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November 2007
Next meeting: Saturday, November
3, 2007
At the Clubhouse, Knutsford strip
Time: 10am.
This
site hosted by OCIS, On Call Internet Services.
376-3858
Due
to the limited space available, the archives will
not contain anything older than one year. For
members only: If you need to look at a specific
newsletter from previous years, please let me
know, I will e-mail you the file. villeneuve@shaw.ca
President's Letter
Dick
is still somewhere in Europe!.... But he will be
back in time for the meeting!
Editor's
Soapbox
Don't
forget: Tony
has arranged for the Christmas dinner to be at
the ABC Restaurant again, this time on December
14th . Be there for 5:30 and a Buffet will be
available. If you want something else, you can
order it too! Also by popular demand, the
$5. gift exchange will take place, for a good
laugh.
If you plan to attend,
please tell me or Dennis, so we can know how many
people will attend.
Some years
ago, I
started on an Internet project called Geocaching.
Lately I went to Savona Mountain with Bill Huxley
to hide my #5. You can read about it here: http://www.geocaching.com:80/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=41788c51-fbcd-4092-b3f8-0d329afa3ecc
A very wild and rugged area.
I had hiked there many times before, but the last
time must have been some fifteen years ago, and I
must have been in better shape then! Bill really
enjoyed it, and he is looking forward to coming
with me on my #6!
The Sentinels
The main caves
Pictographs on the
ceiling
2008
Calendar: I will make a better effort
to get us a Calendar this year. I have to wait
for Dick's return to talk about the printing. But
please let me know if you have a favorite photo
of your aircraft you would like to see featured.
Some of you have already submitted one, and I
will have the exact number at the next meeting.
Search
& Rescue: There is an ongoing search
for a pilot that left Revelstoke but never made
it to Qualicum. I flew a few missions as a
spotter, the last one in a military Buffalo; we
were looking at the area between Lytton and
Squamish. I would hate to have to crash-land
there! Here is a view of the Black Tusk:
THE
BEAUTY IS IN THE LANDING
By Barry Meek
Airplane watchers. You can see them almost
any Sunday afternoon, outside the airport
security fence at the end of the active runway.
They bring lawn chairs, blankets, lunches,
beverages, loud music, and their friends, and
they congregate under the flight path of landing
aircraft. Many airports accommodate these
people by constructing a quasi-park, or at least
an open field. Vancouver International
(YVR) has a great approach park on the east end
of 08-26. The fence is very close to the
runway too. Even better.
Yes, I’ve spent some time at various
“approach parks”. Seems even
those who fly the planes like to watch ‘em.
Landings are always the best. I’ve
often sat in front of the hangar and spent the
afternoon watching the student pilots in the
circuit, practicing the endless
touch-‘n-goes. I’m always
fascinated.
The landing seems to be the part that determines
the success or failure of a flight. Determines
whether it was a good day or a bad day. Most
pilots never comment on their ability to hold an
altitude or heading, or navigate at low levels in
the mountains. But they’ll tell you
about the smooth touchdown when they got to where
they were going. Everything else is
foreplay. The landing is the real thing,
the big event.
Landing an airplane is more a work of art than a
science. And if that’s a true
statement, then taildraggers and floatplanes are
Academy Award nominees. In my logbook there
are a few hundred hours in tailwheel aircraft,
some on pavement, mostly on gravel and grass.
There is also one ground loop noted, a harmless,
low-speed affair when I let one get away from me
in severe, gusting crosswinds. And it
wasn’t early in my career. Experience
means nothing to the airplane. The
taildragger is like a cannibal, just waiting for
a chance to bite you.
The prettiest landings in my opinion, are on
floats. There’s a really active
seaplane base in the Nanaimo, B.C. harbour where
you can sit at a waterfront cafe and watch planes
come and go all day. Several companies,
Harbour Air and West-Coast Air among them,
routinely land and depart numerous times every
hour. I never tire of the show.
These pilots nurse their planes down, holding
just inches above the water until at just the
right moment the floats ‘kiss’ the
surface, they bring the power slowly back, and
the plane skims, settles, and finally digs in as
the nose comes up.
PHOTO
COURTESY GARY ALGATE
I don’t have much float time, but would be
doing it again if the opportunity ever came up.
The instant the floats touch the water is always
satisfying. The feeling is like a gentle
‘tug’ on the airplane, rather than the
‘bump’ when wheels touch pavement.
The sea plane pilots tend to land on wheels using
the same techniques as on floats. They hold
a slightly nose-high attitude, and control the
descent with power. With a lot of practice,
they become true artists, painting the prettiest
picture a plane watcher could ever see.
On a flight into a grass
strip in the mountains one day, I used that
approach. And it was really nice! As
the wheels skimmed then delicately settled in the
turf, the sensation was like landing on water.
Not even a bump, until about half way through the
run-out and at nothing more than a high taxi
speed, one wheel dropped into a depression around
a gopher hole. The effect on the plane was
more of a deceleration than a jolt such as
you’d feel on a hard landing. Because
ELT’s are designed to trigger on horizontal
impact, the gopher hole was just enough to set
mine off. After congratulating myself on
such a smooth landing, I couldn’t believe
the ELT signal blaring in the headset was from my
aircraft!
Flying an airplane never killed anybody. It’s
the landing that does it. Some say any
landing you walk away from is a good one. No
one who thinks about that statement would ever
say it with conviction. I’ve walked
away from many, many landings that were bad ones.
They can’t all be good, but I never stop
trying for perfection.
bcflyer@propilots.net
New in the Buy&Sell
One new ads! A few
aircrafts have been sold too! And some price
changes! Have
a look! http://www.ocis.net/tvsac/buyandsell.html
Cessna
150F
1966
Cessna150F for sale for $ 26000. This plane is in
Kamloops at Mountain Air. Call Ed @374-9224 or
Harley@ 672-9272 Very low airframe time .
Newsletter
published by Camille
We
welcome your feedback. And we could also use some
help with the newsletter. Photo would be great!
And articles of any length will be gladly
accepted! If you would like to contribute with
photos, flying stories, or project updates,
contact:
President:
Dick Suttie, 1-250-374-6136 richard_suttie@telus.net
Vice-President: Dennis Seib 1-250-573-3714 dseib@mail.ocis.net
Newsletter Editor: Camille Villeneuve
1-250-374-4181 villeneuve@shaw.ca
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