Come Soar With Us...
Come soar with us over the beautiful and historic Shenandoah Valley. Skyline Soaring Club at the Front Royal - Warren County Airport (FRR) near Front Royal, Virginia. Located about 50 miles west of Dulles International Airport and about 70 miles west of downtown Washington, DC, we are situated conveniently to residents and visitors to the nation's capital.  Virginia welcomes aviators!

Front Royal marks the northern end of the famous Skyline Drive, a splendid scenic route that runs south down the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Several of the Shenandoah Valley's famous limestone caverns are nearby, including Skyline Caverns just a few miles south of the airport.  There are many other tourist attractions in the area, including dozens of Civil War battlefields - the town of Winchester, 17 miles north, changed hands more than a dozen times!  For an up to the moment summary of things to do, visit Virginia's tourist guide and search the "locations" menu for Front Royal.

 Situated between the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east and the northern tip of the Massanutten Ridge on the west, we have excellent soaring conditions - thermal, ridge, and wave; it's not unusual for a soaring pilot to experience all three in a single flight! 

Our Membership...
Our membership includes FAA Certified Glider Instructors who are skilled commercial pilots, some with thousands of both power and sailplane hours.

Our club operates four gliders, which are available for rental by members. Our fleet consists of two two-seaters, an ASK-21 and a Grob 103, and two single-seaters, a Schweizer 1-36 and a Schemp-Hirth Cirrus. Additionally, many of our 100 members own private gliders, either individually or in partnership with others. The privately-owned gliders include a LAK-12, an LS-1, two LS-4s, a DG-303 ELAN, a 1-35, a couple 1-26s, an ASG-29, a Ventus A, an ASW-20, an ASW-27B, an SZD-59, and a Centrair Pegasus.

All our members are eager to share their experience and love of soaring with students and visitors. Many members have published articles about soaring - check some of them out by clicking on the highlighted link!

As a trial member you can enjoy riding in a sailplane over beautiful Shenandoah Valley at a nominal cost, while deciding whether or not you want to become a regular member. You can experience the freedom of flying as the birds do. Temporary Members report good experiences from their first visits!
 

Are There Physical Limitations to Soaring?
Yes, there are.  One of the most common is weight!  For example,  many of us are sensitive about our weights.  Well, gliders are sensitive about that too.  Safety parameters exist for pilot and passenger weights in all small aircraft.  In general, individuals weighing more than 110 kg (242 lbs) may not be able to fly in gliders.  These limitations exist for safety reasons.

Learning to Soar...
Hundreds of Americans from high school students to grandparents learn to soar each year. Nothing more than normal coordination and a love of the air is required. Members can learn to soar either as beginners or transition pilots. Flight training is in two-place sailplanes noted for their safety record and docile handling characteristics. All Club instructors are SSAI (Soaring Society of America Instructors) who administer the "ABC/Bronze" badge program which takes you through a carefully organized series of steps to being a competent and safe soaring pilot. (Of course, all instructors are certificated by the FAA.) While there is considerable variance in the speed with which individuals learn to fly, it takes an average of 35 flights to solo. At the right time in your training program,  a designated FAA examiner will fly with you to test your qualifications for a Private Airman's Certificate which will permit you to carry passengers in a glider.

For the Power Pilot...
Transition pilots are guided through the same training syllabus as ab initio pilots to assure that the training is thorough.  Of course, the training usually goes much quicker, particularly if the candidate has taildragger experience.  The addition of a glider rating to a private ASEL (or higher) pilot rating requires instruction in the characteristics unique to gliders and a minimum of 10 solo flights. An oral and flight exam is necessary but no written is required. While a glider rating requires no medical exam, you can not have any known medical problems that would be a hazard when flying.

Want to read more about training??

You can read copies of the Club's training Syllabus, which is used for both ab initio and transition pilots. You may also read a list of required and recommended reading materials: [ PDF ]. For more detail and links to other training sites, click HERE.

Check Us Out...
The North and South Forks of the Shenandoah river merge just north of the airport to form the beautiful and storied Shenandoah River. The Massanutten Ridge, ca. 4 miles west, provides a textbook example of ridge soaring.  Weather conditions also often create very good wave soaring. If you want to experience the freedom of soaring over a stunning natural setting, come fly with us as a trial member. Then if you want to learn to fly sailplanes in a club atmosphere, you can become a regular member and receive instruction leading to a glider license. For the licensed power pilot transition instruction for a sailplane rating is available. 

Skyline Soaring Club Inc. operates Thursdays, weekends and some holidays, February through mid-December,  from 10 am to whenever we stop. Occasional other weekday flying by prior arrangement.  Please e-mail our VP for Membership Affairs at welcome@skylinesoaring.org for more information.

For those flying in, see Front Royal - Warren County Airport (FRR),  managed by Cass Aviation. Open 8:00 AM - 7:30 PM May through September, 8:30 AM - dusk October through April.   Elevation 709, runways 9 and 27, dimensions: 3,008x75, asphalt, UNICOM/CTAF 123.0. 

And if You're SERIOUS (or just nosy) . . .

You can check out the Club's Operations Manual  [PDF] which provides all the nitty-gritty detail about membership types, rules & restrictions, procedures, etc.  It's in a (large) PDF file which can be viewed with Adobe Acrobat by clicking on the hyperlink above. 

Skyline Soaring Club Facilities...
The Club operates out of new, commodious hangars located on the north side of the airport about midfield.  We fly the Schleicher ASK-21, Grob-103, Shempp-Hirth Open Cirrus, and the Schweizer 1-36 "Sprite". Towing is provided by a powerful Piper Pawnee, and an Aviat Husky. Tie-downs are available from the FBO, and very limited hangar space is available from the club. 

About this Website...

This website has gone through many revisions:

In July of 1995, the original site design was done by Piet Barber, The page was sparse, and designed only for Mosaic or Netscape version 1.1 -- The website was online well before AOL or Microsoft admitted to the existence of the World Wide Web. The spartan site contained few graphic-images and only small amounts of usable content. The site was graciously hosted by the Space Systems Laboratory at the University of Maryland. [ Link ]

The site went through several revisions in the late 1990s until it was redesigned again in early 2001. It moved from The University of Maryland's Space Systems Laboratory to a location in Richard Freytag's house. The redesign made plain old hyperlinks in the left menu, which is much easier on the bandwidth for those who are stuck using modems.

In 2006 the real Webmaster took an assignment away from our local flying field and passed several of the site duties to a non-traditional web developer that speaks awk, bash, korn, perl, and sed. Ease of navigation and currency of linked data are now major objectives.

Good feedback and advice are a constant -- happily given in *great* amounts by members and surfers. Please send us yours.

All club members are expected to donate some time to the operations of the club. Scheduled duty days are maintained by our skillfull RosterMeister and published on the Club Duty Roster through a nifty web interface. Send changes to the current RosterMeister at rostermeister@skylinesoaring.org. In addition to the scheduled duty days, some members take on additional volunteer positions that are listed on our Membership page Membership.

The website's History and Events pages are maintained by Jim Kellett. Send suggestions for changes and/or additions to Jim@Kellett.com.

Content of the Membership lists is maintained by a password-protected interactive web-enabled Membership Administration Program, which is run by Steve Rockwood.

All of the contributors are club members, who donate their blood, sweat, tears (but mostly time) to the worthy cause of the soaring club.

If you would like to give feedback, (both good and bad) the whole crew would love to hear it. Please write to: webmaster@skylinesoaring.org .