The January 2009 issue of Skylines is dominated by the sudden death of Bela Gogos, a founding board member of Skyline Soaring Club, who passed away of a heart attack on December 18 at his Gainesville, Virginia home. Born in Pápa, Hungary in 1924, Gogos flew gliders as a teenager, served as a fighter pilot in the Hungarian Air Force during World War II, was captured by the Soviets, and endured years in Russian prisons and Arctic Gulags before fleeing Hungary during the 1956 revolution. He eventually settled in America, worked at IBM, and became a beloved mentor and philanthropist in the Virginia soaring community, donating $50,000 to the SSA for youth soaring scholarships. The issue features multiple heartfelt tributes from club members—including a fond memory of his perpetually overripe in-flight banana and his legendary long-distance flights through what pilots affectionately called
The February 2009 issue of Skylines is anchored by a detailed report from the club's January 17 annual membership meeting at Shane Neitzey's home in Broad Run, Virginia, where roughly 40 members and family gathered to review a strong 2008: the club posted a profit despite purchasing a Husky tow plane, logged 1,275 tows and 479 glider hours, and held steady at 85 active members. The meeting also carried a somber note with the first presentation of the newly renamed Bela Gogos Club Service Award, given to Chris Groshel in honor of the founding member who passed in December, and a memorial service held in Manassas on January 9 drew current and former members to share fond recollections. A member survey revealed a clear preference to retain Dan's Cirrus as the next club acquisition (28 votes to 8 for a different glider), and the board elected Craig Bendorf as president and Jim Kellett as secretary. The issue also flags the February 17 deadline for the FAA's new DC ADIZ/SFRA rules requiring online training for any flight within 60 nautical miles of the Washington, D.C. VOR, and features a compelling AOPA/SSA article drawing a direct line from glider-pilot training to Captain Chesley Sullenberger's legendary Hudson River ditching, with F-16 instructor and glider pilot Danny Sorenson calling dead-stick landings 'instinctive.' Upcoming items include the mandatory annual safety meeting on February 7, a cross-country ground school with Jim Garrison on March 28, and a call for volunteers to build a Grob tail dolly and ASK-21 ballast weights.
March 2009 brings a landmark moment for the soaring community: at the SSA Regional Leadership Conference held at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center, the FAA announced it would establish a national glider-unique transponder code (0000), a change the Soaring Society of America has sought since 1995. The announcement came just days after a San Francisco Examiner editorial reignited the long-running debate over transponderless gliders in commercial airspace, prompting a fact-based rebuttal from SSA Region IV director Jim Kellett that put actual midair-collision statistics to rest. The issue of glider identification dominated the newsletter, with the club also urging members to complete the newly mandated Washington, D.C. ADIZ training. On the home front, Skyline Soaring Club launched a member pledge drive to purchase a Cirrus single-seat glider for $16,000, a cross-country course was scheduled in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and a deeply personal letter from Susan Gogos honored the memory of her late husband Bela, a lifelong member of the club's flying family.
April's Skylines delivers a month packed with soaring news, headlined by the International Gliding Commission's confirmation that Uvalde, Texas will host the 2012 World Soaring Championship in Open, 18-meter, and 15-meter classes. The club's Cirrus pledge drive has reached $14,400 of its $16,000 goal, with the board committing club funds to close the gap. Rostermeister Mike Ash offers a thorough review of XC Skies, a web-based cross-country forecasting tool he has used for nine months, praising its accuracy over the more optimistic BLIP-MAPs. In the Doofus Report, Chief Flight Instructor Jim Kellett recounts a cross-country flight that included weak wave soaring above 13,000 feet, a frozen drain tube, and—after ignoring repeated radio warnings—a gear-up landing that left a new centerline on the runway. The issue also covers a 30-pilot cross-country course taught by Jim Garrison in Harrisonburg, Va., new board initiatives including SSA 'Fly a Sailplane Today' packages and a Potomac Consolidated TRACON letter of agreement, and Joe Parrish's monthly airspace thought experiment on legally gliding to Dulles International.
The May 2009 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter carries a season of bittersweet news from the Front Royal–Warren County, Virginia field. The most moving piece is a tribute to Charlie Spratt, the legendary contest director and self-described "soaring vagabond" who passed away after a long struggle with kidney disease and a failed third transplant; memorial services were planned at the 15-meter Nationals in Cordelle, Georgia, and the Region 2 contest, with Karl and Iris Striedieck hoping to plant a tree in his memory using some of his ashes. The club also reported a glider crash near Fairfield, Pennsylvania, in which Frederick Mueller, 41, of Stephens City, Virginia, was injured and later moved from serious to satisfactory condition at York Hospital. On the growth front, Craig Rodarmel and Dave Collier earned their private pilot certificates in challenging conditions, the club announced the purchase of a high-performance Cirrus glider funded by member loans, and a new safety officer, John Noss, was appointed after revalidating his CFI(G) with Burt Compton in Marfa, Texas. President Craig Bendorf recounted a spectacular late-April soaring day that included a shared climb to 10,000 feet with an Osprey, while Robert Creedon's "Creative Daily Reports" told the fairy-tale of the Three Little Pilot Piggies and the Big Bad Wind Wolf. The issue also featured a profile of record-setting pilot Karl Striedieck of Bald Eagle Mountain, a summer intensive-instruction week planned for July 20–24, and Joe Parrish's monthly cross-country thought experiment on towrope tension.
This issue of Skylines opens with Piet Barber's vivid dispatch from Switzerland, where a five-hour Discus B flight over the hills near Bern turned into a crowded, FLARM-buzzing, metric-altimeter-baffling adventure that he likens to a child's crayon scribble on a map. The club also announces its second "Away Day" on June 6, splitting the fleet to a private grass strip at High View Farm in Berryville, Virginia, for a day of relaxed cross-country flying far from the concrete of Front Royal. Perhaps the most remarkable item is an invitation from Karl Striedieck, the 1968 world distance record holder and U.S. Soaring Hall of Fame inductee who flies from his ridge-top strip on Bald Eagle Mountain, Pennsylvania: for a $200 donation to the U.S. Soaring Team Fund, Skyliners can spend a day in his Duo Discus and, as Jim Kellett puts it, "learn more about real soaring in one day than in any other six months of your life." Rounding out the issue are a new probationary member (Elaine Chou, close to her checkride), a Capstan partnership sought by Shane Neitzey, a towing-tension physics puzzle from Joe Parrish, and a note that Boy's Life magazine ran a six-page gliding feature in its spring issue.
The July 2009 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter is headlined by George Hazelrigg's vivid, photo-illustrated account of catching a mountain wave above Front Royal on May 31, climbing to 10,600 feet MSL in laminar air above the clouds. Hazelrigg walks readers through the physics of the Dolly Sods wave, the turbulent rotor below it, and the practical techniques—figure-eight turns, GPS tracking, benign spirals—for staying in the lift and reaching the flight levels. The issue also reports a successful Away Day at Craig Hageman's High View field in Utah, where twelve flights were logged and David Collier set the Flight of the Day with three hours in an SGS 1-26; President Craig Bendorf's update on a healthy mid-year (500+ tows, twelve qualified tow pilots, all four gliders and two tow planes flying); a rare opportunity to spend a day soaring with Hall of Fame pilot Karl Striedieck in his Duo Discus; the club's hard-won Grob-103 airworthiness-directive bolt replacement; a new transponder-code agreement with Potomac TRACON; and plans for a first-ever Week of Soaring, July 20–24, with weekday operations and priority student training.
Skyline Soaring Club's nine-day intensive training camp (July 18–26) produced 86 tows, 29.6 hours of glider time, and a first solo for club member Hugh McElrath, while John Noss wrestled his newly reassembled Ventus into a 3:17 flight of the week. The issue also carries Shane Neitzey's vivid account of the International Vintage Sailplane Meet at Harris Hill, where more than 40 wooden gliders—some dating to the 1920s—launched off a 1,100-foot runway that ends at a 700-foot cliff. In a touching intergenerational story, 16-year-old Zachary Vickland soloed in the SGS 1-26 his grandfather Bill built as a kit in 1966, completing the feat at the Caesar Creek Youth Summer Camp. Rounding out the issue are a review of Rinker Buck's *Flight of Passage*, a call for a public-relations officer, and the first Husky loan repayments to members.
Skyline Soaring Club's September 2009 issue opens with a gripping first-person account from webmaster Piet Barber, who spent his final three months in Switzerland living in a tent in the Saanen valley, flying Discus B and DG-300 gliders seven days a week, chasing ridge lift and wave over the Swiss Alps before his family's return to the United States. The issue also carries a pointed safety analysis by tow pilot Bill Burner, who pushes back on a widely read Soaring article to argue that altitude separation between a Pawnee towplane and a just-released glider is far from automatic and that both pilots bear a mandatory clearing responsibility. Club webmaster Barber details the launch of SPR 2.0, a new web-based training-progress system that links flight logs, instructor reports, and syllabus sign-offs into a single grid view. Interim Chief Flight Instructor Jim Kellett publishes a close reading of FAR 91.113 to correct the common assumption that gliders always hold the right of way over airplanes. Rounding out the issue: a call for volunteers for the Warren County Balloon and Airstravaganza, a stern duty-attendance notice from Chief Duty Officer George Hazelrigg, the announcement of a new scholarship-charity committee, a brief obituary for probationary member Ted Toth, and a membership roll that now stands at 106 active members.
In the issue's most stirring account, Rob Creedon recounts how, on a gray August day with a broken overcast at 700 feet and a solid layer at 2,500, duty instructor Joe Parrish and tow pilot Martin Gomez threaded their way through eerily dark clouds to give Eryn Creedon—his sister, then undergoing chemotherapy in Washington, D.C.—an eight-minute glider flight that she will never forget. The October issue also celebrates the Cumberland Soaring Group's 50th anniversary, where Soaring Hall of Fame members Bill Holbrook, Ed Byars, and Lanier Frantz gathered (and where a nostalgic photo slideshow revealed the youthful face of rocket pioneer Werner von Braun, an enthusiastic glider pilot). An 88-year-old first-time passenger logged a hour-and-seven-minute ride in booming September lift; the club board green-lit a new charity committee to explore glider-flying scholarships for young people; and the SSA reported that its Chapter Rebate Program would return in January, that a searchable electronic archive of SOARING magazine dating to 1932 was in the works, and that the 2012 World Soaring Championship would be held in Uvalde, Texas. Round out the issue with a TRACON open house invitation, a CFI revalidation clinic at the Udvar-Hazy Museum, a for-sale listing for a 68-acre grass-strip airport in Woodstock, Virginia, and the club's 960-plus tows and 673 soaring hours through the fall season.
The November 2009 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter opens with a heartwarming account of 92-year-old Dorothy Orr, who, after watching gliders being towed at Front Royal, declared "How I'd love to go up" and took her first soaring flight in a Grob with her son George Hazelrigg. The issue also details plans for the 2009–2010 winter wave-soaring season at Grant County Airport in Petersburg, West Virginia, with volunteer-run camps scheduled in November, December, and early March, and features a first-hand report from Vern Kline on the thrill of winter wave flying. Club members recount their appearance at the Aviation Education Exposition at Winchester Regional Airport, where they displayed a Schleicher ASW-20 glider and a soaring video to several hundred teens and over 50 sponsors. Rounding out the issue: the annual Christmas potluck party on December 5 in Gainesville, Virginia, with live music from the band "Blues On The Side"; an introduction to the Aerokurier Online Contest (OLC) for worldwide glider competition; the SSA's new Sailplane Tracker List for locating pilots equipped with satellite beacons; and a photo gallery by Martin Gomez capturing David Collier's 3:58 flight in his father's vintage Schweizer SGS 1-26 and tow operations with the club's Husky.
As the 2009 soaring season winds down at Front Royal-Warren County Airport, Skyline Soaring Club President Craig Bendorf reports a record-breaking year with over 1,209 flights and announces that the club will keep 2010 dues flat. The issue's centerpiece is a detailed guide to the club's winter ad hoc operations (Dec. 20, 2009 – Feb. 20, 2010), explaining how members organize spontaneous mountain-wave and ridge-soaring days around Front Royal, including staffing rules, visiting-pilot procedures, and oxygen requirements. Other highlights include a glider display at the Potomac Consolidated TRACON open house in Vint Hill, Va., where Skyline members answered questions from more than 100 general-aviation pilots; the formation of the Skyline Soaring Foundation as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization; a winch-launch clinic trip to Bermuda High Soaring in South Carolina; and a sobering report on the fatal mid-air collision of a Piper PA-25 Pawnee tow plane and a Schleicher ASW-27 sailplane at Crazy Creek Air Adventures in Middletown, Calif., on November 28. The issue also carries the 2009–2010 club calendar, a holiday-party invitation for December 5, and a leadership transition as Phil Jordan steps in as Skylines editor.