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.