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Towlines
The
Newsletter of the
From the President
Bob
Hudson
Hello,
silent aviators! Spring is here and great things are happening in the
Albuquerque Soaring Club. First, we are getting the club house in shape for
the coming activities. Joe Martinez put in a new stoop in front of the
entrance and we finally got our gravel in place so that you don't have to
"climb up” to get into the club house. Joe also
"mudded" in the west wall in preparation for painting. JD
suggested that we move the "Final Glide" Plaque closer to the door
and away from the bathroom to offer better reverence. Several others
thought that having the plaque outside the Danny Sorensen memorial bathroom
was not the right location. JD also replaced the lighting fixture over
the kitchen so that now we can read whatever we are looking at in the filing
cabinet. Lastly, Mitch arranged to get the leak in the pipe by the water
heater fixed (ain't that grand, only ten years of leaks.)
Great
news...new airplanes in the club. Mark Mocho bought a new (read
different) Pegasus 101A. Pat Mcknight bought Mark's previous Pegasus and
Mike Abernathy bought a Stemme.
I
need to remind everyone that it is up to you to check the status of all our
equipment prior to taking something out for flight. Enuff said.
I
hope every one got he word on the passing of Lois Santilli. Our hearts and
prayers go out to Al and his family. Even though it was a sad reason to
gather, I personally enjoyed meeting and interacting with Al's family.
On the bright side, we had a great showing at Lois's funeral. If I was
smart I would have conducted a club meeting as we had a quorum and we probably
could have gotten some issue taken cleared up.
I
hope you have all heard about the Opening of the Soaring Museum Gala dinner.
It is the 10th of June and cost is $50. Get your tickets early and plan
to attend. Laurie says we can have your Club Account pay for the dinner.
Get with me, Brian or Laurie if you wish to obtain your ticket(s) that way.
Lastly, our own Bob Carlton will perform his night acrobatic show over
Moriarty on the 4th of July as part of the 1-26 National Contest. Plan to be
there. See you at the Club House.
The On-Line Contest (OLC)
NATO
(the military lot) has come to the aid of ASC.
No, not directly of course. But major military air war maneuvers are
planned for
The
weather has not been cooperating too well this year, but thanks to a few good
flights we are back into second place in the
We
need all ASC pilots to fly often and for them to file every flight.
We need the miles!
Airport News
Brian
Resor
The Airport Advisory Committee has been recommending
to the city for some time that they fix the cracks in the runway.
The city has now got two bids, but in the process learned that many of
the cracks have grown to a width that is beyond repair.
The only solution is to resurface the runway.
As of the committee meeting, the city has applied for emergency funds
to do that job. Of course, this is
good and bad news in that we could get a new surface, but hopefully the
project won’t interfere with our flying season!
I can’t imagine that this project could get funded and started
anytime soon, though. We’ll see
what happens.
The new crosswind runway is moving along very
slowly, but at least moving along. Right
now there are more paperwork and funding issues being worked related to the
archeological surveys and catalogs.
The new parking apron near Mudd’s shop has
been completed and signed off by the FAA.
Tie-downs and striping were deleted from the plans by the city due to
budget constraints. The Committee
feels that lack of striping could be a liability to the city when larger jets
taxi into the fueling area and is looking into ways to get them painted.
We are also looking for ideas on how to install some tie-downs.
The phone line for DigiWx has been funded by Clay
Keen for the last 4 years at a cost of about $70/month while the system was on
loan by DigiWx. Clay was hoping
that eventually the City would apply for a grant to purchase the system
permanently, but that hasn’t happened. Understandably,
Clay has recently decided to stop taking on the burden of the phone bill and
so in the near future we, as a club, may have to decide if we want to help
support the costs of keeping this thing available for our use (with some help
from the rest of the airport, of course).
Internet
Weather Brian
Resor
In recent years I feel that I’ve learned a lot
about forecasting soaring weather for one good reason: life is busy and I want
to get the most out of my weekends! There
are too many fun things to do in
Moriarty DigiWx:
This is a weather station that has been placed at the airport that we all can
use to gather real-time weather information.
It is accessible either via the web, or by phone (832-9985). There is a
question about who will pay for its continued availability (see the article on
Airport News).
Ford's thermal forecast:
This data is based on radiosonde observations (RAOBs).
A radiosonde is
a balloon-borne instrument that measures and transmits pressure, temperature,
and humidity to a ground-based receiving station. The balloon is released
twice a day. Ford has created an
algorithm that processes the raw data to give us a thermal forecast for the
day. The page is pretty
self-explanatory if you remember the basics of soundings from your private
pilot written test. I find this
forecast to be accurate in the summertime most of the time.
One-click thermal forecast:
This forecast is also based on ROAB data, but
doesn’t allow you to view the actual sounding.
It quotes only the thermal strength and height.
For some reason, this forecast can be way off on many days and I
don’t look at it anymore.
RUC soundings:
This is a webpage with a Java-based plot
of the skewT-logP diagram. If I
had to choose my favorite soaring weather website, this would be it.
It looks like the website is supported by the Forecast Research
Division (FRD) and Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL).
RUC stands for “Rapid Update Cycle.”
Don’t ask me where that came from, but I once read that this data is
measured using a laser from a satellite. The
lasers take measurements on a grid of 20km all over the
SW Blipmap: Blipmaps are one of the
biggest soaring advances in a long time. The
algorithms were created by Dr. John (Jack) Glendening, otherwise known as Dr.
Jack. He uses the RUC data
available from the soundings described above to create a thermal forecast at
every 20km grid point and then lays the data, color-coded, on a map of each
region of the country. He put in a
lot of hard work to get the system going and maintain it, so you’ll pay a
modest price for full access to the forecasts.
It’s worth it to get amazingly accurate forecasts of thermal
strength, thermal height, overdevelopment potential, cloud formation
potential, wind speed and direction. It’s
a beautiful thing when you find a map of
Also
on the Dr. Jack website are ETA forecasts, which pretty accurately predict
soaring conditions for up to 3 days ahead. If anything, they under-predict the
quality of the soaring. I use
these forecasts a lot on Thursday or Friday afternoon to figure out how many
days of the weekend I will spend in the air.
Even if they don’t nail down exactly how many knots you’ll be able
to climb 2 days out, they are definitely helpful for telling you which days
are going to be the best to go fly.
Weather
maps:
Here you’ll find some simple charts to evaluate what’s going on in our
region. I look for things
like high pressure systems (to suppress thunderstorms in summer) or fronts (to
change the air mass).
Weather
channel and Weather underground:
These are your everyday weather web pages.
My favorite is wunderground.com for two reasons:
it tends to have very good weather forecasts for Moriarty and it’s
quick to load over a modem. Here
is where I’ll pull out a forecast high (and low) temperature for the day,
check the winds, and an estimate of the chance of t-storms.
Sandia
Airpark Camera: This is a live camera that is set up at the fueling station at
Sandia Airpark north of
Satellite
Image: Use
this page to evaluate whether or not there are any clumps of cloudy crud
moving in over our area for the day. A
high layer of cirrus moving in halfway through the day will add some extra
challenges to your cross country flight.
In
summary:
1. Get an estimate of the forecast high and low temperature for the day from
Weather Underground (or your own favorite source). 2. Take a look at the
temperature sounding (Java-based RUC or Ford’s RAOB) to determine trigger
temperature, thermal height, cloud formation, thermal strength, possible
over-development. 3. Compare temperature sounding observations with Dr. Jack´s
predictions for the day. Hopefully
they agree. If they do not, then
you’ll have to figure out whether the difference is due to a transient event
like a front or a band of cirrus. 4. Look at the weather maps to get an idea
of the general meteorological forces that will determine the day's weather.
Note locations of high and low pressures and fronts. And
finally, in case you thought I had forgotten:
LOOK OUT THE WINDOW!
[Brian
has agreed to run a tutorial on these weather forecasting tools one Saturday
morning in the club room. Sign up
and we will fix a date. – Ed]
New
to You
Billy Hill
So,
you’ve just spent the kid’s inheritance and sprung for something plastic
‑ and now you and the bank own an [insert make and model] and you are
wondering what it’s going to be like flying your new toy this summer.
Can’t be hard. After all, look at all the other private owners.
They don’t seem to be having any troubles, right?
Well,
let’s look at that picture a bit more closely. From time to time private
ship owners have accidents. More
often than not it is when they fly their new purchase for the first time or
when they have only a few hours in it and decide it’s time to leave the
house thermal and venture out on a cross-country.
There
are a number of questions you have to ask yourself before you venture off for
the first time and they are all centered around how well prepared you are to
fly this new machine.
Are
you current? If so, in what kind
of sailplane? The trusty sailpig,
(the too dirty three) hardly prepares you for something with an L/D well in
excess of thirty to one. OK then,
how about the G103? That’s all
well and good, but it’s not a tail dragger and almost without exception any
used German Glass you buy will have the main wheel well forward of the center
of gravity. Perhaps you have some
time in the Twin Astir. That will
certainly go a good deal further toward preparing you for the transition to a
single place sailplane. Does your
new purchase have a gear warning system in it?
The new, (to me) Discus 2B I purchased last summer didn’t and the guy
I bought it from landed it gear up on his very first flight in it and he is a
professional airline pilot and races sailplanes.
Have
you gotten an instructor signoff? Can
you sit in your new machine and find all the levers, handles and knobs with
your eyes closed? Can you
comfortably reach everything? This
is very important. More so if your
sailplane has both flaps and dive brakes.
A well known race pilot planted his new ASW-27 in the trees because he
thought he was closing the spoilers when in fact he raised the flaps.
If your new purchase is so equipped, do you know what will happen if
you raise the flaps rather than closing the dive brakes?
(The first time you experience the sinking feeling when you put the
flaps away had better be at altitude, not on short final.)
Have
you put the glider in the trailering saddle and raised and lowered the gear?
Do you know the correct sequence for getting rid of the canopy in the
unlikely event you will need to bail out?
Do you know where to find that information?
Do you have a check list and have you run through it a number of times
to ensure you are familiar with all the items called for?
(There are sample check lists detailed enough to suit hyper-anally
retentives on the club web site.) Do you have a parachute and is it current?
I
hope this little screed will give you food for thought and that you will have
an instructor there when you make your first flight.
If you can find someone who has time in your new, (to you) plastic play
thing, even better!
Stan
Nelson
Sadly,
Stan lost his battle with leukemia in March.
He was a well-known glider pilot, was a past-president of the Auxiliary
Powered Sailplane Association, held several national records flown in the
CLASSIFIED:
Pegasus
101C, low time, wings refinished, Becker, M-AV,new bags,