It is election time again.  This year two at-large Board seats and the WVFC CFI Owner seat are up for election.  Information about the election can be seen at election home page. Please take a few minutes to read the candidate statements as well as members questions and candidate answers. the voting period is between June 21st - June 27th.

For any election related questions please contact Brian Eliot, 2010 Elections officer and WVFC Board member at vote@wvfc.org

This is my last newsletter as the Board Chair.

And, I think this message is the most important message I have ever prepared:

I encourage all members to do one simple thing: I want you to vote in our election to be held during the June 21-27, 2010 voting period.

The next Board of Directors election is coming on June 21-27 and is probably the single most important election that will ever occur for the West Valley Flying Club.

You need to do two things:

1) Before you vote, please carefully read each candidate’s statement. Their objectives may offer you insight to their thinking and will help you to understand their motivations for running for this important position.

2) Vote! Your vote will make a (big) difference. In the past, member apathy has allowed changes in the Club to occur that may or may not be beneficial to your longer term objectives.

Again, this is perhaps the most important message I have sent to our members ... PLEASE VOTE! It is simple and easy to do and, if you care for the Club, is the probably most important thing that you will ever do for the Club.

I wish you all the very best and blue skies.

THE COMMUNITY OF FLYING
by Josh Smith, General Manager WVFC

Things are picking up for the club. Membership numbers and flying hours are up, we are also adding some cool planes to the fleet. Recent additions to the club; N81024 which is a sentimental favorite of mine. (I actually learned to fly in that airplane). She will be based at SQL and I would say she was great for me, I am sure she will be a great trainer for you! We have also added N725HE a 7GCAA to the Palo Alto flight line. Take some time to check out the information on the aircraft page.

If you have never been greasy side up, I would highly recommend taking an aerobatic demo flight. N78GC is a great basic acro trainer. Whether you just want to build confidence in your primary flight skills, train in unusual attitude recovery, or actually learn basic aerobatics, the Super D is a great place to start. Personally I feel that that aerobatics training greatly enhanced my every day flying skills and add confidence to my fundamental maneuvers.

The Board Vote starts June 21. Typically we get between 10%- 25% of the membership voting. Prior to becoming a flight instructor, as a typical renting member, my primary focus was to rent aircraft, have fun and go home. I never really participated much in the process until I became involved with the club as an instructor. So it makes sense to me why many do not vote.

The couple of things I would add to this process are the following:

1. The membership participating in this process will only help the club.

2. If you are going to vote, don't just randomly choose names, take the time to read their candidate statements, and make an informed vote.

The process will be a little different this year. The Board has contracted with an outside web service to provide for the administration of the actual vote. As a result each member will receive an E mail which will have a unique link individual to that member. This link will allow each member to access an individual voting page and cast their vote. If you do not receive an E mail as of the 21st, the E mail may have gotten caught by Spam, or possibly the club does not have your correct E mail address. If you have not received the E mail or have any other questions, please contact Brian Eliot the elections officer, by E mail vote@wvfc.org

I want to personally thank Gary Waldeck for his work as a Board member over the last 8 years. Though we did not always agree, I always appreciated his well thought out input and guidance. The club is better for having him on the team. He has seen the club through some interesting times and was always dedicated to the good of the whole. Have fun in your "retirement". I am proud of what the WVFC team has been able to accomplish over the last 8 years. The club is surviving through a difficult economic time and is getting back into a growth cycle. I feel that the club offers the best of what GA is about, and continues to provide a wide variety, of safe aircraft, good instruction, all with a reasonable price. As always, I look forward to working with the future members of the Board and providing the same high quality of aircraft and membership services that we have for the last 35 years.

Thanks for your support.

Josh Smith WVFC GM

FROM THE DESK OF THE CHIEF
WVFC Chief Pilot Steve Blonstein chiefpilot@wvfc.org

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate

The thing about aviation is that there are lots of clichés and “old sayings”. There’s little doubt that one of the oldest is the expression “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate”. In its most simple form it seems to mean, “first fly the plane, then figure out where you’re going and how to get there, and then do the communication task.” What I can tell you after flying with dozens of different members over the past couple of years is that I can use another cliché: “it’s easier said than done!”

AS THE WRENCH TURNS
by your friendly maintenance department, maintenance@wvfc.org

Hello WVFC It's time for the June newsletter from maintenance. Well the weather is finally cooperating, Flying hours are picking up and so is the work in the maintenance .

I would like to touch on two subjects;
The first one is the condition report and the second is the squawk report.

The first - a Condition report item, should not be a Airworthy issue. Examples; a loose knob, a window that won't open, minor cracks in wheel fairings. These are only a few of the many items that go into the condition report. ( Common sense needs to be used ) If there's any doubt or confusion please contact maintenance, 650-856-2030 Ext 202

The second- a Squawk is a Airworthy issue which's Grounds the Airplane. Examples are; bird strikes, nose wheel shimmy or steering problems on the ground. These are only a few of the many items that go into the squawk report. (Common sense needs to be used ) If there's any doubt or confusion please see maintenance.

With that being said, enjoy the nice weather and most of all be safe flying.

Regards
Gene WVFC maintenance

WVFC Passport Program
by WVFC Ops ManagerAshley Porath

Looking for extra reasons to fly or new airports to fly into? The new WVFC Passport Program is designed for just that!

Any West Valley member (Pilot, CFI, Passenger) can participate. Simply stop by the front desk after your flight to have us stamp all the different airports you did a touch-and-go or landing at.

There will be a "Wall of Fame", fun pins, sweatshirts and custom model planes for the members that fly to the most airports.

Ask the front desk staff for more information or to pick up your passport and start exploring California!!

OK, so it doesn’t have the same glamour as “Flying Down to Rio.”

And before I dive into that, I saw an interesting thing during the holiday weekend: I was at Moffett to see a friend who flies the Collings Foundation Mustang. As I was waiting for him to land, I saw a vet in a wheelchair being wheeled out to their B-24. He must have been 90, and showed little emotion until they got the wheelchair out to the Liberator. He looked up at it and ran his hand slowly along the bomb bay door. He nodded a few times as his eyes filled with tears. He couldn’t get up into the plane, but sat in his wheelchair inside the bomb bay for nearly half an hour, occasionally turning to get a different perspective. He left with a smile, but the tears were still there.

Back to the narrative.

Last month, a friend sold his Scout (think Citabria on steroids) and asked me if I could fly it to Hobbs, New Mexico to deliver it to the new owner. I had flown around most of northern New Mexico, but had never flown into the southeastern part.

Like all cross-country flights, preparation is key, and of course, some of the prep is as easy as looking outside. When I called to ask for additional details, the clouds were several thousand feet thick with bases around 2,000 feet. And the forecast of rain – buckets of it. It didn’t take heavy math to see that icing was part of the forecast and that kind of eliminated the flight without even looking at the rest of the forecast.

When you can’t fly, you can prepare, so I began looking at the route to get to Hobbs. AOPA has very nice flight planning tools. One of the easy places to start is by putting the start and end points into the planner, and seeing what the great circle route between them is. Do you have any idea how many restricted areas there are on the great circle arc between PAO and Hobbs? Oh, yes, and what about all the MOAs? And the REALLY big mountains?

With the winter weather pattern keeping moisture-laden clouds well below the tops of all the hills and mountains ringing the Central Valley and the icing levels around 4,000 feet and lower for the next several days: no-go. No matter how much the new owner wanted his plane (and it actually WAS his plane now), it wasn’t headed that direction for the next several days without disassembly and shoving onto a railcar.

Finally, after a week of weather watching, the forecast on Sunday was for a Monday that was severe clear (to use a technical term) all the way from Palo Alto to Hobbs. So, now the planning started getting serious and more quantitative. There was no way to make it non-stop, so where would I refuel? How long would each leg take? What altitude made most sense?

I picked a seriously non-Great-Circle-Arc route of Palo Alto, direct to Palmdale, Hector VOR, Prescott, Arizona, refuel plane and pilot, direct Corona VOR, Direct Hobbs. There didn’t seem to be much difference between the times for any altitude between 7,500 and 13,500. With the wind speeds relatively low and not changing much with altitude, mountain wave and rotor were not likely. But that isn’t the only turbulence producer, so I looked at the temperature gradient through the altitudes I was considering. Unfortunately, as usually happens after a cold front, the temperature dropped faster with altitude (and well past the altitudes I wanted) than the dry adiabatic lapse rate, so I could anticipate thermal activity at all altitudes as soon as they started triggering.

On the other hand, the temperature-dew point spread was such that I didn’t anticipate cloud formation below about 14,000 ft. Clearly no problem for a Scout flying VFR. So what altitude to fly? I figured that thermal activity is more violent (typically) the lower one flies, as they tend to spread out and get less vigorous with altitude. So a thermal that feels like driving a Porsche at 40 MPH across a curb at 3,000 AGL is more like wallowing a ski boat across its own wake at idle when you’re at 10,000 AGL. I opted for the less abrupt wallow and the higher altitude, so I picked 11,500 for both legs of the flight. An additional advantage was that the fuel burn was lower at the higher altitude, and that gave me over two hours fuel reserve on both legs.

The day dawned as forecast – the weather guys hadn’t lied! I was off just after 0700 as planned. Each leg took about ten minutes longer than planned because the winds were just as strong as forecast, but they were more crosswind than tailwind. Still, calculating these things at the one-quarter point of each leg showed plenty of reserve and a simple call to Flight Service changed the projected arrival times.

Aside from that one point, both legs of the flight went exactly according to plan, and that’s all you can hope for. Two interesting points did arise, however. First, when you’re used to modern avionics including a good three-axis autopilot, flying over 10 hours with no autopilot is a lot of work. And second, the Garmin feature showing airspace altitudes (e.g., for Restricted Areas and MOAs), isn’t necessarily the same as reading the sectional charts. For example the Restricted Areas northwest of Roswell show up on the Garmin as Surface to 10,000 MSL, which meant I could cut the corner and fly direct to the Hobbs airport. However, there is another Restricted Area right on top of the one shown on the Garmin, and it goes from 10,000 to Unlimited. OOOPS! Maybe I’ll just continue direct to Corona and turn there.

Over all, it was a successful, no-surprises flight, and that’s the point of planning.

We all have chores: things that need to get done; stuff we want to accomplish. If you’re working on your pilot’s license, your goals may include solo flight, cross-country flying and successfully completing the FAA private pilot checkride. After you’ve earned your ticket it’s time to build up experience in different types of airplanes. If you learned in a Cessna perhaps it’s time to see what low-wing flying in a Piper or Cirrus is like. If you learned in a Citabria perhaps it’s time to see what side-by-side seating is like.

Cross pollination in different types of aircraft will improve your skills in all aircraft even if you mainly fly just one type. One of the great strengths of WVFC is the variety of airplanes that are available to fly. It’s OK to try different types with an instructor even if you do not intend to get fully checked out. West Valley’s Pitts S-2C is lots of fun, for example. If you sometimes fly outside the club you might be interested to know that West Valley has recently revised its rules concerning maintaining currency in different types; check online documents for the latest developments.

Flying different airplanes helps instill basic flying skills that are independent of airplane type. At first, for example, stalls feel different in different airplanes, but as you gain experience you will quickly separate basic airplane properties from type-specific subtleties. Once this happens, learning a new airplane becomes easier.

A personal “To-Fly” list can help stimulate your thinking about new ways to explore flying. For example, you could fly a club airplane to Minden, NV. There you will find first-rate soaring schools offering glider lessons in some of the best gliding conditions in the world. Or you could go to Aurora, OR to visit Van’s kit-airplane factory and take a test flight in an RV series airplane.

One airplane near the top of my “To-Fly” list is the AirCam by Lockwood Aircraft. The AirCam is a two-seat, twin-engine, open-cockpit airplane. It can fly very slowly, take off or land in 300 feet, and climb like a homesick angel. The first AirCam was commissioned by National Geographic for photo flights in Africa. In a pinch it can even take off on a single engine.

What is on your ”To-Fly“ list? Compare notes with your fellow club members and CFIs. Often someone around WVFC will know how you can go about flying almost anything you can dream of.