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Phil Jordan steps back into the editor's chair after a two-year sabbatical, calling his return a matter of 'kicking and screaming' and thanking Dennis Johnson for holding the fort. The issue is rich with human stories: Fred Mueller, whose sailplane graces the masthead, shares a candid update on his slow recovery from a spinal cord injury, writing that he is 'guardedly optimistic' about returning to work; the club mourns the passing of Janie Regan, wife of member Rick Regan; and Bill Vickland delivers a passionate, 49-year defense of the Schweizer 1-26 as a cross-country glider, recounting 250-plus landouts and the quiet camaraderie of the 1-26 Association. Craig Bendorf's President's Report calls for board volunteers and a push toward the best year yet, while the Skyline Soaring Education Foundation takes its first steps toward 501(c)3 status. Rounding out the issue are a NASA report on the SOFIA infrared jumbo jet's first in-flight telescope door opening, a photo essay from an Alaskan gliderport, a Christmas party spread, and an invitation for members to trade cold-weather flying memories for the February edition.
February 2010 brings a dramatic mix of near-misses, heartfelt remembrance, and organizational growth at Skyline Soaring Club. Chief Tow Pilot Dick Otis recounts a harrowing December session in the Pawnee, where severe rotor off Massanutten Ridge sent a K-21 into a close downwind and snapped the tow rope mid-air, followed by a second bout of violent turbulence that ended his day early. The club also presented the 2009 Bela Gogos Memorial Service Award to Spencer Annear, accompanied by a deeply moving letter from Susan Gogos, who reflected on 52 years of marriage and her late husband's enduring love of the club. On the organizational front, the Board formally established the Skyline Soaring Education Foundation, elected its first board of directors, re-elected Craig Bendorf as President, and approved a new Tow Pilot Manual. Mike Ash issued a six-month OLC contest challenging new online-contest pilots to post a 100-kilometer flight for a DVD of the classic film The Sun Ship Game, while the annual safety meeting was relocated to the Samuels Library in Front Royal to accommodate a growing membership and a new risk-assessment questionnaire.
The March 2010 issue opens the new flying season with a dramatic account of Airport Manager Reggie Cassagnol and Captain Rock Skowbo flying a Cessna 310 out of the snowbound Front Royal field to deliver medical supplies, cots, and a generator to Cap-Haïtien in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake, operating under the auspices of the nonprofit H.O.P.E. The newsletter also celebrates Skyline flight instructor Jim Kellett's receipt of the Soaring Society of America's Exceptional Service Award in Little Rock, Arkansas, recognizing his work securing special transponder codes for sailplanes in the greater Washington, D.C. airspace. A sobering NTSB preliminary report on the February 6 mid-air collision between a Cirrus SR20 and a Piper towing a Schweizer glider near Boulder, Colorado—killing three—serves as a stark safety reminder. Club operations news includes the Grob's return from its 3,000-hour inspection in Pennsylvania, the Pawnee's completion of its annual check, and spirited debate over adopting winch launching at an alternate site. Members share first-hand accounts of the SSA convention in Little Rock, from motor-glider demonstrations to a CONDOR simulator training session and a riveting talk by competition star Uli Schwenk. The issue closes with board minutes, a reminder about expiring paper pilot certificates, and a welcome to new students Spencer Wilson and Nicholas Duckworth.
This April 2010 issue of Skylines carries a remarkable announcement: two new Skyline student members, Nick Duckworth and Spencer Wilson, are training in the club's Husky and a Capstan to become tow pilots for the U.S. Naval Academy's soaring program, which will fly roughly 150 midshipmen at Fairfield, Maryland, over the summer. The club is also pressing forward on its 2010 Strategic Plan, with a member survey on the table for acquiring a third two-place sailplane and a working group negotiating hangar expansion with the Warren County Airport Commission. Chief Flight Instructor Piet Barber offers a fresh twist on student training with his home-built glider flight simulator, while former editor Dennis Johnson delivers a vivid, sometimes rueful tour of the largely dormant soaring clubs he visited across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York—concluding that Skyline's porch-side camaraderie and active fleet are rarer than most members realize. The issue also reports on the Skyline Soaring Education Foundation's push for 501(c)(3) status to fund local soaring scholarships, Dick Otis's experiments with a GoPro helmet camera for instruction videos, and a pointed sidebar from Jim Kellett on a retired Edwards test pilot's prediction that the last manned tactical aircraft will be the F-35.
A busy May at Skyline Soaring Club opens with President Craig Bendorf urging members to get back to the field and join the Mike Ash OLC cross-country challenge, while the calendar fills with a June 5 Away Day at High View Farm Airport and a July 19–23 Instruction Week featuring a prototype soaring simulator. The month's most dramatic visitor is Bacil Dickert, who drops his hang glider out of the sky onto Front Royal after a 2½-hour flight from Woodstock Tower. Meanwhile, Chief Tow Pilot Curtis Wheeler puts Naval Academy midshipmen through their paces in the Husky, Rob Creedon reports on a surprisingly realistic tow-and-soar session in Piet Barber's basement using a TrackIR head-tracking rig and the Condor simulator, and Hotel 3 (the ASW-20C) gets fitted with a SPOT satellite Personal Locator Beacon so crew and family can track flights in real time. The issue also carries word that charter member and K-21 owner Fred Winter is recovering from a serious LS-4 accident, that Ryan Hatfield is in Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, and that George Hazelrigg has unveiled the club's new “Skyline Soaring Club Fecal Roster” to shame no-shows off the duty roster.
This issue of Skylines delivers a vivid passenger account from John Noss, who spent a day in the back seat of Karl Striedieck's Duo Discus at the Region 2 contest at Mifflin County Airport, watching the nine-time world-record holder thread 219 miles at 58 knots through sketchy lift over the Pennsylvania ridges. The newsletter also announces the founding of the Skyline Soaring Educational Foundation of Virginia, a new 501(c)(3) dedicated to youth flight scholarships and soaring outreach, and carries a tribute to Rudy Opitz, the 99-year-old chief test pilot of the Me 163 Komet who passed in May. Jim Kellett contributes a tongue-in-cheek but genuinely useful primer on "Kellett's Law"—the unshakable principle that no forecast replaces standing on the field at Front Royal. President Craig Bendorf reports 330-plus tows for the spring, a new treasurer in Tom Parks, and plans for a Week of Soaring in late July, while a May 9 ADO report captures a rare wave day that sent three pilots soaring for hours over the Shenandoah Valley.
The July 2010 issue of Skylines marks a milestone month for the Front Royal club. The Skyline Soaring Educational Foundation of Virginia (SSEF), a 501(c)(3) brainchild of club founding father Spencer Annear, has received state incorporation and is soliciting donations to fund youth flight scholarships, orientation flights, and school presentations, with a first scholarship targeted for the September Front Royal Airshow. The club simultaneously announces a nine-day Week of Training (July 17–24) featuring a roster of instructors, a prototype flight simulator built by Chief CFI Piet Barber, and ground instruction. Safety Officer John Noss delivers two gripping first-person accounts of near-fatal heat stroke episodes on Memorial Day, urging members to recognize symptoms in themselves and others. SSA Chairman Phil Umphres issues an urgent reminder about proper electronic flight-recorder declarations to avoid losing hard-earned badge and record flights. In lighter news, club stalwart Fred Winter—recovering from a hard-landing injury—showed visitors his VW Jetta modified to run on filtered vegetable oil scavenged from local restaurants, and the newsletter closes with SSA regional updates, a candidate slate for the Region 4 Director seat, and a preview of the January 2011 'Gathering of the Clan' conference in Philadelphia.
Skyline Soaring Club's August 2010 issue is dominated by the club's second annual concentrated training week (July 16–25), during which members logged 122 flights, earned two new soaring badges and a new FAA private pilot certificate, and ran a club-first 'hare and hounds' cross-country exercise led by Jim Garrison in his ASG-29. Steve Rockwood recounts a thrilling five-glider round-robin launched in rapid succession by tow pilot Dick Otis, with the crew chasing thermals along the Massanutten Ridge and coordinating on a single radio frequency. The issue also features Mike Ash's dramatic spin-recovery story from a sweltering July afternoon, his account of flying the H3 hang glider into the challenging Sky Bryce Resort field for a July 4th fly-in, and the club's Online Soaring Competition results, where Gyoergy Gulyas claimed the top flight at 234.85 km. Membership Officer Steve Rockwood reports the club has reached 100 active members, welcoming a former Air Force test pilot and a pair of Argentine visitors among the new probationary members. Rounding out the issue are notices of the Skyline Soaring Education Foundation's upcoming first scholarship, a vintage sailplane meet at Massey Aerodrome, and the EAA's B-17 'Aluminum Overcast' tour stop in Leesburg, Virginia.
Skyline Soaring Club's September 2010 issue announces the appointment of member James Garrison as the new SSA Regional Director for the newly merged Region IV/II, a role he will assume in January 2011 after serving as understudy to outgoing Director Jim Kellett, who is stepping into a new coordinating role for the Virginia Gliding Association. The newsletter also calls for volunteers to support the Front Royal–Warren County Air Show on September 11, details the club's new 12-volt battery and laptop power setup in the hangar, and welcomes a wave of new members including fourteen-year-old Trevor Roskind, who joined as a student pilot after his first flights on FAST vouchers. President Craig Bendorf issues a reminder about crew-duty attendance and runway safety, while the club mourns the passing of longtime pilot and instructor Robert Lee Michael and celebrates Carlos Troncoso's first solo. Rounding out the issue are notes on the SSA's upcoming Philadelphia conference, a Navy MQ-8B Fire Scout drone that lost its data link and drifted toward Washington, D.C., and the birth of member Marta and Sobek Dziadek's son, Anatol.
The October 2010 issue of Skyline Soaring Club's newsletter is anchored by a heartfelt "Folded Wings" tribute to Captain Leo Meacher, USN (retired), who passed on September 4 at age 89. A highly decorated WWII Navy carrier pilot and Korean War veteran—holding the Distinguished Flying Cross, Silver Star, and seven Air Medal stars—Meacher was also a founding member of Skyline Soaring, a towpilot, instructor, and the longtime "weekday guru" at the Warrenton Soaring Center. Fellow members share vivid memories of his war stories, his salty personality, and his role in helping the club relocate to New Market Airport in 1991. The issue also reports a successful Warren County Front Royal Air Show in which 23 members displayed five club aircraft and awarded youth orientation flights through the Skyline Soaring Education Foundation, which had just received IRS public-charity status. Membership stands at 103 active members, Curtis Wheeler earned his 50 km Silver Distance by flying 161 km to a remote OKV start, and Chief Flight Instructor Piet Barber shares an inventive experiment logging a full day of student instruction with a GPS watch and visualizing the flights in 3-D Google Earth.
November's Skylines opens with a moving account of the Arlington National Cemetery burial of Leo Meacher, a longtime club friend and demo-flight pilot, whose farewell was marked by a four-ship F/A-18 flyover that briefly held commercial traffic in a holding pattern over Reagan National. The issue also chronicles the club's October 22 appearance at the 5th Annual Aviation Education Expo at Leesburg, where SSC and the new Skyline Soaring Education Foundation shared a booth with a sailplane static display before several hundred high-school students; John Noss's gripping first-person report of towing a Husky at the M-ASA Region 4 North contest in Fairfield, Pennsylvania, where 40 gliders were launched in 50 minutes under punishing conditions; and a substantial feature by Commander Brian Randall of the U.S. Naval Academy detailing VT-NA's expanded 2010 Summer Soaring Program, which safely flew over 900 sorties for 400 midshipmen using M-ASA's Fairfield gliderport and volunteer instructors drawn from the Front Royal soaring community. Membership news welcomes new pilots including 14-year-old John Westenhoff and 13-year-old Christopher Zaboji, both pursuing glider ratings together, while the club's 102 active members continue to grow. Rounding out the issue are notes on the FAA's pending rule to add photographs to pilot certificates, a Florida winch-launch training opportunity, and a link to a 2010 Vintage Gliding Club rally video from Tibenham.
Skyline Soaring Club wraps up a strong 2010 season that has already surpassed last year's 1,274-tow mark, and the December issue is packed with milestones. Chief among them is Piet Barber's September 4 high-altitude wave flight, in which he climbed to 17,600 feet above the Fort Valley ridge, rode mountain wave past 14,000 feet for the first time in his career, and made a 110-knot ground-speed dash to Harrisonburg and back—all while breathing through a brand-new oxygen cannula that smelled, in his words, like a bottle that had been sitting for a year. November 12 proved to be a rare double-header: Ertan Tete passed his PP-G checkride and Craig Rodarmel earned his PP-SEL on the same afternoon, and just two days later 14-year-old Trevor Roskind nailed a perfect first solo under instructor John Noss. Curtis Wheeler also collected FAI Silver Badge #6791, logging a distance leg roughly three times the required 50 km. The issue closes with practical details for the Winter Ad Hoc flying season (December 13–February 19), the December 11 pot-luck Holiday Party at the Neitzey home in Broad Run, a modest $3-per-month dues adjustment for 2011, and reminders for the January 22 Annual Membership Meeting and the mandatory February 19 Safety Meeting at the Front Royal library.
Skyline Soaring Club's January 2011 issue leads with the remarkable news that Bill and Sharon Burner have purchased the entire 68-acre Woodstock airport in Shenandoah County, vowing to keep it as a soaring field rather than a development site. The newsletter also reports on the newly formed Virginia Soaring Association's productive first meeting with the state Department of Aviation in Richmond, where the six-club, 500-pilot Virginia soaring community secured financial support for a statewide promotional flyer and registered the VAsoar.org domain. President Craig Bendorf looks back on a 2010 season that overcame a weak spring and fall to log more than 1,300 tows, while the club searches for an Assistant Treasurer to share the load with Tom Parks. The issue carries details on the upcoming SSA annual meeting in Philadelphia (January 27–29), the mandatory February safety meeting, a lively account of the last tow day of 2010 on the Massanutten ridge, the 2010 holiday party hosted by Shane and Valarie Neitzey, and a sobering report of a midair collision between a medevac Eurocopter and a Cessna 172 near Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport that killed two. A retired pilot's 42-acre gliderport near Lovettsville is also offered for sale, and the editor urges members to register for the Philadelphia convention before the hotel group-rate deadline of January 4.
The February 2011 issue of *Skylines* is anchored by the dramatic rescue of the club's Cirrus trailer, which a previous year's wind storm had picked up, tumbled through the air, and deposited on neighboring trailers. Inspection revealed the frame was far more compromised than anyone expected—major sections rusted away entirely, and the trailer could have collapsed under the weight of a glider. Over four January weekends, a rotating crew of more than a dozen members welded, riveted, reskinned, repainted, and reassembled the trailer in Shane Neitzey's shop, with Valerie Neitzey keeping the teams fed. The issue also reports on the January 22 annual meeting, where the club reviewed a record 1,319 tows and 1,299 total flight hours in 2010, approved a dues increase, and elected Mike Christensen and Steve Rockwood to the Board. Piet Barber received the Bela Gogos Service Award for his years as Webmaster and Chief Flight Instructor. Other highlights include Jim Kellett's lively dispatch from the SSA convention in Philadelphia (featuring an in-flight electrical fire survival story and a reunion with soaring luminaries Pete Brown, Karl Streideick, and Charles Coyne), the announcement of the 2011 OLC Challenge, a cold-weather flight-check tale in which Piet Barber suited up in an orange survival suit to chase wave on a 10-degree January morning, and details on the upcoming Flight Instructor Refresher Clinic in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, and the W99 wave camp in Petersburg, West Virginia.
The March 2011 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter opens with President Curtis Wheeler's call for members to take greater ownership of their flight costs and club responsibilities, followed by a full report on the February 19 annual safety meeting, which drew a large turnout and featured a Single Pilot Resource Management briefing by Jeff Mitchell. The club celebrated a milestone when the Skyline Soaring Education Foundation awarded its very first flight scholarship to 16-year-old Seth Conner of Randolph-Macon Academy, covering 30 instructional glider flights, SSA and SSC memberships, and a logbook. Four new members joined the ranks, including experienced pilots Scott Graham and Rufus Decker, and the newsletter carried practical details for the upcoming W99 Wave Camp at Petersburg, West Virginia, complete with tow rates, lodging, and camping fees. Industry news dominated the back pages: the FAA issued a precedent-setting order forcing Riverside County, California to reinstate glider operations after evicting more than 40 sailplanes, calling the ban an "unreasonable denial" of airport use; Pipistrel unveiled its production-ready Taurus Electro G2 electric motorglider with a 40-kilowatt motor and solar-charging trailer; and two pilots, Gordon Boettger and 78-year-old Hugh Bennett, set a national two-place distance record of 744 miles at altitudes up to 27,000 feet in a modified Discus glider riding the Sierra mountain wave. The issue also announced a Flight Instructor Revalidation Clinic at Tidewater Soaring Society, noted the regrettable cancellation of the 2011 Women's Soaring Pilots Association seminar, and included a stirring pre-quake photograph of South Island, New Zealand soaring by Terry Delore, shared in the spirit of Christchurch's recovery.
The April 2011 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter opens the spring flying season with President Curtis Wheeler welcoming First Flight participants and outlining the year's schedule, including Days Away trips to Highview and Woodstock and a training week in mid-July. The issue introduces two new members—Paul Pruitt, a Reston software engineer fresh off his first "Hamburger Run," and Jack Stradley, a 1,400-hour instrument-rated pilot who caught the soaring bug on a Hawaii vacation. Jim Kellett publishes a detailed "Club Finance Primer" laying out dues, daily operating costs, and the club's firm no-credit-card policy, while Michael Christensen explains the "Meister" fleet-maintenance system and points members to a new spreadsheet tracking every aircraft's registration, sticker, and trailer deadlines. The Skyline Soaring Education Foundation reports a well-received soaring presentation to the Front Royal Kiwanis Club, and the issue's most unexpected feature is Martin Gomez's "Soaring to Mercury," in which the club member who led the fault-protection autonomy team on NASA's MESSENGER mission walks readers through the spacecraft's historic March 17, 2011 orbit insertion, drawing apt parallels between glider attitude control and spacecraft pointing. The newsletter also carries practical four-wheeler tips, a note on the new Duty Officer field computer, and a recommendation of J. Norman Grim's book on WWII glider-pilot training.
Skyline's May 2011 issue leads with Ken Ekman's vivid first-person account of competing in the 1-26 Championships at Bermuda High Soaring, South Carolina. A retired USAF F-16 pilot and Test Pilot School graduate, Ekman describes the camaraderie, careful task planning, and hard-won lessons of his first sailplane contest, complete with landouts, post-flight debriefs over .igc files, and a ukulele-playing competitor. The issue also announces the club's third "Away Day" at High View Farm, a private grass strip near Berryville, Virginia, where members will ferry the Husky, Grob 103, and Sprite for a day of relaxed flying on unfamiliar terrain. President Curtis Wheeler urges all members to review the club's Mishap plan in light of a fatality at a neighboring club, while the membership report welcomes retired Air Force Lt. Col. Greg Davis and new local pilot Jasmine Reidenbach. A detailed conditional-inspection write-up by Doug Hiranaka chronicles the annual overhauls of both club trainers, and the issue closes with a heartfelt update on Hugh McElrath's recovery from a serious paragliding accident, alongside a call for members to submit landout and towing stories for a special Soaring Magazine theme issue.
The June 2011 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter captures a club in full swing. President Curtis Wheeler announces the Board's completed strategic retreat and issues a call to arms for the Soaring100 commemoration at Kill Devil Hills, N.C., where Shane Neitzey is organizing the effort to tow, fly, and return the club's Grob to the site of the Wright Brothers' first glider flight. The month also brought a structural scare: significant cracks were discovered in the Grob N4794E's rear canopy rail, grounding the ship briefly before a careful redundancy procedure allowed it to fly through the Memorial Day weekend while a composite repair shop is sought. On the bright side, membership surged to 92 active members, with fourteen new Introductory Members and a new Probationary pilot, including Maria Luengo, a Madrid native who stumbled upon the Front Royal airfield while driving and never left. Rob Creedon contributes a vivid travelogue of a scrubbed Space Shuttle Endeavor launch and a subsequent day flying a Grumman J2F Duck and a Navy N2J Stearman at Kermit Weeks' Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Florida. The issue also details improved runway-staging procedures for the summer season, a trial of credit-card payments at the field, a Cirrus endorsement clinic, and the club's growing community-outreach program.
Skyline Soaring Club's July 2011 issue captures the club at the peak of its flying season. The headline event is the Club Family Day at Bill Burner's pastoral Woodstock airport, where members and their families gather on a 3,100-foot grass strip to fly two rare vintage sailplanes—a 1957 German Bergfalke II-55 and a sport-canopy Schweizer 1-26A—while picnicking in the shade of a 60-by-54-foot hangar. The club also announces a concentrated Week of Training (July 18–22) at Front Royal, promising a commercial-outlet-style immersion of up to nine successive flying days for students and seasoned pilots alike. A wrap-up of the earlier High View away day credits Jim Kellett and John Noss for organizing a productive session that ended with a safety call when the Husky tow plane struggled on the short, grassy strip. President Curtis Wheeler issues a call for a new Grob Meister to succeed Sobek Dziadek, who has guided the club's Grob 103 through its 3,000-hour inspection and numerous repairs. Rounding out the issue: the Skyline Soaring Education Foundation's successful May cookout featuring Bob Gould's pulled pork, mid-season operations statistics showing 616 tows and 313.6 glider hours, a young pilot-in-training named Zoe Ferreira, and a welcome-back note from Hugh McElrath, who returned to the flight line in June after a second leg surgery.
The August 2011 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter captures a remarkably active summer, headlined by the July 9 away day at Bill and Sharon Burner's Woodstock, Virginia facility, where roughly fifty club members and visitors logged more than twenty flights in near-perfect thermals, with SSC tow pilots delivering 37 tows across two fields and Mike Ash completing an estimated 140-kilometer cross-country to Harper's Ferry. The month also saw 14-year-old Chris Zaboji earn his first solo glider flight during Warren County's 175th-anniversary celebration, where George Hazelrigg's glider 6E drew crowds of children eager to 'fly' from the soccer field. The club's membership swelled to 95 active members, including new probationary pilot Maria Luengo and eleven introductory members, while Paul Pruitt and Carlos Troncoso earned their glider private pilot licenses and Vern Kline added Silver Altitude and Silver Distance badges to his record. The Skyline Soaring Education Foundation reported a $1,500 corporate donation from ITT, a student field trip from Randolph Macon Academy, and plans for upcoming airshow and youth-expo appearances, and a team of volunteers assembled and displayed club gliders at the National Air and Space Museum's 'Become a Pilot Day.'
Skyline Soaring Club's September 2011 issue delivers a rich mix of soaring wisdom and community news. Award-winning aviation author Barry Schiff (27,000 hours, 310+ aircraft types, former TWA check captain) contributes a thoughtful essay arguing that glider flying teaches fundamentals—speed-to-fly, minimum-sink technique, coordinated control, power-off approaches—that power pilots would do well to absorb, illustrated by the famous 1983 Gimli Glider landing. Fellow member George Hazelrigg offers eleven soaring-derived life lessons, from "don't circle in sink" to "help helps," while Doug Hiranaka provides a hands-on first-flight review of the tandem Bergfalke 55-2 floater. Jim Kellett recounts a 1974 introduction to soaring for a family in Illinois and a joyful 35-year reunion with eight-year-old Alice, who once declared her instructor "a glider freek." The club reports strong growth (240 more tows than the prior two seasons combined), welcomes several new members including a 90-year-old celebrating with a FAST-voucher flight, congratulates Robb Hohmann on his SSA "A" Badge, and notes that Kellett received the Virginia Aviation "Person of the Year" award for founding the Virginia Soaring Association. A grandmother's delighted letter to her eleven grandchildren about her first 50-minute thermal ride rounds out the issue.
The October 2011 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club monthly newsletter reports on the club's major participation in the Warren County Front Royal Air Show, where twenty-two members in matching Skyline shirts displayed five club aircraft and the Skyline Soaring Education Foundation awarded FAST vouchers to two local youth, with the show donating $1,500 toward a soaring scholarship. The issue also features a detailed hands-on flight review of the Schweizer SGS 1-26a by Doug Hiranaka, covering its tow behavior behind a Cessna 150, its tight but pure-Schweizer handling, and its strengths as a light-conditions floater. Membership news welcomes the Burgard family of Alexandria, Bruce Zivic of Fairfax, and seven new introductory members, while Dan Ernst earns his glider private pilot license on the club's 1-26. Operations statistics show the club well ahead of prior years with 1,161 tows and 676 glider hours through September, and a lighter section includes a fond remembrance of a long-time club member and former CFI, a note on Virginia SSA distance and altitude records, and a running gag about the airport cat that has claimed the hangar as home.
Skyline Soaring Club marks the centennial of Orville Wright's record-setting 1911 glider flight by sending its ASK-21 and a team of six members to the Soaring 100 celebration at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Over a four-day weekend drawing more than 10,000 visitors, pilots Shane Neitzey, Paul Seketa, Mike Christensen, Mike Peterson, Robb Creedon, and Dan Ernst flew the glider in a cavalcade of vintage and modern sailplanes, executing dramatic passes over the memorial grounds and landing on the grass strip just feet from the granite marker tracing the path of the 1903 powered flights. The issue also celebrates the club's first-ever season surpassing 1,300 flights, details a new emergency-contact database for members, announces winter wave camps at W99 in Petersburg, West Virginia, and notes the club's twentieth anniversary with a call for a holiday party venue. A detailed first-person account by Rob Creedon captures the tension of an over-water return leg to Manteo, while a safety note recounts a near-miss rudder-pedal jam caught only by a methodical pre-launch checklist.
In a milestone issue marking the club's 20th anniversary, Skyline Soaring Club looks back on its founding with Joseph M. Rees's vivid retrospective, 'The Magic Seven Years,' recounting how 23 charter members each loaned the fledgling organization $1,000 to buy a Pawnee towplane and a 2-33 glider they lovingly named 'Miss Daisy,' and how they slid frozen corrugated hangar doors and patched rusted rudders to keep the club alive. The issue also covers the Soaring 100 celebration at Jockey's Ridge, where a National Landmark of Soaring plaque honored the Wrights, Francis Rogallo, and generations of Outer Banks pilots; a dramatic near-miss on the ramp that Chief Towpilot Martin Gomez uses to urge members to respect spinning propellers; Doug Hiranka's practical guide for newly ticketed pilots on reading lift off the Massanutten ridge; and the club's December 17th Christmas and 20th-anniversary potluck at the Neitzey home in Broad Run. Rounding out the issue are Jim Kellett's 'Virginia Aviation Person of the Year' recognition, a detailed listing for a 1987 LAK-12 'Lietuva' high-performance sailplane, and word that Helmut Reichmann's classic 'Cross Country Soaring' is back in print.
In a transitional January issue, new editor Douglas Hiranaka steps into the role left by a long-serving predecessor and promises a more polished format to come. The newsletter captures the club's hands-on winter spirit: members gather for the 2011 Holiday Party, share a Grob wing divot repair and waxing session that leaves the glider looking "close to new," and break ground on a custom dolly with a freshly laid fiberglass boot. Contributing member Ulrike Wustner offers a practical primer on FLARM, the Swiss-born anti-collision and datalogging system now standard on club gliders across Austria and Germany, urging readers to consider the technology for safer soaring in congested airspace. The issue also includes a nostalgic archive photograph of a primary glider at the Rheinbeck Aerodrome living museum and a full roster of Skyline Soaring Club officers at the Front Royal–Warren County, Virginia airport.
In his inaugural letter, new club president John Noss lays out a three-part vision for Skyline Soaring—fly safely, stay financially sound, and build the kind of club members want to show up to—while celebrating a fleet of well-tended gliders from the ASK-21 to the Cirrus and a hangar in its best shape in years. The issue is enlivened by dispatches from a week-long wave camp at Petersburg, West Virginia (W99), where pilots traded blowing snow for sustained lift and a Lambata motor glider scouted thermals for the fleet. A February safety meeting hosted by Charles Norman reviewed recent incidents, including a near-takeoff with unconnected ailerons and a tail dolly left on a glider at wave camp, while Mike Christensen shared his experience of a land-out near I-66. Spring check flights at KFRR saw roughly fifteen members get the Grob, K, Sprite, and Pawnee back in the air, and a thoughtful essay on “The Halo Effect” urges pilots to separate good instruction from personal chemistry and learn at the speed of a champion.
President John Noss opens the January issue by celebrating what he calls an 'all-time record year,' with 468 club glider flights in 2011 compared to 279 at the same point the prior year, driven by a surge in student training and ambitious cross-country efforts. The newsletter announces the club's first dedicated 'away day' at Bill Burner's grass-strip airfield near Woodstock, Virginia, with all four club gliders and both towplanes relocated for the event. New pilot Tony Doggett contributes a gripping first-person account of a tow-rope failure during a wake-boxing maneuver at 2,800 feet, the jolt of the snap, and the calm recovery that followed. Bill Vickland mounts a spirited defense of the humble 1-26 glider as a superior training and cross-country platform for new pilots, while Douglas Hiranaka publishes a detailed transition guide for the club's SGS 1-36 Sprite. The issue also reports that Skylines was featured in a TV3 Winchester weather segment on thermal soaring, congratulates pilots who earned badges and completed fixed-wing training tasks, and closes with an invitation to a family-friendly fly-in party at Burner's field in May.
The February 2012 issue of *Skylines* opens with a dramatic January wave-flying episode: Mike Christensen, solo in the club's Grob 103 (94E), was forced to land out in Eastern Front Royal after cloud streets closed in and lift turned to sink. Pilot and glider were unharmed, and a rapid retrieval crew had 94E de-rigged and loaded onto the trailer within 23 minutes. The issue also reports the club's January 28 annual meeting at the Samuels Library, where new president John Noss presided over reports from the club's roster of dedicated
The March 2012 issue of Skylines celebrates a record-breaking flight season—217 glider flights logged by the third week of March—and features a vivid first-person account of a member's visit to Soaring NV in Minden, where 50-to-60-knot ridge winds and Sierra Nevada wave lift carried a K-21 past 9,000 feet in a half-hour ride. President John Noss announces a new informal cross-country challenge circuit with quarterly tow prizes, a forthcoming revision of the club operations manual, and the arrival of a med-evac helicopter service at the airport. The issue also covers the annual trainer inspections (where Eric Litts discovered car wax as a torque-tube lubricant), Spring Wave Camp photos, and an invitation to a family-friendly flying party at Bill Burner's Woodstock, Virginia airport on May 5.
Skyline Soaring Club's June 2012 issue captures a club in full swing, celebrating a record 600 flights by mid-May—nearly double the previous year—and announcing its Summer Week of Flying for June 25–29. The centerpiece is John Noss's accessible walkthrough of cross-country speed-to-fly theory, showing how the simple glide-polar plots already printed on the club's cockpit cards can substitute for MacCready rings and flight computers, complete with worked examples for the ASK-21. A thorough student operations guide walks newcomers through everything from pushing out gliders and tow-car procedures to what to pack on a flying day. The issue also records a string of student milestones: fifteen-year-old John Westenhoff's first solo, Rufus Decker's CFIG, and badges earned by Trevor Roskind, Paul Pruitt, and Douglas Hiranaka. A local TV meteorologist's segment on gliders and thermals gave the club its
The July 2012 issue of Skylines is dominated by the club's 2012 Week of Training, a five-day instructional effort (June 25–29) that logged 132 sorties for 16 students and 9 rated pilots under punishing conditions. Temperatures hit 110 degrees in the shade, a wildfire was burning several hundred acres on the east side of Massanutten Ridge, and a U.S. Forest Service helicopter was based at the end of Runway 10, ferrying observers and scooping water from the Shenandoah River to drop on the flames—all while club members kept the tow schedule moving. Four teenagers took their first soaring lessons, and multiple members describe the week as the most fun and operationally demanding they had experienced. Beyond the WoT, the issue reports Vern Kline's victory in the club's inaugural cross-country circuit, Dick Garrity's long-awaited Bronze badge (nearly 20 years after his 'C'), Joe Lingevitch's SSA/FAI silver duration and altitude approvals, Chuck Stover's Flight of the Day in his brand-new glider *Romeo Whiskey*, and the club's display of gliders at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center's Become a Pilot Day. Warren County also announced the relocation of PHI Medical Aircare's helicopter operations to the Front Royal–Warren County Airport, and the newsletter notes that *Skylines* would shift to a PDF-only format beginning with this issue.
Skyliner Shane Neitzey finally claimed the elusive Boomerang trophy after a 259-statute-mile, 5½-hour flight from Front Royal, Virginia, to Harnett, North Carolina, in his ASW27B “XZ,” threading between RDU Class C airspace, a blue hole south of Farmville, and a 30-plus-minute blue-sky cruise to the finish line. The flight, a goal he had chased for years in multiple aircraft, required the tireless efforts of a long roster of landout-retrieve crews across Virginia and North Carolina, and he arrived at the FBO just 15 minutes before closing. The issue also features an in-depth pilot report on the club’s new DG 303, covering its 44:1 glide ratio, competition-style aerobatic capability, and handling compared to the ASK21 trainer, and celebrates Bruce Zivic’s hard-won solo in a brief but heartfelt note from the pilot himself.
President John Noss reports a record-shattering season, with the club well ahead of any previous year and on pace to top 1,800 glider flights, driven by an unexpected membership surge that has stretched tows, instruction, and flying days to their limits. The good news is tempered by operational headaches: the long-standing FRAS maintenance facility at the field has closed, the trusty tow-car is on its last legs, and the club is searching for a new Grob Meister to replace Rufus Decker. On the flying side, Joe Lingevitch earned Silver Badge #6899 on a 50-km cross-country from Front Royal to Burner Airport, Chuck Stover logged a 70-km silver-distance flight, and a pair of visiting pilots flew in two unfamiliar "uber gliders" from MASA's Fairfield field before re-launching and heading home. The September 8 Front Royal Airshow delivered stunning aerobatic displays and antique aircraft before a sudden squall shut the show down just as the last glider touched down. Noss closes by urging every member to weigh in on the club's future—hangar expansion, the next club glider, and student-load management—before the January annual meeting.
In a standout feature, Bill Burner recounts a visit to Greg Cole's Windward Performance shop in Bend, Oregon, where nearly finished components of the Perlan stratospheric glider—targeting 90,000 feet and Mach 0.3 via mountain waves—sit in jigs awaiting final assembly. The tour also showcased the 225-KTS DuckHawk racing sailplane (which out-glided a Schempp-Hirth Arcus at the Open Class Nationals) and the 155-pound SparrowHawk, a 37:1 club-class glider that Cole says is 'a pure joy to fly.' Elsewhere in the issue, Mike Ash gives a detailed first-look review of the newly available PowerFLARM anti-collision system, combining FLARM, ADS-B, and transponder detection in one unit; Dan Earnst and Evan Dosik report on a hands-on spin clinic at Eagle's Nest with the Shenandoah Valley Soaring Club; and President John Noss wraps up a season interrupted by Hurricane Sandy with thanks to a long list of volunteers, a reminder that scheduled operations end December 16, and a pot-luck social to close out the year. Chuck Stover's silver badge (#6907) and a formation flight at 14,000 feet over Pennsylvania round out a month of milestones.
Skyline Soaring Club's December 2012 issue leads with Douglas Hiranaka's vivid account of a glider aerobatics checkout in an experimental MDM Fox at Williams Soaring Center, California. A seasoned power aerobatics pilot with 250 hours in acro, Hiranaka describes the quirks of flying a 13-metre, short-winged acro glider—sensitive ailerons, a pronounced stall that drops a wing, and the disorienting feel of inverted flight where the stick logic flips. After a few spins and a quarter-snap roll, he works through loops, rolls, wing-overs, and two-point rolls with instructor Greg in the back seat, emerging checked out for all the maneuvers he flew. The issue also celebrates two member achievements: Tommy Childress earning his Glider Private Pilot rating in an ASK-21 at Front Royal, Virginia, and Chris Zaboji passing his SSA Bronze written exam and completing his duration task in the club Sprite. Club news includes Rufus Decker stepping down as Grob Meister, the Pawnee's door windows being upgraded to Lexan, Martin Gomez taking ownership of the SGS 1-26 "505," and an open invitation from Mike Christensen for fellow members to join a February 2013 soaring trip to Omarama Airfield in New Zealand.
Skyline Soaring Club closes out a record-setting 2012—club-best totals in glider flights and student training, a paid-off fleet debt, and a growing cross-country appetite—before turning its collective gaze skyward. The issue's centerpiece is Mike Ash's extensive, location-specific guide to mountain wave soaring out of Front Royal, walking pilots through forecasting, tow technique, finding the lift line along the Massanutten and I-81 corridor, managing physiology at 12,500 feet, navigating the club's FAA-arranged wave window at New Market, and the peculiar hazards of 50-knot headwinds and persistent wave sink. The holiday potluck brought out a crowd that included legendary airshow pilot Charlie Kulp, the “Flying Farmer,” and saw SSEF present a soaring scholarship to new student Matthew Linger. Two students—Steve Polk and fourteen-year-old Alexandra Burgard—earned their first glider solos on the season's final flying day. The issue also carries a brief, heartfelt notice of the passing of longtime member Clarence See, and a lighthearted passenger's-eye account of an Air France A380 transatlantic crossing, observed through the curious lens of a glider pilot.
The February 2013 issue of *Skyline Soaring Club* captures a club in a rare moment of financial freedom and forward momentum. President John Noss reports that the club has just finished paying off the internal debt from acquiring the Husky and Cirrus, opening the door to strategic planning for the next fleet acquisition and much-needed hangar expansion. The annual membership meeting at the Front Royal library covered survey results, awards, and the re-election of Noss and Martin Gomez to second board terms. On the flight line, Bill Vickland and Eric Litt were deep into recovering the Pawnee's tail for its annual inspection while the Husky's prop was being overhauled, and the club logged an impressive 37 flights in January. The big event on the horizon is the mandatory safety meeting on February 23, immediately followed by a week-long wave camp at Grant County Airport led by Dan Ernst and Shane Neitzey aboard the ASK-21. The issue also features a substantial review by Bob Creedon of Wolfgang Langewiesche's classic *Stick and Rudder* (1944), a congratulations to Craig Bendorf on his SSA Gold Altitude badge, details on the March 16 annual-inspection work party, and updates on intermediate cross-country training and the upcoming XC clinic.
The March 2013 issue of Skylines is dominated by the club's Petersburg Wave Camp, where a group of Skyliners, Shenandoah Valley Soaring, and Mid-Atlantic Soaring Association pilots converged at Grant County Airport for a weekend of high-altitude wave soaring. Joe Lingevitch provides a vivid, technical account of his 18,000-foot flight in the club's DG-200, describing the eerie calm of the primary wave, six-knot lift with near-zero ground speed, and the challenges of the new Mountain High oxygen system at altitude. Joe and fellow pilot Ertan Tete unofficially reached Gold altitude (3,000 m) during the camp. The issue also covers the club's annual safety meeting, including a parachute-rigger briefing and a review of mid-air collision avoidance during gaggling; Chuck Stover's practical explainer of the Gibbz1 arrival procedure and its close proximity to the New Market wave window; Doug Hiranaka's thoughtful essay on cross-country badge flying and the mindset shift from local soaring to five-hour flights; and the awarding of an SSEF scholarship to Warren County High School senior Maria Haas, who aspires to become an aeronautical engineer at Virginia Tech. A work party for the ASK-21 and conditional inspections is scheduled for March 16.
May 2013 brings two extraordinary flight stories from the Skyline Soaring Club community. Chief Flight Instructor Piet Barber recounts a March day near Petersburg, West Virginia, where he climbed into a wave window and held steady at FL220—22,000 feet—managing cold feet, a full-face oxygen mask, and the discipline to turn down just 200 feet below the top of the window to stay out of Class A airspace. Meanwhile, member Hugh McElrath and Greg Read log a 2,500-nautical-mile, five-day coast-to-coast journey in a 2006 Pipistrel Virus touring motor glider, riding a storm-generated tailwind from San Jose to College Park, Maryland, with stops at Rosamond airpark and a first-ever flight through the Flight Restricted Zone over the Capitol. The issue also carries a sobering safety report on a fatal Schleicher K7 accident in Littlefield, Texas, where a portion of the right wing separated during cruise; planning updates for the June 24–28 Week of Training and a parallel cross-country course; an Away Day at Bill Burner's grass strip near Woodstock on May 19; weather-forecasting tips tailored to the Shenandoah Valley microclimate; and welcome notices for new probationary members Gary Mason and Eric Tarring plus eight introductory students. Robert Gray reports the arrival of a 1-26D glider from Bill Bentley, and the club rallies volunteers for the Smithsonian's 'Be A Pilot Day' at Udvar-Hazy and a glider display at the Manassas Air Show.
The June 2013 issue of *Skylines* is anchored by a vivid, multi-page account of the club's Family Away Day at Bill and Sharon Burner's private field, where 31 tows produced a wave climb to 10,000 feet, Shane Neitzey's 2-hour-44-minute flight of the day, and a legendary sausage extravaganza from the Zaboji family. The newsletter also reports that Bill Elliott and Rand Baldwin set a US National Open Class Multiplace 3-Turnpoint Distance Record in the club's Blanik trainer, that Mike Christensen completed a four-year, 2,815-mile quest to tow a DG-300 (N-8RX) from Arlington, Washington, to Front Royal, and that longtime member Joe Rees deploys to Brussels as a Customs and Border Protection attache, promising to file dispatches on Belgian soaring. With the Week of Training and a new cross-country camp both scheduled for late June, President John Noss issues an urgent call for volunteer instructors and towpilots, while Safety Officer Charles Norman reviews a fatal Schweizer crash on Long Island as a reminder to stay current and proficient. Rounding out the issue are six new introductory members, a Virginia Daily feature on the club, and a humorous verse by Rob Creedon celebrating the day at '2 B Soar Inn.'
A turbulent month at Skyline Soaring Club opens with the rear canopy of the club's Grob tearing free in flight, grounding half the training fleet just days before the Week of Training and triggering a full safety review under Safety Officer Charles Norman. The issue carries a somber tribute to aerobatic pilot Charlie Schwenker and wingwalker Jane Wicker, killed June 22 while performing in a Stearman at the Vectren Air Show near Dayton, Ohio, with memorial services held at the Bealeton Flying Circus Aerodrome. On the positive side, member Shane Neitzey recounts his first-ever contest in Sports Class at Caesar Creek, Ohio, where a third-place finish on his debut day and a second-place showing on the final day earned him fifth overall. The club also welcomes Keith Hilton as its new ASK-21 K-Meister, a former Air Force Chief Master Sergeant whose 24-year career included weapons integration on the F-117A, B-2, and the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. Additional items cover the Week of Training's scaled-back but successful run, a planned AWOS installation at Front Royal for late August, a Become a Pilot Day appearance at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center, mechanical upgrades to the club Sprite, and a call for disciplined radio use on the field frequency.
The August 2013 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter is dominated by the dramatic saga of the club's Grob-103, which was damaged in a June 22 accident and spent 34 days out of service. The repair became a cross-country odyssey: a borrowed canopy that turned out to be in Horseheads, New York rather than Philadelphia; a second canopy that was supposedly available but actually sitting in South America; and a brand-new canopy ordered from Germany that got stuck in customs at Philadelphia before a friend-of-a-friend arranged its delivery to a composite shop in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. Steve Rockwood made two round-trip drives to the shop, and a team of members reassembled the glider under the watchful eye of new Grob-meister Evan Dosik. The total tab: $8,347, or $83 per member. On the brighter side, the club celebrated two new Private Pilot Glider ratings earned in July — Keith Hilton and Chris Zaboji, the latter a 16-year-old who passed his checkride just ten days after his birthday and is headed for the Air Force Academy. The issue also features two first-person land-out accounts (one in a young cornfield, one in a field he'd spotted on Google Earth), a report on the 84-sortie Week of Training, a winch-launch endorsement clinic at Eagle Field, Pennsylvania, the 13-year-old Ellie Renshaw's Sky Ghost Scholarship win from the Women's Soaring Pilots Association, the repair of the Pawnee's inoperative Tost tow-line reel, and the announcement that long-time editor Phil Jordan is retiring after 55 years of self-employment.
This September 2013 issue captures the Skyline Soaring Club at a rolling peak. August closed with a record-shattering 33-flight day on Saturday, August 24—the busiest weekend in the history of Front Royal (KFRR)—and the club tallied 1,040 flights for the year, matching its 2011 pace. The training pipeline is surging: Robert Gray, Chris Zaboji, and Keith Hilton all earned their private glider ratings within a two-week span, and Hilton, emboldened by his new certificate, immediately purchased a 1977 LS-3 sailplane and hauled it back to the field in a Dodge truck. The issue introduces a new monthly safety series by Jim Kellett that quizzes members on fire-extinguisher locations, first-aid kit contents, and the club's Emergency Response Plan; lays out detailed radio-discipline guidelines from Martin Gomez to keep club chatter off the shared CTAF frequency 123.0; and announces the board's purchase of six FRS radios for ground-crew use. Members share vivid travel dispatches from Dillingham Airfield on Oahu's North Shore—where gliders, skydivers, windsurfers, and kiteboarders share the same stretch of coastline—and from a K-21 tow at Sugarbush in remote western Maine. Dave Collier recounts a cross-country flight that ended not at the home field but in a grass strip belonging to a farmer named Larry Omps, where a man showed up ten minutes later to mow the runway. The issue also announces the club's participation in the September 14 Virginia Air Show, profiles nine WSPA scholarship recipients, and notes the passing of EAA founder Paul Poberezny at age 91.
The October 2013 issue opens with a vivid photo-essay from the September 14 Front Royal Air Show, where retired two-star Navy Admiral and top-30 all-time aerobatic pilot Bill Finagin stuns the crowd in his Pitts S-2, Boeing engineer Scott Francis flies his $400,000 MXS, and a Flying Circus Stearman line stretches the taxiway. Club photographer Dick Otis captures it all from the cockpit of the club's Husky and from a perch beside a parked Pawnee in the middle of the field. Elsewhere, Dan and Marie Ernst recount their 4,825-mile, 220-gallon odyssey towing a 1-26 glider on an open trailer from Virginia to the New Mexico 1-26 Championships and back, surviving a lost elevator batten, a cracked trailer frame, and one very angry SUV driver in Colorado Springs. Ken Ekman shares hard-won lessons from a year of soaring at 4,200-foot White Sands Regional Airport, where density altitude, the sprawling White Sands Missile Range, and 12,000-foot thermals forced him to install oxygen, rethink his landout kit, and fly in wool socks. The issue also reports that four Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows from California, Montana, Ohio, and Alaska spent time at Front Royal learning to fly gliders, that Trevor Roskind earned his Private Pilot Glider rating, and that the club is planning an Away Day at Bill Burner's grass strip near Woodstock on October 20 and a holiday party at Aspendale Winery in December.
Skyline Soaring Club's November 2013 issue is packed with news on every front. President John Noss details a sweeping set of policy changes—suspending walk-in FAST flights, capping new student memberships, and standardizing instruction scheduling—after a 56-response member survey and a four-hour board session revealed the club was simply too popular to sustain its old open-door model. On the competitive front, Shane Neitzey reports a thrilling M-ASA Fairfield, PA contest in which he placed second on the strongest day and third overall, navigating a 204-mile task through wave, ridge, and thermals over the Tuscarora and Shade Mountain ridges. Curtis Wheeler announces a newly FAA-waivered aerobatic box half a mile north of Front Royal, making the ASK-21 available for aerobatic instruction in the K. The issue also features a vivid first-person account of a flight in a 1929 Ford Tri-Motor at Manassas, a photo-rich recap of the 35-flight Family Day at Bill Burner's field, a safety review of 2013 NTSB glider accidents, a visit to Tidewater Soaring Society by WSPA scholarship recipient Ellie Renshaw, and details on the December 7 holiday celebration at Aspen Dale Winery.
The December 2013 issue is anchored by Robert Gray's long-awaited account of his 42-year odyssey to a Private Glider Pilot certificate, a journey that began with two flights in a 2-33 at Warrenton in May 1971 and ended with a checkride in an ASK-21 at Front Royal on August 2, 2013. Along the way Gray collected lessons at half a dozen fields, bought a 1-26D #470 from former Skyline member Bill Bentley, and jokes that the SSA may need a new record category for 'slowest student.' The issue also celebrates Dick Otis's Cirrus photo of Steve Rockwood earning the centerfold of Soaring magazine, recounts a bone-chilling November 24 flying day when a 33-knot gust blew the windsock off its pole and two pilots turned back with frozen toes, and announces the 2014 Carolina Wave Project (Feb 11–20) and the SSA Convention in Reno (Feb 27–Mar 1). Round out the issue with Jim Kellett's meticulous aircraft-cleaning guide, FAA errata for the new Glider Flying Handbook, a Toy Lift drive for Fort Lee children, and the club's holiday party at Aspen Dale Winery on December 7.
President John Noss reports a near-record 2013 with more than 1,600 glider flights (over 4,200 total sorties including instructors and tow pilots), second only to the exceptional spring of 2012, and sets the stage for a packed 2014 season with the annual membership meeting at Manassas Regional Airport, a mandatory safety meeting in Front Royal, and a string of regional events from the FIRC in Gainesville to the SSA Convention in Reno. The issue features a hands-on tutorial by Jim Kellett on the club's logsheet program for duty officers, Bruce Zivic's lively account of the holiday party at Aspen Winery where nearly seventy members gathered around a wood-burning stone fireplace (and where Steve Zaboji's 0.0000 BAC earned him a spot as Virginia State Police's 'poster boy'), and Shane Neitzey's dramatic tale of a ridge-soaring flight that ended in a freshly harvested cornfield at River Bend, requiring a 4WD rescue and a grateful word to the farmer's wife. Recycled items include the WSPA scholarship raffle, the Mifflin Soaring Association's 'Ridge Soaring the Appalachians' seminar in February, and Keith Hilton's maintenance notes on the ASK-21's damaged rear wheel and cracked seat back.
The February 2014 issue captures Skyline Soaring Club's remarkably active winter season, from a hard-fought 27-flight day on January 20 to the annual membership meeting hosted at Aurora Flight Sciences, where Tom Park took the Outstanding Towpilot Award, John Noss received the Gogos Service Award, and Josh Morgan was presented the Skyline Soaring Educational Foundation Flight Scholarship. The issue also documents the club's participation in the Virginia Soaring Association's second annual Soaring Summit on Safety in Lynchburg, a 32-hour ground school crammed into a member's living room, and a detailed tutorial on the club's logsheet program. Rounding out the issue, Jim Kellett shares a collection of beloved stories about what unsuspecting motorists think is hiding in those strange glider trailers—from breeding alligators to cruise missiles.
Skyline Soaring Club's March 2014 issue marks the transition from a harsh winter into the spring flying season, capped by a productive 28-sortie ad-hoc flying day on February 23 that welcomed two new introductory members. President John Noss announces a host of operational changes: a rescheduled mandatory safety meeting at Aurora Flight Sciences, a hangar reorganization, a likely $25 dues increase tied to rising airport rental fees, new ATV age and speed restrictions, and a temporary freeze on new student memberships to manage a surge in training demand. The newsletter also features a
Skyline Soaring Club's April 2014 issue opens with a strong March recap—180 glider flights logged, ten flights exceeding two hours, and Shane's season-opening six-plus-hour flight—before turning to two safety incidents that underscore the spring rust-shaking season: a tow rope that snapped at the slug and yanked a glider 25 feet down the runway, and a near-collision at Front Royal when a Grob pushed past the hold-short line while a pilot was on downwind. The issue's centerpiece is Jim Garrison's vividly told account of a Seniors Event landout deep inside E.R. Jahna Industries' 18,000-acre Vulcan Sand Mine in Florida, where a hostile property supervisor, a GPS that didn't know about locked gates, a retrieve convoy split across two cars, and a pair of missing wing handles turned a routine landing into a multi-hour ordeal resolved only by a man driving by with two bags of laundry. Ken Ekman reports on a dual-life adventure in Phoenix, where a USAF F-16 checkout at Luke AFB doubled as soaring in a 1-26E at Estrella Sailport, with altitudes topping 10,000 feet and 127 km logged on OLC. Other highlights include Tom Knauff's safety seminar at Shenandoah Valley Soaring, SSA Convention oddities from Reno (a 2,560-milligram ornithopter and a fossilized Quetzalcoatlus), a Women in Aviation Day photo essay, Joe Parrish's wedding at Caltech's Athenaeum, and plans for the Schweizer Homecoming at Harris Hill and the 1-26 Spring Fun Meet at Wurtsboro.
Piet Barber's gripping first-person account of an April 26 ridge-soaring flight gone wrong anchors this issue: after finding no usable lift along the Massanutten range, he executed a short-field landing in a state park near Woodstock, Virginia, spent a few minutes in the back of a sheriff's deputy's cruiser, and watched his retrieval crew hacksaw a chain off a locked gate to free his glider. The newsletter also details the club's beloved Spring Family Day grass-strip fly-in at Bill and Sharon Burner's field, a visit from 18 Randolph-Macon Academy students who toured the fleet and heard about SSEF scholarships, a pointed (and funny) radio-discipline lecture from Chief Tow Pilot Martin Gomez that takes aim at a certain business jet's 38-nautical-mile rental-car monologue, Bob Sallada's candid update on a harrowing February emergency operation, and the announcement of a Week of Training intensive for student pilots the last week of June.
A visiting pilot from New Castle swooped in on an LS-6 to claim the Boomerang Trophy, only for Piet Barber to fly out the very next morning and haul it back to Front Royal in a 3-hour, 78-km/h dash that may be the fastest retrieval in the trophy's 45-year history. The same month saw Barber finally earn his long-sought Gold Distance badge and Diamond Goal on a 300-kilometer triangle along the Blue Ridge, while the club mourned the loss of founding member Bob Collier, whose decades of low-tow 1-26 cross-country flights, hilltop landings, and infectious enthusiasm drew a wall of tributes from fellow pilots. Other highlights include a packed Family Day at Burner Field with 27 flights and family rides, the installation of a new legal radio base station extending communications to Woodstock and White Post, Shane Neitzey's report from the Mifflin, PA contest, and plans for the upcoming Week of Training at the end of June.
In a story that captures the very spirit of soaring, Skyline member Greg Ellis recounts the June 1 flight of Joshua Basile, a quadriplegic attorney and inventor who, with the help of a lift-and-sling transfer into the Grob G-103, climbed to 4,700 feet and toured Signal Knob and the Blue Ridge for 44 unforgettable minutes. The issue also celebrates 14-year-old Ellie Renshaw's hard-won solo flight on a drizzly June 22, chronicles Chuck Stover's 319.6 km out-and-return Gold Badge flight to Buena Vista, and carries the somber notice of a memorial service for Bob Collier, a founding member of the club and longtime 1-26 pilot. Rounding out the summer dispatches: a day at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center, a peek inside SpaceX's Dragon capsule at the Newseum, and the club's reminder that the Fall Family Day at VG55 is set for October 12.
Skyline's 2014 Week of Training produced 104 launches and 416 flight operations across five days of punishing heat, afternoon thunderstorms, and gale-force winds, with a dozen or more volunteers on the field from before 0800 to well past sunset. The event yielded three glider first solos—Brandon Snow (14, of Washington, DC), Kaye Ebelt, and Mario Simula (29-minute flight)—plus Bruce Zivic's PP-G endorsement, all witnessed by families, instructors, and a full ramp of cheering members. The issue also details the club's August 1 financial adjustments: monthly dues rising from $28 to $33, a revised tow-fee schedule that actually lowers the 1,000-foot charge by $2 while raising higher-altitude tows, and a $50 increase in hangar sub-lease fees to offset Warren County's new rental rates. Steve Rockwood steps in as Treasurer, the operations manual gains a mandatory new-member orientation and pre-launch tire-pressure checks, and the club issues a firm parking protocol as private glider ownership outgrows the ramp. Smaller items include Bob Sallada's return to the front seat after a six-month recovery, a major Sailplane Tracker update adding altitude data via a free iPhone app, and a tribute to Robert Drew, director of the classic soaring film *The Sun Ship Game*, who died at 90.
September 2014 at Skyline Soaring Club is a month of narrow escapes and quiet triumphs. A solo pilot in the ASK 21 nearly launched with the rear canopy wide open, only for alert wing runner Carlos Troncoso to spot the unlocked pins and break what Safety Officer Charles Norman calls a textbook 'accident chain' before it could become a real one. Meanwhile, Chris Zaboji is one good day away from becoming the youngest Skyline member ever to earn a Silver Badge, having already banked Silver Distance and Silver Endurance legs under punishing low cloud bases. The club also celebrates Tom Gainer's first solo flight, recounts a Flight Review session interrupted by a flock of geese sprinting down the runway ('living, breathing FOD,' as Jim Kellett puts it), and details preparations for the Front Royal Airshow on September 13, where a P-51 Mustang, hot-air balloons, and Skyline's own K, Pawnee, Grob, and Husky will share the ramp. Rounding out the issue: a new John Deere Gator TS tow vehicle is on order, a member's sons are building a 0-time replica of a 1933 Lockheed Vega in Pennsylvania, and the SSA's Badge and Record Committee is calling for volunteers to keep the sport's milestone program alive.
October at Skyline Soaring Club brought a fleet addition, a memorable farewell, and an airshow that nearly rained itself out. The club's new John Deere Gator utility vehicle arrived in mid-September and made its debut at the Front Royal airshow, where low ceilings over the Blue Ridge grounded the Flying Circus until the weather cleared enough for an abbreviated wing walk on a Stearman and a full Pitts Special routine. Radio-control pilots, unfazed by a 300-foot ceiling, carried the show through the waiting periods. The issue also carries a heartfelt goodbye from Scott Graham, an Air Force pilot and club instructor who retired and relocated to Las Vegas, leaving behind a parting bit of aviator's wisdom: at some point things go from bad to worse to worst, and the only thing between you and the ground is the luck you've made for yourself. Meanwhile, Piet Barber—featured on the cover of Soaring Magazine—has been running evening checkride-prep sessions for post-solo students at his Verisign office in Reston, with a Google Hangout option for those who can't make the drive. The club is also gearing up for a Family Day fly-in at Bill Burner's grass strip near Woodstock on October 12, a January board election with two open director seats, and a holiday celebration at Aspendale Winery on December 6.
Skyline Soaring Club's November 2014 issue is headlined by the club's most newsworthy undertaking to date: a 'Soaring Beyond Limitations' day on October 29 in which five quadriplegics and paraplegics, brought together by Josh Basile's Determined2Heal Foundation, each experienced their first glider flight at Front Royal. The Washington Post dispatched a photographer and two reporters to cover the event, and the issue is filled with cockpit GoPro stills, heartfelt thank-you letters from the young pilots and their families, and reflections from club volunteers who called it the most rewarding day of their soaring careers. The newsletter also records a club-record 36 glider launches in a single October day, Chris Zaboji's well-deserved Kolstad Scholarship Award, the Grob's return from Shenandoah with a new Trig-21 transponder and its remarkably painless reassembly, Chuck Stover's report from the Mount Washington Wave Camp (including a 16,400-foot flight and a spiral descent through a closing cloud hole), and Joe Rees's evocative 'Letter from Brussels' recounting the D-Day Horsa glider assault on Pegasus Bridge. Rounding out the issue are the Burner Family Day, a farewell party for departing member Scott Graham, the welcome of new member Walter Litzenburger, and the SSEF's search for new board directors.
Skyline Soaring Club closes out a strong 2014 flying season with a milestone: Keith Overstreet and Ken Ring both passed their commercial glider pilot checkrides on November 23, a double-header the president calls a club first. The issue features an in-depth profile of Curtis Wheeler, the club's sole aerobatic instructor and former Naval Flight Officer, who shares his philosophy on loops, Cuban eights, and cultivating good judgment in students, while Kaye Ebelt, Robert Gray, and Ertan Tete recount their own first loops and high-G experiences. Keith Hilton reports on a day flying a high-performance DG1000S out of Skylark North at Mountain Valley Airport in the Tehachapi Mountains, and Shane Neitzey unveils his ambitious project to build a glider flight simulator around two salvaged 2-33 fuselages. Looking ahead, the club is organizing a Petersburg Wave Camp for late February, promoting a Carolina Wave Project at Shiflet Field near the base of Mt. Mitchell, and scheduling its annual membership meeting for January 24 at the Samuels Library in Front Royal. A holiday party at Aspen Dale Winery rounds out a December packed with last-chance currency flights before the winter break.
Skyline Soaring Club closes out a remarkable 2014 with 1,832 glider flights—just shy of the all-time record—and a December so warm that members flew jacketless on the 27th. The month's headline moment belongs to Andy Delgado, who, days after turning 14, logged a stunning 46-minute first solo. The club also celebrated a deeply moving 'Soaring Beyond Limitations' event in which spinal-cord-injured youngsters, guided by quadriplegic pilot and Determined2heal Foundation director Josh Basile, experienced the thrill of gliding for the first time. Other highlights include Chief Flight Instructor Piet Barber earning his Gold Badge, Chris Zaboji receiving the Soaring Society of America's Kolstad Scholarship, Josh Morgan winning the Skyline Soaring Educational Foundation Flight Scholarship, and the engagement of Magan Patch and Reggie Cassagnol. The club mourns the loss of member Bob Collier. Looking ahead, Michael Bishton proposes adding ultralight and motorglider options to broaden access for members constrained by hanger space and weekend-only operations, while the annual membership meeting (January 24), the Virginia Soaring Association conference (January 17), and the mandatory safety meeting (February 21) set the stage for the 2015 season.
The July–August 2015 issue captures a remarkably productive summer at Skyline Soaring Club despite one of the wettest Julys on record. Three members earned major ratings in a single month—Kaye Ebelt (Private Pilot-Glider), Piet Barber (Designated Pilot Examiner), and Chris Zaboji (Commercial Pilot, examined by Piet in his first DPE session)—while Charles Norman completed his Silver Badge with a five-hour endurance flight. Piet's newly acquired Duo Discus made its maiden cross-country at 305 kilometers and 5 hours 32 minutes, and the club shattered its own single-day launch record twice, finishing Week of Training with 40 flights on July 31. The issue also follows Bill Vickland and his grandson Zach through the storm-plagued 2015 1-26 Championships at Minden, Nevada, where a shoulder injury ended Bill's 40th-plus contest and the crew spent downtime exploring the ghost town of Bodie, California. A STEM outreach day at the National Air and Space Museum drew NASA astronaut Patrick Forrester to the club's glider simulator, and Kaye Ebelt bids a warm farewell as she heads back to Montana, leaving behind a self-published pilot's notebook she hopes will guide future checkride candidates.
The February 2015 issue captures a remarkably active month for Skyline Soaring Club, anchored by the annual membership meeting, board elections, and a January that saw 40 flights—the club's best since 2008—despite repeated snow. President John Noss welcomes new board members Ertan Tete and Dan Ernst and bids a fond farewell to outgoing Secretary Jim Kellett after eleven years of service, with Keith Hilton stepping into the role. The educational pipeline is in full swing: aerospace engineer George Hazelrigg hosts an intensive CFI course in his home, John Noss leads student pilots through Skew-T chart analysis and weather-briefing drills ahead of checkrides, and six Skyline representatives attend the Virginia Soaring Association instructor summit in Charlottesville. Members also tour the Potomac TRACON, the third-busiest approach control facility in the country, spending time in its ATC traffic simulation room. Robert Gray contributes a practical, good-humored protocol for what to do if a hang glider, paraglider, or hot air balloon drops into the Front Royal safety area, prompted by Hugh McElrath's 24-mile hang-glider flight that ended in a farmer's pasture near Waynesboro. A reprinted 1949 SOARING guest editorial by Ted Nelson on powered sailplanes closes the issue with a historical nod to the sport's early ambitions.
The March 2015 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter opens with a heartfelt tribute to Joan Vickland, the beloved crew chief who supported Bill Vickland through 40 contests on the 1-26 circuit and soloed in the 1-26 #238 the couple built from a kit, before her passing in late February. President John Noss reports on a brutal February that included chipping ice off the hangar ramp with mauls and sledgehammers, and celebrates the long-gestating installation of a live ramp-and-runway webcam by club member Ertan Tete. The rescheduled annual safety meeting at Aurora Flight Sciences drew a standing-room-only crowd for discussions on helicopter rotorwash, hypoxia, and new tow ropes. The issue also announces a Warrenton Soaring Center reunion for May 16 to mark the club's 24-year heritage, welcomes new members Mike Heinz (first solo in the Grob) and Tom Ward, congratulates Carlos Troncoso on his Commercial Glider rating, and notes the death of Fitz Fulton, the legendary test pilot known as the "Dean of Test Flight."
April 2015 at Skyline Soaring Club is a month of milestones and farewells. Young member Chris Zaboji collects the SSA's 2014 Kolstad Award in Greenville, S.C., with the $5,000 scholarship directed to his incoming class at Virginia Tech's School of Engineering. Piet Barber chronicles his long, winding road to becoming the only glider-capable Designated Pilot Examiner in the Washington Dulles FSDO region, complete with a mock practical in which a UPS pilot stumbles over the word "variometer." Ertan Tete and Shane Neitzey report a ridge flight down Massanutten Mountain at 70 to 90 knots, calling it a "high-speed highway" that left them back at Signal Knob in just over an hour. The issue also carries a deeply moving tribute to Joan Vickland, who bucked every rivet on the club's 1-26 #238, soloed it more than sixty times, and then spent decades crewing her husband Bill through 38 championships and 260 landouts in his pursuit of three diamonds. A memorial for Peter Bacque, a Warrenton Soaring Center towpilot and instructor, recalls a "very talented, kind and warm friend." Rounding out the issue: a reminder of the May 16 Warrenton Soaring Center reunion, a 70-aircraft WWII flyover over Washington, D.C. on May 8, and Phil Jordan's reflection on the 100th anniversary of NACA's founding.
The May 2015 issue celebrates a spectacular spring soaring season at Front Royal, Virginia, where nine flights exceeded 200 OLC points in April alone, including 710-kilometer flights by new member Karsten Petzold and Shane Neitzey and a 500-kilometer diamond by Chuck Stover out of Julian, Pennsylvania. President John Noss announces the installation of new LXNAV S3 variometers in the club's two-seaters and urges members to coordinate weekday flying days more effectively. The issue features detailed driving and landing directions for the Woodstock Fly-In Family Day at Burner Field on May 17, a reminder of the Warrenton Soaring Center reunion on May 16, and coverage of the 70th-anniversary WWII Victory Capitol Flyover over Washington, D.C. on May 8, featuring more than 70 historic military aircraft in 15 sequenced formations. In the 'Around the Field' section, Kaye Ebelt earns her B badge, Ellie Renshaw and her 81-year-old grandfather enjoy a biplane tour over the Piedmont with Blue Ridge Biplane Rides, and two Randolph-Macon Academy students receive FAST certificates following a Skyline Soaring Educational Foundation briefing.
Skyline Soaring Club's June 2015 issue leads with the remarkable cross-country flight of 17-year-old Chris Zaboji, who piloted a Musketeer from Leesburg, Virginia to Essex, New Jersey and, with passengers, circled the Statue of Liberty counterclockwise along the Hudson River corridor. The issue also recounts the club's Family Day at Bill and Sharon Burner's Soar-Inn in the Shenandoah Valley, where Charles Norman earned his silver distance badge, a two-seat Bergfalke gave rides to non-pilot family members, and Chris Carswell executed a dramatic off-field Sprite landing that required a four-person recovery and reassembly team. Keith Hilton's purchase of a 250-horsepower Piper Comanche 250 and its ferry flight from Great Barrington, Massachusetts to Front Royal mark the club's foray into powered flight. Other highlights include seven-year-old Margot Norman's first glider flight in a Grob, Dave Collier's hard-won landing in a corn-stubble field, a nostalgic reunion at the Warrenton Soaring Center airpark, Christine Vincent's tandem skydive, Shane Neitzey's enthusiastic recruitment pitch for contest flying at Mifflin and Fairfield, and a call for volunteers to man the SSA booth at the 2015 Oshkosh AirVenture.
Skyline Soaring Club's September 2015 issue centers on a landmark honor for longtime member Bill Vickland, a 1-26 Championship competitor, who is set to receive the FAA Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award on September 27 at the Washington Dulles Flight Standards District Office in recognition of 50 or more years of safe, professional flying. The issue also carries the deeply personal farewell of Steve Zaboji, who recounts his son Chris's five-year journey from a 13-year-old first lesson to a confident pilot who, on his last day at the field before college, took his mother Susan up for her first glider ride. Carlos Troncoso details his hard-won 2 hour 22 minute flight in the club Cirrus, a milestone toward his Bronze Badge, while President John Noss reports a remarkably productive August with 13 flying days and a Boomerang glider retrieved from New Castle by Shane Neitzey. Rounding out the issue are an obituary for former member MacKaye W. Smith, a youth-outreach report from the NA&SM STEM Family Day, and news of the Perlan 2 pressurized glider's debut at Oshkosh, designed to soar at 90,000 feet at the edge of space.
Skyline Soaring Club's October 2015 issue celebrates a remarkable milestone: 84-year-old Bill Vickland receiving the FAA's Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award for 50 years of safe flying, complete with a spouse's pin in memory of his late wife Joan and a ceremonial induction into the United Flying Octogenarians by fellow member Jim Kellett. The issue also chronicles Vern Kline's debut in a regional contest, where he piloted the club's Cirrus sailplane against a grid of modern 18-meter gliders at New Castle, Virginia, and finished 9th of 11 in class—beating an ASG-29 and an LS-10 in weak conditions. President John Noss reports a productive September (143 club flights), a record 18-flight student training day, and details the upcoming Away Day at Bill Burner's grass strip near Woodstock on October 18. Former member Paul Pruitt files a 'Post Card from the Left Bank' describing his new life flying public rides in a Schweizer 2-32 at Santa Ynez, California, while the recycled-news column carries word of the Perlan 2 pressurized glider's first test flight above Redmond, Oregon, as the project aims for a 90,000-foot altitude record in 2016.
Skyline Soaring Club's November 2015 issue is headlined by Chuck Stover's gripping account of his Mt. Washington wave camp flight, in which he climbed from a 5,300-foot release to 25,800 msl in 1 hour 44 minutes to secure the altitude requirement for his Diamond Badge—completing the badge where he first learned to soar in the mid-1970s. The story carries a sobering postscript: the very next day, a sudden weather collapse at camp left one pilot bailing out under parachute, another landing on the Mt. Washington Auto Road with a damaged sailplane, and a third making a downwind dash to a Maine airport. Elsewhere, Shane Neitzey's first-place Silver class win at the Region 4 North contest in Fairfield, PA, is celebrated alongside Bruce Zivic's vivid behind-the-scenes look at what it's like to crew a contest pilot. Piet Barber recounts a ridge-running weekend in the Duo Discus with former student Keith Hilton, crossing the Virginia–West Virginia border and chasing thermals past Bryce Resort. Chris Carswell reports on a winch-tow adventure at the Norfolk Gliding Club in England, where he logged two launches and landings in 21 minutes at a former WWII bomber base. The issue also announces the club's December 5 holiday celebration at Aspen Dale Winery, reminds members of updated SSA badge-claim forms, and flags a new New Members Orientation session for November 7.
This December 2015 issue is anchored by a richly detailed profile of Bill Vickland, who received the FAA Master Pilot Award for five decades of flying—all in a single 1-26 sailplane he and his late wife Joan built from a kit over two years. Vickland earned all three of his Diamond badges in that one glider, competed in the 1-26 Championships nearly every year since 1973, logged 265 landouts, and delivered polio vaccine to bush strips in Guyana during a Peace Corps stint. His wife Joan, dubbed a "STAR" (Sociable Tenacious Aircraft Retriever) by fellow competitor Del Blomquist, crewed him through it all. The issue also celebrates an extraordinary November in which five members—Jeff Windham, Mike Heinz, Joe Lingevitch, Nik Kruhmin, and Evan Dosik—passed their practical checkrides within two consecutive weekends under DPE Piet Barber, a milestone President John Noss notes the club had not seen in years. Other highlights include the annual holiday party at Aspen Dale Winery, a 1-26D #470 offered for sale to the club, a near-miss side-step landing by Ertan Tete, and a call for members to run for two open board-of-directors seats at the January 2016 membership meeting.
Outgoing President John Noss bids a final farewell to the membership, reflecting on 2015 as the club's second-busiest flying season ever and an apparent all-time record of at least thirteen new glider ratings, before handing the reins to a new board to be elected at the January 23 membership meeting at the Samuels Library in Front Royal. The issue is enlivened by Bruce Zivic's vivid account of his first ridge flight aboard Piet Barber's Duo, a 40-mile carpet ride to Massanutten Ski Resort that left the self-described "ridge virgin" grinning for days, and by a candid (if exasperated) report that the club's ASK-21 has been shipped to Gehrlein near Erie, Pennsylvania, for finish repairs after a string of avoidable cosmetic and structural damages. Rounding out the newsletter are the holiday party recap at Aspen Dale Winery, Tim Moran's hard-won private glider rating, Bill Vickland's playful challenge to identify a 1978 in-town landing, and the Senate's unanimous passage of the Pilot's Bill of Rights 2 medical-reform legislation.
The February/March 2016 issue opens with a leadership transition as Dan Ernst assumes the presidency from John Noss, welcomes new directors Dick Edge and Evan Dosik, and presents the Bela Gogos Service Award to longtime treasurer Steve Rockwood. The heart of the newsletter, however, is a multi-author dispatch from the biennial Soaring Society of America convention in Greenville, South Carolina, where fifteen Skyliners gathered and Shane Neitzey's Illudium Q-36 glider simulator drew a steady line of pilots for three straight days. Convention coverage ranges from Piet Barber's technical deep-dive into the Concordia racing glider—55-to-1 aspect ratio, a 2.5-centimeter center-of-gravity window, and a cruise glide ratio near 70-to-1—to George Hazelrigg's wide-eyed tour of the Stemme S-10 motor glider (a used example at $295,000, a new one at $400,000) and the Adventure Motor Homes display. The issue also records the annual Safety Meeting, attended by roughly 72 members and highlighted by Bill Burner's parachute demonstration and Pete Maynard's calm walk-through of a Sprite landout; the arrival of Elise Wheelock, a high-school senior and Skyline Soaring Educational Foundation scholarship recipient aspiring to a career in rescue flying; a three-generation Navy aviation tradition in the Otis family; and the club's 2016 calendar, including a cross-country camp at Emporia, Virginia, a Week of Training over the July 4th holiday, and the season's first flying days, which saw Guido Kramp post a 3-hour-30-minute flight in the Cirrus to open the year.
The April 2016 issue marks Skyline Soaring Club's full-throttle launch into the 2016 soaring season. President Dan Ernst reports the club's Grob two-seater back from a compliance inspection in Erie, Pennsylvania, now sporting two new round inspection windows in each wing, and announces a strong early showing for the Week of Training set for July 4–8. The board has locked in the Woodstock Spring Fly-In and Family Day for Memorial Day weekend (May 29), where the club will haul all four gliders fifteen miles to a 3,000-foot grass strip in the Shenandoah Valley, offer students a cross-country tow and simulated outlanding, and make the Burners' 1957 Bergfalke 255 and 1967 1-26A available for rent-free flights. Dick Garrity kicks off a hands-on Cirrus assembly program beginning April 2, aiming to get eighteen qualified-but-unflying members through the check-out process. In the lighter corners, editor Phil Jordan shares a 1974 P-3 Orion ferry-flight tale from Captain Richard Otis, a Brussels update from former president Joe Rees written in the shadow of the March attacks, and Jim Kellett's tongue-in-cheek proposal for a “BikeBack” recumbent bicycle to be strapped to a glider for outlandings—a gag that actually made the pages of SOARING magazine back in 2001 and drew a formal letter of aerodynamic concern from a reader in Alaska. The issue closes with congratulations to Mario Simula on an approved Silver Altitude and Distance claim, Piet Barber's search for a co-pilot for the Mifflin contest, and Brian Clark's heartfelt thanks for finally logging his first solo.
May 2016 is a milestone month at Skyline Soaring Club. Two extraordinary new members arrive: Theo ten Haaf, a 57-year-old Dutch Air Commodore (Brigadier General) and Apache helicopter pilot who led the Netherlands' MH17 recovery effort in Ukraine and now serves as Defense Attaché at the Dutch Embassy in Washington, D.C., and Jeff Armentrout, a former C-5 Galaxy captain, American Airlines 727/MD-80 pilot, and Lockheed Martin F-22 program engineer. On the youth front, 14-year-old Max Fisher earns his first solo in the club Grob, and Joe Lingevitch passes his CFI-G checkride at Bermuda High Soaring in South Carolina. John Noss marks his 2,000th tow and offers his Naviter Oudie for cross-country training sessions. President Dan Ernst issues a pointed reminder about careful use of the Grob tail dolly after recent gel-coat and tail-boom damage, while the club looks ahead to the Woodstock Fly-In Family Day on May 29, the Tidewater XC camp at Emporia, Virginia, and the Week of Training in early July. A STEM-education piece by Erik van Weezendonk recounts bringing a fifth-grade class's aviation lesson to a live glider, and the Safety Corner urges members to adopt an 'aircraft hygiene' mindset borrowed from corporate jet operations.
An eventful June at Skyline Soaring Club opens with a tense rear-canopy failure on the club's Grob during takeoff—no injuries, but a trip to New Jersey for repairs and a temporary loss of the two-seater. The month's most gripping story belongs to Piet Barber, who flew his first glider contest at Mifflin, PA, battling a stuck variometer, a misprogrammed flight computer, and a dramatic land-out in a Pennsylvania field where two young Amish men and a team of horses came to inspect the
July 2016 brings a landmark honor to the Skyline Soaring Club as Jim Kellett, alongside fellow Virginia glider pilots Bill Vickland, Graham Pitsenberger, and John Molumphy, is set to receive the FAA's Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award on July 30 at the Dulles Flight Standards District Office in Herndon—a recognition of fifty years of accident-free flying. The issue also announces plans for a gala celebration of the club's 25th anniversary on November 5, a Warrenton Soaring Center reunion cookout on Labor Day, and the triumphant return of the club's Grob glider after a cross-state canopy repair effort involving a half-dozen volunteers. In the hangar, George Hazelrigg chronicles his upgrade from a trusty LS1-f to a gleaming ASW-27, while the outgoing LS1 finds new life with a trio of eager pilots. New member JP Stewart, a Virginia Tech aerospace engineering student and SSA Youth Committee Chairman, shares his journey from radio-controlled aerobatics to the Junior World Championships in Australia. Rounding out the issue: a new 2-33B's successful first flight ahead of the IVSM at Harris Hill, a tow-rope knot mystery, and the club's ongoing Week of Training preparations.
The August 2016 issue of Skylines brims with milestone moments as the club prepares for its 25th Anniversary Gala on November 5 at the Stonewall Golf Club in Gainesville, Virginia. President Dan Ernst kicks off the issue with congratulations on a record-breaking Week of Training that logged 112 flights across 15 pilots, producing multiple first solos and a 13-year-old student, Maryam Ali, confidently staging gliders by week's end. The issue also celebrates founding member Jim Kellett's receipt of the FAA's Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award for fifty years of accident-free soaring, a 19-year-old Elise Wheelock's new private glider rating, and Matt Linger's emotional solo flight he calls the best twelve minutes of his life. Rounding out the news are plans for a nostalgic Warrenton Soaring Center reunion on September 3, an appeal for the Skyline Soaring Club Educational Foundation, a petition to save the Virginia Aviation Museum, and a temporary board restriction on new member intake to protect the training pipeline.
President Dan Ernst reports a remarkable summer at Skyline Soaring Club, where a wave of young pilots — from 13-year-old Ryan Trexell taking first instruction to 20-something transient members earning commercial ratings and international competition experience — carried the club's training pipeline to new heights. The issue also chronicles the club's successful static display at the Virginia Airshow, where a Grob glider drew crowds and piqued the interest of would-be soaring newcomers, and features Michael Bishton's travelogue from a detour through Moriarty, New Mexico, home of the Southwest Soaring Museum and the bustling Sundance Aviation operation. Looking ahead, the newsletter announces the highly anticipated 25th Anniversary Gala Celebration on November 5 at the Stonewall Golf Club, a second Burner Away Day at Woodstock on October 2, and a new members orientation session, while the editor's column lays down updated safety rules banning selfie sticks from club gliders and tightening vehicle-and-radio procedures on the field.
Skyline Soaring Club's October 2016 newsletter announces the details of its 25th Anniversary Gala on November 5 at The Stonewall Golf Club in Gainesville, featuring competition pilots Eric Nelson and JP Stewart as speakers and a musical program by club members Susan and Steven Zaboji and 14-year-old pianist Maryam Ali. The issue also reports on a successful second Burner Away Day at the Burner family's grass field, where three tow pilots logged 32 flights amid a crowd of members, families, and a record number of dogs; congratulates Reynolds Renshaw on earning his private pilot rating at Bermuda High Soaring; and carries a letter from Ken Ekman, a Skyline member stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, who fondly recalls a 320-kilometer, 17,000-foot flight with his father over the Sacramento Mountains. Rounding out the issue are a humorous safety column from "Gramps," a new tow pilot class, a pre-flight square-dance poem, and a call for volunteers to crew at the MASA Fairfield contest in mid-October.
The November 2016 issue marks the Skyline Soaring Club's 25th Anniversary Gala at the Stonewall Golf Club in Gainesville, Virginia, and the month is packed with milestones. New PPL-G pilot Michael Bishton earns his checkride under Chief Instructor Piet Barber; 85-year-old Katie Simenson checks a long-held dream off her list with a FAST flight witnessed by her large family; and club member Martin Gomez is named to the FAA's high-level Drone Advisory Committee alongside 34 other aviation experts. President Dan Ernst reflects on the legendary Bob Hoover, who passed at 94, drawing a parallel between Hoover's energy-management gliding in a Shrike Commander and the sport Skyline calls home. Tim Kreiner bids a fond farewell as he relocates to Florida, calling Skyline 'by far the best Soaring Club I have seen or been part of.' The issue also carries SSA news of a new online Soaring magazine subscription and a modest dues increase for 2017, a ground-school interest survey from George Hazelrigg, and a reminder that the flying season winds down on December 11.
Skyline Soaring Club marked its 25th anniversary in early November with a gala honoring founding members Jim Kellett, Spencer Annear, Shane Neitzey, and Phil Jordan, while looking ahead to a restored Pawnee tow plane and a 2017 Petersburg Wave Camp (Feb. 24–Mar. 5) with a 23,000-foot wave window. The issue also carries a sobering safety account: on November 20, gusts exceeding 37 knots freed a 1-26 (registration 081, in which Ted Teach won the 1973 1-26 Championship) from its tie-downs, and the glider flew itself apart mere feet from a Cherokee. Other highlights include a gripping November 26 ridge-day narrative in which four pilots tracked the North Mountain ridge for three hours—one covering over 200 kilometers without ever climbing above 4,000 feet—Keith Hilton's achievement of a single-engine land rating in a 1964 Comanche 250 after a glider-pilot foundation, Erik Van Weezendonk's promotion to full Colonel in the USMC Reserves, and a call for volunteers to adopt a near-complete run of Soaring magazines dating to 1969.
Skyline Soaring Club marks its 25th anniversary with a January issue brimming with adventure and club business. President Dan Ernst lays out the year ahead, including the January 28 membership meeting at the Samuels Library in Front Royal, a pending safety meeting, and a call for more social gatherings at the field. The club's Pawnee glider was ferried to Pennsylvania for a full fabric and paint overhaul, with hopes of having it back for the start of the 2017 season. On the international front, Harry Dogo reports a five-day pilgrimage to Omarama, New Zealand, where daily wave conditions, cloud-street thermals, and a spin-and-loop session in a Grob 103 at Mt. Cook made for a "gliding mecca" experience. Michael Bishton shares a detailed account of his first ridge flight at Dillingham Airfield on Oahu, navigating the quirks of unassisted takeoffs, a 9,000-foot runway, and a 25-knot headwind landing. JP Stewart has been named to the USA Junior Team for the 10th FAI Junior World Gliding Championships in Pociunai, Lithuania (July 27–August 13), joining teammates Noah Reitter and Daniel Sazhin. The Safety Corner notes the FAA's withdrawal of its proposed transponder requirement for gliders above 10,000 MSL. Other highlights include Chris Zaboji's new Flight Instructor-Glider rating, Christopher Carswell's Silver Altitude badge, a book review of Joe Karam's *Danger and Poetry*, and a call for crew volunteers for the 15-meter Nationals in Cordele, Georgia.
Skyline Soaring Club's February 2017 issue captures a surprisingly active winter: the Pawnee glider was ferried to Pennsylvania for a full fuselage recovery and repaint, a second Gator tow plane joined the fleet, and a long-awaited open hangar at Front Royal moved closer to approval from the Warren County Board of Supervisors. The annual membership meeting re-elected Keith Hilton and Dick Garrity to the board and saw President Dan Ernst present the Bela Gogos award to George Hazelrigg for his years of instruction, leadership, and off-season ground schools. A heartfelt tribute from Spencer Annear recalls Bela as the pilot who stayed up when everyone else gave up, the treasurer who kept the young club afloat, and the organizer who proved cross-country soaring was within reach. The issue also announces the 2017 Petersburg Wave Camp (March 24 – April 2), a member's farewell as Curtis Wheeler relocates to Nevada, a lighthearted Gator-naming contest, and a mandatory pre-season Safety Meeting on February 25.
The Warren County Board of Supervisors gave the go-ahead to demolish the aging pole-barn T-hangars and build a larger, open-bay hangar purpose-designed for glider operations, a milestone the club is calling the first step toward 'Gliderville.' The season opened with a safety meeting, a weather-busted ops attempt, and a harrowing (but injury-free) hangar-door incident that prompted a club-wide safety reminder. The club's ASK-21 was deployed to the 2017 Petersburg Wave Camp in late March, spin training in a modified ASK-21 was slated for early May at Grant County, and a waitlist of sixteen eager new students underscored Skyline's continued growth even as soaring participation wanes nationally. Other highlights include Chris Zaboji's promotion to CFI-G after starting at the club as a fourteen-year-old, a humorous naming debate over the two Gator tow planes, and a fresh paint job for the club's ASK-21, affectionately dubbed the 'Old Buzzard.'
Skyline's April 2017 issue is packed with the energy of Larry Stahl's Petersburg Wave Camp at Grant County Airport, where pilots from multiple clubs logged six-plus-hour ridge flights, a 15,500-foot climb above a line of thermal lift, and a 6-hour flight by Chris Carswell, all supported by Shenandoah Valley Soaring's legendary "curb service." Back home at KFRR, 14-year-old Maryam Ali earned her solo in the Grob and followed it with a 1:10 flight from a low tow, while Piet Barber documented his winch-launch certification at the newly opened Eastern Soaring Center, comparing the launch acceleration to a Tesla in ludicrous mode. The issue also features Jim Kellett's entertaining account of United Airlines pilot Rock Skowbo repairing an ASW-20C canopy strut using improvised wooden jigs, a turnbuckle, and a piece of stranded control cable scavenged from a transponder. Other highlights include a heartfelt farewell from Martin Walker, who is stepping back from soaring after a cancer diagnosis; WSPA scholarship opportunities for women pilots; a solar-eclipse flying weekend at Chilhowee Gliderport, Tennessee; planning for the Mid-Atlantic Soaring Association's July western safari to Hobbs or Nephi; and a cautionary tale about the club computer's ransomware infection. Upcoming events include the May 28 Burner Away Day at Woodstock, a spin clinic with Shenandoah Valley Soaring, and the annual Week of Training.
Skyline Soaring Club's May 2017 issue is dominated by Chief Flight Instructor Piet Barber's bold proposal to relocate the annual Week of Training (July 10–14) from Front Royal to Grant County Airport in Petersburg, West Virginia, where a 5,000-foot runway and near-zero traffic could enable 40–50 student instruction flights per day with under two minutes of turnaround between sorties. Fellow members Steve Zaboji and Pete Maynard enthusiastically endorse the plan, with Zaboji offering tow pilots, an instructor, and a rented motor home for the trip. The issue also marks a significant editorial transition: founding member and long-time editor Phil Jordan—himself a former design director at Air & Space magazine—hands the reins to Vern Kline after roughly 25 years at the helm. Other club news includes Tim Moran stepping in as Membership Officer, Dick Otis joining as FAST Instructor, the Sprite's rudder receiving a full fabric re-cover by Pete Maynard and Bill Vickland, a detailed safety write-up on a near-miss aileron-control jam in the club Cirrus, plans for a Spring Family-Away Day at Bill Burner's Woodstock, Virginia field on May 28, early M-ASA Summer Safari planning for Hobbs or Nephi, and a heads-up that the board is soliciting member loans to fund additional glider purchases under a new strategic plan.
Skyline Soaring Club's June 2017 issue captures a club in full stride. President Dan Ernst reports on the completion of the 2017 Strategic Planning Survey, the board's decision to accept two additional students into the training pipeline, and the upcoming Week of Training at Petersburg, West Virginia, where long runways and low traffic promise more sorties than the home field at Front Royal can offer. The issue's most vivid dispatch comes from Joe Lingevitch, who recounts a spin-training clinic at Grant County Airport in which five Skyline pilots worked the Schleicher ASK-21 with a factory-installed tail-ballast spin kit, holding the controls through four full rotations before executing recoverals and simulating the dreaded low-altitude traffic-pattern spin at safe altitude. Bruce Zivic lays out the Duty Officer's authority over launch queuing and the new first-come, first-served student rotation, while Chief Tow Pilot Steve Zaboji proposes a formalized 'Surge Tow Pilot' slot to tame the midday launch rush. Michael Bishton offers a lighter counterpoint from Seminole Lake Gliderport in Florida, where a 17-minute check-ride, a sand-grass runway, and a passenger ride with a retired State Department colleague reminded him just how well-equipped Skyline's own fleet is. The issue also announces a retirement BBQ honoring George Hazelrigg on July 22 and includes the club's aircraft maintenance and registration calendar.
The July 2017 issue of Skylines carries the club's biggest news of the year: the board has voted to purchase Charles Norman's meticulously maintained Discus CS "9Y," slated to join the fleet in October after Norman's final Region 4 contest. In the interim, the aging Cirrus is offered for sale at $7,000. President Dan Ernst also reports on a successful Away Day hosted by Bill Burner, the upcoming Week of Training (July 10–14), and a tick-season advisory for members working near the pole barn hangars. The issue features warm introductions from four new members, including Fernando Cuenin, an economist at the Inter-American Development Bank who grew up 300 km from Buenos Aires in a town known for asado and soaring; Kip Ongstad, a 64-year-old RC glider enthusiast from California; Derek Schesser, a staff scientist with a PhD in mechanical engineering; and Todd Morris, a 51-year-old national-security IT director in Chantilly. Chris Carswell is lauded for placing second in the OLC Region 4 standings, and Steve Wallace is congratulated on earning his CFI-G rating. Treasurer Steve Rockwood's mid-year report shows the club holding $155,800 in the bank with roughly $79,400 available for capital investment, while the maintenance section tracks inspection and registration deadlines across the ASK-21, Grob-103, SGS-136, Husky, and Pawnee.
Skyline Soaring Club celebrates a triumphant Week of Training at Petersburg (W99), where the club logged a record 52 launches in a single day and sent six students to their first glider solo, including Chief Tow Pilot Steve Zaboji's own first solo. The issue also covers Piet Barber's 500 KM Diamond Distance Task flown in August, Bill Vickland's role as contest director at the 1-26 Championships in Midlothian, Texas, and Chris Zaboji's adventure at the Junior Contest on Harris Hill in Elmira, New York. A heartfelt tribute marks the retirement of longtime member George after 35 years at the National Science Foundation, where he helped shape the Engineering Design program. Additional items include a soaring safety site survey by Burt Compton scheduled for September 3, volunteer calls for the Virginia Air Show at Front Royal, Clark Lundsford's account of instructing cadets at the CAP National Flight Academy for Gliders, Joe Lingevitch's practical guide to the FAA glider knowledge test, and a nostalgic look back at the Warrenton Airpark, the grass-strip birthplace of the club's predecessor, the Warrenton Soaring Center.
September 2017 was a banner month for Skyline Soaring Club. Piet Barber received SSA approval for his Diamond Distance claim on an August 5 flight, a milestone that cements his standing among the sport's long-distance aces. Meanwhile, Shane Neitzey launched from Front Royal, Virginia, and soared to 15,000 feet above Petersburg, West Virginia, capturing a stunning front-page photograph before turning back home—a flight the editors named the best of the month. The club also turned out in force for the annual Virginia Airshow at KFFR, fielding a glider display staffed by young solo pilots, running a live demonstration, and manning the ramp in a no-prop zone where one pilot earned a standing ovation for a spot landing. Looking ahead, the newsletter promotes the biannual Burner Away Day at Bill and Sharon Burner's family-friendly field in Woodstock, Virginia, on October 1. The issue also bids farewell to JP Stewart, heading back to Virginia Tech after an internship at Aurora Flight Sciences, and Mario Simula, returning to Italy after his F-35 program stint with the Italian Air Force.
The October 2017 issue of Skylines captures a club in transition at the close of its flying season. President Dan Ernst recounts a memorable Away Day at Burner Field in the Shenandoah Valley, where members thermalled alongside Black Vultures in a Bergefalke and a drop-top 1-26, and where Bill and Sharon's daughter Guinevere made a surprise appearance with her two young daughters. The newsletter also marks the departure of Theo ten Haaf, a Dutch military officer promoted to Major General to build a special forces command back in Holland, whom Ernst calls a warm and gracious addition to the club. On the competitive front, Chris Zaboji flew 4.5 hours from New Castle, Virginia to claim the Blue Ridge Soaring Society's Boomerang Trophy from Skyline on September 16, and Shane Neitzey offers an enthusiastic first-hand account of his debut at the New Castle contest, logging 1,395 km in 23.85 hours over eight days. A thorough instructional article by J. C. Kellet untangles the tangled American and British terminology around forward slips, sideslips, and crosswind landings. The issue closes with an operations update announcing the resumption of flying on October 21, a safety briefing, and a remembrance for Chief Tow Pilot Steve Zaboji, alongside the board's plans to induct a Discus CS into the fleet and sell the club's Cirrus.
The loss of club member, mentor, and pilot Steve Zaboji on October 7, 2017, while towing a glider from Front Royal, Virginia, dominates this issue of *Skylines*. President Dan Ernst opens with a somber message as the club resumes operations on October 21 following a mandatory safety meeting and remembrance. Keith Hilton contributes a deeply personal tribute recalling 76 hours of flight training with Steve, his patient mentorship, and the pilot's final radio call: "Front Royal traffic, Pawnee 866 departing runway 28 glider in tow." The club is actively searching for a replacement Pawnee tow plane, has completed the purchase of a Discus CS glider (N520RJ) now awaiting final FAA registration, and has established a $45,000 Pawnee Replacement Fund from the insurance settlement. Treasurer Steve Rockwood reports a healthy bank balance of nearly $153,000, while the Board outlines upcoming 2018 elections, a proposed hangar dedication to Steve Zaboji, and the club's fleet action schedule. The issue also reprints notices for the December 2017 FAI Pan American Gliding Championships in Buenos Aires and the 2018 SSA Convention.
Piet Barber's August 8, 2017 flight set multiple Virginia state soaring records, a feat the club celebrates alongside a feature in Soaring magazine highlighting four Skyliners at the Junior Nationals, where Keith Hilton's BW sailplane landed on the centerfold. President Dan Ernst reflects on a challenging year, welcomes FedEx pilot and Marine Corps veteran Erik Van Weezendonk as the club's new Safety Officer, and reports progress on the long search for a replacement Pawnee tow plane to retire aging 866. The issue also carries a tribute to late member Steve Zaboji, honored with the FAA Master Pilot Award, updates on the county-approved new hangar project, and details on the January 2018 membership meeting and a two-day Flight Instructor Refresher Course in Gainesville, Virginia. Rounding out the newsletter are features on the Arcus M and Genesis 2 sailplanes, photos from the 2017 Week of Training, and a recap of the CAP National Flight Academy Junior Camp and Contest.
Skyline Soaring Club kicks off 2018 riding a wave of national recognition, with youth members gracing the cover of Soaring Magazine, five first solos and a new rating highlighted in its milestones section, and Keith Hilton's glider featured on the center fold. President Dan Ernst celebrates the club's growth with 20 new pilots in the pipeline and announces the arrival of a new Pawnee tow plane, the product of a rigorous selection process led by Shane Neitzey and Dick Garrity. The January Membership Meeting honors Dick Otis with the FAA Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award for 50 years of accident-free flight, while the club elects a new slate of officers including Garrity as President. Instructors Bob Sallada and Piet Barber offer practical deep-dives into glide performance in sinking airmass and the four levels of pilot competence, and the FAA Safety Team schedules a series of webinars and a local checkride-prep seminar at Leesburg Executive Airport. It is a newsletter that reads less like a routine January update and more like a club tipping into a new era.
The season kicks off with a safety meeting, a practice ops run, and the first flights of the year, but the real story is Piet Barber's three-attempt odyssey to Mobile, Alabama, where he battled two weather cancellations, a COPS-rehearsing neighbor in a sketchy downtown motel, and a mountain of FSDO paperwork before finally certifying three new glider pilots and crashing on the beach at fellow Skyliner Dick Edge's Mobile Bay house. The issue also marks the arrival of fifteen-year-old Maryam Ali as the club's new newsletter editor, celebrates Fernando Cuenin's private glider check ride at Bermuda High, features Jim Kellett's pointed takedown of the myth that gliders always have right-of-way, and includes a reminder to check your qualification icons before the Duty Officer has to flip through your logbook. A timelapse of the crew assembling the K, a $2,000 VABA aviation scholarship, and a 'Name that Skyliner' game (Big Ten football, Apollo last cut, 100+ aircraft flown) round out a busy first issue of the season.
The 2018 season is officially underway at Skyline Soaring Club, with eight days of operations, two Discus checkouts, and over fifty student flights already on the books. President Dick Garrity outlines the Board's evolving approach to tow scheduling and two-seater access, while a brand-new "Club Buds" program pairs six volunteer instructors with incoming students to ease them into the club. John Noss delivers a thorough, step-by-step guide for new certificated pilots ready to tackle their first cross-country badge flight, from OLC logging to glide-computer setup to a 21-mile local practice course. Jim Kellett brings back vivid dispatches from the 2018 Soaring Society of America convention in Reno, where seven Skyliners attended talks on WWII gliders, drooled over a twin-jet 1-26, and shared an OSTIV dinner with the Payne team behind the Perlan altitude record. The issue also features Hugh McElrath's practical ADS-B Out installation write-up, a monthly free-tow lottery from new Safety Officer Eric van Weezendonk, details on the May 27 Burner Family Day away flight, and Dick Edge's tongue-in-cheek announcement that "tow planes are a thing of the past"—photographed amid paragliders and RC models at Torrey Pines. A "Name that Skyliner" guessing game and a safety alert about ramp visitors round out a busy first issue of the year.
The May 2018 issue opens with the triumphant arrival of the club's new Pawnee tow plane (424BY), a 260 HP machine hauled in by Shane Neitzey from Scotts Bluff after a two-day, multi-leg flight behind a cold front, promising turnaround times of just eight minutes and the ability to carry water ballast for cross-country pilots. The centerpiece of the issue is Piet Barber's vivid, day-by-day account of competing with JP Stewart in the first-ever 20-meter multi-seat national glider competition at Mifflin, PA, where the pair endured a cancelled practice day, a land-out on a private grass strip called Snook while sheltering a Duo Discus from a hail-laden storm, a barefoot week in a tent, and a nail-biting scratch over the Nittany Mountains to ultimately finish third overall behind Karl Striedieck and Sarah Arnold. Other highlights include a 1971 1-26E (s/n 505) offered for sale, Bob Sallada's hard-won safety column on landing-related pilot-induced oscillations drawn from his F4H Phantom II test-and-evaluation career, Erik van Weezendonk and Evan Dosik's STEM outreach to fifth graders at Frederick Douglass Elementary, Clark Lunsford's Civil Air Patrol checkout in a Cessna 182, a safety alert on visitor control around taxiing tow planes, and the ongoing 'Name that Skyliner' guessing game featuring a pilot who once held the title of 'emperor,' drove a steam locomotive, served on a German submarine in World War II, and wrote the MNPS for the North Atlantic Track System.
The July 2018 issue captures the height of Skyline Soaring Club's summer season. The centerpiece is the Week of Training at Petersburg, West Virginia (Grant County Airport W99), where 180 instructional flights were launched in just over four days, students averaged 18 flights each, and two pilots—Todd Morris and Rob Jacobsen—earned their first solos amid what one student called a "week-long summer camp" of flying, home-cooked BBQ, and a power outage that turned into a hand-pumped-gas lesson. The issue also features Dan Ernst's vivid account of his first 1-26 Championship at Caesar Creek, Ohio, complete with a buzzard circling in the middle of a gaggle, a stuck flight computer, and a carrier-landing game played in a raincoat while being hosed down. Other highlights include Piet Barber's review of the long-out-of-print Soaring Flight Manual, Clark Lunsford's report on the CAP National Glider Flight Academy at Fort Indiantown Gap, Hugh McElrath's rookie tow-pilot experience, and Jim Kellett's "Curmudgeon's Corner" tale of climbing the upwind side of a cumulus cloud to 4,600 feet before diving through a narrowing cloud canyon to make a bumpy landing.
Skyline Soaring's August 2018 issue celebrates the club's training pipeline with two student members, Peter Ross and Max Fisher, earning their PPL-G ratings, while President Dick Garrity lays out a candid and forward-looking discussion on the club's glider acquisition strategy, the role of the Skyline Soaring Education Foundation, and the balance of membership categories from early teens to octogenarians. The issue also features a thorough, hands-on guide to tow-rope inspection and maintenance by John Noss, a vivid account by Hugh McElrath of a winch-tow clinic with multi-time national champion Karl Striedieck at Eagle Field, Pennsylvania, and a lighthearted 'Name that Skyliner' guessing game. A safety alert on visitor control around taxiing tow planes rounds out a newsletter that captures a club actively growing its fleet of pilots while wrestling with the practical economics of keeping its hangar full.
Skyline Soaring Club's biggest fleet news in years dominates this issue: a nearly new Alexander Schleicher ASK-21 (N321K, ~1,000 hours) is being purchased from Burt Compton in Marfa, Texas, to replace the club's Grob. Keith Hilton traveled to the 4,800-foot airfield to inspect the glider, took a 45-minute tow flight behind a Cessna 182, and reports the ship in beautiful condition with a Spin Kit, full AD compliance, and a like-new trailer. The member load-pledge drive closed two days early, slightly over-subscribed. The issue also carries a pointed safety corner from Frederik van Weezendonk following a long-landing incident in a Sprite during an ad-hoc day, a candid Part 2 from instructor Bob Sallada on student motivation and training expectations, a photo gallery from the Burner Family Day, a listing for a member-owned DG-300 (SF9) for sale, and a 2001 poem by David Brunner celebrating the joy of circling.
Skyline Soaring Club's February 2019 issue packs a full month of forward-looking news into a single newsletter. President Dick Garrity rallies members for the March 3 season opener and a mandatory safety meeting, while flagging plans to qualify instructors for the club's new Discus glider ahead of a late-May Mifflin Regional contest. The January 26 annual business meeting, held at the North Warren Fire Station, revealed a club that spent heavily on a new ASK-21 glider (hailed back from the West Coast by Bill Vickland via Marfa, Texas) and tow-plane upgrades, only to be hit by a dismal flying season that left the capital investment fund strained. Keith Hilton was honored with the Bela Gogos Award for years of fleet maintenance and board service, Piet Barber debuted a Mach 1.0 glider flight simulator built around Oculus Rift goggles, and the board welcomed Evan Dosik and Pete Maynard to new terms. Perhaps the issue's most memorable page is a first-person account by 13-year-old Ava Dunphy, a brand-new student who chronicles five grueling Sunday ground-school sessions with instructor George Hazelrigg—complete with mini-quizzes, SKEW-T charts, a reassuring line about stalls and spins, and Maruta's chili. The newsletter also points members toward the SSA's eight new $2,000 youth flight-training scholarships (deadline March 31), a fresh 'Soaring the Sky' podcast, and an urgent appeal for SSEF donations to fund two additional 2019 youth trainees.
Spring has finally arrived at Skyline Soaring Club, and this issue is packed with the energy of a season about to explode. Tim Moran recounts his Mt Mitchell Wave Camp experience (Feb 26–Mar 7), including a 14,000-foot birthday flight in the primary wave and a dramatic upwind transition from secondary to primary — only to learn the camp's best day, with pilots topping 26,000 feet, came the very day after he left. Safety Officer Erik Van Weezendonk delivers a no-nonsense deep dive into 14 CFR 61.56 and 61.57, walking members through the difference between legality, currency, and proficiency with the memorable case study of "Joe M. Pilot," and follows with an IMSAFE-style self-assessment covering illness, medication, stress, alcohol, fatigue, and emotion. President Dick Garrity reports on the Grob's custom trailer refit, the club's push toward ADS-B compliance, and a May that will see members scattered across contests in Albert Lea, Mifflin, and Moriarty. Bill Burner lays out plans for the Woodstock Fly-In/Family Day on Memorial Day weekend, complete with vintage Bergfalke and 1-26 gliders on a soft grass strip. The issue also carries a heartfelt memorial for towpilot extraordinaire Jim McCulley, who passed in late April, remembered by friends for his F-86 stories from Korea and his low passes over Warrenton. Rounding out the newsletter: a detailed guide to filing NASA ASRS voluntary safety reports, Jim Kellett's decades-spanning "See and Avoid" anecdotes from a 707 near-miss to modern TCAS alerts, a soaring poem by W.G. Hill, and a 1985 DG-300 (N8RX) listed for sale at $39,000.
The July 2019 issue is dominated by the club's decision to outfit every glider and tow plane with ADS-B Out transponders, a $26,000 fleet upgrade prompted by multiple near-misses with business jets in the Dulles approach corridor. Keith Hilton lays out the prioritized installation schedule, the Trig equipment choices, and the funding plan drawn from the avionics fund, a maturing CD, member loans, and a possible $200 assessment. Pete Maynard and Steve Wallace deliver a richly detailed recap of the Week of Training at W99, from the parents' lasagna and fajita dinners to the Husky brake swap and a safety stand-down after a wing-tip bump. Joe Rees pens a moving remembrance of charter member Jim McCulley, a Korean War ace who drove a MiG into the ground and later shaped Skyline's early culture. The issue also introduces a wave of new youth and adult members, reprints Bill Burner's 2012 visit to Windward Performance in Bend, Oregon, where Greg Cole's Perlan glider was being built for a 90,000-foot stratospheric record attempt, and features Reynolds Renshaw's discovery of a historical marker in Afton, Virginia, commemorating Richard duPont's 1933 record-breaking 121.6-mile soar down the Shenandoah Valley.
Piet Barber's vivid account of supporting the US Juniors at the Region 3 Harris Hill contest dominates this issue, chronicling a first-day land-out in a tall-grass field marked by a single tree, a 150-degree ground loop that left the glider backwards on a gentle hill, and a gaggle of excited kids clamoring to sit in the cockpit. The newsletter also celebrates Andrew Melanson's calm first solo on Labor Day Weekend, confirms the club's ASK-21 will fly the Fairfield, PA contest in early October with seats open for member co-pilots, and offers a gripping family history of Joe Revelli's father, a WWII CG4A glider pilot who hauled troops and a 75 mm howitzer over the Hump into China. A thorough Safety Corner walks members through Breaking the Chain, the Swiss Cheese model, and Threat and Error Management, while Shane Neitzey lays out practical contest-preparation advice for newcomers. Rounding out the issue: a Perlan 2 stratospheric flight update, a call for the October 6 Family Day at Burner's Field in the Shenandoah Valley, and listings for a 1984 LS-4 and a 1985 DG-300 both seeking new SSC homes at KFRR.
October 2019 marks a fresh start at Skyline Soaring Club, with Jim Kellett stepping in as newsletter editor and John Noss assuming the role of chief flight instructor. Noss's inaugural column urges students to distinguish between procedure and technique when different instructors offer varying advice, while Bill Burner delivers a gripping safety piece on what to do when a tow pilot waves you off rather than simply releasing—describing the terrifying moment a tow plane 'stops in mid-air' and begins losing altitude while the glider coasts on. The issue also covers the club's first ADS-B OUT installation on N321K (a Grob, upgraded for roughly $2,500), the Grob 103 hitting the Wings & Wheels market, a January 25 annual meeting with two open director seats, a Family Away Day at Burner Field, and a lighthearted introduction to the Skyline Cycling Club, a self-described subsidiary whose members favor motorless land transport as much as motorless flight.
President Dick Garrity opens with a warm thank-you to the volunteers who cleaned the hangars and ran the October 13 Away Day at the Burners' grass strip near Woodstock, Virginia, then lays out the Club's six volunteer groups (Chiefs, Meisters, Officers, Service Members, and Webmasters) and invites members to claim a role. The safety content is the issue's backbone: Keith Hilton's "Dufus Report" recounts a Cessna pilot who drifted into IMC, iced up the windshield and wings, and made it to San Angelo by the skin of his teeth, drawing five hard lessons for glider pilots about cloud clearances and see-and-avoid. Erik van Weezendonk follows with a detailed Safety Corner on landing-pattern communication at Front Royal, walking through what happens when a glider calls the 45 and the launch crew is already pushing out. Bob Sallada reprints the SSF's approach-speed formula (1.5 Vso + ½ steady wind + full gust factor) and urges pilots to keep it on the fast side. A Federal Air Surgeon article warns that unregulated CBD oil can fail a DOT drug test and is not an affirmative defense, while a separate piece on marijuana's aeromedical implications reminds readers that federal law, not state law, governs FAA certification. On the lighter side, Carlos Troncoso earns his FAI Silver Badge in the Club's K-21, George Hazelrigg celebrates joining the United Flying Octogenarians at a party hosted by the Neitzeyes, and two new members—Richard Good, a former marine engineer and solar-industry CEO, and Molly Grear, an ocean engineer at the National Science Foundation—introduce themselves. The issue closes with a six-month Board summary covering ADS-B Out installation, a new spin-training requirement in the ASK-21, a $43,900 listing for the Club's Grob, and plans for an "Advanced Flying Guide" by Ron Wagner.
Ginny Fleet Pawlak offers a deeply personal account of growing up spending weekends at New Market and Front Royal airports with her glider-flying father, Kevin Fleet, from the treks down Route 340 through Bela's Gap to the water-balloon contest she won from the back seat of an ASK-21. Her story, tinged with the bittersweet reality of her father's declining health, closes with her hope to fly him one more time. The issue also features Erik von Weezendonk's vivid report from a Region 4 North soaring competition at Fairfield Airpark near Gettysburg, complete with compressed grids, a 2.5-hour retrieve, and hard-won lessons on tactics and crowd management in the start cylinder. In the Instructors' Corner, Ron Wagner—a 10,000-hour jet pilot and USAF Presidential Wing alumnus—describes the thrill of flying wingman with a bald eagle in a thermal, a joy he says surpasses even supersonic flight. Club business includes a $5/month dues increase, hangar door repair proposals, and an urgent call for Director and Corporate Officer nominees ahead of the January 25, 2020 Annual Meeting. The SSA Convention in Little Rock (February 20–22) is highlighted, along with a safety bulletin on K2 battery/charger compatibility and a Safety Corner on expectation bias and complacency.
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