November
2009 Newsletter
THOMPSON
VALLEY SPORT AIRCRAFT CLUB
(Member of
Recreational Aircraft Association)
Beautiful
Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada
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Next meeting: Thursday, November
12, 2009, at 7pm.
Location: Clubhouse, Blair Field, Knutsford.
Editor's
Notes
Looks
familiar? That's a retaining spring on a Rotax
muffler. I found this one while walking on the
south end of the Knutsford strip. The engine will
still work with only two springs, but if it
starts to leak at the joing the performance will
be affected. And if the muffler comes off you're
in deep trouble!...... So, check your springs!
Christmas
Dinner
The dinner will be at the
ABC Restaurant again, at 5:30pm on Dec.
12th. Please let Jim Bottoms know if you plan to
attend. jimbottoms@yahoo.ca Don't forget the gift
exchange!
A
reminder that the hangar
rent will be due soon.
Tony
Bellos still
wants to sell his aircraft tools and supplies.
Call him at 250-374-6591, and you can go for a
look this next week-end Saturday November 14-15.
Dennis
Seib sold the Baby Ace
and delivered it to the new owner. Let us make
sure the expenses incurred do not come out of his
own pockets!
Larry
L'Heureux, and then Bill
Huxley, dragged the strip two weeks ago, and it
looks better. Too bad the pocket gophers are
back, it is an ongoing battle. I see that Larry
also mowed the strip yesterday, and I hope that
in the process he gave those little suckers a
good headache. Looks like I will have to set my
trap again before Winter...
Also
there are now some 30-40 pigeons calling the area
their own. Some people consider them a delicacy,
and I might check if they are right.... :-) But
in the meantime be sure that they can't get into
your hangar, because they can make quite a mess!
When
it is too windy to fly, like
on Thursday November 5, you can still drive to
some interesting spots. This time Larry was
driving, and Bill huxley and I were enjoying the
ride on the Peterson Creek road, trying to reach
the Encore Renaissance mine site. We made it to
within 5 miles, and the road was not getting
better. (Maybe they use another road!...) But we
ended up at 5289 feet altitude, in 4 inches of
snow. There were signs of life there, though,
like this very big pussy cat, with his foot wider
than mine:
November
7th, it was still too
windy to fly; too bad, I would have loved to take
off to investigate the grass fire south of
Aberdeen. I had to do with this picture taken
from Goose Lake Road.
When
the wind died down sufficiently on November 8, I
was airborne at 3:30 and checking out the extent
of the damages. You can see at the lower right
where it started.
There
had been cattle grazing on the left side of the
fence, so there was nothing to burn.
A
crew has been busy
rebuilding #1 Hangar that had been damaged by the
wind. they are doing a great job, and it will
soon be ready.
#2
hangar is still
available, and #5 will be by the end of the year,
if not sooner. If interested, call Bill Davidson
at 250-573-2357 or pilotbill@telus.net
WHEN
DO YOU SAY "NO"
By Barry Meek.
Continuing VFR into IMC. We
read that short statement in aircraft accident
reports far too often. And by now you'd think
pilots would know better. You DON'T fly, in fact
you CAN'T fly visually in instrument
meteorological conditions. It's a simple fact. So
why then, does it continue to happen and cause
crashes? Why are people dying and perfectly good
airplanes being wrecked by pilots trying to beat
the unbeatable odds?
These are accidents that
don't need to happen. They're predictable, and
therefore avoidable. It' s all about decision
making. When to say, "No, I won' t fly into
that area, those clouds, that weather" . Let
me try to sort this out.
A young pilot with a brand
new license in his pocket will often turn back
from bad weather sooner than a more experienced
one. At this point in his career, that good
decision usually has nothing to do with good
judgment, but rather it\rquote s fear. He is
afraid of cloud because in his relatively short
time flying, he's been in nothing but clear
conditions, supervised by his instructor. Weather
distractions are usually not a factor in the
learning environment. His low-time is an
advantage, and may save his life more often than
he could possibly know.
Now put that same pilot in a
similar situation after he's built up four or
five hundred hours working in a small charter
operation. By this point in time, he has no doubt
flown in a bit of 'soup' , but has made it
through without too much trouble. Chalk up the
good outcome from each of those flights to good
experience. His confidence is increased as long
as he's not hurt. It's an important, necessary
process. The weather doesn't accommodate pilots
or air operators with clear, VFR conditions all
the time. Some calculated risks and bending of
the rules are a fact of life. The pilot gains
experience quickly, but unfortunately it usually
happens too fast, and his age, maturity and good
judgment lag behind.
This is not a good thing.
This is when he becomes dangerous to himself, his
airplane, employer and his passengers. The pilot
at this stage, has beaten the weather enough
times to figure out the risks have rewards. So he
continues to take them. Every one of us has flown
into and through something that we know we should
not have been in. We do that because there are
usually good 'reasons' for continuing on into
deteriorating conditions. We push ourselves to
complete a flight because of pressures of the job
or from passengers on board.
Someone once described a
good pilot as one who relies on his excellent
judgment to avoid the situations which require
his exceptional skills to get out of. A true
statement if I ever heard one!
Clear judgment must be
accompanied by the courage to make the right
decisions too. A pilot may judge a situation to
be unsafe, but without the courage to say
"no" to his passengers or employer, he
remains a reckless risk. Both judgment and
courage come with experience, and with age. I've
always believed that the older the pilot, the
safer he will be. Of course that comes with the
caveat that there's a point where the mind starts
to slow down and have trouble with solid
reasoning too.
This is all philosophical
ramblings from someone who thinks he\rquote s old
enough to know better, and not old enough to feel
he's on the downward slide. And when I was
younger, I probably thought I was wiser too. But
that really wasn' t so. I'm a lot wiser now, and
I have no problem turning back from weather or
conditions that, years ago, I would have
proceeded into and may have wound up in serious
trouble. Luckily it never happened, because
undoubtedly there was some degree of good
judgment happening then too.
Looking at all the accidents
that result from the VFR flight into IMC
scenarios, I'm left wondering why it happens so
often? In my experience, the one (or two) times I
flew into bad weather, it scared the pants off
me. Although I made it through in one piece, I
wasn' t proud of it. In fact I was mad at myself
for getting into something I knew I should not
have. Then I resolved it would never happen
again. And it didn't. Apart from those incidents,
there's not been another decision I could still
not defend as being the right one. That leaves me
out of a lot of hangar discussions that evolve
into bragging and boasting about how bad the
conditions were, and how the storyteller made it
through. They're all interesting, some
embellished almost beyond belief, but that' s OK
. Some people are just plain lucky. They say
they've made it through time after time in
conditions they describe as something of a
nightmare to me. "No thanks" I say.
I'll play it safe. My airplanes have never been
bent, and nobody ever got hurt. You can' t argue
with decisions like that.
I'm giving the final word on
this topic to someone on the AVCANADA internet
forum. I am not a member of the group that writes
in the forum, so I know nothing of this
person\rquote s background or experience. But his
words of wisdom say it well. Quote: " This
is part of the learning process, as time passes
you begin to realize how soon these trips we
thought just had to go regardless, were actually
of no real importance once some time has
passed."
After over a half a century
of flying I can not remember even one trip that I
refused to do that resulted in someone getting
killed because of my decision not to fly.
bcflyer@propilots.net
To read all of
Barry's previous articles, go to http://www.ocis.net/tvsac/BMLetters.html
New
in the Buy&Sell
Glasair Kit with IO-360. $38,999.
Barely
started kit with engine. Bought several years ago
and then got married and had a couple kids so
this plane is too small. Kit is a 1992 2S RG.
Everything is there except the left gear leg. Has
electric, slotted flaps, and extended tips as
well as regular tips. engine is brand new, zero
time. never overhauled or installed. Has both
mags and lightweight starter. Kit and engine have
been kept indoors. Have all manuals for engine
and kit. Would entertain a trade for Bearhawk QB
kit. Also has a second fuselage from a 2. Just as
shown. Nothing for the second fuselage. Good for
a mockup or wind vane. Michael at mgodwin12@shaw.ca
(09/11/07)
This
site hosted by OCIS, On Call Internet Services.
250-376-3858 Check
their Website here: http://www.ocis.net/
Due
to the limited space available on the server, the
archives will not contain anything older than one
year. I
welcome your feedback. Do you have any
contributions for the newsletter? Photos would be
great! (At least 600 pixels wide) So would flying
stories, project updates or tall tales... Contact
me: Newsletter Editor: Cam Villeneuve
1-250-374-4181 villeneuve@shaw.ca
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