Hello Members,

Among all of the other West Valley excitement, Dream Machines in Half Moon Bay is around the corner. West Valley will be present with the Extra 300, which generally resides in Hayward as well as a Sukhoi owned by CFI Cory Lovell, not to mention all of the Hot rods, plane rides and drag racing you could ever want. Nancy Auld of the Half Moon Bay Pilot’s Association is looking for quite a few volunteers to help run the show, and she has asked me to present the opportunity to help out with moving aircraft, security work etc. to our membership. Any volunteers are much appreciated and are all invited to join in the after party; just email me to let me know if you’d like to help or for more details.

This month, Dan Dyer has planned another Air Rally for the membership, new and mysterious; to find out more, shoot Dan an email, Dan@dkyer.com on or before March 8th.

You will see under events, a Catalina fly-in scheduled out in June, more details from Logan Frasier below in this newsletter. If you’d like to go or if you have a strong desire to go and an opinion, there is a poll available on the BBS or you can sign up at your friendly, local front desk. March 7th will be the first meeting to get all of the details, held in Palo Alto for anyone looking to find out more.

Recently in addition to the current ground schools in Palo Alto and San Carlos , a new series has begun in Hayward , so if you know someone who wants to learn now’s the time to get them going, anywhere from E16 to HWD see the calendar for details and sign up any time.

For all of you who read last month’s newsletter, as promised, details are here on the Hayward Air Race; for members only, West Valley is offering prizes of $500 credit on your account for 1st place, $250 credit on your account for 2nd place and a $150 credit on your account for 3rd place toward your flight, in addition to the prizes already offered. Even more exciting; just for participating, you will receive one month dues free!

So sign up for the Hayward Air Race today and claim your prize. That’s about it, check out the calendar for more info and have a lovely March.

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.

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

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.

Pilots, do you want to have a mid-air collision while flying the pattern? It's easy! All you have to do is fixate on the runway, especially when you make the downwind to base turn and the base to final turns.

I encounter this behavior all too often; while flying downwind the pilot fixates on the runway behind the aircraft. Later s/he turns base or final, again while fixating on the runway. By staring at the runway you set yourself up for a mid-air collision. If you are on the downwind, expect to collide with the slower traffic preceding you on downwind. If you are making left traffic, expect to get whacked on your right side while on base by an aircraft on a long final or T-bone an aircraft on final or have a high velocity head-on with an aircraft on an opposite base. All it takes is for two pilots to be fixated on the runway and the probability of a mid-air experience in pattern goes up.

Would you like to avoid a collision? This is also easy! Know where your preceding traffic is located. Before turning downwind to base, look at the path of final abeam your aircraft and then scan away from the runway, inspecting both the extended final and opposite downwind legs for traffic. This is a good habit to guard against a straight in approach or a fellow pilot on the other side of the final line. As you turn to base, look straight out the front windscreen for close-by traffic you may have missed in your earlier scan and to obtain pitch and bank data from the horizon to control the turn. Level your aircraft's wings while looking forward and once level, take a quick look towards the runway to judge when you should consider turning onto the final leg. When you decide it's almost time to turn towards the runway onto the final leg, again look out the window at the intersection of your base to final and the opposite downwind. Make sure you know where opposite downwind traffic is located. Continue your scan away from the runway onto a long final to determine that there are no aircraft on a straight-in approach, then begin your bank towards the runway. Turn to final looking straight out the window, referencing the horizon, for all the same reasons I mentioned above.

Once the runway is in view, your mid-air danger potential is from a base turn made in front of you by another pilot (left or right) or you catching up with preceding traffic. When changing pitch or bank angle, good VFR pilots reference the horizon by looking forward out the wind screen for reasons of both turn control and collision avoidance. Keep in mind that the aircraft you are likely to collide with in the pattern is directly in front of you or is on an extended final or is on the opposite downwind and you both turn into each other on opposing base legs. Be careful out there.

On another note, I am starting a blog for GA pilots.
If you would like to check it out please go to:
www.davesflightnotes.com

In the software industry, every time things didn’t go correctly on a project, we’d put together a series of “Lessons Learned”. Of course, being software (and therefore more creative and less hammer-and-nail-construction than most managers were willing to admit), that was almost every project. The value of the “Lessons Learned” typically varied from minimal to non-existent.

Not because the lessons themselves were of little value, but because they weren’t learned. And, of course, management being management, they made great finger-pointing tools, as well as perfect things to put into performance reviews.

Most flying magazines have a section devoted to lessons that pilots have learned. Almost always it’s as a result of doing something they promise not to do again. So THEY’VE learned the lesson, but too often WE don’t learn from them. As I’ve mentioned in earlier articles, a smart pilot learns from his mistakes; a wise pilot learns from someone else’s mistakes.

But it’s just way too easy for us to read the articles and think, “Wow, that guy was lucky! Stupid, but lucky.” And even think, “I’d never do anything that dumb.”

I’d be willing to bet that prior to getting into whatever mess it was that the pilot wrote about, if you had asked about that very scenario, the pilot would have discussed it intelligently and would have come to a much safer course of action than he actually followed.

Why do you suppose that is?

My guess is that we don’t honestly believe that what we read can actually happen to us. We can see the error of the other poor blokes ways and the faulty thinking early on in the process and truly believe that under similar circumstances we would not have made those decision/mistakes. Of course, if that were true, the folks who read those articles would never end up having to write one.

For lack of a better word, this is arrogance. A certain amount of it is justified in a pilot. After all, we do something that only a small percent of the population does, and if we didn’t have faith in ourselves we wouldn’t go out in anything except dead calm, clear-and-a-million with no other traffic anywhere in the Bay Area. The bottom line is that it’s really easy to say that a particular scenario will not happen to me, and not to learn the real lessons from these articles. Which makes us more like some software folks I know than like pilots.

But as in the story of the boy who cried, “Wolf!” the wolf IS out there. Those scenarios CAN happen to us.

And lest I sound “holier than thou”, let me say I’ve made some decisions I would take back if I could, though all but one of them turned out fine (if somewhat adrenalin inducing at the time).

And an unrelated PS. As you may have noted by this time, I’ll write about almost anything. But I’d like to open things up a bit and ask if you have anything you’d like me to write about. If you have topics you’d like to hear about (that don’t involve politics or religion – my ideas on these subjects aren’t politically correct), let me know, and I’ll try to cover them

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.

For members only, West Valley is offering prizes of $500 credit on your account for 1st place, $250 credit on your account for 2nd place and a $150 credit on your account for 3rd place toward your flight, in addition to the prizes already offered. Even more exciting; just for participating, you will receive one month dues free!

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.

Close your eyes, sit back, and allow the warm ocean breeze and summer sun to lull you off to sleep—just don’t spill your Mai Tai!!!
The quaint town of Avalon is a beautiful backdrop, for one of the coolest places you can fly into on one tank of gas from Northern California. A myriad of activities awaits you; golf, scuba diving, snorkeling, shopping, biking, or just relaxing on the beach. And when the sun goes down, so do the drinks at Luau Larry’s, Chi Chi’s, or the Marlin Club.

At the conclusion of a two-and-a-half hour flight, (in a C-172), you touch down on the apex of the island, tie your aircraft down, and load a bus for Avalon—the tiny coastal town, that supplies a heartbeat for Catalina. Once there, you’ll unpack your bags, and instantly the stresses of flight planning and yapping with So Cal Approach drift away. If you’ve never been to Catalina, you’re in for a real treat.

West Valley Flying Club has sponsored more than a dozen very successful trips to the location, and without question, it is this flight instructor’s favorite fly-in destination. So on June 26th, pack your bags, Honey, we’re off on a 4-day weekend to the toasty Southern California sun.

The trip is scheduled for June 26th through 29th 2008, and we will be holding a pre, pre-fly-in seminar on Friday March 7th in the back classroom of WVFC @ PAO. If you’re even considering joining us for the trip, I urge you to attend this class. We will be discussing all the ins-and-outs of flying into this little paradise, as well as critical information on lodging/activities once on the island. This is peak season for Catalina, and most hotels are full to capacity for the summer months by the end of March. If you don’t book your room/aircraft, within the next few weeks, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to go. It’s also a haven for scuba diving, and I will be organizing a boat dive trip that requires pre-registration; again, typically months in advance. An additional fly-in seminar will be held in June, (date TBA), to go over final preparations for the excursion. But remember, if you wait for the latter seminar, it will most likely be unable to find space.

A sign up sheet will be posted at the front desk, and will be used to get an initial idea of the total attendance. If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact WVFC CFI Logan Frasier at freeflyguy66@yahoo.com or (408) 506-5292. Safe flying, and blue skies!"