We have made a programming change to CASSi; we will be requiring cancellation codes when flights are canceled. In our last member survey there were concerns about the lack of availability of some aircraft, mechanical cancellations which can be from both maintenance extensions or unforeseen squawks, cancellations due to scheduling conflicts, etc. This new tool should help us to better measure where we are at and thereby focus our energies on improving the areas that require the most dramatic improvement first. Please input the correct reason for the cancellation, and if you think we need to add some reasons please email me at jsmith@wvfc.org .

Right now, all of four major sports plus college are in full swing. As pilots we are obligated to always do the appropriate pre-flight planning, which includes a check for TFRs; however, with this being one of the more busy sporting times of the year, I would suggest we amp up our due diligence as even local training flights could be affected.

Mentioned throughout the newsletter and various sources will be notice that Santa Clara County is out repainting and RENAMING the taxi ways at KPAO. Thus the old "taxi to parking via Delta" may now sound something like, "taxi to parking via Kilo".... same place, same location, new identifier. This is due to some modification slated for the future, including a new exit from the runway.

Get the correct/newest info for KPAO at the Club or at the airport terminal building. If in doubt, ask the Ground Controller for a progressive taxi until you become familiar with the new taxiway IDs. Remember to be patient with yourself, other pilots and the controllers during this transition.

At the last board meeting, we discussed the fact as a board we seem to create a lack of involvement in our outlying facilities. As a way of improving transparency and the lines of communication, the board will start circulating the open member participation board meetings to all 4 facilities. Next month’s October 17 open board meeting will be held at our San Carlos office. The hope is that we can draw in thoughts, ideas and participation from those members who traditionally only use the extension facilities.

*Speaking of our extension facilities, we have added four new aircraft to the fleet at HWD, and a NEW G1000 to E16. at WVFC we can provide TAA training aircraft at ALL FOUR FACILITIES!! The new G1000 trainer at E16, N2357J, is available and ready to start your IFR ticket. We are also looking into putting an Elite trainer down there to add additional IFR training tools. At Hayward we finally have the return of the much anticipated Cessna 152 and three new 172SPs, including one that is equipped with a G1000. You can come see all of this at the open house for our Hayward location on October 20, where we will have a drawing for a free flight in the Extra 300, or just come and fly one of them any day of the week. For more information, check out the West Valley website or feel free to call the Hayward office.

Finally, I would encourage those of you who have thought about moving on to becoming an aviation professional that this is a good time to do so. I have never seen the airlines hire at the rate that they are now, which means we have had a difficult time keeping some of our great CFI’s. It’s hard to believe but some of them want to go on to burning kerosene at those high flying altitudes.
Thanks for your time, and safe flying.

Stanford Football and TRFs (Maybe Not!)
On September 1st one of our members was departing KPAO when the tower controller asked him if he was aware of the TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction) over Stanford Stadium due to a football game. “I am now. Thanks.” was the member’s basic reply.

THE FOLLOWING DATES ARE TENTATIVE. We will let you know when they are confirmed:

      Sunday October 14 @ SQL - 14 members and 7 CFI members
      Sunday November 4 @ E16 - 8 members and 4 CFI members
      Sunday November 11 @ HWD - 8 members and 4 CFI members

Reminder for Landing Clinic October 14th:
I am requesting that interested parties contact the Chief Pilot Office at chiefpilot@wvfc.org, put "Landing Clinic" in the email subject line, and supply the following information:

      Name
      Member Number
      Email Address
      Desired Airport
      Make and Model of airplane you want to fly

Are you willing to assist with the event? Here are some ways you can assist: Cooking-BBQ / Set-up / Clean up / Video Taping Take-Offs and Landings

Are you a WVFC member CFI who wants to participate? Here are some ways you can assist.

Give dual instruction during the flight portion of the clinic / Lead ground presentation - Chief Pilot's Office has a presentation already prepared / BBQing / Set up / Clean Up / Video Taping Take-Offs and Landings

You can cut and paste the above, add your answers and mail it to the Chief Pilot's office.

We can only be successful with member pilot and member CFI participation. Hope to see many of you at the Landing Clinics.

Hi Everybody! Hello Members,

In Operations news, there is a lot going on. For those interested, we will be having some great safety seminars led by one of our own CFI’s, Max Trescott, in October and November. Due to the Holidays, these will be the last of the ’07 Safety seminars, but look forward to two great seminars each month in San Carlos and Palo Alto for 2008. Seeing as how we have so many airplanes in Hayward that we are not well enough acquainted with, we are using the opportunity to have an open house for members, families and anyone who wants free BBQ and a chance to win a free flight in the Extra 300 with instruction from Andy Geosits. Come see what’s going on in Hayward and join us all for a great time.

October 24 we will be lucky enough to have West Valley member; Jean-Pierre Harrison, coming to talk about the Career of WVFC Member and Astronaut Kalpana Chawla, with information on NASA and applying to the astronaut Corps, as well as a video and his own personal knowledge and artifacts from the Columbia recovery. This is going to be a very informative and unique presentation; I encourage anyone who is able to be there, to do so, as this is a one time event for members and past members only with no guests or press allowed, and with limited seating.

A couple of FYI’s for all members; headset checkout at the front desk is done through Cassi, You can now schedule headsets, as they are available for, before, during and after hours flights at all of the locations. In accounting, for anyone who receives E-statements, the email address you will receive your monthly bill from is Michelle@wvfc.org , so please accept emails from this address and send any billing or account questions to Michelle as well. Anyone who would like to turn in fuel receipts, please turn them in directly to the front desk (not in the after hours box, please.) with your member #, to assure that your account is credited.

Winter is coming and we plan to have a great event for members, CFI’s and WVFC staff, which will be going to Tahoe for skiing and/or snowboarding, whichever you prefer, and a winter flying safety seminar; it will be a weekend trip, optimally the first weekend of December. Anyone who will be free and who is interested, please send me an email with any questions and the number of people you would like to bring and I will get details out to all interested parties. This will be a RSVP event, as we have to pre-book rooms for everyone.

For the month of September, I would like to thank all of the members who helped with Airport Day and congratulate Marta Schulte on winning a free flight at the event.

I hope everyone is well and as a reminder, please feel free to contact me for any operations questions or concerns or with any ideas you may have to improve OUR club. Remember to check the calendar to see everything going on in the coming months.

An amazing thing happened last week. I was at FlightSafety getting a Citation VII type rating (an amazing thing in itself – about which more next month), when after not seeing him for 40 years, I met my primary flight instructor. Forty years ago this month, I took my first flying lesson, and to say that it was a memorable experience doesn’t come close to describing something that totally changed my life.

My instructor, Ray Rowhuff, was (in my then-uneducated opinion) a wild man. I was in a Part 141 school through the Air Force ROTC, so the entire program was Private Pilot in 36 hours. Ray figured that the only way to do that was pour things on as fast as I could take it, or even faster, and make me play catch up. Examples include stalls (both approach and takeoff) on the first lesson. To say I was scared doesn’t even come close! I’m still not sure what brought me back for my second lesson – which, by the way included spins and recoveries. If there was a dual lesson pre-license in which my personal pucker factor wasn’t off the scale with the needle bent around the post, I don’t remember it.

I ran into him in the halls of FlightSafety, Wichita, where he now teaches the simulator part of the CJ1+ Initial and Recurrent training. We had a short time to compare notes about our various flying careers, and though the details of his career (including flying for the Air National Guard, charter, and being a Designated Pilot Examiner) were particularly interesting to me, they may be less so to you. However, the mere fact of seeing Ray again brought back an entire flood of memories, a couple of which follow.

I remember distinctly our first flight. I had already finished ground school, so knew some of the theory, but I was to learn there is a great deal of difference between theory and reality. We were flying a (brand new) Cessna 150, so my first thought was, “Wow, that’s a small airplane.”

My second thought was how incredibly noisy the plane was. This, of course, was back in the pre-headphone days. There was no intercom, and at the uncontrolled field where I learned, we never used the radio. So, we got to yell back and forth to each other, and at the end of a long flight, my hearing was pretty much gonzo, and my vocal cords had been hyper-extended and needed to be put back where they belonged. For a fact, I wasn’t even approximately prepared for that first lesson, and I spent almost all of it pumping straight adrenalin rather than blood.

Like most pilots, I remembered my first solo, though probably not in the way it happens today. Back in the dark ages, there was a lot less formality, and much less paperwork. But we did have a phase check, and like today, sometimes it took place after solo. Mine did. There was no written pre-solo test, and the apparent philosophy was that if you were successful in (i.e., survived) your first solo, the instructor would sign your logbook and medical. I’m guessing that the idea was to keep the student from being nervous by making the whole solo thing a surprise.

We were doing full stop taxi-backs when Ray said, “Stop the plane” right in the middle of the taxiway, hopped out, slapped me on the back and said, “Do three more just like that last one.” After the initial panic of having yet another new thing thrown at me, my thought was, “I’m not ready!!” But I figured to argue the point would show a shocking lack of faith in the judgment of my instructor. I still think he was crazy! But a 150 accelerates a lot more quickly and climbs a lot faster when you take 220 lb from the right seat. I was soon putting so much energy into just keeping up with this newly created rocket ship, that I didn’t have time to think about Ray’s judgment.

The final memory I want to share was our first cross country, going from our safe little 2000 ft long, 30 ft wide strip to the huge runway at McPherson, Kansas. This place had more cement than I had ever seen in one place, and there were cross runways and a control tower.

We entered the downwind for the runway the wind was favoring, but tower asked us to extend downwind for a guy practicing crosswind landings on the other runway. But, no, Ray said, “Let’s just go into slow flight, so we don’t have to get all that far from the runway.”

Now, I HATED slow flight, primarily because I was afraid of stalling. On the downwind, with the stall horn honking in my ears and me sweating like a pig, the other guy finally was out of our way, and I turned toward the runway and proceed to descend. Somehow, with the flaps full down (40 degrees), I didn’t manage to gather any airspeed on the descent. I started the flare early (REALLY wide runway, remember, and I’d never seen one of those before). Well, you know what happened, I landed about 10 feet high, and dropped it onto the runway (hit mains first) and bounced so high you could have taxied a 747 under us. Ray was laughing his empennage off. I’m just glad he didn’t ask to do it again.

After the uneventful flight back to Rawdon Field, I executed my first perfect landing, an absolute roll-on. It was exactly on the centerline, right on the numbers, the wheels picked up speed from the boundary layer, so there wasn’t even a squeak on touchdown, and the follow through was flawless.

Ray told me to finish the tie-down and meet him inside for the post flight, which I was dreading because of that landing at McPherson. Ray talked about the navigation, the control tower operations, how the plan compared to what we actually experienced, and so on. Not a word about THE LANDING.

As I was leaving, he looked up, and said, “By the way, the landing you did here was probably the finest landing I’ve ever seen … which on the day gives you a D average.”

Lot’s of great memories, but flying is like that if you do it right.

Sometime I’ll have to tell you about the guy who owned/ran the flying school, but if you want a piece of interesting history, run a Google search on Rip Gooch.

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