Official Publication of the Airventurers, a Non-Profit Pilot s Association Volume 51, No. 8, Aug. 2011 www.airventurers.org Hello Airventurers, After the wonderful Fly-in to the McMinnville/Portland area, Jeanne and I were looking forward to spending a day or so with Gene and Bonnie Barlowe at their new northern home. I know they had spent a lot of time and thought in preparing their home for some of us to stay with them. Unfortunately every weather report I received indicated that a storm was moving in for the next few days. I just couldn t chance it so we had to leave early the next morning. In order to beat the storm we flew the trip home in one day. Not including two stops for fuel etc. it took 7 hours and 10 minutes of flight. The alternator went out so for a couple of hours, we were flying with almost all of my electrical equipment turned off. It was a long day and we were tired when we landed. I had to have the alternator and battery replaced the following week. I hope to get a rain check from Gene and Bonnie on our next trip up there. Jeanne and I enjoyed having 35 Airventurers members and seven of our family members at our home to celebrate my 80 th birthday. Gosh, it doesn t seem like a year has gone by since my last one. I guess I have to accept the fact that birthdays are good for you. The more you have of them the longer you ll live. Everyone appeared to have a good time eating and talking. We should have more events like this. The Airventurers had a fly-in to Camp Pendleton July 21 st and 22 nd. Twenty-two members attended. The weather looked a little questionable on Thursday morning so a few of us drove. When the weather cleared up the large majority flew later in the day and the weather remained good for the rest of the trip. After dinner at the Oceanside Harbor we walked around Cape Cod Village and had an ice cream cone. The next day at Camp Pendleton we saw the flight line, a fire crew presentation, visited the tower and radar room, the mechanized museum, and watched a martial arts demonstration. We had a buffet lunch at the South Mesa Club. It used to be traditional to complain about the food in the military. There was no reason for complaints about the meal we were served. All you could eat and it was delicious. It s a mystery how the marines can eat like that every day and remain so slim, trim and physically fit. Well, running 5 miles a day could help. I might be biased so I ll leave it to someone else to evaluate whether the fly-in was well organized or not. We re looking forward to the Airventurers Club picnic to be held on August 13 th in Santa Barbara at Goleta Beach. This has always been a fun event with a large number of Airventurers members attending. Yoni and Joel have their hands full and can use any help you can give. This would be a good opportunity for applicants to fulfill a requirement for co-hosting an event. There will be no dinner meeting during August but with the picnic on the 13 th and Barry and Laura Rainey s hangar party on the 20 th we won t have to go hungry or miss seeing each other for long. The Rainey s hangar party is tied in with the Camarillo Air show so of course it is at the Camarillo Airport. The party will be catered, so please make sure to RSVP. I ve been involved with planning the Camarillo Air Show that will be held August 20 th and 21 st. It s coming together and it looks like it s going to be another big event. The introduction of the pylon racing appears to be drawing much interest and a larger crowd. We re always looking for more volunteers if you want to participate. Blue Skies and good flying, www.airventurers.org
AIRVENTURERS APPLICANT CHECKLIST DATE APPLICANT SPONSOR FEE DINNER MEETING co-host add l co-host FLY-IN add l 4/06 Kardack Harris Y Y Y 1/10 Bakst Losacco Y Y Y 1/03 Reisman Eisenberg Y Y Y 8/10 Brandt McMullin Y Y Y Y 11/10 Cheer Savage Y Y Y Jan. 15 2011 Fly-Ins (not carved in stone) Laughlin, 1 nt. Eisenberg/Frangos Feb. 11-12 Navy Airshow & Fly-Over Djanogly & Rifkin Mar. 19 Apr. 16 May 20 June 24 July 21 Aug. 13 Sept. 24 Oct. 8 Nov. 6 Dec. 3 Palm Springs Follies Busick Harris Ranch, 1 day Losacco & Bakst Sacramento Delta, 2 nts. Samojen & Samojen McMinnville/Portland, 3 nts. Barton Camp Pendleton, 1 nt. Lane Club Picnic in Santa Barbara Boujo Grand Canyon, 2 nts. Kirschner Calico Days/Barstow, 1 day Lane Santa Paula Open House, 1 day Holiday Party Ideas/Suggestions??? Volunteers??? CAMP PENDLETON FLY-IN On July 21, the Lanes took 22.3 Airventurers on a short over-nighter to Oceanside for a tour of the Marine base, and managed to pack a lot of activity into a few hours. The weather was marginal when we left CMA, but we never miss an opportunity to file, and hey, even a visual approach counts, right? KOKB was VFR by the time we got there, so we didn t even have to go to the VOR, from which some people had a hard time finding the airport, even with GPS, iphones and ipads to help. The hotel kindly donated the use of their breakfast room for our cocktail party and I have to laugh we promptly re-arranged all of the tables so we could all sit together. That s what Airventurers do! Jeanne Lane outdid herself with the hors d ouevres, but we all went to dinner anyway, and then to the harbor for coffee and ice-cream. Friday morning, we boarded our big yellow school bus for the tour of Camp Pendleton. It is a huge base, 125,000 acres, with a day-time population of more than 70,000 military and civilian personnel, and it contains the largest undeveloped portion of coastline in Southern California. The ecosystem includes beaches, bluffs, mesas, canyons, mountains and our only free-flowing river. There are more than 1,000 species of plants, fish and animals, some of which are either threatened or endangered. Wildlife and habitat protection is a top concern of everyone who lives, works and trains at Camp Pendleton. Our tour included a visit to the air operations center, the control tower, a demonstration by the base firefighters, we got to see (and climb into/on) some of the vehicles that are being used in the Middle East, and a demonstration of martial arts, which (I think) all Marines have to learn. We enjoyed an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch, complete with tablecloths. Tony & Elaine Albany, Don & Pat Eisenberg, Fred Stewart, Joel Kirschner, Yoni Boujo, Richard Somers, Barry & Laura Rainey, Tony Samojen, Sid Djanogly, Bernie Harris, Ron Millman, Mike & Lois Savage, the Nelsons, Judy & Marv Rifkin thank our host and hostess for a great time. www.airventurers.org 2
FOR MORE PICTURES, GO TO: https://picasaweb.google.com/111866737570010723592/tourofcamppendleton? authuser=0&authkey=gv1srgcltsxtw6zpsxig&feat=directlink# AND CLICK ON SLIDESHOW www.airventurers.org 3
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THE CLUB PICNIC IS AL- WAYS A FREE EVENT FOR AIRVENTURERS, FAMILY AND FRIENDS, BUT YOU DO NEED TO R.S.V.P. PICK UP THE PHONE AND DO IT NOW 818-761-0342 TAKE LOTS OF PICTURES AND SEND THEM TO JUDYRIFKIN1@CHARTER.NET www.airventurers.org 5
SAFETY Claudio Losacco, CFII, Safety Officer Situational awareness is very important to our lives in general, but it can mean the difference between life and death to a pilot. Maintaining a good idea of your relative location to terrain, navigational aids and airports as you progress along your flight is imperative. Losing that relationship can be catastrophic. A very sobering example of what can happen is described below in a piece I came across this past month. Many of you might recall this local tragedy. I think it serves as a stark and poignant reminder of how important situational awareness is to a pilot, especially in IFR conditions. Situational Awareness Reprinted, with permission, from SDReader.com By Fulano detal, Posted July 11, 2011, 2:09 p.m. Situational awareness is the perception of environmental elements within a volume of time and space, the understanding of their meaning, and the projection of their status into the near future. Lacking or having inadequate situational awareness has been identified as one of the primary factors in accidents attributed to human error. The evening of October 16, 1986 was dark, with overcast skies in the Los Angeles area. A 22-year old flight instructor was giving his student instrument flying instruction in a Cessna 172N, registration number N1048F. The flight instructor worked for American Flyers, a flight training school based at Santa Monica Airport. It was only his second day of work, having moved to Los Angeles from Florida. The instructor and his student took-off from Van Nuys airport, and were being given radar vectors by air traffic control to DARTS intersection, which is the initial approach fix for the instrument approach to Santa Monica Airport. As the instructor and his student passed over the Van Nuys VOR, they were to be handed-off to the next controller down the line. The controller would normally give the airplane an assigned heading and altitude, and then tell the pilot to contact the next controller on a specific frequency. Cessna 48F was given an assigned altitude of 3,000 feet and a heading of 080. However, the air traffic controller failed to give the pilot a new radio frequency. No hand-off. The assigned altitude of 3,000 feet was just high enough that N1048F could safely fly right over the Santa Monica mountains. To the north and east of the San Fernando Valley, the San Gabriel mountains rise rapidly to over 6,000 feet. The last assigned heading of 080 would head the Cessna directly into a 6,176 foot mountain. According to the National Transportation Safety Board Report (NTSB), the first controller handed off N1048F at 7:29:12pm. The next controller acknowledged accepting the hand-off on his computer. Four minutes later, at 7:33pm, both the first and second controller s shift was over and they were relieved. They gave the incoming controllers a beginning briefing. On the controller's radar screen, the data tag showed that N1048F was being controlled by another air traffic control facility. While the controller could see 48F on his radar, he disregarded it, as it showed it was being controlled by others. Moments later, the Cessna hit the mountain at its last assigned altitude of 3,000 feet, killing the instructor and his student. The NTSB assigned the blame for the accident on both the ATC personnel and the instructor pilot. An experienced pilot, or even one who looked at the approach chart, would know he could not maintain a heading of 080 outbound from the Van Nuys VOR for very long without having a terrain clearance problem. If you look at the approach chart (next page), there are two circles on it, a big one and a small one. The small one shows the Minimum Safe Altitude within a 25 nautical mile radius of SMO. It shows that north of the airport, the MSA is 7,700 feet. The red arrow shows the last assigned course of the Cessna. The green arrows show the proper course into Santa Monica Airport. On the night of the accident, I was flying my airplane to Santa Monica from Stockton, California. I was the airplane ahead of 48F on the approach to SMO, and could hear the pilot and controllers talking until I crossed the Van Nuys VOR and changed frequency for the approach to SMO. It was a dark and overcast night, so there was little other air traffic coming into Santa Monica Airport. www.airventurers.org 6
As I was pushing my airplane back into the hangar, I wondered why the airplane behind me on the approach never landed. wing, porta potty s, small portable showers that often are missing hot water and tents that sometimes leak, just a little, when the big thunderstorms happen by. For the last 3 years I have been fortunate to hook up with about 35 other plane nuts that fly to OSH from all over the country. We all camp together, have dinner delivered every night and just have a weeks worth of airplanes, flying stories, a golf tournament, quite a few beers and more laughs than you can imagine. Many of us have chipped in and rent a hangar here at OSH to store all our camping equipment; we have purchased a 15 passenger van to run around in. It lives in the hangar all year and always starts when we get there. All these folks have found that special camaraderie that is Oshkosh and airplanes. REPORT FROM OSH Joel Kirschner Oshkosh, how do you explain the magic of that word? I have been thinking a lot about that question and to tell you the truth, I can t answer it. Oshkosh is a unique experience for everyone that comes here. It s not just about homebuilts, it s about every segment of aviation from the smallest kit plane to the Boeing 787. It s about all the peripheral stuff that goes along with everything and I mean everything that flies. There are four huge hangars that house every vendor that has anything at all to do with aviation. I call it the biggest toy store for pilots that you have ever seen. Any questions you may have from max CHT s on a 182 to the state of the art ADS-B in & out transceiver can be answered by the people responsible for building the darn things. I ve been asked to write an update about what s happening at OSH this year but I felt it was important to first explain what Oshkosh is all about before sharing the daily happenings. Daily airshows. Workshops on everything from riveting to fabric stitching to washing your underwear in the water fountains. Forums on everything from ADS-B to actual pilots talking about flying B-17 s in WWII to Zenith aircraft fly-ins. Cafes and food stands with everything from Wisconsin Brats to burgers and fries to salads to soft serve ice cream. Speakers and entertainment in the evening at a forum called Theater in the Woods ranging from Harrison Ford to the original astronauts to Gary Sinese s band. Movies at night projected on a super-sized inflatable screen in the woods. Camping community with hundreds of motorhomes and friendships forged over years and years of camping together. We spent $10 and got into a B29 for a look around. We heard Burt Rutan talk about going into space. We got the inside scoop about flying missions over Russia in an SR71. We saw an F16 land a little too fast and slip off the end of the runway (nobody hurt). We got to touch the new Boeing 787. When it took off it dipped its wings back and forth to say goodbye just like we do in our little airplane, it was something to see. There are over 10,000 little airplanes that land at Oshkosh during the last week of July. Many are spam cans but many more are literally works of art. They are the result of 1000s of hours of passionate caressing by some guy in his garage for the last 10 years. I have seen flying machines that make you stop in your tracks and marvel at the workmanship. More than 750,000 visitors come to Oshkosh during the week and everyone of them does OSH differently. I have been here many times and for me it s complete immersion in the experience. That means camping under the www.airventurers.org 7
AIRVENTURERS 29630 Ridgeway Drive Agoura Hills, CA 91301 National Aviation Day is observed in the United States on August 19 each year to celebrate the history and development of aviation. It coincides with the birthday of Orville Wright who, together with his brother Wilbur, made significant contributions to powered flight. In 1939 President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed August 19 to be National Aviation Day. The day coincides with the birthday of Orville Wright, who piloted the Wright Flyer. He and his brother Wilbur are given credit for building the world s first successful airplane with aircraft controls that enabled them to steer the plane. IMPORTANT DATES IN August 13 Club Picnic 20-21 CMA Airshow 27 Board Meeting fly to Santa Paula September 20 Dinner Meeting 17 Board Meeting non standard 24 Grand Canyon October 8 Calico Days in Barstow 18 Dinner Meeting 29 Board Meeting fly to Santa Ynez www.airventurers.org 8