The Newsletter of the Albuquerque Soaring Club                                         February 2003

From The President                        Paul Chase

Board Report.  We now have a full slate of officers, and all promise to work hard to make the ASC even better. 

2003 Elected Officers

President	Paul Chase	268-3107
Vice President	Steve Schery	835-1155
Secretary	Brian Resor	323-1579
Treasurer	Mitch Hudson	881-5323
Director at Large	Peter Bilan	345-2308
Director at Large	Jimmy Wier	292-0190

2003 Appointed Officers

Towlines Editor	Kevin Ferguson	271-2636
Safety	Al Santilli	884-2136
Chief Instructor	Billy Hill	286-7628
Chief Operations	Tom Tichy	822-7946
Chief Tow Pilot	John Farris	797-2279
A/C Maintenance	Mark Mocho	298-2922
Fac. Maintenance	JD Huss	899-9169
Membership	Kathy Taylor	672-0152
Insurance	Don Kawal	856-9043

I reported on the Elected Officers in the last issue.  Now let me comment on our Appointed Officers, the real club workers.  Kevin Ferguson, Al Santilli, John Farris, Mark Mocho, JD Huss, and Don Kawal have agreed to continue in their excellent work from last year.  Jimmy Wier needed a break from his Chief Instructor job but agreed to serve as Director at Large. We are lucky to have a man of Billy Hill’s experience to replace Jimmy.  Lee Goettsche needed a break from his Chief Ops job and was ably replaced by Tom Tichy.  Expect some phone calls from him in the near future.  Kathy Taylor volunteered for the vacant job of Membership, and she promises to instigate more fun activity at Moriarty.

At our first board meeting on February 6^th, the new board members validated the board objectives from last year, summarized below:

--Make board members more responsive to club members.

--Make club members more responsible for club equipment

--Make club members more enthusiastic about club duties

--Make the club more user friendly

--Make soaring more fun for more people

From the spirited participation at the first meeting, I expect we will see some new vigor from our new board members.  We are already working on fresh ideas for accomplishing our objectives

Let’s keep trying to make soaring more fun!

 

Beware The Ides of March?                        Billy Hill

So, exactly when does the cross-country season truly start?  Guess it depends on when Mother Nature gives us the green light and bestows upon us those days of high cloud bases and abundant lift.  

Oh sure, you can look at the almanac and give it a good educated guess, but the middle of March could go either way.  So what the heck, let’s plan a weekend soaring seminar for March 14, 15 and 16.

I suggest we start with a Friday (the 14^th), evening dinner/lecture in Moriarity followed by a weather briefing and assembly, (weather permitting), on Saturday morning.  We could do this in the same manner in which we did our soiree of last fall.  That is having the experienced X-C pilots team up with those who would like to play follow the leader and head out mano-a-mano. 

We could then fly a pilot option speed task with a minimum task time.  The team with the fastest time for the distance flown would be declared the winners.  The only proviso is that the pilots of each team must finish within a prescribed time frame of each other.  This would encourage the lead pilot to make sure his/her charges were doing as well as he was.  If the lead pilot lands his partner(s) out, (or vise versa for that matter), then they get zero points for the day.  Could be a lot of fun and a great learning experience or all.  

From Your Chief Instructor                                Billy Hill

As your new, (by virtue of position, not age), chief CFI, I have some issues near and dear to my heart that I would like to see become part of how we do business as a flying organization.

I hope to develop an agenda, after which I will get together with the club CFI’s in order to see what we can do to standardize our training syllabus as much as possible.  Along those lines, I hope to have everyone using the same pre-published primer, specifically Knoff’s publication on training.  In conjunction with that, JD Huss is assisting us be putting together a program which will mirror the manner in which Part 141 Flight Schools are run.  This will aid us in our efforts to standardize the manner in which we do business when teaching.

Another subject near and dear to my heart is checklists.  I plan to develop one that will be generic and can be used in any club glider.  And yes, that will also address the issue of landing gear.  The idea of memorizing a checklist just doesn’t work for me.  Even more so when there are distractions in and around the cockpit. 

The advantage of a checklist, which will be on a laminated card and available at all pilot stations, is that more senses are involved in the process.  That is you hold onto the card while you are working your way down the list and read it out loud…..even when you are by yourself. 

On the subject of speaking out loud.  I hope I can get everyone into the habit of calling-out of the minimum altitude from which a safe one hundred eighty degree turn can be made after a rope break. The “what iff’n” question should be the last one you ask yourself just prior to launch.  What iff’n the rope breaks or the tow plane aborts?  What direction will I turn should that happen?  If you get into the habit of doing that prior to takeoff, you substantially reduce the likelihood of being caught off guard.  We need to become as proactive regarding safety as possible.  If you see a potential problem, bring it to the attention of someone in a position to do something about it.

We all know a BFR only comes once every other year, but are you comfortable with that? Why not get together with an instructor for a little refresher ride in order to see if there are some skills on which you would like to become more proficient.  When was the last time you did a slip?  Are you comfortable with doing one?  If not, then why not get together with one of our CFI’s.  There are any number of things at which you would like to be more proficient.  How about thermaling technique?  Cloud recognition? Working in gaggles?  Identifying and tracking in the wave? 

That’s just for starters.  After all, with any luck we should have a great season ahead of us provided the smoke from the forest fires isn’t too thick!  Lighten up guys, I’m just kidding.