President Richard Garrity looks back on a solid 2019 season (1,543 sorties, a near-record ad hoc day of 29 flights) and previews the January 25 annual membership meeting, where two new directors will be elected and the club's growth toward 150 members will be discussed. The issue's most human moments come from Erik van Weezendonk's self-deprecating 'Doofus Report,' in which a complacent tow pilot leaves carb heat on, watches a glider release in a puff of smoke, and then forgets to drop the tow rope at the field; and from Jeff Kellett's warm reminiscence of growing up in 1960s Alexandria, Virginia, where his family assembled a Schweizer 1-26 in the front yard, chased cross-country flights with a CB radio, and eventually led to his 1978 solo in a 2-33 over Burmuda High. Brian Clark recounts a high-pressure week at Seminole Gliderport in Florida, where he completed Commercial and CFIG checkrides in a no-frills Super Blanik with no radio, no wing runner, and 50-foot trees in the pattern. Rounding out the issue: Pete Maynard's letter urging members to crew at a regional contest, Jim Kellett's candidacy for the board, a photo caption contest, WSPA scholarship information, and a feature on member Jim Perlmutter's 100-kilometer 'Tour of the Moon' cycling trek through Colorado National Monument.
Pete Maynard, a 35-year United Airlines captain who also spent a decade as a DEA Special Agent and flew C-130s in the Air Force Reserve, steps into the Skyline Soaring Club presidency for 2020 with a safety-first manifesto and a call for members to pitch in on everything from fueling tow planes to pushing gliders. The issue also carries the thrilling second half of Brian Clark's Seminole, Florida training odyssey, where 83-year-old Dutch glider legend Jan Driesson—nearly 30,000 flights and counting—shepherded Clark and his father through 42 flights in four and a half days. Erik van Weezendonk's second Doofus Report delivers a hair-raising account of an aileron pin ejecting mid-tow at Warrenton and a spoiler deploying on takeoff at Lovettsville, both traced to skipped control-integrity checks. Round out the issue with Bob Sallada's candid take on duty-team readiness, Board decisions on the Grob sale, FAST flight expansion, and a Spring Family Day locked in for Memorial Day weekend at Bill and Sharon's field in Woodstock.
The March 2020 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter opens with a somber tribute to club President Pete Maynard, who was killed on February 9 in a crash of his Russia AC-4 near the Front Royal, Virginia airport. The memorial recounts a remarkable life: a New Jersey police officer, DEA agent, Air Force Colonel who flew C-130s and C-141s worldwide, a United Airlines Captain who retired in December 2019, a motorcycle enthusiast, and a safety-driven Skyline member who helped make the club's annual Week of Training in Petersburg, West Virginia a success. The issue also carries vivid dispatches from the 2020 Soaring Society of America Convention in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Skyliners rubbed shoulders with hundreds of pilots from around the globe. Highlights include a breakfast with Sarah Arnold, the new Standard Class Women's World Gliding Champion, and her teammates Sylvia Grandstaff and Kathryn Fosha; Piet Barber, the club's Chief CFI and DPE, receiving two SSA awards for his tireless instruction work across the East Coast; and a rapt banquet audience hearing the three US Women's Soaring Team members recount their Lake Keepit, Australia campaign. A candid DUFUS report details a near-miss on a demo tow when a loose ballast weight jammed the control stick mid-turn, prompting a pointed reminder that the pilot in command bears ultimate responsibility for the aircraft. The newsletter also previews a mandatory safety meeting with a quiz drawn from the Ops Manual, discusses the club's decision to outfit all gliders with ADS-B Out after a scary IFR-traffic incident near Dulles, and notes that a team of members spent Super Bowl Sunday assembling a new XZ glider. A brief sidebar on the growing prevalence of electric motorgliders in European production hints at the sport's evolving future.
With the club's terminal closed and flying suspended amid the early days of the pandemic, this issue turns to the classroom. SSA Director Jim Garrison publishes a detailed post-flight analysis of a 126-mile cross-country task flown in a Duo Discus at the Seniors Soaring Championship at Seminole Lake, Florida, on March 13, 2020. Using IGC trace data, he walks through three specific thermals to show how a few minutes of aimless circling on a short leg can cost a pilot 1.6 mph of average speed—roughly a quarter of the gap between his 63 mph result and the day's winner, 18-meter champion John Seaborn, who averaged just over 70 mph in a new JS3. The issue also carries highlights from the February 29 board meeting, including the unanimous vote to acquire an additional hangar, three parties circling the purchase of the club's Grob, and the report of a gear-up incident that sent the Discus to Gehrlein Products in Pennsylvania for repairs. A $300 donation to the Front Royal Fire Department, SSEF scholarship applications, and a lighthearted Skyline Cycling Club photo of Joel Hough rounding out a newsletter that reads as both a technical study and a snapshot of a club pausing mid-season.
With Virginia's stay-at-home order grounding all club operations, the Skyline Soaring Club issued a May 2020 newsletter that reads less like a flight report and more like a community finding its footing in an unprecedented crisis. President's notes detail the club's financial triage—shifting fleet insurance to storage coverage to save $736 a month and moving board meetings to remote format—while a 'Too Late for Press Time' note teases the April 30 board session that hammered out a plan to resume flying. The emotional center of the issue is a brief, dignified memorial to young member Ryan Trexel, with a request that donations in his name go to the Skyline Soaring Educational Foundation. In 'Coping with COVID,' Piet Barber offers a vivid, slightly self-deprecating account of keeping his competition skills sharp through a home-built Mach 0.1 cockpit, Oculus Rift goggles, and the Condor 2 soaring simulator, complete with online races in US Nightly Soaring where he discovered he was 'a mediocre or low-quality competition pilot' against 70 other pilots. Jim Garrison kicks off what promises to be a multi-part series on using internet weather tools—Windy.com, XC Skies, SkySight, NOAA satellite viewers, and more—to predict the Continental Polar airmasses that deliver the East Coast's best soaring days. And in a nostalgic coda, Alan Bikle shares a 1967 Soaring Magazine piece about growing up in the shadow of his father Paul Bikle's world-record flights, complete with a photo of a three-year-old watching his brother solo a Windjammer trainer.
In a month when the club was cautiously reopening its gates after the spring shutdown, the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter carried a deeply personal tribute from instructor Bob Sallada to Ryan Trexel, the red-haired, 105-pound, almost wordless teenager who crept into the club in mid-2016, earned his solo in November 2018, and was taken in his sleep just weeks before the 2020 season. Alongside that moving remembrance, the issue features a detailed weather-forecasting walkthrough by Jim Garrison of the spectacular May 7 soaring day that produced a 1,000-kilometre ridge flight by Jim Frantz out of New Castle, a 750-km run by JP Stewart, and a 300-km out-and-return to Luray by Pete Appleby. Erik van Weezendonk, a commercial airline pilot, draws practical parallels between his carrier's COVID-19 protocols and what a small soaring club might adopt, while Secretary Keith Hilton reports on the Board's careful step-by-step resumption of operations, the cancellation of the summer week-of-training, a new wind-operations procedure, and the search for a new Chief Duty Officer to replace Reynolds Renshaw. A photograph by Dick Otis captures the Linden VOR on the ridge above Front Royal, a navigation aid quietly being retired in the GPS era.
Skyline Soaring's July 2020 newsletter marks a milestone month: the club officially launches spin training in its ASK-21 (N321K), with weight-and-balance certification from Schleicher, new cockpit cards, and a cadre of instructors being qualified under Chief Flight Instructor John Noss. Jim Garrison delivers a thorough, data-rich guide to forecasting mountain wave along the Alleghenies and Blue Ridge, walking through the April 22 and May 9, 2020 wave days with Skew T–Log P soundings, SkySight model comparisons, and contest flights that reached 18,000 feet and stretched all the way to the Atlantic coast. In the 'Story Time' column, Jim Kellett recounts a 1970 Gold-distance attempt that ended with a 27-mile flight into the grass field of the Cold Springs Correctional Center outside Lexington, Virginia, where a prison guard let him use the phone and a friend arrived in a Citabria to tow him out while inmates watched from the fence. The issue also carries Board highlights on resuming dual instruction under pandemic protocols, a quirky sidebar about a Charlottesville pastor who filmed a 'canoe metaphor' sermon with Skyline gliders in the background, a safety column on maintaining currency and proficiency during the COVID-19 shutdown, and a detailed listing for a 1968 Open Cirrus 8AN (with trailer) that once flew at the World Glider Championship in Poland.
Skyline Soaring Club welcomes Rock Skowbo, a former Air Force Academy cadet, Westair and United Airlines captain (currently flying the Boeing 767), and self-described 'aviation polymath,' as the new manager of Front Royal Airport (KFRR) following Reggie Cassignol's retirement. Skowbo, who has been a long-time tenant and flight instructor at the field, pledges to turn KFRR into a community destination with youth outreach, fly-ins, and a staffed flight school. The issue also features a thought-provoking essay by George Hazelrigg arguing that aviation safety must be framed in terms of future probability and personal belief rather than past accident statistics; a vivid first-person account by Richard Good of earning his glider pilot license after transitioning from power flight, complete with a nerve-wracking covered-panel grass landing; a comprehensive Condor2/Top Hat cross-country training guide by Ron Wagner, who logged nearly 6,000 virtual XC miles during the pandemic; Dan Ernst's behind-the-scenes story of crafting his 'Little Glider That Could' 1-26 history presentation for the SSA Convention (now a 50-minute YouTube video); and a note that former club president Joe Parrish, featured in Smithsonian Air & Space, is leading DARPA's Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites program. Board highlights include the club's stable $63,000+ bank balance, a unanimous vote to reopen guest flights under COVID-19 protocols, and planning for a Week of Training in mid-August.
A bittersweet September issue marks the departure of the Skyline Soaring Club's Grob glider, delivered on August 7 to Eric and Annie Ellis for their new Mallards Soaring Club in Locus Grove, Georgia—a months-long effort involving a dozen or more members in maintenance, negotiation, and final packing. The issue also carries the moving account of Ryan Trexel's life celebration at the Harris Pavilion in Manassas, where Skyliners gathered among red-and-white Nationals balloons and soaring memorabilia to honor a young pilot who had just earned his solo, a cross-country runner, a Taekwondo blackbelt, and the official bat boy for the Potomac Nationals. On the celebratory side, sixteen-year-old Maxwell McGowan of Herndon logged his solo on July 18, and Stephanie Zilora and Ben Bierstine passed their private pilot practical tests on August 22. A long, vivid first-person essay by William O. Banks recounts learning to spin twice—first in a Navy T-28C, then in a French Ka-13 glider club in Provence, where a soft-spoken instructor named Balzac induced a near-fatal over-the-top spin at low altitude. The Safety Officer's column, titled "Snow White, Fairy Tales, etc.," urges members to guard against complacency as pandemic-restricted flying slowly resumes, while a 1968 Schempp-Hirth Open Cirrus 8AN with World Glider Championship history is offered for sale at $16,000. Board notes confirm that Grob-sale proceeds will fund Tost tow-release upgrades and accelerate payoff of the K-21 loan.
This October 2020 issue opens with a heartfelt tribute to Pete Maynard, the club's longtime president, logistics coordinator, and all-around fixer, whose untimely passing left what Erik van Weezendonk called a hole in the collective heart of Skyline. A retired USAF colonel and United Airlines captain who flew the full Boeing fleet before retiring on the 787 Dreamliner, Pete was remembered as a man of boundless energy, empathy, and a 5'6" frame belied by a Wright Brothers t-shirt. His ashes were released over Front Royal in late September to tears and a small crowd. The issue's centerpiece is Jim Garrison's extensive 'Ridge Runnin' 101,' a practical guide to soaring the 47-mile Massanutten Ridge that covers wind geometry, the convex front slope, the Short Mountain gap vortex, transition points, and a full set of safety rules for pilots new to ridge work. Rounding out the issue are Kip Ongstadt's candid near-miss landing story, a sidebar on a cuckoo's 26,000-km Mongolian-to-South African migration, a half-share listing for a 1984 LS-4, and a board update covering the club's cautious return to scheduled operations amid the pandemic, a new ATV helmet mandate, and approval of a second Week of Training for October.
Stephanie Zilora's sprawling retrospective traces her three-year journey from a December 2017 introductory tow with Andrew Neilson to earning her glider certificate just after Week of Training 2020, detailing rope breaks, a first solo in the rain, a terrifying Sprite landing, and the camaraderie of three consecutive WoTs at Petersburg and Front Royal. The issue also carries Ralph Vawter's thrilling account of a wave flight to 10,000 feet during 'OctoWot,' Nick Leonard's October 8 private glider rating, and Bob Sallada's warm retirement from the club. The Skyline Soaring Education Foundation reports on new scholarship recipients, a memorial fund for Ryan Trexel, and board changes, while the October 15 board minutes reveal a club of 97 active members resuming FAST flights, accepting five new students from a 35-person waitlist, debating a PW-5 to replace the Sprite, and migrating its website—all while keeping COVID precautions in place at Front Royal.
December 2020 brings a rich mix of club news and aviation history. Ralph Vawter steps into the role of Skyline Treasurer, bringing three decades of financial-systems experience and a soaring background stretching back to his first glider lesson at Warrenton Air Park in 1987. In Curmudgeon's Corner, a fond remembrance of founding member Jim McCulley recounts his Korean War F-86 SAR mission in which his wingman was lost at sea while McCulley himself made a dead-stick landing after running out of fuel. The club also congratulates Jim Garrison, its SSA Regional Director, on his elevation to chair the national SSA Board of Directors. The issue's standout feature is Phil Jordan's first-person account of designing the USPS 100th Anniversary of First Powered Flight commemorative stamp, including his collaboration with artists Bruce Morser and McRay Magleby, and his painstaking effort to prove—using the official Kitty Hawk Life Saving Station weather report and Library of Congress glass-plate photographs—that the sky was clear, not cloudy, on December 17, 1903. Rounding out the issue, a gift guide points members to club tee-shirts and tote bags available on an honor system behind the right elevator of the Husky.