January 2004

From the President Kathy Taylor

Sheri Nevins is organizing this year’s annual awards banquet to be held January 23 at Garduno’s at Balloon Fiesta Park. Cocktails begin at 6 PM and dinner at 7. Our after-dinner speakers will be Ted Spitzmiller, who will talk about the work of the Wright Brothers in achieving powered flight, and Chip Garner, who will report on the World Championships in Poland. Howard Banks has agreed to be our Master-of-Ceremonies. You will find an announcement for the banquet on the club website.

Our next regular club meeting will be at 9 AM, February 28, at the clubhouse. Dennis Wright, the new Executive Director of the SSA, will talk about the benefits of being an SSA Chapter. We will be voting on a By-Laws change to better define the Family Membership (see the exact wording elsewhere in Towlines) and we need a quorum to approve the change. After the meeting we will reconvene at El Comedor for a no-host lunch. (I think that means you buy your own –Ed)

The Board elected on December 17 consists of: President: Kathy Taylor
Vice President: Pete Vredenburg
Secretary: Brian Resor
Treasurer: Tom Tichy
Members-at-Large: Mitch Hudson and Jimmy Wier

Peter Bilan and Steve Schery have stepped down after serving the Board admirably. They deserve your gratitude for a job well done.

The following were appointed by the new Board to serve during 2004:

A/C Maintenance Officer: Bob Hudson
Facility Maintenance Officer: JD Huss
Chief Instructor: Jim Miller
Safety Officer: Billy Hill
Chief Tow Pilot: John Farris
Operations Officer: Michael Kleinfeld
Newsletter Editor: Kevin Ferguson

Outgoing A/C Maintenance Officer Mark Mocho decided that two years of hard labor were enough. Next time you see Mark, thank him for keeping our aircraft flying.

Please note that you should be calling Michael Kleinfeld now instead of Tom Tichy for changes in Ops Duty. Mike can be reached at 281-7908.

Tom Brenza will be doing some repainting on the 2-33, probably beginning in February. We will try to minimize the amount of downtime.

The Board approved Jimmy Wier to take a towplane to Hobbs July 1-7 in support of the Region 9 contest.

At the December meeting, the membership agreed to support two scholarships for young people to learn to fly. Howard Banks will be developing the details of this plan. I’m sure he would appreciate your help and ideas for this project.

The Board has agreed to sell the ATV since it is not being used. Any club member who would like to purchase the ATV should approach the Board with a suggested purchase price. If no acceptable bids are received by the February 3rd Board meeting, we will proceed to make the sale to the general public.

By-Laws Change Proposal

The current by-laws do not specify the privileges and responsibilities of a Family member and need to be clarified. The following change to the By-Laws will be voted on at the general membership meeting on February 28. It is proposed to change Article II of the By-Laws to clarify paragraph 2.7, to read as follows:

2.7 A FAMILY MEMBER is a member who has been accepted by the Board as a family club member. FAMILY membership is limited to members of a REGULAR club member’s immediate family. Such members shall be entitled to use and fly all ASC aircraft which their individual licenses and club rules permit. The member shall have the privilege to vote on all general activities of the club. The member must pay all fees, dues, and assessments levied, maintain SSA membership, and perform regular member club duties.

Scholarship Proposal Howard Banks

At the December club meeting, I raised the idea that the Club might offer a youth flying scholarship pegged to the centenary of the Wright Flyer and the reaction was, to say the least, mixed. The history of earlier such efforts by ASC was not all favorable. The decision at the meeting was that I should write this outline and call for comments, which should be directed to the board.

1. The rules should be straightforward. Those wishing to apply (students from 14 through high school, living within some yet to be determined range of Moriarty) should write an essay -- presented in hand-written form, double spaced, one side of the paper -- of no more than 250 words explaining what the 100-year anniversary of the Wright Flyer means to them and why they should be the one who gets the scholarship.

It will need some suitable group to manage the review and judging (to include local notables involved in flying, plus perhaps one or two high school principals, etc).

2. Up to the best 10 essays selected by this panel (with no appeals or reviews) would be declared winners. Each would get a free first flight with an instructor, a log book and the opportunity to join the club as a student member, perhaps on some modestly subsidized basis for the first year.

In addition, each of the 10 would be eligible to win the grand prize, the flying scholarship, which would be extremely generous. It would include free flying, tows and instruction up to first solo, after which the scholarship winner would be eligible to join ASC as a student member, as above, and continue their instruction at student member rates but at their expense.

3. Because the scholarship is so generous, the selection process would necessarily be rigorous. Each of the 10 winners would be invited to an extended interview with ASC board members, and their parents or legal guardians would also be invited (meaning required) to take part. This would be to make sure that the students would understand, and be ready to make, the heavy commitment required, and would have the family backing to make this a success. To make this work for the scholarship winner and ASC, the winner would have to be ready to devote large amounts of his or her spare weekend time, to helping on the line and all of the other club requirements, as well as studying aviation and actually flying.

There is the possibility that, as part of the selection process, ASC could include a review of grade point requirements, attendance and other school activities. It also seems reasonable to require provision of a recommendation from the student's school principal as part of the final selection criteria to ensure that this considerable extra-curricular activity would not damage the student's chances of satisfactorily completing his or her studies.

4. The return to the club would -- or should -- be through the opportunity to obtain publicity in local papers, tv etc, at each stage, at the announcement of the essay competition, the flights of the 10 winners and the announcement of the scholarship winner, perhaps even with progress reports. It may also be possible to obtain some help here from the State aviation people. And it plays to the sport's need to attract youth to flying and the reinstatement of the ASC student membership category.

5. To make it eye catching, the scholarship program would need some fancy title, to include the Wright centenary, soaring in general and the club, Moriarty, perhaps also the Soaring Museum ..... club contest on that to follow, prize one beer.

Please let the board know what you think.

We’ve Lost a Friend

We are sad to report the loss of long-time member, Dick Valentine. Dick passed away on December 9 within six weeks of discovering that he had an inoperable brain tumor. Dick was a good friend who worked hard for the club. He will be missed.

ASC Website Update Brian Resor

Probably many of you have visited club’s new website. (If not, point your browser to www.abqsoaring.org ) Since it was posted on the web in September 2003, almost 1000 hits have been recorded at the site. I am even getting emails from other clubs in our part of the country to congratulate us on getting our website up and running again.

The service provider that I chose (bravenet.com) is cheap for the club - about $80 a year - and provides tools and simple user interfaces to help me keep the site up-to-date. One of the useful tools is the site counter. Not only can we tell how many hits have been made, but also we can tell on which days of the week and during what times of day are the most common for usage. You can see that a lot of people will check the site right around lunch time and right after dinner in the evening. The day of the week with the most hits is Thursday - must be people thinking about going out to fly during the upcoming weekend

When you load the Home page, you see immediately the latest news blurbs and important announcements. The Board would like to be able to make important announcements on this page rather than send emails out to everyone in the club. No one likes to get “junk” mail every time a minor announcement needs to be made. If you can, try and get in the habit of checking this page for announcements at least every week or so. Of course, if a major announcement needs to be made, either a phone tree will be set up and/or emails will be sent to club members.

From the Home page you are also able to link to issues of Towlines and a Calendar of events. So far this winter the calendar is not filling up with fun things to do, but we hope to have plenty of events planned for the summer.

In the left sidebar of all the pages you will find useful links to soaring weather information. For now I have included everything I might look at before I make the trip to the airport. Feel free to submit to me any other links that you think others would find useful.

For visitors to the site who might not already be glider pilots I added a brief section on the sport of Soaring: what it’s about, what it takes to learn to fly gliders, and how much it might cost. Of course, the cost estimate is a WAG based on an average motivated student, but it’s good to have some sort of figure to quote because the question always gets asked.

The Photo section of the website is still growing. I like to take a little camera up in the glider with me in case I get a chance to snap a good shot of weather, terrain, or other gliders. If there are others who do the same, it might be fun to collect photos of far-away turnpoints or other interesting features and weather in New Mexico.

The Members area of the website is protected by a simple password gate provided for free by the service provider. It is by no means a highly secure gate, but it keeps the casual web surfer, search engine, or nosy person out of our more private information. Inside you will find the latest club roster, the ops schedule, and all the latest minutes (posted after they are approved). The Ops schedule is constantly changing as people switch with others. I do not try to keep up with these changes. I merely post the same schedule that is printed in the newsletter.

In the left sidebar I also have included a few links to the AeroKurier Online Contest. See my other article in this issue of Towlines for more discussion on these links.

I usually sit down to make updates to the webpage about once a week. If there is an important announcement for me to make, I can get to it almost immediately if I’m in town (usually the case). If you ever have material for the webpage or suggestions for additions or changes feel free to let me know.