Hey there to all. June is the month for board voting. Since that segment is going to take up a lot of space I will keep my article down to a minimum. I know this will make my regular readers upset but fear not, I will write a more detailed argument next month. Below the Fleet Updates will be the Candidate Statements. The vote for the board members takes place between June 11th and the 17th. You will be able to vote in person at leach location, or online by going to Election Central at www.wvfc.org/mem/v/election.html.

I would also encourage those of you who are interested in the inner workings of the club to participate in the open meetings. This is a great way to find out what is going on with the club and its inner workings.

A reminder to look out for the Hiller Brew-Fest the night before the Vertical Challenge. I went to this last year and it was a ton of fun. Tickets can be acquired by going to the Hiller Museum gift shop. They put on a twilight airshow, get a local brewer to supply beer and wine and have great food. I would highly recommend it.

Other things to think about, the Palo Alto Working Group is making a presentation to the city council regarding the current status and future of Palo Alto airport. Those interested in reading what the report has to say can get the .pdf file from [HERE]. It is a very interesting document and I am proud to be a part of its development. The other concern is User Fees for GA. I cannot begin to speak about what an atrocity user fees are. Please write your local representative about this action. There is plenty of data regarding the user fees issue on www.aopa.org.

That is enough of the political stuff. Please remember to enjoy yourself. The summer is here a little early and with it comes good flying weather. Remember as you get back into the plane to assess your personal skill and currency and to be self aware.

Thanks

Torea Rodriquez (CFI Seat)

Dear West Valley Flying Club Members:

I have been a member of WVFC since July 2002. I started my flying adventures here and continue to cultivate my aviation interests in this club. I have obtained all my ratings (except seaplane) through West Valley Flying Club and I am a strong component of the quality of training one can receive from this club. I have served on the Board of Directors for the last 3 years, one of which was as the CFI representative. I seek to continue that representation for another term.

West Valley is now entering a new phase. It is strong with members, airplanes and new locations. We are entering a new phase in training with technologically advanced general aviation aircraft and we are seeing more unique airplanes of the vintage era, like the T34 & the SNJ. With all this change and advancement will come a need to lean our processes and increase our consistency of training and aircraft safety... changes not always so easy.

I want to help serve WVFC by volunteering my time and contributing to the Board of Directors in the CFI seat. I bring with me my business experience from my previous technology career in which I have worked in operations for several major Silicon Valley technology companies. I feel that my experience in large-scale operations, and process improvement will serve well for West Valley at this stage. I would like to focus on streamlining our aircraft checkout processes, increasing overall pilot safety, and enhancing our technically advanced aircraft education. Meanwhile, there is a responsibility of the CFI seat to serve the unique membership status of our very talented Flight Instructor corps. I will always keep the CFI interest in mind as I serve as a member of the Board and will openly continue to request and receive feedback from the instructors.

In addition to my devotion to WVFC, I am also active in the aviation industry through other volunteer activities. I am a founding board member of the San Francisco Bay Area Women in Aviation chapter. I volunteer with the Professional Ninety-Nines and participate in the Santa Clara Valley Ninety-Nines chapter.

This year, I will be unable to participate in the "Meet the Candidates" sessions in June as I will be in Alaska during that time. I do look forward to your questions in email and on the BBS. I will be able to check email and the boards semi-regularly while I am in Alaska and will respond to everyone. I also look forward to serving on the board for the next few years.

Torea Rodriguez
WVFC Member 7688
CFI, CFII and MEI
taildraggerflying@gmail.com

Jeff Swan (At-Large Seat)

My name is Jeff Swan, and I would like the opportunity to represent members of West Valley Flying Club, as a member at-large of the Board of Directors. I have been a member since 2001, am a single engine land, instrument rated pilot, and am an active renter of a number of club planes. I am very proud to be a member of WVFC and thrilled to have the opportunity to fly the large and diverse number of planes that our club has to offer. Having the chance to take advantage of the opportunities that WFVC provides, I have had an increasing desire to give back to this great aviation community. Taking a leadership role is a great way to do so.

I have resided in the Bay Area for the last twelve years and love the culture, diversity, and location that we get to call home. I currently live in Mountain View, with my wife and 2-year old daughter, and work in San Mateo. This allows me to take advantage of the number of locations that WVFC has, whether it is to take in a lunch bay tour out of San Carlos, or to fly the family out of Palo Alto to Tahoe for a weekend.

I work in the software industry helping small and medium sized businesses set up their financials, e-commerce, and relationship management systems. I have a BS in Business Management and over 15 years of experience in working with different types of businesses. I have experience in sales, sales management, international business development, and marketing. I believe this experience will be an asset as a member of the board. Given the opportunity, I will represent the members of the club to the best of my ability, take an active role at meetings, and contribute in any way I can.

I am excited to have introduced other members to the club over the last years by sharing my flying experiences with co-workers and friends. Some of those members are currently flying as private pilots or going through the private pilot training. Seeing their delight is another one of the things that motivates me into running for a seat on the board. As a member of the board, I look forward, first-and-foremost, to being a member of the team. I am proud to consider myself a team player who works well with others to get the most accomplished. Specific goals that I would like to accomplish are increasing annual flight hours of our existing members and increasing the club's general membership.

Finally, I believe interaction with members is extremely important and I will advocate for continuous communication and openness within the club. I will personally be happy to answer any member's questions by phone or email throughout this process and, if given the opportunity to serve you on the board, I will maintain a relationship of openness with all members of our community. Thank you for considering me to represent you.

Sincerely,
Jeff Swan
jeff@jeffswan.com

Ettore Leale (Owner Seat)

Dear fellow WVFC aircraft owner,

My name is Ettore Leale, for the past four years I served on the Board of Directors as Treasurer and Secretary. Since April I have been serving as your interim aircraft owner representative.

I have been a pilot for 19 years, a member of the West Valley Flying Club for over six years, and I currently have a Cessna 172SP online with the club.

I am running for board re-election as an aircraft owner representative in order to contribute my energy, dedication and professional experience to the long-term success and sustainability of our club.

I believe the mission of our club is to provide safe, affordable and quality aircraft rental and instruction in a collegial environment of aviation enthusiasts. I also believe in professionally managed operations and in setting an example in management and board accountability and transparency.

Over the past four years the club has achieved important milestones: membership has grown steadily, debt has been repaid, and we are now on the best financial footing that club has been in many years.

If re-elected to the Board of Directors as aircraft owner representative I will work towards addressing the following goals:

• Build a relationship of trust, respect, accountability and transparency between club's constituencies;
• Expand and improve the club's marketing efforts to increase hours flown by fleet aircraft;
• Improve the squawk process to safely minimize airplane down-time, costs and pilot inconvenience;
• Expand the value provided by the club to aircraft owners by improving overall operational efficiencies.

It's that time of year! We are in the process of planning the events for the summer, please make sure you check the WVFC calendar as each event will be posted as they come across my desk. If you are interested in any particular events please let me know so we can get them on the calendar, any and all ideas are welcome. The following are a few events that are already on the calendar, we hope to see all of you there.

"The Vertical Challenge Airshow is a wonderful event that allows visitors to see firsthand helicopter operations. The show is devoted to educating the public to how helicopters affect our daily lives from traffic and news reports to its unique life saving ability, to the national defense of our country." We will have a booth at the event and a tandem party at our San Carlos facility so I will need at least six volunteers for that day. Please let me know if you are available.

I still need volunteers (at least 6) for the Hiller Vertical Challenge Saturday June 16th , San Carlos. This event promises to be very exciting; I look forward to meeting new members who haven't been out to volunteer! Call me at 650-856-2030 ext 304 or e-mail me at Shannon@wvfc.org if you are interested.

Airport Day is coming up on Sunday September 9th, my goal is to bring in many different types of aircraft. If you have any Warbirds or unique planes you are interested in displaying please let me know soon so I can reserve a space for you. We are very excited about this event, please let me know as soon as possible if you would like to participate!

For those of you who are wondering what the status is on overnight parking, we confirmed with our property manager that West Valley members may park overnight for 1-2 nights and a 3rd with permission along the fence only-not along the buildings. In order to do this you will need to notify the front desk so we can get you an overnight parking pass with all your flight information to put in your car window, this will insure you will not be towed. Thank you for your patience while we handled the details!

Please take the time to introduce yourselves to our new front desk staff, Lauren Douglas is working M-F at SQL, Michael Fernandes is taking over Jeanette's shifts at PAO and Sundays at SQL, we will miss Jeanette, please wish her luck in her new endeavors with Northwest Airlines. Michael is an aspiring Pilot and owns his own Model Aircraft business if anyone is interested in models he's the one to talk to! We also have a new girl named Amber who will be joining us as a fill-in at PAO, SQL and HWD during the summer; she is an aviation student and also an aspiring pilot. Please introduce yourselves and be patient with us as we get everyone trained and up to speed. I would like to make a public thank you to Joel Harris for all his patience and hard work throughout our turnover period. His patience and expertise goes so far in training everyone, he will be taking a well deserved vacation for a couple of weeks in June. I would be lost without Joel here, my appreciation goes very deep.

If you have any comments or suggestions for the front desk I would love to hear about them.

Happy flying everyone!!

In order to become a Flight Instructor, the CFI applicant must demonstrate that he or she can prepare a lesson on a flight maneuver in short order. In order to facilitate that feat, most recommending instructors have their CFI trainees prepare a portfolio of canned lessons that cover all PTS maneuvers.

Those flight instructors who are fortunate enough to be selected to teach at West Valley Flying Club are required to have training syllabi available for private, commercial and instrument courses. The value of this is that it reduces the chance of missing some item that should be covered in preparing pilots for safe flying and passing the checkride.

Recently, I have been preparing a set of helicopter training syllabi. The task is good review for me. It is amazing how many changes have occurred since I wrote my previous course outlines. Practical Test Standards (PTS) seem to generally get updated by the FAA around every four years.

As a DPE, I stay on top of the changes by looking at the dates on the PTS listed in www.faa.gov. When a new PTS appears, I simply print it out. Then I have to adjust my plans of action.

On occasion, I have had flight instructors notify me of a recent change that I hadn't yet seen. That is a little embarrassing for me.

More often, I have had flight instructors surprised by new updates bearing some non-trivial changes that they were unaware of. The changes had not yet been accommodated in their training syllabus. The result had been that their students were missing some training for required PTS tasks.

An even less fortunate situation is the usually senior flight instructor that has discarded his or her syllabus and is sort of winging it. The result is often that their students miss critical training. In that case, I think the best outcome is that the student fails the checkride and learns from the failure. Worse would be that the licensed pilot commits a violation of some sort. The worst-of-all outcome is that the student has an accident resulting in injury or death.

So flight instructors, please continue using those training syllabi. If your memory is better than mine, maybe you don't need the paper. But there is a reason the FAA demands physical checklists be used in flight. And the syllabus is a checklist.

And make sure your syllabus is current. I can tell you from my own recent experience that it is very easy to let it get out of date.

Most of the time, when accidents happen, there isn't a single cause, but a series of erroneous decisions and adverse events that eventually culminates in a situation that is beyond the pilot's capability. Often the situation would be beyond ANY pilot's capability.

Kirk Syme, one of my students, witnessed such a situation last weekend during a long cross country. He had flow up to Redding, and rather than going to the larger (control towered) KRDD, he went to Benton. His description of the accident follows:

"Talk about an adventure: I saw a guy run off the end of the runway at Benton, just as I was taxiing out on the parallel for departure on RW33. It made me suspicious when this guy called in on final on RW15, but I reasoned to myself "I guess the winds aren't ALL that strong". I was pretty confident with my decision to use RW33, however, so I stuck with it. Anyway, turns out his tailwind was enough to make him sail past me (I was abeam the runway mid-point), and fast. Right at touchdown, his brakes started smoking, he entered a ground loop, and ran straight into the grass. I called him on the radio to make sure he was OK; thank God he was."

So, let's look at a couple of questions that could reveal the sources of the problems.

1. Did the pilot over-fly the field and look at the windsock? Pretty fair bet that it would have shown a tailwind if it was strong enough to do what it did. Did he listen to other traffic in the pattern? My student was taxiing to runway 33, and even if he hadn't called his taxi intentions, the other pilot could have seen him taxiing. I'll grant that there times the windsock is hard to see from the air. I remember one time I was attempting a landing at Alpine County, and for the life of me couldn't spot the windsock, to say nothing to seeing which way it was blowing. I made the assumption that the wind was blowing the same way there as it was at an airport just down the valley. As I was approaching the runway, the ground speed simple didn't match my pitch attitude and power setting, so I initiated a go-around, only to notice the windsock a couple of seconds later. It was pointing the same way I was going and was so straight it could have been starched.

2. Let's say the pilot knew runway 33 was in use, did he think he didn't need to do what everyone else was doing? As a friend of mine noted once, even birds (which are not noted for great brain-power) know enough to takeoff and land into the wind. Certainly, somewhere during the process, he must have realized that something was wrong, especially since the touchdown occurred at mid-field. Probably before the touchdown, since the tire smoking began as soon as he touched down. That seems to suggest that there was time to go around. Why force an airplane onto the ground half way down the runway? Could there have been some macho stuff going on, or perhaps some anti-authority behavior? The ultimate authority here is contained in the laws of physics. No amount of political influence, personal determination, or pilot skill can change the laws or make you stop faster, and touching down hot at midfield is uniformly bad at short runways. In terms of controlling the plane, touching down with a tailwind can be exciting (and remember how I feel about excitement - it's something I can avoid if I do things correctly).

3. Did the pilot have a firm personal insistence on a stabilized approach and a commitment to execute a go-around when things weren't as he had planned? My guess is not. There were, according to this description, ample opportunities to go around and set up for a better approach.

I am sad to report the passing of our fellow club member and my good friend John Hannigan, but I'm happy that he has at last been released from the excruciating pain of the cancer that claimed his body. He was only 74.

John arrived at the airport late in life. After a lifetime of gazing skyward he started his flight training at age 66. Undertaking this activity at a stage in life when many others are ramping down is no easy task. But he approached it with the determination of a bulldog. It was my good fortune to be his flight instructor. Although progress was sometimes slow he was relentless in the pursuit of his dream. His tenacity was one of his attributes that I most admired.

No one ever enjoyed his time at the airport more than John and he made many friends here. He delighted us with his stories and with the slightly off-color jokes he told with obvious great glee. He was a Warbird aficionado and bought his first airplane, a 1941 Vultee BT-13, while still a student pilot. When you taxi to runway 31 at PAO via the terminal side of the loop you pass by it.

Three years ago the cancer strengthened and his doctors thought he was mere days, perhaps only hours, from death. He resolved that he would not die until two objectives were accomplished. He would finish Private Pilot training and he would make the pilgrimage to Oshkosh. He accomplished both.

Although by that time too frail to fly the BT-13 to Oshkosh he did have strength enough to ride home in it. He had such a good time flying across the country that he hatched a plan to get an airplane big enough for him to take his friends and family on similar trips.

His all-time favorite airplane was the North American B-25 Mitchell bomber. He remembered fondly a trip he made in one when he was a young Navy sailor and he set out to acquire one. Reality intervened in the form of $2,500/hour operating costs. He could afford to buy one, but not to operate it. A Beech 18 was deemed a reasonable substitute. Round engines, twin tail and seven seats. All the necessary stuff. He found a good one. It flew straight and fast and he flew it all over giving rides to friends and family. He even made a second trip to Oshkosh in it where he flew it as a camera platform for air-to-air photo hops.

And he did get to fly a B-25. Not just ride in one, but fly it from the left seat. He considered that to be one of the highlights of his life. He crammed a lot of living into his three-year reprieve and closed his log book with a total of 781 hours.

As his health worsened and he became confined to his home and then to his bed, he was always happy to receive news from the airport. He brightened whenever a visitor came by or greetings were relayed from an old airport pal. Thanks to all of you who helped keep his spirits high.

He passed away quietly in the company of his family of close friends. We were swapping airplane stories until the end. After a low, farewell pass in his beloved Twin Beech along the U.S.S. Iowa, upon which he had served, his ashes will be scattered over the Pacific according to his wishes. He and his wife had often found serenity gazing at it.

Farewell, John. We are richer for having known you and we will remember our time together fondly. Not alone into the sunset but into the company of friends who have gone before them.

It was a beautiful morning in The Bay for an 0800 departure out of Hayward with a final destination of Apple Valley. We were flying the WVFC Pitts S2C, so jumping up to 9,500 only took a few minutes. The route would take us over the Central Valley, Tehachapi, just south of Edwards, and finally into the high desert. The weather forecast was for severe clear for our entire route. The flight was uneventful until we were about 15 miles out and started listening to CTAF. There were four airplanes in the pattern, one airplane in the "aerobatic box", and one airplane in "the holding box". Normally this would be very stressful, but instead, it brought smiles to our faces. Gary Evans and I were just about to land at the Apple Valley Aerobatic Contest, and all the airplanes flying around were high performance aerobatic aircraft. You would normally see these aircraft at a local airshow, however at a contest, you can walk up and down the flight line, and admire all 50-55 aircraft.

By now I'm sure you're wondering what an Aerobatics Contest is. The easiest way to describe it is figure skating in the sky. There are four separate categories, based on aircraft performance and pilot experience. Each category has a Known sequence, an Unknown sequence, and a Freestyle sequence. The sequences are required to have certain elements, which add up to a total score for the flight. It might seem pretty simple at first, but the last requirement is to do all of the figures in the "aerobatic box". It's marked on the ground by large white tarps, which sit at the corners and center box. So, how's this all judged? Well, there are several judges (pilots and volunteer spectators) sitting on the ground at the edge of the box. The judges are looking for straight vertical and horizontal lines, round loops, and clean hammerheads. The corners are marked with volunteer judges looking through special sighting devices, which allow you to see when the aircraft goes out of the box. At the end of each categories flight, all the scores are tallied up and the pilots are ranked. The pilot with the highest points average from the three flights wins their category

Aerobatics is not just about contest and airshow pilots. It's about learning what an airplane can do through the entire performance envelope. Simple aerobatics such as stalls, spins, loops, and rolls are used to train all levels pilots on how to recover from upset attitudes. Not only does it make you a much safer pilot, it also makes you much more confident in your flying abilities and the aircraft's performance. Whether you're ultimate goal is to be in a competition, or to just tune up your flying skills, WVFC has a Decathlon, Extra, and Pitts to help you out. If you want to learn more about aerobatics, feel free to contact Cory Lovell (g1000instructor@gmail.com). The next aerobatic competition will be June 8-9th at Paso Robles airport.

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

On Saturday the 16th of June we will have an open house with the club's T34 N162WB. If you have ever had an interest in warbirds or classic airplanes, you won't want to miss this event. We'll have a brief classroom meeting to go over the history of the airplane and the checkout requirements, and then we'll go out and let folks "dry-fly" in the cockpit.

This airplane is a great "step-up" from the standard airplanes you may have trained in. It will introduce you to high performance (>200HP), complex systems, and if you've never flown a stick-controlled aircraft this is an ideal way to experience it. It also makes a great commercial trainer for those of you pursuing that certificate. And you won't find many other places that allow you to rent a classic like the T34 and fly solo.

Be sure to bring your headsets, documents and sunscreen (we fly with the canopy open) - you may want to take a ride in this remarkable machine. We will have a checkout CFI available for flights, and the owner is an A/P mechanic and will be giving a tour under the cowling for those who are interested in the ponies up front.

Saturday, June 16
1200-1300 - Classroom session in the big classroom at WVFC/KPAO 1300-1400 - Open cockpit session
1400-tbd - Demonstration Flights (bay tour anyone?)