By: Rus Howard - 02/03/10
I am a transition pilot approaching my one year anniversary of my glider rating. In the past year I have come to enjoy not only learning to fly airplanes without motors, but I have also hanging out with the bunch of itinerate glider pilots of CSA.
Not sure why, but I decided that a trip to the SSA meeting would be a good way to get a handle on a lot of different aspects of soaring in a short time frame. So I asked a few people at the club and Tom told me he would like to go. We decided to fly to Little Rock in my Piper Warrior. So, Wednesday January 26, Tom and I departed for Little Rock, home of the Whitewater scandal and the host city of the Soaring Society of America convention. The flight was a GPS direct LIT with a heading of about 310. We flew at 2,500 feet to avoid strong headwinds at the higher elevations. A 2,400 foot radio tower about a mile off our right wing was the only excitement in our 4 hour flight. ATC gave us an approach to 22R, we taxied to Central FBO and caught the shuttle to the DoubleTree Hotel downtown.
We attended an event that night by the SSF (Soaring Safety Foundation) and I learned quite a bit about insurance, towing, and safe operations. It is good to hear someone talk about what can go wrong and help me to think about how I would recognize it and what I would do. Burt Compton has a lot of experience and I was glad to talk to him about safety in general and he agreed to send me his power point presentation so that I could share it with our club.
The next two days I spent attending seminars, lunches, dinners, sessions and on the exhibition floor looking at and sitting in gliders. It was great to talk to so many people with the same interests as myself. I got see motor gliders and sustainers and self launch gliders in addition to the high performance traditional gliders. I am impressed with the new jet powered sustainers and self launchers and believe that we will see much more of these designs in the future.
I was also able to talk to several commercial operators where I can go to develop new skills, fly ships that I have not flown before, and fly conditions that I have not flown like ridge flying, wave flying and aerobatics. I spent time talking with Jason Stephens, Estrella Sailport owner, and 3 time US aerobatic glider champion. I plan to fly aerobatics with him in March/April when I travel to Phoenix, AZ to see my new granddaughter, due to arrive in that time frame.
Tom and I spent time playing with Condor, a simulator for gliders. I bought the software and would like to try to set it up at the club. We need a computer and a couple of monitors. We also need a set of CH rudder pedals with a USB connector. We also bought some new gadgets for the club including a data logger.
Thursday night the adverse weather rolled in and left a half inch of frozen rain also known as ice on all surfaces. Fortunately, Central FBO put N44621 into the hangar for us. THANK YOU Central Aviation Services. Nevertheless the sidewalks were severe “DANGER ZONEs” making the walk from the Hotel to the Convention treacherous. We planned to go back to PNS on Saturday, but the weather had not cleared and there was ice in the cloud layer at 1900 to 4000 agl. N44621 is only 150HP and no deice equip. Not like those “heavy jets” that can blow right through such a layer with no effort that Tom flies on a daily basis. It broke our hearts to have to stay an extra day and night hanging out with glider pilots.
We had met a lot of great people, learned about the new ASW and how its design is being developed. We checked out the Perlan project - it is going to attempt a new height record of 90,000 feet. The old record is in the 50,000 foot range. I sat in the prototype and Tom took a picture of me.
The trip home on Sunday was uneventful. We filed IFR, but it was severe clear and blue skies all the way. We had plenty of time to talk and through the conversation I gained an appreciation of the efforts of Joe, Ken, Roger and the other long time CSA members that sustained the club through many tough years. Thank you all. (Joe was my first contact at CSA.)
As we approached PNS we noted that there was an airplane on the end of the runway at Coastal when we flew over Sunday afternoon. Hope you all were having as much fun as we were.
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» Great Pancakes!
» CSA Article in the UWF Newspaper
» Tom Johnson - Silver Badge - Minden, NV
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» It can happen to the best of us!
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» Altitudes - General Info
Weather Check:
Pensacola NAS (13 miles SSE)• Conditions: clear
• Temperature: 95°F
• Barometer: 30.05 in.
• Winds: NNW / 9 mph
• Visibility: 10 mi
(Last Update: 07/29/2010 12:56 pm)
Club Officers:
• President: Tom JohnsonEmail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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• Vice President: Ralph Tarver
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• Secretary: John Bolyard
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• Financial Officer: Roger Hinote
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• Civil Air Patrol Liaison: Jason Depew
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Club Instructors:
Certified Flight Instructors - Glider (CFIG)• Jason Depew
• Alan Edwards
• Dave Galloway
• Roger Hinote
• Brad Jackson
• Tom Johnson
• Joe Kuehmeier
• Sean Noronha
Certified Flight Instructor (CFI)
• Jason Depew
• Alan Edwards
• Dave Galloway
• Brad Jackson