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.