President George Hazelrigg, after four years at the helm, calls on members to step forward as candidates for two open Board seats ahead of the January 21 annual meeting, while the Soaring Safety Foundation launches its 2006 Accident Reduction Program, urging every pilot to make the first flight of the new year with a CFI-G instructor and inviting the community to share near-miss stories in a new 'Accidents That Almost Happened' series. The issue also carries a warm dispatch from Tucson, where member Vern Kline and his children enjoyed guest flights in a Grob 103 off an abandoned WWII airfield west of Marana, and longtime member Mark Ballinger reports his new role as Chief Pilot for Raytheon's Unmanned Aircraft Directorate. The club welcomes new members Craig and Zachary Bendorf, celebrates the birth of Caroline Alexandra Sutherland, and rallies behind a volunteer effort to put a glider on display at the 2006 EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, all while the editor defends the beloved Massanutten masthead photo with a 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' philosophy.
This issue carries the final President's Prerogative from George Hazelrigg, who looks back on a four-year tenure marked by paying off the Grob and Sprite, refurbishing the Pawnee, surviving a hostile Warren County Airport Commission that tried to drive the club out with a Based-Aircraft Fee, and building what he calls the best glider-pilot training program anywhere. The January 21 annual meeting elected new directors Robert Link, Rob Creedon, and Joe Rees, handed Bill Vickland a Sustained Service Award to a prolonged standing ovation, and confirmed the Pawnee is ready to fly. Piet Barber details the club's new computerized instruction syllabus, which lets students track their progress online between flights. Beyond the field, the newsletter reports on New Zealand's first televised Gliding Grand Prix in the Omarama mountains—won by Ben Flewett in a finish decided by four points, with helicopter air-to-air footage and 3D graphics that director Peter Newport called a new spectator sport—and announces a revamped Region IV North Contest at the Mid-Atlantic Soaring Center, now featuring a cross-country school, mentoring for new XC pilots, and a special two-place award. A Flight Instructor Renewal Clinic with Bob Wander is set for late March at Virginia Tech, and the FAA's latest registry counts 30,176 glider-rated pilots in the United States.
Skyline Soaring Club's March 2006 issue marks a fresh start on multiple fronts. Joe Rees steps in as President, replacing George Hazelrigg, who guided the club through a turbulent standoff with the Front Royal Airport Board of Airport Commissioners — a conflict now resolved, with the BAF dissolved and member fees refunded. The new Board of Directors and officer slate is introduced, and the club welcomes retired Lt. Col. Paul Seketa as its newest tow pilot. The SSA Region IV Director's Report delivers the issue's most star-studded tidbit: Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, speaking at the Arlington convention, revealed he had recently earned a glider rating and recounted his very first glider flight in December 1969 at the Capital Area Soaring School in Warrenton, Virginia. The newsletter also covers the mandatory February Safety Meeting, Craig Rodarmel's appointment to the Warren County Airport Commission, upcoming OLC cross-country camps in Virginia and North Carolina, the revamped fall Region IV North contest, and a heartfelt letter from a longtime member reflecting on 63 years of flight and fond memories of soaring above the Massanutten Mountains.
April 2006's issue of *Skylines* captures a remarkably full month for the Front Royal, Virginia, soaring community. The standout event is Bob Collier's extraordinary March 20 flight in a CAP 1-26: releasing at a mere 900 feet AGL, he climbed to over 9,000 feet and logged more than four hours in the air, a performance that left even veteran towpilots and club members stunned. The issue also records Rick Harris's hard-won solo after eighteen months of training, Greg Ellis's hands-on experiment confirming that the Grob's benign-spiral spoiler system genuinely arrests a developing graveyard spiral at altitude, and George Ross's thorough guide to web-based weather resources for planning ridge, thermal, and wave flights off the Massanutten. Captain Richard Otis, on Navy orders in Hawaii, squeezes in a 30-minute ridge run at Dillingham Airfield between monsoon squalls. On the club-governance side, returning president Joe Rees outlines a new prepayment plan for flight dues, flags the still-unsigned Front Royal airport lease as his top priority, and announces a late-April board retreat to refresh the club's strategic plan. The issue also carries the sad news of Steve Harvey's death in a March car crash, the birth of Adelyne Gera Hazelrigg, and a brief note on a fatal Cessna 182 accident near Weyers Cave. Together the pages paint a vivid snapshot of a small club balancing record flights, new pilots, administrative wrangling, and the quiet camaraderie of a shared hillside.
As spring winds and snow squalls test the pilots of KFRR, Joe Parrish delivers a practical, experience-based briefing on safe operations in gusty crosswinds—covering tree-shadow turbulence, premature tow termination, and the hard lessons of a downwind landing gone wrong. The issue also marks a significant loss to the national soaring community with the passing of Floyd Sweet, 91, a longtime SSA Director, WWII glider-training pioneer at Twentynine Palms, and stalwart of the Mid-Atlantic Soaring Association. On the brighter side, Chief Flight Instructor Piet Barber earns his Gold Altitude badge, Craig Bendorf logs a 50-minute solo in the K, and Dan Noonan passes his checkride after a twenty-year hiatus. The club's community outreach continues with a Soaring Cadet appearance at Randolph-Macon Academy—where a lucky student pilot logged 56 minutes aloft—and a multi-month ride program for Boy Scouts. A High Desert Soaring Club quilt raffle, a mice-infested glider in Bob Collier's garage, and a wry note about Piet's newly certified altitude round out a rich and varied issue.
Editor Phil Jordan opens with a self-deprecating plea for member contributions before the issue dives into its richest feature: Jim Kellett's meandering 'Connections' column, which traces a personal chain from a soaring demo flight in 1979 through the Flying Cow Farm gliderport, a Junkyard Wars airplane builder, the Fantasy of Flight Museum's Nieuport 17 restoration for the film *Flyboys*, and all the way to Kellett's own fifteen-year career designing Air & Space magazine and USPS aviation stamps. The issue also carries a gripping first-person account by Rick Harris of his Grob canopy popping open mid-pattern in wind and rain, and his improvised stall-and-reach maneuver to close it, followed by commentary from Kellett and a parallel canopy saga from Phil Jordan in a 1-26. SSA Region IV Director Jim Kellett weighs in on the Group Insurance Program, a TSA compliance letter that missed the glider-training exemption, and a visit by SSA Executive Director Dennis Wright to the Atlantic Soaring Club. A brief news round-up covers a fatal Schweizer crash near Pittsburgh and a Category A airprox in the Scottish Highlands in which a glider passed within fifty feet of a Tornado fighter jet at 450 knots.
In the club's longest and most personal dispatch of the year, Chief Flight Instructor Piet Barber recounts his six-year odyssey to earn the US Silver Badge—a saga of torn claim forms, expired submission windows, undeclared tasks, a dead Volkslogger battery, and one memorable lesson in supine urination. His perseverance paid off on May 6, 2006, when a 5-hour-23-minute wave-and-thermal flight from Front Royal to Luray to Winchester finally earned him Silver Badge #6857, confirmed by the SSA in June. Barber closes with eleven hard-won tips for fellow badge chasers. The issue also carries a gripping memoir from Member Emeritus Bela Gogos, who in 1942 flew his glider under a high-voltage power line to avoid a fatal collision, survived a blinding fireball, and went on to endure WWII, a Soviet Gulag, and a 39-year flying hiatus before returning to the sport in 1978 and logging 2,440 hours. Other highlights include the White House nomination of club member William B. Wark to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, a sobering report of a fatal stall-spin at a Pennsylvania soaring club, a TSA search of a pilot's reserve parachute at Anchorage, and a round of new-member welcomes and badge congratulations that underscore the club's steady growth.
The August 2006 issue of Skyline Soaring Club's newsletter, *Skylines*, is anchored by a remarkable account from instructor George Hazelrigg Jr. of a lesson given to Rebecca Pickrell, a totally blind young engineer at Northrop Grumman TASC who had never been in a glider before. Despite her blindness, Rebecca demonstrated exceptional pitch, roll, and yaw control, tracked thermals by audio vario, and flew a confident 25-minute circuit to 5,300 MSL—performance Hazelrigg noted surpassed that of many students after ten flights. Her seeing-eye dog, Jersey, wagged her tail for every landing plane but grew anxious when Rebecca didn't get out. The issue also celebrates club milestones: Danny Noonan's Private Glider Rating, Craig Bendorf's Commercial rating, Vern Kline's solo, and Bill Vickland's second-place finish (and Old Toad Trophy win) at the 1-26 Championships in Parowan, Utah. Hazelrigg contributes a travelogue from a soaring trip to Moriarty, New Mexico, while Ricardo Pradella and his two sons send a warm thank-you from Spain. The newsletter also announces the club's 15th Anniversary Gala for November 4 at the Heritage Hunt Golf & Country Club in Gainesville, Virginia, features a technical advisory on IGC-approved data downloads for FAI badge claims, and carries a brief but poignant obituary for founding member Ralph Wentzel, who passed in April at age 67.
The September 2006 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter is anchored by Susan Gogos's sweeping memoir, "Reflections of the Crew," in which she recounts years of ground-crew life alongside her husband Bela at soaring sites from Wurtsboro, New York, to Keystone Gliderport and Sugarbush, Vermont. Her stories range from the lighthearted—sharing a hangar with actor Chris Reeve, watching Cliff Robertson earn his glider certificate, and Bela's improbable landing in a village cemetery at Bellwood—to the deeply tragic, including a fatal crash at Keystone caused by an unhooked elevator and a mountain collision at Sugarbush that left a pilot and his stepson injured. The issue also features Piet Barber's vivid account of a two-hour cross-country flight at Warner Springs, California, with former Skyline member Byron Lowry, in which a single thermal carried them from 6,000 to 13,000 feet beneath cloud streets stretching to the horizon near the Palomar Observatory. Club news includes Craig Bendorf's Bronze Badge (August 27), Dan Noonan earning his Private Pilot Glider license on his 16th birthday, a grateful shout-out to out-of-town pilots who rescued the club when its tow-plane went down, and details for the 15th Anniversary Gala on November 4 at the Heritage Hunt Golf & Country Club in Gainesville, Virginia, featuring nationally known speaker Doug Jacobs.
The October 2006 issue of Skylines is dominated by a major financial crisis at the Soaring Society of America, where a former employee's misappropriation of withheld payroll taxes left the 13,000-member organization owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to New Mexico and the IRS. The SSA's CFO was fired, the Executive Committee moved swiftly to contain the damage, and a member Town Hall Meeting was set for November 5 at the Udvar-Hazy Center. Back at the club's home field in Front Royal, instructor Gordon Roesler recounts a remarkable September 23 session in which two pilots executed downwind landings amid severe sink and gusty crosswinds, one involving a high-speed 90-knot approach that required the full 3,000 feet of runway. The issue also announces the Club's 15th Anniversary Gala on November 4 at the Heritage Hunt Golf & Country Club, featuring 1985 World Champion and seven-time U.S. National Champion Doug Jacobs as keynote speaker; celebrates new badge achievements by Mike Ash and Mark Witte; and includes editor Phil Jordan's serendipitous discovery of the Library of Congress's 'Bound for Glory' exhibition of rare 1940s color glider photography, including a striking image of a Marine glider at Parris Island, South Carolina.
The November 2006 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter is anchored by the club's 15th Anniversary Gala on November 4 at the Heritage Hunt Golf & Country Club in Gainesville, Virginia, where 1985 World Champion and seven-time U.S. National Champion Doug Jacobs is the after-dinner speaker. SSA Region IV Director Jim Kellett issues a major fundraising appeal to put a volunteer-staffed soaring presence back at the 2007 EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where the prior summer's experiment had been a spectacular success; the goal is $8,000, with $2,622 already pledged. Chief Duty Officer George Hazelrigg follows an unnamed field incident with a pointed safety alert laying out mandatory radio, runway-clearance, and chain-of-command procedures for all club operations. A 'Meet the Member' profile introduces Bob Sallada, a former Naval Test Pilot School instructor and T-45 Goshawk flight-test program manager who first touched a glider by accident in the early 1970s and who, among a long list of aviation firsts, was one of twenty finalists in the last Apollo astronaut selection. Rounding out the issue are a call for a November–December wave camp, a NASA student aeronautics competition announcement, and word that Dr. John H. Campbell received the 2006 Mervin K. Strickler Aerospace Education Leadership Award in Arlington, Virginia, with Buzz Aldrin in attendance.
Skyline Soaring Club's 15th Anniversary Gala on November 4, 2006, drew more than 75 members and guests to the Heritage Hunt Club House in Gainesville, Virginia, for an evening of dancing, trivia, and a riveting presentation by National Glider Champion Doug Jacobs. Jacobs recounted the 2003 'Return to Kitty Hawk' expedition—a 12-stage, 2,500-mile cross-country glider flight from Los Angeles to the birthplace of powered flight, completed by over 50 pilots from eight countries—and shared details of the grueling 2006 International Glider Championship in Sweden. The issue also carries a gripping first-person account from emeritus member Bela Gogos of stealing a Bucker Jungman from Heroes Square in Budapest on Christmas morning 1944 and flying 120 miles west through Russian lines to escape the encirclement. New members Verne Kline, Sobek Dziadek, and Curtiss Wheeler earned their pilot and instructor certificates; Steve Rockwood steps in as Membership Officer; and Miriam Ellis proposes a standing social calendar to keep spouses and families at the field. The newsletter closes with details of the December 16 holiday party at the Canary Cottage in Clifton, a Region 4 town hall covering the SSA's financial scandal and a tour of Horten flying-wing sailplanes at the Udvar-Hazy Museum, and an announcement of a cross-country racing camp at Perry, South Carolina, in April 2007 mentored by Jacobs and the U.S. Soaring Team.