aircraft training. As always, look at the bbs calendar for more details.

On a somber note, as many you probably heard or read, we had an aircraft go down this past month. Both pilot and passenger sustained some injuries however, both are going to be okay. The incident is currently being investigated by the NTSB and the FAA. The aircraft, N8127J, was a total loss.

Flying is a sport with great pleasures and great reward, and with it comes a great responsibility. We must all look into our own flying and review the training that we have done or are doing, flights that we plan on taking, and try always to be as safe and as prepared as possible.

Be safe… always.

Flying an airplane is probably one of the most rewarding and empowering experiences you will ever have in a lifetime. For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by flying machines and walked with my neck twisted upward to gaze at the jumbo jet contrails, dreaming to be up in the air one day at the controls of an airplane. It is very romantic if you think about it: seeing the earth from so far up, having a big picture of what a city looks like, flying in the sunset, and feeling like you are suspended between space and land. However, flying is not always or only this: it requires not only physical or psychomotor skills but also the ability to refrain from taking to the controls if you think there might be a risk to scare or endanger yourself or, worse, those around you.

This is broadly known as aeronautical decision making. The Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge defines ADM as “… a systematic approach to the mental process used by airplane pilots to consistently determine the best course of action in response to a given set of circumstances”. The “given set of circumstances” encompasses various items: the pilot, the airplane, the environment, and the operation – better known as the mission. For each of these four elements, the pilot must make decisions as to whether the flight is justified or can be made safely. The result of this process is the “go-no go” decision or: “should I really go on this flight? Yes, I would like to get where I have planned to be today/tonight but are all the pieces fitting well, and will I be able to complete this flight safely and smoothly?”

First and foremost, let’s talk about fitness for the flight. You have all heard about the “IMSAFE” mnemonic: Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, and Eating. Most pilots pay great attention to the illness, alcohol, and medication: they know that these factors will for sure impair their performance. However, they regularly ignore the eating, stress, and fatigue parts because these are often a major component of their everyday life with little or no readily noticeable adverse effects.

Remember that if you did not sleep long or well enough or had a long and/or stressful time at work or with your family, there will come a time when you will start to feel fatigued. Add lack of food to that, and your brain starts to slow down and ultimately goes into standby mode. It does not have the fuel required to function properly, may it be nutrients or rest, and, therefore, whatever it needs to process information while flying is becoming scarce. The most mundane clearance or cockpit duty becomes a hurdle, and, to a certain extent, you can start to experience spatial disorientation. Obviously, it all becomes even more dangerous and severe if you get or already are in instrument conditions.

Another decision you need to make is the type of airplane to fly. This depends on the type of mission or operation you intend to undertake and the environment you plan to fly in. The more unknown there is around you, the more familiar you want to be with the airplane. Let me elaborate somewhat. If you decide to go to an airport or an area you have never gone to, at altitudes you are not necessarily comfortable with (close to the service ceiling of the airplane or your own service ceiling without oxygen, which can be much lower than the FAA requirements), in conditions you have not experienced as a solo pilot before, your best bet is to use a make and model if not a specific airplane that you know really well. A 10-hour checkout for most airplanes is very little and does not provide full proficiency, except for regular trainers (and yet, one can argue that depending on the experience and total time level, it can be).

You want to think about the type of equipment aboard the airplane as well: it can be to your advantage to have a flat panel with all the bells and whistles and digital information you can work with, but if you have just been taught to use those, it might be wise to get more familiar with them on a short or a few short flights before shooting on a long expedition. Flying an airplane that you know well leaves more available power to deal with other unknown areas of the flight. Part of this experience is also whether you have flown that airplane on solo flights yet or not. Again, it is one thing to get checked out to fly an airplane with an instructor on board, but when it comes to flying it without supervision, it can become much more demanding. As long as everything goes as planned and there is no equipment failure, weather changes, and/or unexpected adverse conditions along the route, the flight will probably go smoothly. But you never know, right? And this is when you would be in a better place flying very well known equipment, avionics and airplane included.

Next month we will talk about the environment and the operation parts of decision making. Until then, fly safely.

Who is ready to go camping? We have a trip to Columbia scheduled for the last weekend in September, so pack your bags and join us for a fun filled weekend. I haven’t firmed up all of the details yet but am in the process of gathering information to make it a great trip. If you can’t spend the night we decided to tie in John Ferrell’s lunch fly-out into the weekend, so at least meet us on Sunday for lunch, it’s going to be tons of fun!

We are waiting with baited breath for the opening of the new San Carlos location, I know I’ve been writing about it a lot. I figure the more I put it in print, the sooner it will come to fruition! You can bet you will all hear from me when we are ready to move. We will make a fun day or two out of it if you feel compelled to join us!

Congratulations to new CFIs Dan Dyer and Brian Eliot. We are very excited to have you on board! If you haven’t already seen them, we have a couple of new front desk staff members: Candice Nance (PAO) and Cosmo Bucci (HWD). Please take the time to introduce yourselves to them. Candice has worked at a couple of FBOs and is already a pilot. Some of you may know her from Amelia Reid or ACM. I am so excited to have her here as she is a natural leader, has a great attitude, and works very well under pressure. We all know at times the front desk can be very stressful, so go easy on the new people!! Cosmo comes to us with a management and leadership background and is studying to be a pilot at Embry Riddle. He is very dedicated, and I know he will do well here. I am thrilled to have two very strong new staff members!

If you are planning on attending the AOPA Convention, Brian Elliot is coordinating ride share and/or hotel share for the event, so feel free to contact him via e-mail eliot@rpi.edu. It should be a great time you won’t want to miss!

Last but not least, we are looking for an old or rebuilt aircraft for a reasonable price. We would like to use it for events and marketing, so if you have one or know anybody who does, please contact either myself, Shannon@wvfc.org, or Josh, gm@wvfc.org.

Keep checking the calendar for new and exciting events. We look forward to your participation!

My personal apologies to Ken Gottfredson for not acknowledging him as a participant in National Night Out!

Happy September everyone!

A Taxiway Adventure
A few weeks ago, I was instructing a pre-private student who had recently taken his WVFC cross-country phase check. We were going over the main area the phase check instructor had found deficient, which was entry into airport traffic patterns.

After a successful pattern entry, approach, and landing at Reid-Hillview, we taxied back to runway 13 Left via taxiway Y as instructed and were cleared for takeoff to return to Palo Alto. My student advised tower that we were not ready for takeoff since he wished to review the trip first. The tower controller instructed him to advise when he was ready.

The student taxied the aircraft away from the tiny run-up area and onto Taxiway Z. I hit the brakes and told him he needed clearance to proceed. He called ground, who didn’t answer, and I told him to contact tower. Tower instructed him to contact ground. This time ground answered and asked his position and intentions. My student responded that he was on Zulu going to Trade Winds to prepare the next leg of his flight. The ground controller told him he had not been cleared onto Zulu and to contact the tower by telephone.

I moved us off the taxiway onto a space at Discovery Air and dialed the number we had been given. I was advised by the ground controller that he was going to send a report of a possible pilot deviation to the FSDO. He wanted my name, pilot certificate number, etc. As CFI giving dual instruction to a student pilot, there was no doubt that I was pilot-in-command and legally responsible for the airplane. Given the short connection between the two parallel taxiways and the relatively small danger of this incursion, I thought this was a somewhat harsh reaction by the controller. There had been no other airplanes on Taxiway Z. However, I understand Reid-Hillview controllers are frustrated by these incursions, which could cause an accident. Lucky for me, the tower supervisor agreed with me and was not inclined to forward the report. If he had, my CFI and DPE tickets might have been at risk.

The moral(s):

1. Students and instructors who train at Palo Alto and San Carlos are used to tolerant controllers who wish to expedite traffic to avoid blocking runway egress. Sometimes we CFIs allow our students to continue taxiing after leaving the runway without formal clearance. Other airport control towers, such as Hayward, Livermore, and Reid-Hillview, are not tolerant of un-cleared taxiing. Once an arriving airplane exits the runway by crossing the hold bar, the pilot requires clearance to proceed. We CFIs must caution our students about the standard procedures at other airports.
2. CFIs are constantly in danger of this type of thing happening (or worse). During initial phases of flight training, they exercise tight control of the student. They are either on the controls or spring-loaded to take them as necessary. However, as training advances, the CFI relaxes the close control. The student is allowed more leeway. This is an important and necessary progression. If the instructor never gives the student any slack, neither the CFI nor the student can ever be confident that he/she is ready to assume pilot-in-command responsibility. I have had applicants tell me that the first time they ever actually controlled the aircraft was on their first solo. Still, we CFIs must be constantly vigilant. I could tell you frightening stories about unexpected blunders made high-time pilots training in a new aircraft category….but I won’t.
3. Notwithstanding the student’s advanced pre-private training status, I was remiss in that I had not ensured that he fully understood the airport taxiway rules. This occurrence proved his lack of understanding. We CFIs must take care that our students have the skills and knowledge required for all phases of flight, including taxiing.
4. And, most importantly, the story is one example of the big bunch of risks and responsibilities that CFIs undertake when they happily welcome you as their student. Therefore, when you pass your checkride, you must ensure that, in accordance with tradition, your instructor is well supplied with his/her favorite adult beverage for the next week (or so).

2006 has been a year of personal milestones. This year, I had my first (and last) day with two FAA check rides, reached the age of statutory infirmity, and now have spent a total of one year in the air. This has caused some reminiscing about how things have changed since I started flying.

My first flight lesson was in a Cessna 150 in 1967 with an instructor that I was convinced was a wild man. My first impressions were that the plane was really noisy and that I REALLY didn’t like stalls. Things to note: first, we did several stalls the first lesson, and in those days, no one wore headphones. High time pilots didn’t waste money on expensive stereos.

In those days, airplanes, airfoils, construction techniques, and engines were all 1930s technology. Radios were probably a decade more recent, but they all had tubes, and many were of the “coffee grinder” type. Solid state radios weren’t in any of the planes I flew and may not have existed. LED displays certainly didn’t exist, and GPS wasn’t even a dream.

Most of the changes from the 1930s technologies were occurring in sailplanes. They were the first with fiberglass/epoxy composite materials, the first with carbon fiber composites, and some even got into boron fibers. They started using some of the more recent NASA airfoils, replacing the NACA ones of the 30s.

One piece of sailplane instrumentation was frequently better than what was in airplanes: total energy variometers (sensitive vertical speed indicators for the non-glider pilot). Gliders tended to be pretty weak on gyro instruments, though. They had no vacuum system, and most had no electrical system, either.

Interestingly enough, there was little change through the 1970s and 1980s, with the exception of the introduction of the intercom and headsets, which hit their stride in the late 80s, and an increase in the number of fuel injected airplanes also in the 1980s.

Probably the greatest changes in general aviation began in the early to mid 1990s when airplanes started integrating the latest advances in electronics into the avionics stacks. For someone who’d flown for years with no display, I can’t begin to tell you how great the first moving map was, though it was crudeness incarnate by today’s standards.

Still, an interesting thing began to happen. The pilot community became split along technology lines. Some pilots embraced the new technologies and began thinking about what could or should happen next. Others stayed with the older technology with no apparent desire to upgrade either their planes or their skills. This dichotomy continued as the gap widened, making the effort to span it even greater. And the rate of change has increased as new materials, construction techniques, airfoils, engines, and controls have become commonplace. How many of us 20 years ago could have imagined the Eclipse or the Cirrus or even the multi-function display? I was involved early in the Operational Requirements Document phase of the GPS development but am still blown away by the capabilities of the GPSs installed in most of our fleet.

This is an incredible time to be in aviation. Change is occurring daily, and even better, most of that change actually represents progress instead of cosmetics. Paradigms are being shattered and shifted. And, unfortunately, many pilots are being left behind. The good news is that we have planes with some of the new goodies in our fleet.

There are a couple of things that do puzzle me though.

• Auto manufacturers have long ago figured out how to make climate control systems – why can’t the airplane folks break the code? Why does a Cirrus have two little dinky air vents with no fan? Is it supposed to be a winged greenhouse/sauna?
• Why do airplane doors more closely resemble submarine hatches than car doors? Could we learn something here?
• When you acknowledge traffic on the TCAS, why does the fool thing keep calling the same traffic rather than recognizing that you’ve seen it, have tracked it, and are expecting something new when it yells “traffic, traffic” the next ten times?
• Why isn’t there a valve to prevent fuel tank overflow with 100LL being peed all over the ground when the plane is parked on the side of a hill?
• When you’re in OBS mode on a GPS, why does the course line disappear from the MFD screen? Is this a “feature”?
• Not strictly an airplane issue, but since I’m in Andy Rooney mode, why is IACRA so incredibly user-arrogant?

As a long-time member and CFI at West Valley, one my favorite activities is showing potential new members the incredible selection of planes that we have available to rent. And we really were a pioneer when it came to bringing new planes to the line starting with the Cessna 172SPs, the Archer IIIs and most recently the Cirrus family of planes. These aircraft are really cool with that new plane smell, advanced avionics, autopilots that actually work, PFDs, MFDs, and on and on. Of course, none of this “coolness” comes cheaply. These newer planes are more expensive to rent, and in many cases people on a budget simply can’t afford the luxury.

Now let us turn our thoughts to the brand new student pilot, especially those who are on some kind of a budget. What are their choices? To keep costs low, they usually consider a two-seat plane like the Cessna 152 or perhaps an older Cessna 172 if the 152 is too tight. I’m a huge fan of the older Cessna 172s (I have one online at West Valley), but it doesn’t take much foresight to see the end of the road (or is that runway?) for these older models. This just begs the question of where do we go for our next generation two-seat training platform. It’s something I’ve been studying, along with the GM, for the past few months, and I’d like to bring the membership up to date on our current thinking and ask you for your feedback before we take the next steps.

The research we’ve done to date includes running a survey with new members who currently fly the Cessna 152 fleet. It’s also included lots of number crunching, several test flights, speaking to manufacturers at Oshkosh this year, other flight clubs/schools who have new two-seat trainers on their lines, and just my gut reaction based on past experiences. Let me touch on the survey results first. We had over 50 responses, so the data are probably pretty good with the exception that all the respondents were already WVFC members flying 152s. We weren’t able to reach those people who perhaps looked at the older 152s and simply said no thank you and moved on. The bottom line results were that the membership wants to have new two-seat trainers online. It’s a cost sensitive area, and the magic number seems to be under the $100 per hour mark and preferably closer to $90. As I’ve done leasebacks at the club for many years, I’m reasonably adept at working the numbers to see what makes sense from a potential owner/leaseback standpoint.

So far, the options seem to break down into 2 distinct groups.

The first group of planes is newly or recently certified production planes that meet part 23 certification standards (the same that’s applied to existing craft like Cessna, Piper, and Cirrus). The credible candidates in this category include the AMD Alarus, the Symphony 160, the Liberty XL, and the Diamond DA20. Realistically, all of these planes have acquisition costs on the wrong side of $150K, which makes hitting the $100 per hour mark very difficult. Their running costs vary considerably, but fuel burn is a big factor in a trainer, and here the O240 FADEC engine in the Liberty wins because of the low fuel consumption (5 gph at 60% power) and high cruise performance (130+ knots), potentially making it more than just a trainer but also a useful cross country platform. I test flew the Liberty and liked what I saw.

And then there’s the Light Sport Aircraft (LSA). Now here it feels more like the Wild West (isn’t that where we already are?). I say that because a large number of small players have crowded into a market where things are only just getting figured out. The things you can do with an LSA might scare or worry the part 23 folks. For example, I recently flew the Flight Design CT LSA. It had a PFD! But it wasn’t a $40,000 Avidyne or Garmin G1000 but a Dynon EFIS, with solid state gyros, that retails for $5000 and pretty much does everything the big boys do. They just don’t need all of that certification stuff to get there. This is just the way that market operates, and it enables the creation of fuel-sipping, aerodynamically slick aircraft, 120K cruise speeds, useful loads that put a 152 to shame, and price tags around $100-110K. All of a sudden $90 per hour doesn’t look so unrealistic. Oh, and by the way, that includes a parachute like the Cirrus! While LSAs are being pitched at the Sport Pilot certificate audience, they can still be used for private pilot training provided that certain options are included (e.g., lighting for nighttime flight). One huge factor is Cessna’s (hopefully near-term) decision on whether to join the fray. It would certainly legitimize the market segment in a whole new way.

So where do we want to go? I’d love to hear from many of you on your thoughts on this subject. It’s my opinion that we need to go somewhere because if we don’t someone else will. There are other local clubs already putting LSAs on their flight lines. It would be a shame to lose our leadership position because we didn’t take the lead at this important point in time. So send me your thoughts at sblonstein@mindspring.com. We’ll keep you posted, and hopefully, before too long, you’ll see new, shiny two-seat trainers on our line.

There is an opening in the WVFC accounting department for an Accounts Receivable Coordinator. We offer a fun work environment and great flight and other employee benefits.We are looking for a team player with a passion for great customer service!

Requirements: Excellent phone, communication and documentation skills. General accounting knowledge and problem solving ability. Formal accounting training is a plus but is not a requirement. The customer support person is responsible for resolving member problems and complaints within the realm of accounting.

Provides excellent support of customers. Have responsibilities which include but not limited to Customer support, issue documentation and tracking, general accounting duties. Requires attention to detail, a high level of accuracy, excellent customer service and phone skills, computer experience (Windows, excel and word) and ability to multi-task.

Duties and Responsibilities
Accounting

• Compile, review and mail monthly statements to members and owners
• Enter new and/or updated member information into accounting system
• Monthly billing and related accounting entries
• Follow up overdue accounts

Please update yourself on the latest club activities by going to the membership calendar located at http://www.wvfc.org/b/calendar.php