Well this is a wet and windy winter for sure. I know it is good for the environment but I sure prefer those slightly drier winters. At least then we get to fly and enjoy that crisp, cool dry air which is so good for the wings and prop and really makes the planes climb like rockets.

Business planning is going very well. We have our first swipes at the budget and it looks like a tight one. We have been doing really well as an organization at optimizing our resources however, the pinch is getting tighter. Of course, all the flights help however, as the board we are looking at what we need to do to keep the organization on the green side while keeping costs down and maintaining premium services.

A note for all, we had two bird strikes in our aircraft out of Palo Alto . Always important to consider our feather friends – they are great pilots but lousy at maintaining their distance and do not listen to controllers. Please take all of the warnings about birds in and around the runway seriously. One of the birds created only relatively minor damage with the other aircraft we had to remove one of the wings and ship it back to the factory for repairs. As another reminder, one of the pilots had renters insurance and the other did not. The deductible for a bird strike or no fault is $3500. Remember, the club offers a deductible waiver program for $125 every 12 months. If you become a part of the deductible waiver program your entire deductible is waived regardless if you are at fault or not. This is an exclusive members-only benefit. There are other programs available through commercial insurance providers at much higher costs. Trust me when I say that the last time you want to look into some sort of deductible coverage is after you have had an accident. Please consider this before your next flight. Your friendly front desk staff has all the information you need to sign up.

We are working over the next month to do a lot of updates on the website. Right now our main focus is to get all of the information up to date. Next we will be working on the underlying structure. If you know of any web designers who would be interested in working with the club on a restructure of the page, then please forward their information to me at gm@wvfc.org.

Thanks as always for your support.

Cassi Change: We have updated Cassi hopefully in a way that will create both a better user experience as well as a more thorough decision making process prior to each flight.

First what we would like to draw everyone’s attention to is the Maintenance status board for WVFC aircraft. The url for this is locate at the bottom of most cassi screens and looks like MX Status Board . This screen will give you the necessary information on the aircraft inspections and if there are any open discrepancies. First and foremost is noting that all of the various inspections are listed here. The inspections are listed by date or time depending on the type of inspection. If the box is clear the inspection is good. If it is Green or yellow the inspections is coming due, and if it red the inspection is overdue. Note that GPS update times are also listed.

The squawk column will let you know if there are any open squawks on the aircraft. If there are open squawks by simply clicking on the N# on the far left hand side you will be taken to a list of open squawks. Note that these are open squawks not addressed by the MX department, and in many cases the planes may not be grounded as of yet.

At WVFC we do everything we can to provide safe aircraft. Opening up the MX status board, and the internet view ability of squawks should help to pilots to make better decisions on flying and help to eliminate some last minute cancellations due to equipment not working.

We are hoping this tool well help to increase the member experience with WVFC, and continue in our partnership to make the best possible flying club.

I would also like to thank all of the members who are working with the MX department to gather more information about there favorite plane and provide accurate feedback on issues and discrepancies. We all own a stake in this organization and partnerships through all of the processes will be the key to all our safety and success.

Thanks for all of your support.

Do you know what the Club’s Insurance Policy is? Do you know what the member benefit the “deductible waiver” is?

If you can answer “yes” to the above questions, good for you you have done your homework. Repeatedly, I learn that some members don’t know the deal until damage has occurred to an airplane and they are on the hook for $3,500 or maybe $5,000.

Our insurance policy offers full hull coverage, $1 million in liability, with a per-seat limitation of $100,000. Our policy contains a "no-subrogation" clause. No-subrogation means that the insurance company cannot sue the renting member to recover damages beyond the stated deductible. A $3,500 deductible applies for no fault claims and a $5,000 deductible if the pilot is at fault.

West Valley also has a member benefit, the deductible waiver plan. The cost is $125 for 12 months of coverage. If the member is involved in an accident or incident in a WVFC airplane, their deductible is waived completely providing the member was in compliance with the FARs and Club rules when the damage occurred, which is something we expect from members at all times. (Dead batteries and burnt tires are not included in the deductible waiver plan). Buying the deductible waiver plan is good financial judgment. Ask the front desk staff for more details.

I loathe those on-the-job moments when I must tell a member that he or she must fork over $3,500 or $5,000 to pay off the insurance deductible.

I talked to a member last week after a goose strike out of KPAO. I asked my usual questions:

• “Was anyone injured?”
• “No.” (Good thing!)
• “How much damage has the airplane sustained?”
• “Oh, it was a lot of damage you should see the wing.”
• “How is the goose?”
• “He is dead, poor thing he went straight down.” (Sad!)
• “Did you purchase the deductible waiver plan?”
• “Oh no. We were just talking about it yesterday, I was thinking about buying it.” (Bummer.)

This month, we were able to donate a demo flight to a Palo Alto elementary school student and teacher CFI Paolo Resmini is kindly doing the honors. We have also donated an hour of flight time to a school neighboring our San Martin location with help from CFI Mary Ann Dach. Last for the month, with a little help from Dan Dyer and one of our members, Chandu Thekkath, we were able to facilitate a tour of a 172SP to a class of 1st graders, which means that you, as a part of West Valley, have helped make this happen - doesn’t that feel good? If you’d like to see pictures, check out the website on the San Carlos page.

Participation in the upcoming Hayward Air Rally will qualify for credit in the new wings program. West Valley is sponsoring the event by offering prizes for winners. Check in next month’s newsletter to see what prizes will be available to members only. Dan Dyer has begun planning fly outs for the second week of each month, beginning this month on February 9. For $20, there will be a tour of the NORCAL approach control facility, with lunch and shuttle included. For more information see the WVFC website or contact Dan at Dan@dkdyer.com.

Some of the West Valley forms have been updated for 2008. The member regulations have changed a bit as well as some of the ground reviews and checkout policies. Make sure you read forms carefully, so as not to miss any updates. If anyone is interested in participating in the wings program, you can go to https://faasafety.gov/login/reg/Register.aspx to get started we will have plenty of seminars eligible for Wings credit coming up.

From here on out, you will find a list version of upcoming events at the end of the newsletter and details as needed in the operations portion. If there are questions or suggestions, don’t hesitate to contact me at Christine@wvfc.org.

2/9 - Tour of NORCAL Approach Control Facility, leaves from SQL, 0900-1600
2/19 - Palo Alto Airport Association Meeting at 1900
4/27 - Dream Machines - Half Moon Bay, 1000-1600
5/10 - South County Wings of History Museum and Open House, 1000-1600
5/15-5/18 - Hayward Air Rally at 1000

Upcoming Safety Seminars

2/13 - Mid-Air Collision, hosted by Kyp Kypta at PAO
2/20 – FSS, hosted by Jason Miller at SQL
2/27 – AMCC, hosted by Josh Smith at E16

3/12 - Get Your Wings: A How To, hosted by Jack Hocker at PAO
3/19 - Night Flying Safety, hosted by Max Trescott at SQL
3/26 - VFR into IMC, hosted by Jason Miller at HWD

Check the Calendar for more Events and Details.

There are rare events in every sport or profession. How often does a golfer hit a hole-in-one? A batter hit 400 for a season? Or a basketball player hit a half-court shot at the buzzer? Often enough to keep the game interesting.

There are less desirable events that are (fortunately) equally rare, such as Tiger missing the cut, or Tourischeva falling off the balance beam. In the flying game, one of the fortunately rare events is the engine failure.

Yesterday, at about 40 years totaling 10,200 hours of flight time, I experienced my first engine failure. That’s about the right ratio, and I can wait that long for the next one.

I was flying with a student in one of our TwinStars when the left engine (the critical engine, of course (see previous commentary regarding Murphy) quit and feathered itself.

My student controlled the airplane nicely, though the standard procedure of Forward, Forward, Forward, Up, Up, Identify, Verify and Feather was seriously truncated since there were no prop or mixture levers to bring forward, and the engine had feathered itself already. The new procedure was Forward, Up, Up, Now What?

My student’s first reaction was to think that I had somehow caused the engine to fail (moi?). I, on the other hand, never suffered from the illusion that everything was still going the way I had planned the flight.

The rest of this article isn’t intended to be one of the “There I was”¯ articles, but more a series of interesting (at least to me) observations about peripheral issues and how people react in emergencies.

The first thing I noticed was that, since the engine didn’t fail according to the book, (it wasn’t supposed to feather itself), that kind of barfed up the checklists and most of the thoroughly practiced flows. My student and I both spent some extra mental effort trying to sort out what could have made that happen. This wasn’t the three seconds of denial that something could have actually gone wrong, just a high level of weirdness that things could have failed in this particular way. This had an influence on later decisions, as you’ll see. Still, we did the normal flows, following up with the checklists. No go. The engine turned just fine, but wouldn’t start, and wouldn’t come out of feather (which it should have, as soon as the engine master was turned on)

We were at about 5500 feet near Del Valle reservoir, so Livermore was a logical landing place. Why not Palo Alto, where the mechanics are and where the plane is based? There were two things I was thinking that played to Livermore better than Palo Alto. 1) I had no idea why the engine quit, and had no certainty that the same thing wouldn’t take the second one as well, and 2) even though I’ve done my share of simulated single engine landings in twins, I had never done a real single engine landing in one, and I felt more comfortable with a longer runway. I felt pretty sure I could have landed safely at PAO, but I felt absolutely certain I could do so at Livermore. And the difference in certainty was enough to convince me to land at LVK.

Most accident reports include an entire litany of decisions, any one of which would have broken the chain that led to the accident. I’m not sure that the decision to proceed to PAO would have resulted in an accident, but why not go for a larger, closer runway?

On the way to Livermore (after calling, explaining the situation, and declaring an emergency) we tried several methods of restarting the plane both on the primary and the back-up Engine Control Units. We put the fuel in cross feed and used alternate air - still no restart.

But let’s talk about this in more detail. We were doing the crew resource thing, with one reading the checklist and the other responding so I could spend most of my mental energy on the task of setting up a descent profile which would get us to the right base entry LVK Tower had given us (originally 7 Right, but I wanted more runway and asked for 7 Left).

In retrospect, I could have been more methodical in the restart process. Did I try all combinations of control configurations? I think so, but I’m not sure. Did I reset the Engine Master by turning it off and back on? It wasn’t on the checklist, but is a logical step, and I honestly don’t remember whether we did or not. My student says we did, but I don’t remember it.

This, I have read, is common in emergencies. No matter how calm we appear to be, we easily get into task-focus mode, and somewhere between several and many things get left out of the scan, the thought process, or out of the sensor circuits. In extreme cases people don’t even hear the gear warning horn, or other system alarms.

On the way in toward Livermore, I noted that immediately after declaring the emergency, tower chased a couple of pattern workers away, held everyone on the ground, and scrambled the fire engine and police car. At 300 feet on final he called to remind me, “Negative gear.” I knew that, but was saving the gear until the runway was made and, in fact, was just reaching for the gear handle.

The point here is that in an emergency, part of your team is the folks on the ground, and they can help out in all kinds of useful ways. They’ve even been known to patch through to an instructor for advice - many emergencies aren’t all that time critical.

Trying to keep ahead of the airplane as we approached the runway, I began to think about what we were going to do after landing. Enough of my attention was devoted to the landing to keep in on centerline and in the touchdown zone, but I did get to thinking that single engine taxi in a twin is a directionally challenged proposition. Fortunately, the transient area was left of the runway, so the turn that direction was going to be easy. By keeping the power to idle, directional control during the rollout was simple, and by timing the braking, it was easy to make the turn to taxiway Echo and coast clear of the runway and the taxiway. At that point, it became obvious that going straight or turning left were the only options. Of course, the place I wanted to go was to the right. I suppose I could have done left 270s to end up going to the right, but it would have taken a lot of real estate for each turn so we just shut it down where it was.

The final thing that occurred to me based upon this event was that training really pays off. My student and I did the right things, there was no panic, and the outcome was great. How can you beat that?

Hayward Air Rally - Save the date!

The 44th Annual Hayward Air Rally is May 16, 2008. As regular rally pilots already know, it's an incredible amount of fun. But more than that, it is a great way to increase your proficiency, enhance your safety and ... get credit towards the FAA wings program.

Pilot and copilot teams fly the rally course and identify checkpoints from the air. The team that comes closest to their estimated time and fuel estimates win. There is an awards banquet, raffle prizes and an opportunity to hang out with other pilots who love to fly and improve their skills. Trophies are given to the top 15 teams at the Palm Springs Awards Banquet. The rally can only accommodate 70 aircraft, so check it out now! Registration ends on May 1st!

For more information, a video and registration information, visit the www.hwdairrally.org website.