THOMPSON
VALLEY SPORT AIRCRAFT CLUB
(Member of
Recreational Aircraft Association)
Beautiful
Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada
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2009
Next meeting: Saturday, June 13,
2009, at 10am.
Location: Clubhouse, Blair Field, Knutsford.
Editor's
Notes
Dick
Suttie would like to know what the following
object is. And I am wondering too! My wild guess
is that is is used to stretch leather; what is
yours? The writing on it is TURNER MADE IN
ENGLAND.
Who's
Flying?
The
weather lately has been quite nice, and a few
trips were made to Quilchena for coffee... I was
not in on the last one, but Bill Huxley sent me a
few photos.
Larry
and Bill Ross getting ready to leave for
Quilchena:
Bill landing at Quilchena
Gerald, Larry and Bill Ross.
Bill Huxley took this photo
of my Beaver taking off from Knutsford.
Bill Huxley accompanied me
to Lac LeJeune on an evening flight.
The devastation brought to
Lac LeJeune by the pine beetles.
I spotted this bi-plane
crashed on the hill by Dick Suttie's place. Could
not spot any survivors. Fortunately it was only a
4-foot span kite.
Coming back from Geocaching
on the Dewdrop Range, I came across this trio of
California Bighorn sheep.
Out for an evening flight on
June 2nd, I zoomed in on Dunn Peak, some 100km
away.
I waited until sunset to
capture Kamloops, the rivers, Mounts Peter and
Paul.
My wife Judy was helping our
friends Richard and Leslie Welsh with the
front-yard landscaping. And I was slacking off in
the Beaver... At least, I took this neat
photo!...
June 7th, I had some new
tenants at the hangar... 2174 pinhead-sized
spiders just hatched. They now will go to work
catching mosquitoes, I hope!
Spot!
Bad Spot!
Not
Spot the Dog, but Spot the Satellite Tracker...
Could that tracker be a real dog? We bought one
last month, and I have a few bones to pick!
Anyone
who read the ads will be familiar with the claims
that it will report your location every ten
minutes, and send it to your computer. Yeah,
right... The ads also show the different
activities where you could use a Spot: Hiking,
flying, climbing, hunting, etc... But if you have
problems with the unit not working as promised
they ask you to look at the fine print at http://www.spotwarranty.com/
Notice
the part where they say: Buildings,
inside cars or planes, dense wet tree cover,
mountains, caves, canyons, etc…can reduce
message delivery success.
Who
are those people?!.... We had expected that it
would work anywhere a GPS works. Nobody I know
would expect it to work inside a cave; but a car
or an aircraft? My GPS works there fine... And we
bought the Spot to use in our aircrafts...
We
found out that reliability can sometimes be as
low as 50%. And you don't need to be under "dense wet tree
cover"
for it to fail. Even the proximity
of trees or buildings seems to affect the
performance. Their Customer Service Department
told me that even using it within 12 inches to a
GPS or other electronics might also screw it up.
The
small size of the unit makes you believe that it
would be ideal for hiking, but don't count on it!
You would have to keep it clipped to the top of
your hat so the logo always points up, and stay
away from trees and cliffs.
From
what I have seen so far, it does not have the
power needed to perform as advertized. I would
not mind if the unit was twice its size, if at
least it was reliable in my aircraft.
It
might be better than nothing,
but if you ever have to use it in an emergency,
be ready to drag yourself with broken legs out of
the bush and to the top of a hill with an
"unobstructed view of the sky" if you
want any chance of rescue. If you are lucky it
will already have tracked a few of your last
positions and transmitted them to your contacts.
NOT
IN MY BACK YARD
By
Barry Meek
The small city of Oak Harbor, Washington , is
located on Whidbey Island, a short drive north of
Seattle . Similar to all the San Juan
Islands , Whidbey is a relatively quiet, scenic,
pastoral place populated by small farms, acreages
and interesting little towns. Ferry
service is available on the south end while a
bridge connects to the mainland on the north.
Anyone connected to aviation would
recognize the name Whidbey Island because a naval
air station operates there.
In the summer, the islands attract visitors and
the curious drivers seeking a short getaway from
the metropolitan areas of Seattle and Vancouver.
They soon discover that the quiet atmosphere is
often shattered by the sound of military jets,
specifically the EA-6B Prowler, arguably one of
the loudest aircraft in the Navy’s
collection working from the NAS at Oak Harbor.
There is a sign at the main airfield that said,
“Pardon our noise, it’s the Sound of
Freedom”. Most residents in that area
are navy employees so noise complaints are not
common, however the sign was probably an attempt
at justification aimed at all the tourists.
One
night several years ago, while on a solo cycling
tour of Whidbey, I stopped in a small, clean campground
about ten miles from the main airbase. Unaware
that there was another airstrip through the trees
adjacent to the camp, I settled into my tent for
a much needed sleep. At about two a.m., the
fun started. It turned out I was situated
almost directly beneath the flight path of navy
jets practicing their night carrier landings on a
runway only a few hundred yards away. The
EA-6B is noisy from 5,000 feet altitude, but
it’s downright scary as it comes blasting
overhead at about 100 feet, with power on, in the
dark, in unfamiliar (to me) surroundings. The
practice went on for the rest of the night. Earlier
I had wondered why no one else seemed to have
discovered this little spot. Now the
answer was clear.
Recently, I recalled that
sleepless night while reading about a fellow who
had his home situated in a spot similar to my
campground. He lives in a trailer park in Florida,
adjacent to the Jacksonville Naval Air Station.
Seems he got tired of the jets overflying his
trailer at low altitudes all night so he took
some rather unorthodox actions of his own. He
obtained a high-powered, hand held spotlight
(several million candlepower) and shined it into
the cockpits of the jets as they approached.
Evidently it was bright enough to temporarily
distract the pilots to the point where they
cancelled their night landing practice.
He’s
in jail now, serving a year-long sentence for his
attacks. It makes me wonder about the
quality of the pilots though. Supposedly,
they’re trained to fly missions while under
fire from people who are shooting back with real
bullets, not just flashlights.
Anyway,
this all goes back to the never-ending complaints
from people who live near airports and want them
shut down. Most, like the guy with the
flashlight, came after the airports were already
there. In fact ‘flashlight man’
had signed a disclosure when he moved his trailer
to the property stating that he knew his location
was close enough to a jet practice area that it
would be impacted.
I
live on a small island. We have a somewhat
similar situation developing recently.
Although it doesn’t involve an airport, it
is about attitudes of people who want to bring
their lifestyle with them and force it on others
wherever they go. For us, it’s about
transportation to our island. One reason I
moved here is because we need to take a ferry to
get here. There is water all around us,
which affords a small feeling of isolation from
the ‘outside world’. We tend to
be left alone by politicians and bureaucrats,
even the police. The big city issues like
crime, development, pollution, overcrowding,
heavy traffic and noise have little meaning over
here. It’s a peaceful, easy
lifestyle a bit slower than on the mainland.
Now, there’s talk of building a bridge!
To some people, mostly the newer residents,
it’s a great inconvenience to deal with a
ferry schedule on their daily commute to work, or
shopping, or whatever other reasons they go to
the mainland for.
We
hear of those who purchase a home near an airport
then want it shut down because of the noise it
creates. These city people who purchase on
an island then want a bridge link to the mainland
are barking the same tune. To them I say,
“If you don’t like these realities, why
did you move here in the first place? If
the noise from the airplanes or conforming to a
ferry schedule becomes too inconvenient to live
with, then move someplace where conditions are
more acceptable to your lifestyle.”
Anyone
reading this article, printed in an aviation
publication, is already in agreement.
We’re preaching to the converted. But
there’s a reality out there that the
politicians are listening to these complaints.
They’re putting operating restrictions on
airports, shutting them down during certain
hours, imposing noise abatement rules, curtailing
certain activities like flight training and
airshows, and even closing some completely.
This talk about a bridge to our island is
increasing too. There are surveys and
studies going on leading us to believe that it
could quite possibly become a reality someday.
Some
aspects of society and our cities should be
changed. But the reasons for the change
need to be right too. It seems to me that
it’s wrong for someone to move himself into
a situation that is working for those already
there, then work to change it so it’s more
convenient for him.
Airports
are a necessary reality. But they
don’t build them in a residential area or in
the middle of a city. They’re located
out in open land, in fields far from existing
development. The people who work and live
in close proximity come later, a predictable
evolution. That’s when the
complaints start up. We call them
NIMBY’s. How long can it be before
the politicians feel there’s enough support
for them to act against NIMBY’s? Politically,
that may not be a good move, but like many other
issues, it would be morally correct and would
make sense to me and anyone else who flies and
supports airports.
Barry Meek
bcflyer@propilots.net
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welcome your feedback. Do you have any
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great! So would flying stories, project updates
or tall tales... Contact me: Newsletter Editor:
Camille Villeneuve 1-250-374-4181 villeneuve@shaw.ca
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