April 2004

From the President Kathy Taylor

Our next regular club meeting will be at 7 PM, Wednesday, April 28, at the SkyBox Bar in Albuquerque. JD Huss will present a Wings Program on Hazardous Attitudes. Attendance at this meeting will count toward your next BFR. You may order food or not during the meeting, as you like. To get to the SkyBox from I-40, go North on Tramway, turn East onto Indian School, and then turn North into Skyview Center. The restaurant will be on your right.

JD is also organizing our annual work day at the hangar for May 1. He will have a list of jobs to be done. Please come out and help.

The club will be purchasing a computer for the clubhouse that will run SeeYou flight analysis program. Members can use this computer to download and view flights using this incredibly versatile software. We expect this new equipment will encourage greater involvement in the club’s annual cross country program by those who already participate and especially by those who are only thinking about learning. We also expect that the ability to immediately share flights will help to increase activity at the clubhouse at the end of each flying day.

The last meeting, on March 27, was a tutorial by Brian Resor and Mitch Hudson on task planning and filing of flights using the SeeYou program. Their effort has already paid off through lots of club flights being filed to the US section of the international On-Line Contest (see separate report below).

The Grob 103 N916G is due for some work on the wind leading edges. With luck, we’ll get this done during the week and no one will even know that the glider is not available.

With the closing of Tom Brenza’s repair shop, the club will no longer have easy access to aircraft maintenance. Tom did not have time to refurbish the 2-33 before he closed up so that work will be deferred until we can find a suitable substitute. Most of our maintenance will probably be done at Sandia Air Park, although Jon Daffer has agreed to help out from time to time. Mitch Hudson has agreed to take on the job of changing oil on the towplanes and keeping those current. All our members will have to be alert for maintenance issues and report them promptly to our A/C Maintenance Officer, Bob Hudson, as well as writing them on the squawk sheets in the clubhouse.

The Board discussed the use of the visiting membership and agreed that we would proceed as follows: When visitors arrive with their own gliders to be towed, we will refer them to Sundance Aviation except on those occasions when a Sundance tow is not available or during special events, such as the 1-26 Nationals that will be held at Moriarty in 2005.

Brian Resor has agreed to serve as our membership coordinator. He will be sending in new memberships to SSA and he will follow up with them when there are problems. He will also be keeping the membership list up to date. So contact Brian directly with corrections and updates to the list. When announcements have to be made promptly to the membership, we send out a broadcast email to members with email addresses on file. Please check the email address currently listed and contact Brian if it is missing or incorrect.

The Board is trying to get rid of the bus that has been holding up the east end of our hangar for many years. We have contacted a salvage company, but any member who wants it gets first dibs unless the salvage crew arrives very soon. It has a Washington plate but we do not have the title.

Our newsletter is available on the ASC website, http://www.abqsoaring.org/, sometimes well ahead of the date that it arrives in the mail. Please check it out. Some of you may prefer to read it there and not receive a printed copy in the mail. Let us know your thoughts.

Mark your calendars for a Memorial Day weekend Saturday bash consisting of a club meeting, fun flying events, and a cookout

Positive Control Checks Howard Banks

There has been a resumed debate on the www.rec.aviation.soaring website about how best to avoid mis-assembling a glider. This includes what is called a positive control check before take off and the critical assembly check now insisted on at US contests.

We all know in general terms about these checks, yet there are even so accidents every year caused by disconnected elevators, spoilers or whatever, that result in accidents causing serious injury or worse.

Yet the recent flurry on the web about this seemingly simple piece of gliding good practice showed that there is no clearly accepted best way to perform these checks. And there was no discussion as to whether they should be performed before every flight by gliders that are rarely disassembled -- a significant matter at Moriarty. Should it, for example, be a requirement that each pilot name with whom they did their pre-flight checks before they get a club tow -- or would this be bureaucratic overkill that would soon be lost in the take-off shuffle?

Please let Towlines have your thoughts on this. Your editor will be bulling those who should know the answer(s) in time to produce a note for the May edition and would like to include as wide a response as possible.

Contact: Howard Banks. Tel: 505-821 2651. Email: HBSoar@Comcast.net

Moriarty Turnpoints

A preliminary revised database of turnpoints and waypoints is now available on the Club website. It has been updated to make the turnpoints match what is required for GPS, so that the turnpoint is now the actual runway, or cross roads in the middle of a town for example. Many of the old turnpoints were actually based on the zones that pilots were required to fly to take a valid photograph.

This database is expected to be available on John Leibacher's Worldwide Soaring Turnpoint Exchange within several days.

Thanks to Mitch Hudson and Brian Resor, and all the club members who spent a non-flying Saturday morning in March going through these changes.

Jim Crisp Memorial Taos Soaring
Kim Buehre

The Taos Soaring Fiesta will be held from June 3 to June 6 this year. I will be aerotowing the Grob 103 to Taos for the event. I expect to give several rides to local Taos folk, but can offer instruction to club members. I am requesting that anyone who wants to receive instruction or to use the ship schedules an appointment . Please do not just show up expecting a flight.

This is a volunteer flying event that is organized and managed by club member, Angel Pala, and Terry Blankenship. They need help with ground duties. I understand that the club has agreed that anyone in the ASC (student and private ship) who participates will make themselves available for duty for half a day (ie, a morning or an afternoon, selection by lottery).

Also be aware that the tow rates will be at the price set this year for the Fiesta. This could be around $40 a tow, for any height of tow. We will have a club towplane at the event, but it must charge that rate to help defray the cost of flying the towplane to Taos.

Taos is a great place to soar. The thermals are strong and can go higher than you can legally fly. The mountains are within easy gliding distance back to the airport and it is fabulously beautiful! For private owners there is already a waiting list to fly at Taos, so this is an excellent way to join in the fun.

I can be reached at 776-8241, 758-8241 or janaki@laplaza.org

2004 Cross Country Contest
Banks, Resor, Hudson

This winter a small informal committee of members discussed improvements that can be made to the club cross country contest in hopes of growing more participation and enthusiasm.

Suggested guidelines for pilot classes are as follows: 1) Gold class - at least one 200 statute mile flight flown, and 2) Silver class – for the casual or fledgling cross country pilot (especially club ships!). In the past, the classes were based on the Gold Badge only. It’s a little unfair to the real beginners that the average task distances for this year’s Classic Class winners were well over 200 miles even though they supposedly didn’t have a gold badge!

Scoring will primarily use IGC GPS logs filed to the electronic On-Line Contest. This solves several issues:

Flights do not necessarily have to be made to fixed turnpoints. This encourages pilots to make the very best use of the weather and to stay over friendly terrain. The OLC provides scoring, with independent adjudication. Using the OLC system is free. Another attraction of the OLC contest is that we all can easily go to the website and view others’ flights. This is a huge learning tool for fledgling pilots.

Pilots will be responsible for filing their flights with the OLC. The filing deadline for the OLC website is the Tuesday (midnight) after the flight.

Those without IGC GPS loggers are NOT excluded. Flights scored by various means will be accepted for the ASC awards even though they can't be submitted to the OLC contest. Claim your flight simply by emailing your turnpoints flown to Brian Resor.

At the end of the year, the Kim Harmon X-C Awards (Gold Class pilots) and Classic Class XC Awards (Silver Pilots) will be based on the OLC scoring system. The final score will be the total of the best FIVE scored flights instead of only two flights, as in the past.

The criteria for the Aero-tek X-C Award, the longest flight over 300km originating from Moriarty, will remain the same as always.

For a detailed description of the rules for 2004 click on the Club XC contest link in the left sidebar of the webpage – www.abqsoaring.org (Sorry for the delay…this article was meant to be printed in the March Towlines)

Flying Start

Albuquerque Soaring's participation in the On-Line Contest (USA) got off to great start. We were running fourth for a while and were only pushed back to fifth -- of more than 30 clubs in the US already participating -- when the unusual storms in early April clamped down on cross country flying. The best news is that 12 Moriarty pilots have already filed flights.

So far, to April 12th, total distance claimed is 6320 kilometers (3950 miles). There have been two 300km diamond goal flights involved -- Mitch Hudson and Angel Pala, who also completed all legs of his Silver and Gold badge at the same time including flying for five hours. There have been nine other flights of 300 km or more and one of 500 km (Tim Feager, who flies with Sundance). Jim Weir flew 235 km at 77 mph, without water. Mitch and Steve Schery both managed to get some of the earliest landouts of the season while flying for miles. Just wait until the weather turns for the better!

It is not hard to join in. Brian Resor has even made house calls to help the computer inept get their files into a form that is acceptable to the OLC. That includes filing from the Cambridge software, or from Volksloggers, among other options. Brian has also put on the Club web page an easy to use guide explaining how to enter.

Following are the flights by Moriarty pilots through April 12, 2004. Listed here are pilot name, Total kilometer (No of flights):

M Hudson 1306 (6), T Feager 975 (2), B Hill 817 (3), B Leonard 700 (2), B Resor 524 (3), A Pala 420 (1), M Abernathy 331 (2), H Banks 317 (1), M Mocho 292 (1), J Weir 235 (1), J Cumiford 221 (1), R Rozzonni 179 (1)

Those of us who are competing against each other in the club cross country contest can check standings on the club webpage under “Standings” in the left sidebar. Beginners take note that we need more Silver class pilots to enter. The scoreboard will be kept up-to-date during the year so that we can have fun chasing the leaders!

Who’s Flying This Thing? Billy Hill

Standardization has always been the foundation of good flying procedures. Because our little organization is one of volunteers who perform various club functions it's difficult to standardize our flying program to the extent I would have liked. Last year when I was the club's Chief CFI, I had grand plans to totally standardize our training program. Well, you know what is often said about good intentions. Anyhow, I didn't even come close to getting it done so now it's Jim Miller's turn. Of course I'll support any efforts he may undertake.

One recurring issue has become apparent as a result of flying with both licensed pilots and students alike. It has to do with who is actually flying the glider. It is of utmost importance to establish the rules of engagement regarding who will actually be handling the flight controls as well as when and under what circumstances. This must be done prior to the first takeoff.

If the flight instructor is to be flying the aircraft initially, then he should make that point clear to the student or other pilot. If the student is to "follow thru" on the flight controls with the CFI, then that point should also be discussed. When the student/other pilot is "following thru" with the instructor, then he should only maintain enough contact with the flight controls to feel what his mentor is doing. That is, contact with the flight controls should be very light. It should in no way interfere with the operation of the flight controls. The last thing the instructor wants is to feel input from the student when he is attempting to demonstrating a segment of the flight profile.

The transfer of the flight controls from one pilot to another should be preceded by the statement, "I have the flight controls, or You have the flight controls." This should be followed by the response, "You have the flight controls", or "I have the flight controls." This verbiage will depend on who has initiated the sequence. More often than not it will have been the CFI. In conjunction with these statements, the pilot who is taking command of the aircraft/glider should shake the control stick to acknowledge the transfer of control. This is often called, "shaker-taker."

If the CFI wants to assume control, he should again state, "I have the flight controls." If it his intention to have the student "follow him thru", he should so state that and of course follow up by shaking the stick. Again, the student's contact with the flight controls should be light enough to feel what is happening but not so firm that it interferes with the CFI's attempt to fly the glider.

The above mentioned technique should leave no doubt in any one's mind as to who is actually flying the glider. However, should a problem arise with a student freezing on the controls, there is a good chance the instructor will be forewarned because the transfer of control challenge and response protocol will most likely not have been followed.

OK then —"You have the flight controls!"

New Towlines Editor/March Billing

The club thanks Kevin Ferguson for all the time he spent as Towlines editor. Kevin has been busy lately and Howard Banks has shown some interest in helping out with the newsletter, so we are changing things around. Unfortunately no newsletter or billing went out in March. This month there is no roster included in the mailing because we need to include extra billing information. Next month, submit your articles for Towlines to Howard by the 10^th of the month.