Wave Camp Wrap-up
Much of what went on at camp has already been reported so I will try not to bore you with detailed repetition. As was reported earlier Vickland and I moved the ASK to Petersburg, W99, on March 6 to be ready for the influx of fliers on the 7th. After Bill worked the Pawnee maintenance problem I was towed at 6,000 msl to within a couple of miles of the airport. I met the FBO's dad, Don Bane, on the radio first and then in person when he came to help pull the ASK to tie-down with a John Deere garden tractor. It didn't work too well, engine problems, so we pulled the K behind the hangar and tied it down. Before finishing with that task Vickland arrived in the Scout to ferry me back to 8w2 and my car. I arrived back in Petersburg about 7 PM.

March 7, three Cumberland Soaring Club members showed up after I had done a couple of flights in the ASK, with towing done by the FBO, Fred Bane, in his C172 with a 180hp engine. Climb on tow was about 600 fpm. Larry Minch and Dan Bookwalter had driven in from the Cleveland, Ohio area and Clyde Reeves came from Clarksburg, W. Va. After registering them for the camp we had some flying discussion in which it came out that they were not there for the camp but just to use Fred's tow service (Fred is a member of the Cumberland club too). They remained registered and took several flights. Shane showed up later, taking several flights in the K. Then Kevin pulled the Sprite onto the field in the trailer. He had gone to Gordonsville to pick it up that morning. Kevin did a couple of flights in the K before assembling and test flying Sprite.

March 8-11 the rains came. The Great Lakes are open due to the warm winter (el nino) so northwest winds picked up moisture from Lakes Michigan and Erie depositing it in the area of the highest elevation, the Allegheny Plateau front that sets off the Petersburg wave. It snowed for days on the plateau.

March 12, SSC members Parrish, Michael, Vickland, Mueller and Kellett showed up and flew. Ward Hindman, formerly of MASA, from the New York City area also showed up and flew. Michael flew his first wave flight with Annear to guide him and was duly impressed by the transition from rotor to smooth wave. Release was at 3,000 agl with a 10,000' gain so it could have been a gold altitude flight. As we had no supplemental oxygen on board we broke the flight off at 14,000' msl and returned to the field.

March 13, Michael and Vickland flew in thermal and, possibly, warm frontal upslope.

March 14, if the lift had matched the turbulence it would have been a great day. Fred said that the turbulence on the first tow rated a 9.5 on a scale of 10 in his experience (he has towed regularly at Cumberland for years). Michael took that first tow and then went for a ride with Shane for the second and last tow of the day (the second tow was smoother).

March 15, Jay Dickoff (MASA) took the first tow with Michael the second and Winter (SSC) the last. The wave was working at dawn but unfortunately no wave fliers were there to use it because the forecast did not look quite right. As we were packing to leave Vickland took a flight in his 1-26 and later Tom Ball (MASA) flew and reportedly encountered wave at about 7,000'. Fred towed the ASK to 8W2 dropping it off then returning for the Sprite. He towed Kevin at 8W2 before flying Shane and Winter back to their cars at W99.

There was a lot of good hangar flying both at the airport and evening meals. Fred, the FBO, has a thousand stories from a long and varied career. His Dad, Don, made soup which was available at the field every day. A lot of people met to do a lot of talking and some flying. Everybody had a good time. We should do what we can to support this new, close glider FBO.
-Spencer Annear

Wave Camp-I get around!
I left home at 7:00, got to Petersburg at 10:15, was in the K at 11:11, landed at 12:18, ( off at 4500, up to 6300, thermals, no wave ) back in the K for the ferry flight at 1:30, landed at 8W2 around 2:30 ( off tow 12 miles out at 5000, up to 7000 cloud base in 2 climbs ), launched Kevin and friend for 15 minutes when the 172 brought Shane and the Sprite over, put the K away, jumped in the 172, back to Petersburg and on the road by 4:10, home at 7:30. Heard Tom from OB call during the ferry, he contacted the wave at 7000, went to 10,500. Tom and Jay, as well as Vickland, were packed and on the road by the time we got back to Petersburg.
-Fred Winter

Report from Portland
My wife Pat and I thoroughly enjoyed our fourteenth (!) Soaring Society of America convention, held this year in Portland, OR. We shared three days of most superior hangar flying with about 800 fellow SSA members, which included Skyliners Linn Buell and Fred Winter.

Personally, I still get a big kick out of the exhibition hall every year. Like a kid with his nose pressed against the window of the candy store, I can see, touch, and sit in state-of-the-art soaring machinery (and some not-so-state-of-the-art, too!). Plus I can often find real bargains on accessories, in addition to being able to do comparison shopping right on the spot between competing suppliers. (When you're thinking about spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on something like a vario, it's nice to walk from the ILEC to the Filser to the Cambridge booth and back again!!) I put a panoramic view of this year's convention hall on the Badge Board in the training room at New market - check it out!

This year we also enjoyed an unplanned opportunity. It seems that a nearby shop was in the process of restoring, for two different Army museums, two Waco CG-4a troop carrying gliders of the kind used in WW II. (The US built 14,000 of these things and used them in eight campaigns, including the invasion of Normandy in June, 1945.) He'd finished the fuselages and was awaiting payment from the Army before delivering them (and starting on the wings). The Army was late paying, and the builder (prudently) was not delivering them until they had! So while they weren't supposed to be there, there they sat in a shop in Wilsonville, OR, about 30 miles south of Portland. A member of the Willamette Valley Soaring Club (the hosts of this year's convention) took advantage of this and arranged a last minute evening tour of the shop, where we met a pilot who actually flew one of these suckers in the war! The enclosed picture shows yours truly sitting left seat in this beautifully restored machine. What a hoot!

I also met Bob Lacovera and bought the last copy of his book they had at the SSA booth - it lists all kinds of interesting factoids about the glider fleet - including average asking prices for 1994-1996 for thousands of sales, both here and abroad! Very helpful when you're venturing out into the never-never economic jungle to negotiate buying a used glider! Did you know that ca. 6.25% of the US fleet turns over every year?

Linn and I also attended the Soaring Safety Foundation's CFI revalidation clinic the two days before the convention began. Great instruction from some of the nation's premier flight instructors! Always a refreshing and inspiring experience.

Pat and I also always enjoy a couple of special events for old planes and old pilots - this year we had the opportunity of eating and chatting with Paul Macready (of Macready ring and Gossamer Condor fame), Paul and Jenny Schweizer, Floyd Sweet, Don Engen, and many, many other legends of soaring.

Next year - in February, 1999 - the convention will be held in Knoxville, TN, hosted by the Smoky Mountain Soaring Association. This is less than a day's drive from the DC area! Put it on your calendars now - a pilgrimage to the mountain is in order!!
-Jim Kellett

My first flight...
The following didn't occur on my first flight, but it was the first flight of any significance.

The so-called "Dollar Ride" at primary flight school-plain and simple-I got airsick and hurled right into my new Air Force blue overseas cap. After the instructor, who introduced himself as "Mr. Dye, I'll teach you to fly and you'll never forget me", had flown the four students at our table, he addressed each of us individually. "Mr. Kaneski, you'll be okay, Mr. Brown, you'll be okay, Mr. Carlisle, you'll be okay, but Mr. Carson, you're a barfer."

For the next six months, I avoided breakfast or lunch depending on whether I was scheduled to fly in the a.m. or p.m. The T-6 Texan didn't have niceties such as hot mikes, so Mr. Dye couldn't hear retching dry heaves. That was 42 years ago, and the rest, as they say, is history.
-Kit Carson

DuPont Regatta
The Board of Directors agreed to support the request of the Shenandoah Valley Soaring Club to host the 1998 DuPont Regatta, scheduled for September 18-20, 1998. Ralph Vawter, Skyline's coordinator for the event, has agreed to work within an ad hoc committee structure that includes Fred Daams (who's a member of both Skyline and SVS) and a representative from M-ASA to coordinate the management of this year's Regatta, and the planning for future years' events.

Skyline's Examiner is Ready to Go!
Shane Neitzey has cleared all the bureaucratic hurdles and is now an official DPE (Designated Pilot Examiner)! That means our candidates for ratings will no longer have to migrate to Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Maryland, or Florida to get examined! Shane briefed the Club's Instructor's Caucus on March 21 on his priorities, plans, procedures, and prices - for Club members, a rating examination will be $125 (plus, of course, the normal Club fees for aircraft), a significant discount from the normal $250 fee.

Wanna See Your Name in Lights?
Well, at least maybe see your name on some organization's program? Arrange to make a presentation to a pilot's meeting, church meeting, school meeting - you name it - on this wonderful sport. And, of course, this wonderful club! Recruit a new member!

To make it easier, use a really nice videotape that addresses soaring in easy to understand language and pictures! Jim Kellett has a copy of "Discover Gliders", the 25 minute tape produced by Niche Aviation, and advertised heavily by the SSA. It's a nice tool to include in a program, or even to show individual member candidates in the privacy of your own home!

Give Jim a call at (540) 678-4798 or e-mail to Jim@Kellett.com to make arrangements to borrow the tape.

Safety Corner
Keeping Current- Experience suggests that glider pilots who fly less than 20 hours a year are not flying enough to maintain their skill levels enough to be safe pilots, much less optimizing their soaring ability. (Some Club members probably fly less than 10 hours a year!) And soaring accident statistics indicate that the beginning of the season, when most folk have endured a three to five month layoff from any flying at all, is a really critical time of year!!

Let's all work hard to maintain Skyline's perfect safety record! Have YOU flown less than 20 hours in the last twelve months? Then before you start your "serious" spring flying, call a Club instructor and arrange for a little "mini-review" and spring flight check! You'll enjoy safer flying for the rest of the year as a result! Even if you've flown a lot in the last year, it still makes a lot of good sense to do a "sanity check" with a Club instructor.

Biennial Flight Reviews- The legal requirements for flight reviews are really pretty easy; every two years, you must get a minimum of an hour's ground instruction and three instructional flights in a glider to exercise the privileges of your license. You can meet this requirement by adding a rating to your license that requires a flight with an examiner; many flight instructors meet part or all of the requirement with their biennial recertification process (part or all depending on whether or not they actually fly with an examiner.) Most experienced pilots know that these are truly minimum requirements, especially for pilots who don't log many hours during the year.

Check your log books- Remember, not only is a BFR good for you and the Club, it's not legal to fly without one!! And remember it's not a test, you can't "flunk" it, and should be seen as what it is - a chance to learn something new and/or refresh your skills in areas you already know.

To make that easier, Club instructors have agreed to make themselves available to groups of members for the hour's ground instruction, to be scheduled once a month. Here's the roster:

        April   Joe Parrish
        May     Shane Neitzey
        June    Spencer Annear
        July    Paul Dawson
        August  John Ayers

These instructors have agreed to meet on a mutually agreeable date, during "their" month, with those members who need a BFR. Check your logbook now, and call the instructor of your choice to set up a group meeting!! Note that it's up to you to contact the instructor, and in a timely way so as to arrange for a date and time that's agreeable for all those members who want to meet that month! (At the same time, you can discuss arrangements to get the flight instruction, which does not have to be on the same day as the ground instruction.)

Please don't just show up at the field and try to sweet talk an instructor into taking time out of his or her schedule to give you personalized ground instruction!! That's not fair to your instructors who are, let's not forget, not on a pay scale that includes overtime!!

Maintenance Note
During the past year we have acquired a few tools to help us at the field. Included in the new tools are a small air compressor and an air tank. Tires should be checked each day before flying and should be inflated if they appear to be low.
-Bill Vickland

Log this...
Please change Jim Miles' e-mail address to jimmiles@erols.com
...and change Dave Weaver's email address to: weaverd@mcione.com
...and Jim Kellett as well to: Jim@Kellett.com -Jim will monitor the old address, jkellett@shentel.net, for a few weeks, but not after April 15, 1998.

Please welcome new member Mike Cordova to the club. Mike is a First Officer for USAirways, based at Dulles, flying Boeing 737-200's. He's a graduate of the Air Force Academy, and flew KC-135's (military version of the Boeing 707) while in the Air Force. We're glad he's decided to do some relaxing behind the stick on his days off.

Media Star- The May issue of Air & Space has a nice article on Midway Island in which Skyline Soaring's ex-member, Rob Shallenberger, makes a major appearance in his roll of Manager of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Nice article, good issue, check it out.

Easter Day (Sunday 12 April) operations will be voluntary. We need a volunteer duty officer for that day. IF operations occur, then the DO will need to coordinate with the tow pilot, ADO, and instructor. In other words, the DO needs to put out a message the week before asking if anyone wants to fly. Operations may be cancelled if we do not have volunteers and sufficient interest from the club to fly.

This message is for student pilots working toward their Private Pilot Glider knowledge exam (aka The Written). If you are in this leaky boat, you might want to check out a very cool web site that gives interactive practice exams. The author, Kip Shaffer, has graciously incorporated a category for the glider exam. You just tell it how many questions you want on your practice exam, and it selects an appropriate set. Grading is done automatically.

If I can get three or more students to commit, I think I can talk Don Robb into offering a class through Av-Ed Flight School in Falls Church, VA sometime this Spring. Course cost is approx. $200 including books and supplies. If that falls through, I could be inspired to teach a one-on-one or two-on-one tutorial at my home. Course costs would be measured in six-packs.-Joe Parrish

and finally, this note of caution..
We're not through with El Nino yet. The warm, moist winter is about to present a plague of insects of near Biblical proportions! Now the mosquitoes are bad enough, but the dog ticks (those ugly, match-head sized bloodsuckers) are worse. And this year we face the very real threat of a major increase in deer ticks, the very tiny but dangerous carriers of Lyme disease! This is a non-trivial matter, since these are potentially crippling diseases. So come prepared from the get-go with appropriate clothing; long pants, ideally tucked into sock tops, and long sleeved tops. And with liberally applied repellent that works on ticks! And be appropriately cautious about laying down in the grass-to nap, or even to hook up a glider.-Richard Freytag