This January 2007 issue of Skylines captures a club in a moment of both celebration and urgency. The centerpiece is Craig Sutherland's account of holiday training operations at W99, where newcomers Matt Putz and Bruce Codwise earned their first glider solos—Matt connecting with light wave to 8,000 feet and receiving a Sport Pilot endorsement, while Bruce completed crosswind training and set his sights on commercial and instructor ratings. Chief Tow Pilot Dick Otis, marking eight years with the club, delivers a pointed warning that Skyline Soaring's very survival depends on recruiting and training more tow pilots and acquiring a second tow plane, noting that on a recent good soaring day more than 25 members sat on a waiting list for tows. The issue also carries President Joe Rees's call for greater member involvement and an early flying season enabled by a joint operating agreement with the Mid-Atlantic Soaring Association, Fred LaSor's cautionary tale of a violent ground loop in a Grob during a Nevada wave flight that left a student with a cracked vertebra, a free DVD of the club's 15th Anniversary Gala, a rich exchange of Warrenton Soaring Center history from retired Navy fighter pilot Ron C. Miller, and updates on the SSA's ongoing recovery from the Alan Gleason theft scandal.
Skyline's February 2007 issue packs a full month of club life into its pages. President Joe Rees lays out the aftermath of a tense annual meeting in which Eric Litt was elected to the board as chief tow pilot, dues crept up to $25 a month, and the ASK-21 and tow rates were adjusted to keep the club solvent while remaining the valley's most affordable operation. In a deeply personal sidebar, member Shane Neitzey recounts the moment his doctors told him his Hepatitis C virus was undetectable—six months after a second treatment that had less than a ten percent chance of working—and admits to crying uncontrollably over good news for the first time in his life. Fellow member Jim Kellett brings readers along on a 50th-anniversary trip to New Zealand's South Island, where he and his wife Pat flew a Duo out of the tiny village of Omarama, got towed behind a vintage Archer, and marveled at a rural community where gliding is, in the locals' words, the only show in town. The issue also features Michael Ash's hands-on review of the X-Plane flight simulator as a winter soaring substitute, a report on the Flight Instructor Recertification Clinic held at M-ASA with Dean Carswell and Bob Wander, Richard Freytag's hard-nosed safety corner on turbulence training at Petersburg, and Dick Otis's continued push for a second tow plane. Rounding out the newsletter: a reminder of the mandatory February 17 safety seminar at Front Royal, a photo of a lenticular over Carson Valley, a warning about rats in the hangar trash cans, and the joyful announcement that Rebecca Pickrell is expecting a daughter due on February 12—Shawn's birthday.
President Joe Rees delivers a vivid, self-deprecating account of his first SSA Annual Convention in Memphis in over twenty years, from gawking at a carbon-fiber Antares 20E and a quarter-million-dollar LS-10 to sending his wife Sherry off to Graceland ("Elvis was a better singer than an interior decorator") and defending his choice to attend a sailplane battery session. The issue also features a pointed open forum on whether gliders should install transponders, with SSA Region IV Director Jim Kellett weighing the safety case against fears of draconian FAA mandates, and member Frank Banas reporting on a $439 PCAS unit he purchased at the convention. New members Chris Woodham and the Hatfield family join the club ahead of the 2007 season, a mandatory safety seminar is held at Front Royal, and the board announces improved communication protocols including hangar dry-erase boards and director-to-chief liaison assignments. Roundout items include a recommendation for Dale Masters' new book Soaring Beyond the Basics, the SSA's "Adopt-a-Library" program, the Pathfinder-Plus solar flying wing entering the Smithsonian collection, and the unfortunate news that Grob Systems in Bluffton, Ohio is ceasing U.S. operations after 24 years.
Skyline Soaring Club's April 2007 issue is dominated by a major community-relations push: after more than $20,000 in planning and research, the club installed a new German-made Hoffmann four-blade propeller on its PA-25 tow plane and began testing on March 26, with early results showing dramatically reduced noise at no loss of climb performance. President Joe Rees frames the effort as part of a broader strategy to be good neighbors in a rapidly developing Front Royal, Virginia, complete with a noise-abatement flight-path plan, a goodwill glider ride for county administrator Doug Stanley, and preliminary talks toward a long-term airport lease. The issue also sends member George Hazelrigg to Dillingham, Oahu, for a vivid account of ridge soaring on a 9,000-foot runway shared with skydivers, turboprops, and a military target range just over the hills. New member Tom Park—former Piper Aircraft designer who once nearly died in severe icing on a North Atlantic ocean crossing—shares his story of rediscovering flight through gliders. Rounding out the newsletter are equipment-care reminders, a member weight survey, and a full calendar of spring events including an away-day fly-in at High View, West Virginia, the Vintage Sailplane Association Nationals in South Carolina, and a Virginia–Carolinas sport-soaring tour hosted by the Tidewater Soaring Society.
The May 2007 issue of Skylines carries the club's most consequential news in years: the airport commission and the Skyline board have entered discussions to secure a 25- to 30-year lease at Front Royal, with glider hangars to be added to the Airport Layout Plan west of Front Royal Aero Services. Alongside that landmark, the newsletter brims with the small, human moments that make a flying club a community. Vern Kline recounts the day his son Richard, on a 2,000-foot tow, found a column of 8-knot lift and climbed past 5,000 feet over the Shenandoah Valley. At Randolph-Macon Academy's Springfest, dozens of middle-schoolers crammed into the ASW-20C, and a Suffolk boarding student lingered long enough to look up and ask, "Will you adopt me?" The club also planned its second Away Day at Craig Hageman's grass-strip High View Farm Airport near Summit Point, welcomed new PPL holder Mike Ash, mourned the death of Blue Angels pilot Lt. Kevin Davis in a Beaufort air-show crash, and issued an urgent call for members to step up as Hangarmeister and Tow Car Meister. It is a newsletter that looks simultaneously at the next three decades of the club and the next generation of pilots who will fill its hangars.
Skyline Soaring Club members marked a memorable June with a cross-country away day at High View, a rural grass strip 25 miles northeast of Front Royal, where 15 flights were logged under challenging crosswinds and Piet Barber claimed flight of the day with a 3-hour-45-minute tour of the Massanutten ridge and Harrisonburg. The outing, hosted by field owner Craig Hageman and powered by tow pilot Steve Wallace's enthusiastic aero-towing, gave pilots a hands-on lesson in landing at an unfamiliar field with trees at the threshold. The issue also carries Piet Barber's farewell note as he relocates to Fribourg, Switzerland for two years, his Memorial Day picnic report featuring Lynne Wark's hand-stamped club-logo pies, SSA Region IV Director Jim Kellett's urgent call for a successor amid the Society's restructuring, and Phil Jordan's spirited defense of the WWII glider program's overlooked legacy, including the release of the 'Silent Wings' documentary. Club business items include the search for a replacement Chief Flight Instructor, the adoption of a Honda trike ATV for ground operations, and the sad passing of aviation author and weather consultant Robert N. Buck at age 93.
The July 2007 issue of Skyline Soaring Club's newsletter is headlined by Michael Ash's dramatic account of a June 20th flight in Bob Collier's 1-26 (N289) out of Front Royal. After catching a 6-knot thermal to 4,200 feet AGL, Ash rode the Massanutten ridge at speeds up to 95 MPH with zero sink, covering 45 miles in roughly half an hour down to the Massanutten resort. The return trip, however, required a risky gap-jump between ridge segments that cost him critical altitude, forcing his first-ever off-airport landing in a hilly hay field bordered by trees. The glider rolled up a slope and came to rest in a hollow, where Ash enjoyed a nap under the wing, an amazed roofing crew, a nonchalant farmer, and a heroic recovery effort. The issue also features Jim Kellett's report on the third annual Family Day at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center, where Skyliners Richard Freytag and Frank Banas displayed gliders to over 17,000 visitors, including a visit from the Virginia Department of Aviation's chief. An 18-year-old exchange student from Warsaw, Poland, Blanca Abramek, contributes a vivid first-ride account with George Hazelrigg, while the editor's column rounds out the issue with used-glider buying advice, a note on the Perlan glider's 50,699-foot record, and details on the upcoming NAS Oceana Air Show featuring aerobatic champion Manfred Radius.
The August 2007 issue of Skylines arrives packed with transition and turbulence—both literal and figurative. The FAA announces a major overhaul of the Washington ADIZ, slashing 1,800 square miles and 33 airports from the zone and replacing the infamous 'Mickey Mouse ears' with a clean 30-nautical-mile circle effective August 30, a change that will reshape how Skyline pilots manage their approaches to the Dulles corridor. On the club side, the Board and instructor cadre elect Bob Sallada—veteran of the Naval Test Pilot School, Vietnam combat tours in the A-7, and the T-45 Goshawk flight-test program—as the new Chief Flight Instructor, while longtime CFI Piet Barber and his wife Stacy bid a fond farewell before a two-year posting in Fribourg, Switzerland. The issue also carries Bob Gould's vivid account of his first cross-country flight in a Capstan, which included a hair-raising passage through the Dulles approach where heavy jets crossed his glidepath one after another, and Jim Kellett's confirmation of a TCAS Resolution Advisory with a United Express jet over Front Royal, underscoring why the new transponder-equipped airspace rules matter. Rounding out the newsletter: Gordon Roesler's three-and-a-half-hour ridge-and-thermal endurance flight, Mike Ash's harrowing (and slightly messy) emergency landing in a Woodstock, Virginia school parking lot, Mike Hatfield's acrobatic ridge-soaring days at Dillingham Field in Hawaii, the NAS Oceana Air Show featuring glider aerobaticist Manfred Radius, and a welcome to a fresh crop of new members joining the Skyline family.
This September 2007 issue of Skyline Soaring Club's newsletter opens with a practical deep-dive on glider-trailer towing safety, drawing on the 850,000-mile experience of a former long-haul truck driver to put glider pilots' minds at ease. The club celebrates 17-year-old Matt Brewer, who earned his Private Pilot Glider certificate after beginning his soaring journey at age 13 in Las Vegas, and welcomes a wave of new probationary and temporary members. Guest flights delighted visitors from Paris and New York, while the club's most stirring story belongs to Bob Jones, an 84-year-old WWII Navy seaplane pilot who, after a chance visit to Front Royal, went from a wandering first-tow to a confident 3,000-foot release in a single flight. The issue also carries the sad news of Paul MacCready's passing on August 28, a personal update from Susan Gogos on her cancer treatment, a call for a new SSA representative to the National Coalition for Aviation Education, and a reminder that several Skyliners fly with the Civil Air Patrol, offering cadets essentially free glider time.
The October 2007 issue of *Skylines* is bookended by farewells and fresh starts. Longtime editor and pilot Phil Jordan pens a heartfelt retirement letter, explaining that progressive medical issues and a two-year gap in flying have made it time to step down as pilot-in-command and, after the December issue, hand the newsletter to a younger steward. His parting line—borrowing Kit Carson's famous quip that soaring is like sex, and he'd rather not watch others enjoy it—sets a wry, personal tone. Elsewhere, Regional Director Jim Kellett paints a vivid portrait of the Region IV South contest at Newcastle International Airport, where forty-plus gliders, Canadian and New Mexican visitors, a fleet of RVs with pop-out satellite TVs, families with babies ten days old, a cannon-blasting morning meeting, and an army of friendly dogs turned a competitive event into a celebration of soaring's social soul. The Board of Directors, reporting through Secretary Craig Bendorf, announces the appointment of new Chief Tow Pilot David Dawood and Roster Meister Michael Ash, the generous donation of a new tow car by Steve Landers, plans for a second tow plane, and a Regional Club Meeting set for October 20 at Front Royal Airport. SSA news confirms that Albuquerque, New Mexico in February 2008 will be the last annual convention before the organization shifts to a biennial schedule, and a brief obituary honors aviation innovator Paul MacCready, designer of the Gossamer Condor and the record-setting Helios solar aircraft, who passed away at 81.
The November 2007 issue of Skylines leads with Dick Otis's gripping two-day account of in-flight distractions during FAST student rides at Front Royal: first, discovering his Grob canopy was unlatched just after rotation and recovering in four seconds; then, the following day, being hit by a blood-curdling 80-decibel screech from a hairline crack in the ASK-21's wing tape that left him unable to hear his vario, radio, or passenger for ten agonizing minutes before a hard but safe landing. The issue also announces the club's December 8 Holiday Party at Bill and Lynne Wark's Canary Cottage in Clifton, Virginia; details Bob Sallada's new mentoring program pairing incoming students with club CFIs; reports the Board's deliberations on procuring a second tow plane and its call for volunteers to fill the Skyline Editor, Board, and Sprite Meister roles; welcomes a roster of new probationary and introductory members bringing the club to 89 active flyers; and features Chris Groshel's vivid memoir of growing up beneath the TWA flight pattern at Forty-Fort, Pennsylvania, and his decades-long odyssey from a one-member glider club at Sylvania Plantation Airport to the Skyline Soaring family.
Club webmaster Piet Barber, newly transplanted to Bern, Switzerland, signs on with the Segelfluggruppe Bern and reports on a glider club that suffers from the enviable problem of too many aircraft and not enough pilots. His dispatch covers the DG-300s, Duo-Discus X, and a vintage Rhönlerche; a mandatory noon-to-one curfew enforced by local ordinance; a control tower that speaks in feet and knots while the gliders read in meters and kph; and a Swiss-German dialect that leaves him comprehending barely five percent of the lunchtable chatter. Back at Front Royal, Spencer Annear lays out a detailed financial case for a second tow plane to relieve the congestion that has left nearly ninety members waiting on a single aging Pawnee that has logged some 18,000 tows. Mike Ash logs a thrilling 100-plus-mile cross-country along the Massanutten ridge in a leaky 1-26, battling sub-freezing temperatures and the very gap at Mount Jackson that had forced his first-ever hay-field landout the previous summer. The club also welcomes its newest second-generation Skyliner, David Collier, celebrates a membership of 93, hosts a holiday party at the Canary Cottage in Clifton, and points glider instructors toward a January refresher clinic in Charlottesville.