Please update yourself on the newest aircraft on the WVFC fleet. We have gone quite a few months without a lot changing. West Valley Flying Club will always work to be a technological leader and offer Club members a wide variety of aircraft. New to WVFC will be a 2007 Mooney Acclaim with a top speed of 240 KIAS, two new 2008 SR22 Turbo normalized aircraft one with the Garmin perspective panel. For more information please look at the Fleet news section.

All of the above planes are fast, new and extremely cool. They are also very equipment intensive. Please familiarize yourself with the ground review information prior to flying the aircraft. The longevity of all aircraft depend on our knowledgeable use of their systems.

We have had some really great trips planned and executed. Several of our Cirrus went to Alaska, look for those pics to be published on the bbs. There was a mountain flying seminar and trip where several of the C182’s flew around the Sierra’s while giving pilots a real life experience of mountain flying. Please take time to look at the The Calendar . Christine has been working hard to add a lot of fun and informative events exclusively for WVFC members. Please check out the calendar to keep yourself up to date on the latest going on.

In terms of safety updates, please take time to look over Lucy’s great article and the new safety thread on the bbs. The topics are very relevant to our accident investigation. We hope the reading and the discussion will bring about safer pilot operations. As we all know the price of fuel has risen significantly particularly over the last few months. In order to keep the fuel surcharge reasonable, we changed the base rate on which the fuel surcharge is calculated. Effective July 1, 2008, the base rate of fuel was increased from $3.50 to $4.50. For every $0.10 above $4.50 the club adds a surcharge of $1.00 to the aircraft rate. This meant that the surcharge came down $10.00 per hour. Aircraft owners were therefore obligated to change their base rates to compensate.

Why $4.50? It seemed like a good middle number that allows for some elasticity in the rates, particularly if the price of gas comes down. I have my own personal feelings about the issue, however, I will remain open to changing the base rate again as well as looking at other solutions to the problem.

Thanks for your support.

Josh

In recent months I’ve been writing about human factors in accidents and incidents. Keeping in that vein, here is a look at another misadventure had by a brand new WVFC private pilot.

Our Club member, I’ll call him Bob, took a flight from his home airport to a non-towered airport. He received a full weather briefing but stated there was no NOTAM that would have alerted him to the fact that his destination airport was hosting a special fly-in event.

Bob arrived at his destination airport and followed his plan to taxi to a preplanned stop on the airport. The fly-in event had pretty much wound down but many taxi areas were blocked. About half way to his destination, Bob was stopped by two event volunteers who said he would have to go and park elsewhere due to an elaborate maze of fences and obstructions. A “ground boss” offered to give him taxi instructions over the CTAF but as the ground boss didn’t have a bird’s eye view, his instructions were inadequate. Bob went down one taxi way then realized it was blocked. The ground boss gave him instructions to make a 180° turn which he did. Bob then found himself going down another dead-end. While making yet another 180° turn his right wing hit and knocked over a porta-potty. The airplane swung to the right and went off the pavement.

Bob finally freed himself from the maze, found a place to park and shut down. Luckily there was minimal damage to the wing and none to the porta-potty. I’m happy to report the porta-potty was not occupied when it was knocked over.

Bob said that he should have shut down before making his first 180° turn and determined where he needed to go before moving the airplane. I agree with this assessment. Airplanes are not as easy to maneuver as cars and had Bob shut down and assessed his situation, he would have had a better and less embarrassing outcome.

One factor that cannot be over looked was that Bob was a brand new private pilot. This flight had many firsts for him. For example it was his first:

1. Flight after his check-ride
2. Time taking a passenger
3. Time back in a particular N number in over a year
4. Departure from SQL without a CFI
5. Time he arrived at a destination airport and found conditions that were far from normal/expected

Here is part of Bob’s assessment:
“I had a lot to deal with in a short amount of time”. Slowing things down, taking more time to check and confirm and putting on the brakes when things were not going as planned would have been wise decisions to make. Any 'first' adds to your mental workload, stress and emotions. Extra planning and having contingency plans set before preflight helps to reduce the burden and facilitates good decision-making.

Other firsts I know I will experience are:

• Flying over a Mountain range
• Landing at a higher elevation
• Long cross-country trip
• New airspace
• New WX challenges
• New aircraft
• Night flight

Bob said that he now plans to limit himself to just 1 or 2 ‘firsts’ at a time. I hope Bob sticks to his strategy and perhaps his misadventure will serve him well in the future.

More than 85 percent of accidents are pilot error. Our complacency, decisions, omissions, errors, denial and our inability to acknowledge or accept change are some of the things that get us into trouble.

A great place to review Aeronautical Decision Making (ADM) is the FAA publication The Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, Chapter 16

If you’ve not done so yet, I’d suggest you think about where your limits are – it is best to think these through the day before your next flight. If you haven’t already done so, make sure you keep yourself honest by abiding to your limitations and review and revise them as appropriate. It would be good judgment to periodically review your own self-assessment and strategies with your favorite CFI.

Blue skies and smooth tailwinds.

There has been a lot of talk about costs. In the average aircraft, 30% of the price of the aircraft is directly related to MX operating costs. This generally will cover the inspections and a small amount of nuisance squawks on the aircraft. Obviously, the more MX the aircraft requires, the more the operating costs go up and the more the rental price will go up. In some cases this is unavoidable. As a plane gets older systems start to break down and more MX is directed towards the plane. The owner has a choice to completely upgrade the plane and replace the worn out systems or they go off the flight line.

In other cases, this is where the pilots knowledge of the systems and exactly how they are expected to perform is key to this fragile economy. Obviously, if the aircraft has a fundamental airworthiness problem it needs to be grounded, no one would suppose otherwise. It’s when a plane comes in for a problem that does not exist, that it chews away at the margin. As a group we are getting really good at vetting out issues. The point of this brief commentary is to reward those that are seeking out the knowledge to really understand the systems prior to making assumptions of performance, understand the nuances prior to creating unattainable expectations and understand the cost of squawking for this reason. We may not be able to control the price of oil, however, we as a group, can in fact help control the rental price of the aircraft.

Hot Weather will create the need for Hot starts particularly after a long flight. Please make sure you are familiar with the Hot start procedures for all the aircraft you fly. Consult the POH prior to engine start, doing so afterwards may be too late. Please also pay special attention to the long pre-flights and electrical usage. We are starting to see battery systems failing again on a regular basis. This is often after a long pre-flight where the electrical is left on throughout much of the pre-flight process. On a glass panel aircraft this will almost assuredly drain the battery all the way. Electrical systems should be tested very briefly so they are available for what they are intended to do, like start the plane, be available when needed during flight, etc..,

Flat spotted tires - some tips:

• Always preflight the planes tires. Roll a plane with wheel pants.
• At KPAO and other short strips, do not try and get the first turn-off
• Simulate stopping hard on short field landing practice
• Know that you will probably not feel when the tire starts to break loose. It is less obvious than you think. We have had to tow aircraft off the runway the tire is so smoked and the pilot claims they did not feel a thing.
• Use the aerodynamics of the aircraft in combination with normal breaking procedures, to help slow them down.
• Help put weight on the tires by reducing or completely storing the flaps after touch-down.

With July comes a lot of summer events; one of the biggest is the annual EAA Airventure at Oshkosh, going on July 28th – August 3rd. Typically gathering about 2,500 show aircraft; including homebuilts, antiques, classics, warbirds, ultralights and rotorcraft and over 500 forums are conducted by aviation leaders and NASA researchers, along with FAA personnel, aircraft designers and a host of others and of course, non-stop air shows.

In our own Bay Area, we will have some great Safety seminars:
In an effort to learn from each other's mistakes and increase safety in the community, Jason Miller will be hosting an "Aviation Safety Session”; real accidents from the NTSB files will be analyzed and the hope is that all attendees can learn the easy way rather than the hard way, how to avoid making these mistakes. The seminar will be held in San Carlos July 16th.

Anyone who’s been considering flying one of the beautiful aerobatic airplanes we have on the flight line or doing any aerobatic training for that matter; should really take the opportunity to check out “Why Fly Inverted” with the president of the IAC, Vicki Cruse, in Hayward on the 24th of July. “Aerobatic training benefits general aviation pilots through a better knowledge of the flight envelope. Despite initial reservations, pilots who take aerobatic training often develop a sense of confidence in their flying skills they hadn't previously experienced. The fun of recreational aerobatics and the precision and skill of competition aerobatics will also be discussed.” See more on the WVFC calendar.

Dan’s fly out group is planning another…fly out, if you couldn’t guess; participating teams will be given a puzzle sheet and directions to the first waypoint. Visual indications on the ground at the first waypoint will guide you to the next waypoint, and so on. The last waypoint indicates the location of the Fly Out Group's picnic, where food and other pilots will be waiting to hear stories from your trip. Start forming your teams and reserving your airplanes! Check the website for all of the details and Dan’s contact information.

There is still space available in the new Interactive Instrument Ground School with John Otte, going on in Palo Alto on Tuesday nights. This course offers a money back guarantee on your FAA instrument written exam, traditional and current-technology IFR operations will be covered in this fast-paced format; integrating response technology, so you learn better, faster, and remember longer. So, get “the written” behind you this summer and be ready for the great instrument training weather this fall!

Also, now available on the website are all of the great photographs taken on the Colorado trip in June and the trip that some of our members had taken on their trip to Alaska. Some of these pictures are really amazing, and you can see some of what’s in store for future trips. If anyone has pictures from a trip they’ve taken, that they would like to share on the website, please feel free to send them to Christine@wvfc.org Hope everyone enjoys July! On August 5th we will be doing National Night Out again, for the airport community in Palo Alto, we will have a BBQ and a great time for all. Get some good food and a chance to get to know some of the tenants, look for more details to come on the calendar. to sign up.

Last time the topic was the performance differences between jets and other airplanes. This time, we’ll address the impact those differences have on procedures, crew coordination, … And they are significant.

As an example, in one long day of flying, I corrected what the Captain was doing twice – once correctly and once not. First, as we were climbing out of Payne Field in Everett, Washington, we went blasting through our assigned altitude of 3,000 feet. I called “Altitude” to the Captain, who got us back to altitude, though with an excursion of about 400 feet, or perhaps a bit more. Not good when you’re required to hold an altitude within 100 feet.

In the second case, about five hours later, we were told to begin a descent, given a crossing altitude, and given an airspeed to be at or greater than. As we began the descent, the airspeed began to drop and the trend arrow showed that if no action was taken, we’d drop well below the required number. Since the Captain was busy with a half a million other things, I pushed the throttles up several percent and kept us at the required airspeed.

Now, those of you that aren’t charter or airline pilots get to figure out which one of those actions was right and which was wrong. Oddly enough, the one that resulted in the altitude bust wouldn’t have caused me to meet a Review Board at a charter company or airline. The other one would have. There are things the Captain has to know and the only ways for that to happen are for the Captain to perform the action, to order it done and to confirm it, or to have the Pilot Not Flying (me) perform the action as part of a standard checklist and either call “checklist complete”, or orally call out the challenges and responses as appropriate. The PNF doesn’t mess with throttles (unless the Pilot Flying directs, “Set throttles”, and indicates a power setting), the wheel, or much of anything that isn’t related to radios or the PNF part of the checklist.

The extreme down-side case of this can occur when the PNF sees something that (in his or her opinion) needs to be done and calls it to the attention of the pilot, who says, “Negative” and proceeds to disregard the PNFs call. As an example, if the plane is well past the first third of the runway and the wheels are still not on the ground during a landing, the PNF calls, “Go around, go around,” and the flying pilot says, “Landing.” The PNF has a career decision to make. Is he going for a ride (with the potential of taxiing into the gas station across the freeway from the airport), or will he over-ride the captain and risk his career? When the PNF is a flight instructor, things get even more interesting, because the flight instructor is ALWAYS the pilot in command, and takes over regardless of which seat he or she is in if something needs to be done. But in jets, not only does the flight instructor/beginning jet jock not know as much as the captain, he doesn’t know where his knowledge is lacking. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. What’s worse, the tyro jet pilot CAN’T know these things until he experiences them – very much like the beginning student pilot can’t know where his experience is lacking until he has flown a lot more. So, where is this part going? There are two keys to crew coordination:

1. Procedures and
2. Communication.