As the Skyline Soaring Club hunkers down for winter at Front Royal, this February 2008 issue of *Skylines* packs a surprising amount of motion into a quiet season. The headline adventure is the annual Mid-Atlantic Soaring Association trek to Hobbs, New Mexico—roughly 1,700 miles of highway, a WWII-era B-17 airfield with a two-mile ramp, dorm-room lodging at $14 a night, and the promise of pegged variometers climbing past 18,000 feet. In the meantime, the club's winter calendar is full: the SSA Annual Convention convenes in Albuquerque the first week of the month, a mandatory safety seminar kicks off the 2008 flying season on February 23, and the Petersburg, West Virginia wave camp follows immediately after. The issue also carries a lively internal debate over runway-change radio calls at the uncontrolled Front Royal field, a detailed cold-weather flying guide from resident curmudgeon Jim Kellett (complete with frostbite warnings and Moon Boot recommendations).
This March 2008 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter is dominated by the romance of wave soaring. Mike Ash recounts a two-day January trip to Minden, Nevada, where he and instructor Mike Moore rode a Sierra-generated wave to 18,000 feet in a Grob 103, covering roughly 275 kilometers over Reno, Topaz Lake, and the town of Walker in three hours and twelve minutes. The issue also captures a wave camp over Petersburg, West Virginia, where pilots from four states logged a dozen launches and reached flight level 127, and offers Jim Kellett's hard-won observations on reading cloud-deck holes and wisp drift to find wave in the Shenandoah Valley. On the club front, President Shane Neitzey launches a $40,000 member-loan campaign for a second tow plane, the board approves a Warrior Program to fly recovering disabled servicemen, and the annual safety meeting features two pilots walking the audience through the decisions that led to their 2002 accidents. The newsletter also carries notes from the Soaring Society of America's Albuquerque convention, including a $25,000 matched challenge grant and the announcement of a PBS documentary called *Cloudstreet*, and advertises two glider ground-school courses scheduled for March.
Gordon Roesler's gripping account of his first solo wave flight—reaching 13,900 feet in a Sprite glider off the Great North Mountain ridge near Front Royal—anchors this issue, detailing a harrowing February day of sub-zero temperatures, a frozen barograph, and a close encounter with a regional jet on approach to Dulles. The club also celebrates the arrival of its second tow plane, flown directly from the Berlin Segelflugverein in Germany by Captain Clarence Oveur and copilot Roger Murdock, and welcomes new member Bill Burner, a former competitive skydiver who test-jumped the first ram-air parachute for Notre Dame's John D. Nicolaides. Board notes cover Region IV interclub agreements, the $40,000 second-tow-plane pledge drive, and a proposed program to bring glider flights to wounded veterans at local military medical facilities, while a report from the SSA convention in Albuquerque highlights crashworthiness research and Jim Kellett's Exceptional Achievement Award.
This issue reads like a small world tour of the soaring fraternity. Greg Ellis reports on a February–March trip to New Zealand's South Island, where he flew a Duo-Discus in the 'Lord of the Rings' country around Omarama and stumbled upon the Nelson Lakes Gliding Club, complete with a winch so far away it was invisible from the takeoff point. Piet Barber, meanwhile, endured a Swiss Spring Field Check at Segelfluggruppe Bern and emerged with a vivid, sometimes exasperated comparison of Alpine and American flying doctrine—from wake-boxing so low the tow rope nearly whips the tail, to a full-spoiler 'get rid of altitude' dive that no American student would attempt. Back home, the club marked a milestone with the signing of a letter of agreement with the Potomac Consolidated TRACON (effective March 14), the second such arrangement in the United States, assigning discrete transponder codes to M-ASA gliders and tow planes operating near Front Royal and Fairfield. A detailed, multi-perspective account of an April 12 Sprite landout three miles north of the Shenandoah River yields ten hard-won retrieve lessons, including the discovery that the correct trailer hitch ball was missing. Other items include Dave Weaver's well-attended three-weekend spring training course, the grounding of the club's Sprite over a structural concern, Dick Otis's encouraging post-surgery update from the Navy Medical Center, and a second-tow-plane fundraising update standing at $33,200 of a $39,100 goal.
The June 2008 issue of Skylines captures a club in active growth mode. The board has authorized up to $75,000 (with member loans of $40,000) to acquire a second tow plane, with the committee eyeing Scouts, Super Cubs, or Maules, while a lease on Dan Noonan's single-seat Cirrus is expected to be operational by mid-June. Bill Vickland floats the idea of a 1974 Bellanca Citabria—currently for sale at $55,000—as a versatile backup tow and tail-dragger trainer, offering to run free tow tests at Petersburg. On the maintenance front, the Pawnee's VHF radio was replaced, the Sprite was grounded in late April for fuselage buckling, and the Grob was cleared as flyable after minor stabilizer damage. Community highlights include Dick Otis's encouraging post-heart-surgery update, retired anesthesiologist George Phillips building a GeeBee replica from scratch on his Virginia farm, and the launch of SoaringNV, a new Sierra wave soaring outfit in Minden, Nevada run by former Skyline member Fred LaSor. The issue also promotes the June 14 Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Family Day fly-in, the Women's Soaring Society Seminar in Indiana, and Gordon Roesler's officially acknowledged gold altitude record.
The July 2008 issue of Skylines opens with Gordon Roesler's gripping first-person account of an April 12 landout in a Sprite, triggered by a deceptively calm morning that gave way to 15-knot southwesterly winds and a violent turbulence corridor in the gap between Massanutten Ridge and Signal Knob. Roesler credits the club's recent safety meeting with steering his decisions toward a safe cornfield touchdown, and George Hazelrigg Jr. follows with a ten-lesson debrief of the harrowing four-hour retrieve, in which six men carried the disassembled glider over a fence, a stuck trailer was pulled from a mud hole, and the wrong hitch ball nearly derailed the whole operation. The issue also reports Kevin Fleet's 6/29 emergency landing after severe turbulence shattered his canopy, a detailed technical walkthrough of the club's Tost tow-reel system (including why the rope always breaks at the knot rather than the weak link), a 97-member roster update welcoming a Hungarian soloist and a Vermont pilot, a sailplane display at the NASM Udvar-Hazy Family Day, and a sidebar on Eric Rupp's record-shattering 444-mile thermal flight from Hollister to Calexico.
In a safety article that reads like a thriller set in the sky above Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, Curtis Wheeler walks members through the four Standard Terminal Arrival Routes that funnel jet traffic over and around Front Royal, explaining Minimum Enroute Altitudes, Victor airways, and the vectors that can swing a 15,000-foot airliner down to 7,000 feet MSL over the local VOR—all in the shadow of the Reno midair collision and the NTSB's push for sailplane transponders. The rest of the issue buzzes with club life: the long-awaited Cirrus is cleared for member flights at $24 an hour, with Gordon Roesler named Cirrusmeister; a Bulgarian visitor named Ertan, initially unsure whether to fly gliders or powered planes, spends an hour above 4,000 feet in a two-seater and lands declaring, "I want to start instruction tomorrow!"; the Pawnee towplane gets a full radio overhaul; the Grob sits on the ramp with a dinged aileron after a July 30 runway-light strike; the Tost rope guide is sawn through and under reconstruction; and a lead shot bag bursts across the taxiway, leaving Spencer Annear to sweep up a scatter of pellets. Rounding out the issue are a Tidewater Soaring Society letter-of-agreement with Norfolk Tower granting gliders discrete transponder codes, a call for a second towplane, a 1968 Slingby Capstan up for sale, and a gentle but pointed reminder from Resident Curmudgeon Jim Kellett to clean the hangar.
Skyline Soaring Club's September 2008 issue opens with SSC webmaster Piet Barber's vivid week-long account of chasing Alpine lift in Saanen, Switzerland, where he camped through rain, navigated Bärndütsch banter at a Lagerfest dinner, and squeezed three familiarization flights in a DG-300 around a restaurant perched atop a ski lift. Back at Front Royal, the club announced the purchase of a second tow plane—an Aviat Husky acquired in Cary, North Carolina on August 16—and celebrated two Silver Distance badges earned by Frank Banas and Craig Bendorf within days of each other. The issue also carries Mike Ash's report on spin training in a Blanik L-23 over the flat, thermally active Everglades, a reminder of the club's new Dr. Jack limited-weather service, membership and FAST-voucher procedures from Membership Officer Steve Rockwood, an SSA notice on the upcoming transition to plastic pilot certificates, and a brief look at Roke Manor Research's work on autonomous gliders that seek their own lift.
October 2008 marks what Secretary Craig Bendorf calls an "historical month" for Skyline Soaring Club: the fleet has grown to two tow planes and four gliders with the addition of a Husky and a Cirrus, the Grob and Sprite have both returned to service after repairs, and a $2 tow-fee increase takes effect. The issue's lead story sends readers into the cockpit of a Blanik L-23 at Shenandoah Valley Soaring Club, where Rob Creedon, Craig Bendorf, David Collier, and Ryan Hatfield deliberately spun the glider under the watchful eye of instructor Bob Sallada—five revolutions, a 100-knot recovery dive, and a 3-G pullout that left the author convinced he would "be a better pilot because" of the experience. Elsewhere, the newsletter points members toward the Chilhowee Oktoberfest (Oct. 10–12) in the Tennessee Appalachians, a potential five-to-six-pilot syndicate purchase of a nearly new Duo Discus with just ten hours on the airframe, winter wave-soaring camps at Petersburg, West Virginia, and a reassuring word from broker Pat Costello that AIG's financial troubles are unlikely to disrupt the SSA's group glider-insurance program. New private-pilot certificates for Rob Creedon and Tom Park round out a busy month at Front Royal.
Skyline Soaring Club's biggest news this month is the arrival of an 18-meter Open Cirrus, now under lease and ready for proficient pilots. New Cirrus pilot Mike Ash delivers a vivid first-flight report covering everything from the quirky gear-retraction lock to the surprisingly twitchy post-tow handling, and notes the club's requirements: a private glider certificate, 75 PIC flights, and 12 in the past year, with rental at $24 per hour. The month was equally busy on the solo front, as Matt Jackson earned his first solo on his fourth flight, Bulgarian-born Ertan Tete soloed in the ASK-21, and professional jet pilot Rick Regan made his first glider solo. Fifteen-year-old John Kouris made his first three flights on November 1, and the club welcomed three more introductory members. In a lighter vein, resident curmudgeon Jim Kellett recounts a back-seat ride in flight instructor Joe Parrish's 200-knot Berkut canard pusher over the Shenandoah Valley, and a rare mass migration of flying spiders. Elsewhere, the SSA announced new board leadership, opened a design contest for a traveling 18-meter nationals trophy, and the SSC board outlined 2009 plans including a student training kit program, a search for a new Grobmeister, and a West Virginia Wave Camp in late February.
The December 2008 issue of Skyline Soaring Club's newsletter leads with the story of Charlie Brown, a 90-year-old former P-38 Lightning and P-40 Warhawk pilot who, after his original Silent Wings glider training was canceled during World War II, finally experienced his first glider flight with SSC instructor Andy Gerner at Front Royal on October 11. The issue also chronicles a spectacular November 16 wave-flying day that produced 22 launches, ten gliders airborne in the first hour, altitudes above 11,000 feet, and half a dozen or so pilots collectively covering over 1,000 kilometers. Board candidates Jim Kellett and Joe Parrish have announced their candidacies for the 2009 elections, and the newsletter covers new introductory and visiting membership policies, tow-plane and glider operational status, the SSA's completed annual audit, the FAA's extension of parachute packing intervals to 180 days, a look at New Zealand's AirSportsLive virtual-flying coverage, and a full calendar of upcoming events including the January 2009 annual membership meeting and winter wave camps at Grant County Airport.