Annual meeting: The annual meeting is a time for club members to get together for a good dinner and a good time, and to sharpen their bragging skills for the next season. This year's meeting will be held on Sunday evening, February 23, from 5:00 to 9:00 PM at the Papa Razzi restaurant on Route 16 in Wellesley. There will be a cash bar at 5:00, with dinner starting at 6:00. Papa Razzi is a family-style Italian restaurant, and we'd like this to be a family event, so tickets will be $25 with kids 10 and under free. Make your reservation by returning the reservation form on the last page of this newsletter to Mark Tuttle before February 21. Carl Johnson is organizing the party.
The speaker for this year's meeting will be our own Margaret Rappaport. Margaret is a pilot with glider and airplane ratings (both sea and land) and a psychologist with twenty years of experience. The title of her talk will be ``Fit to Fly.'' She will speak on traditional pilot proficiency with some new and interesting twists. Pilot psychology and pilot health will be discussed and a personal checklist will be provided to help you determine when you are ``fit to fly.''
Papa Razzi
16 Washington St (Route 16, westbound)
Wellesley, MA 02162
(617) 235-4747
Reservation deadline: February 21
Elections: It's time to elect the next board of directors. For the first time in my memory, we actually have a contest for one of the board positions! Al Gold and Eric Hostage are running for Director of Operations--the person responsible for scheduling instructors, tow pilots, and DOs and for training and supervising the club's DOs--and they have each written a paragraph about themselves:
1-26 repainting: Tom Avery made the club a deal we couldn't refuse: Tom would repaint the glider if the club would strip the glider of its old paint, and Tom would even provide the hangar space and supervision. Ian Clark started organizing the project last fall, and Joe Kwasnik took over last month. Joe organized three paint-stripping sessions at the end of January, and the volunteer paint-strippers who showed up to help included Ian Clark, Jim Emkin, Steve Glow, Al Gold, Carl Johnson, Joe Kwasnik, Bernie Loraditch, Matt Sovis, Steve Sovis, Jim Tsillas, Mark Tuttle, Andrew Watson, and Terry Wong. This is exactly the kind of work that rainy weekends were made for. Maybe we could wax the gliders next...
Blanik damage: Winter storm damage has grounded 118BB, the newer of our two trainers. The speculation is that the weight of heavy snow on the left wing caused the right tie-down to pull apart, and the left wing slammed into the ground. The left wing may have been further damaged by flopping against the ground in high wind. The result is that the left wing bends up about five degrees about four feet in from the wingtip. Bill Brine and John Wren first alerted the club to the damage, and Jim Emken volunteered to supervise the insurance and repair process.
Peter Foley: Peter Foley is moving on this month. My sketchy records indicate that Peter took his demo flight in June 1992, joined the club as a tow pilot immediately after that, and was an instructor by the end of the year. Peter has been an invaluable member of the club, always ready to fly or help out at the last minute: a pilot, a tow pilot, an instructor, and a cattle prod pushing people to get off their rears and into the air. Peter has been managing the sales and training operation at CompUSA in Framingham, and he will be doing the same kind of work for CompUSA in Sacramento, California, the capital of California with lots of government business. Peter will be living 120 miles from Minden, Nevada. He is already on track to be a tow pilot and an instructor with High Country Soaring in Minden (702 782-4944), and he invites MITSA members to give him a call if they want to fly in the Minden area. Peter says that wave is possible, but that the real beauty is cross-country soaring with thermals to 18,000 feet. Al Gold spent a lot of time flying in Nevada area before coming to MITSA, Jim Emken and Walter Hollister were flying at Minden last month, and an increasing number of club members have been finding their way to Minden in the last few years. Peter may be getting a call sooner than he thinks! Good luck, Peter, and thanks.
Tom Avery: Tom Avery is also moving on. You have almost certainly met Tom, even if you didn't realize it at the time. Tom has run the maintenance operation in the main hangar for years, he has run the airport restaurant in the main building, he has been a tow pilot for the club in a pinch, and he has been a great friend of the club. Tom is packing up his maintenance operation and moving it down to Florida. It sounds like Tom is moving to a spacious facility with no other A&P's for miles, so it sounds like a great opportunity. Good luck, Tom, and thanks for the help you've given the club.
Guenther Eichhorn: The SSA board of directors has awarded Guenther Eichhorn the SSA Exceptional Service Award in recognition of his leadership and work to establish the home page for SSA at http://acro.harvard.edu/SSA/ssa_homepg.html. Congratulations, Guenther, you have put a lot of work and imagination into this project. (But what do you suppose his prize will be? A roll of turbulator tape for his Pitts to improve the engine-off glide ratio?)
FSDO web page: The web page for the Boston FSDO has been a work in progress for a few months, but it appears to have been officially announced by the FSDO in its summer 1996 newsletter. It is worth looking at. See http://www.airsafety.org/.
PW-5 web page: The World Class Soaring Association, promoting the one-design competition in the PW-5, has a new web page at http://www.wcsa.org/. MITSA could have a PW-5 on the field in a year or two, since John Wren and Steve Sovis signed a letter of intent to reserve their place in the production schedule.
Soaring video night: On Saturday February 8th, Steve Sovis and John Wren will be hosting a meeting at the Lowell VFW (190 Plain Street) to show some new gliding videos and talk about the World Class Soaring Association and the PW-5 sailplane. If you have an interest in the new World Class or just want to get out of the house, please feel free to attend. If you know a non-gliding friend who is interested in gliding (of course, most of us don't know anyone outside of gliding), take them along. The meeting will start at 7:00 PM, and there will be refreshments and a cash bar. If you have any question, please contact John Wren at (508) 244-0647 (home), jwren@chelmsford.com, or http://www.chelmsford.com/home/jwren.
Aircraft-tracking web page: Want an absolutely stunning example of information on the web today? The Flyte Trax web page at http://www.amerwxcncpt.com/flytrax.html gives you real-time access to a visual display of flight information about any commercial flight in the US airspace, including its current location, altitude, and intended route of flight. My introduction to this site was a paragraph in an section by Jeff Harrow (harrow@mail.dec.com) in the December 23 issue of The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing (http://www.digital.com/info/rcfoc/): ``As I write this, I can see that United 162, a Boeing 757 is at 23,000 feet, has just entered the southwest corner of Massachusetts en route to Boston from Los Angeles, is making a ground speed of 544 knots, and I can see the path it plans on taking into Logan during the remaining 19 minutes of its trip. A few minutes later I look again and find that it's descended to 17,000 feet, slowed to 462 knots, and is five minutes from Logan. And another few minutes later it's down to 3,800 feet and 231 knots and is being vectored out over the ocean to come back and land. At 4:03 and 32 seconds, Flight 162 landed. Sobering, isn't it?''
Walter Hollister (wmhollis@mit.edu) sent this letter to Soaring magazine, but sent us an advance copy. --Editor
I have been flying fixed wing, powered aircraft since 1952, but only transitioned to glider soaring less than a year ago. New England doesn't permit much in the way of soaring during the winter, so with nine days free in January, I arranged for some instruction at Soar Minden, Nevada, including airline reservations to Reno. To be prepared, I took an appropriate FAA written exam with a computer testing service. I passed the test, but the local printer was down, so they could not give me a written confirmation of the result. ``Don't worry, the result is in the computer at the testing service headquarters.'' That was the start of a three-week, 25-phone-call run around to get the test result out of the headquarters computer, onto a piece of paper, and mailed.
Moral: When taking a computer test, ask if the printer is working, and if not, reschedule your test until the printer is up!
The flight to Nevada was scheduled Boston - DFW - Reno. Those flights were cancelled when DFW was shut down by an ice storm. The backup was via Salt Lake City, but the connection to Reno was missed due to a two-hour trouble-shoot on a faulty boost pump warning light. A commuter flight made it out of Salt Lake City for Reno the following morning in spite of near zero visibility in blowing snow. The trip back home from Reno started with a 50 mile drive through blizzard conditions in the dark to get to Reno airport for a pre-dawn departure. It was for naught. The flight was cancelled because the airport had run out of deicing fluid. The first leg of the backup was uneventful, but on the second leg, the captain called in sick, and the flight was delayed until they found a replacement captain. Having been scheduled on a total of nine separate flights to complete the round trip, seven were cancelled, delayed, or missed due to connections. The total delay was close to 20 hours.
Moral: When traveling by airline in January, allow lots of extra time!
The first few days at Minden were cold with a few inches of snow on the surface, calm winds, and one long runway plowed. It was excellent weather for me to get checked out and solo in the Grob 103 Twin and Grob 102 Single. The real excitement started when the winds picked up to above 30 knots with gusts, turbulence, rotor and wave. On my wave checkout flight I got my first surprise on tow when I experienced the severe turbulence inside the rotor. It was worse than formation flight through a thunderstorm. Off tow in the smooth air of the wave above the rotor we were going up with the variometer pegged above 1,000 feet per minute. Later with the nose down 30 degrees below the horizon and the spoilers deployed full, we were still climbing!
Moral: The wave is fantastic, but on tow in the rotor, you better be able to handle wild turbulence with incredible slacks in the tow rope!
On my first solo in the wave, ATC was unable to give a clearance into Class A airspace. Forced to remain at FL180, I went on a 100-mile cross country staying in the wave in front of the lenticular with almost full spoilers deployed. On my third solo in the wave, the ATC window was open above FL180, but I had to stop at 14,000 because my oxygen supply, originally showing 1500 psi on the ground, had gone to zero. Minden base suggested that perhaps the valve on the oxygen bottle (about 20 inches behind the seat) was closed. After five minutes of contortions in the cockpit, the oxygen was back on and I was going up all the way to 27,000 feet. The temperature inside the cockpit was -20C.
Moral: The oxygen gauge reads the pressure in the line. Make sure before take-off that the valve is open which connects the bottle and the line!
In summary, in spite of the airlines, my Soar Minden adventure in the depths of winter was a great success. The area is a national treasure for fantastic soaring. I only lost one day out of nine to weather. The people were delightful and the service was excellent. The organization is a first class operation.
While reading the August 1996 issue of Soaring, I sadly read of the untimely death of a MITSA alumnus, Guido Hayman, in a glider accident.
Guido was a MITSA member in the late 1970's through 80's. Guido was a regular with the club and could be counted on being out every weekend. After graduating with an MS in aero/astro at MIT, he went on to work at a local Boston bank doing systems development. At one point, he decided to take a vacation to his home in Chile, and just never returned. Over the years, Guido would call me while he was in the States on business trips. He joined a local club (in Chile) and was always looking to buy gliders.
Somewhere in the late 1980's, Guido and others in his club organized a ``soaring safari'' along the Andies. The club invited highly experienced US pilots to join. The adventure was chronicled in Soaring magazine. I was impressed by not only the fantastic soaring, but also by the incredible amount of organization and support that went into the trip.
Here is the letter that appeared in the Soaring Mail section of the August 1996 issue of Soaring. --Editor
Journey in the Andes
Having had some experience in mountain flying, I felt like trying the ultimate in the sport--the Andes. I had flown them in our old Bellanca in the area of the lakes districts of Argentina and Chile, but was aware that Chilean glider pilots were now flying deep into the mountains in the area east of Santiago.
A telephone visit with Guido Hayman from the Club de Planeadores de Santiago, warned me that their flying was very different from anything that I could have experienced before and implied that it was not for the faint of heart, but put the trip in motion. Guido invited me to come to Santiago, offering to take care of all the logistics.
Arriving at the club in early December, I found Guido had reserved the club's Janus B for me. After a short tow, we were working the lower slopes northeast of Santiago in our route to the high mountains, when the landscape started changing dramatically. There were no gentle slopes anymore, but rather very steep ridges towering above us and enclosing valleys where it was impossible to land. However, I never felt in trouble, due to Guido's mastery of the ridges, and his knowledge of every nook and cranny in the area.
The day was clear, the wind was light, and we encountered little turbulence. We could not have asked for a better day for flying. When we were deep into the mountains, Guido said, ``I think that we can try to reach Aconcagua.'' My excitement grew following this, and I was all for pushing east.
So, here we were! Flying by the slope of the 23,000 feet high Aconcagua. At the point we were at 19,000 feet, but we could not go above the summit because it was surrounded by a cloud, so we headed home. We flew northwest and landed at the Las Condes Airport. Total flying time was approximately four hours, with 200 km traveled. We landed at about 5:00 in the afternoon.
I finish this account on a sad note. I had intended to make this a festive narration of the most unforgettable flight of my life. Instead, tragic circumstances force me to offer this account as a tribute to Guido Hayman Haber, who was a great pilot, most gracious host and friend, and man of multiple achievements, who died on January 8, 1996 in a glider accident.
I can only add, from the depths of my heart, ``Hasta Siempre, Guido!''
Pedro de la Serna, San Jose, CA
This article Robert Rodwell and Stephen McGinty appeared in the London Times on December 1, 1996, with the headline ``Glider pilots fight jail over parachute death,'' and was submitted by Morrie Tuttle (tuttle@zeus.unl.edu). The incident it reports has created quite a stir in the BGA and on the rec.aviation.soaring newsgroup. --Editor
Jonathan May was 5,000 feet above the French Alps in his glider when a free-fall parachutist smashed into the wing. May glimpsed a shadow, heard a bang, and found his plane spiraling towards the ground.
He and his co-pilot, Phil Woodruffe, baled out and landed with minor injuries. But the 18-year-old parachutist, Franck Massait, died--and May and Woodruffe have been charged with his manslaughter.
The incident, near Gap in France last year, has led to the British Gliding Association launching an appeal to fund the legal defense of the pilots. Bad feeling about the handling of the affair threatens to bring a boycott by British enthusiasts of next year's World Gliding Championships in St. Auban near Gap in June, a week before the pilots' trial.
May, a commercial analyst, said: ``A split second after we saw a shadow he hit the top side of our port wing. There was no question of being able to avoid him.'' As the crippled glider locked into a spin the G-force made it difficult for the pilots to lift themselves out of the cockpit. May escaped first, while Woodruffe leapt clear just 300 feet from the ground. Witnesses say his parachute opened only 50 feet from impact.
They were taken to hospital before spending the next day making statements to the police. Six days later, however, they were asked to return to the police station where they were brought before a court and officially charged with involuntary manslaughter and imprudent flying. If found guilty, they face a fine of 50,000 pounds or three years in jail.
The charges raised are believed to hinge on a statement by Pierre Gouin, the deputy chief flying instructor at St. Auban, the gliding center from where the pair took off. Gouin has said that he briefed all the glider pilots flying on that day that there was a five-mile exclusion zone around the Gap-Tallard airfield where the accident happened. Both pilots deny they were given any such briefing. Of 20 other pilots present at the briefing who have made statements, none has said they were given a warning about an exclusion zone.
A civil case for damages has also been raised by the parents of Massait, a French military cadet. The legal costs of May and Woodruffe have mounted to 50,000 pounds; their insurance company has paid for the damaged plane, but is withholding previously authorized legal costs, claiming the policy may be invalidated by their alleged criminal behavior.
May, 31, of Solihull, and Woodruffe, 30, from Bristol, were in France on an annual trip with the Oxford University Gliding Club. Massait was one of group of parachutists who are understood to have jumped through cloud cover.
Last week Woodruffe said: ``The reason they have pursued us is they don't want to bring the spotlight on their own operating procedures.'' Henry Page, the men's French lawyer, said in Paris: ``I cannot see that there was any negligence or imprudent flying.''
Robert Gibson was a member of MITSA from 1977 to 1979. --Editor
The MITSA experience was not only rewarding in its own right, but formed a solid basis for some 5,700 hours of great flying since. You've been kind enough to let me track MITSA through ``The Leading Edge'' (renamed while I was there from the previous ``Up Yaws'') ever since. With this, I hope to partially return the favor.
My introduction to soaring was digging a MITSA 2-33 out of the Norfolk ice one dreary February morning in 1977. After a day's work and shivering, one 1,800 foot tow to cloudbase, and ten minutes in the air, I knew soaring was a lot of work! It got better. Sam Francis signed my private ``ticket'' in December. A Silver Badge (Mansfield to Chatham for distance) and a power rating (in N19094) were added before departing MIT in June of 1979. Todd Pattist and Guy Spencer were my principal instructors, but Tommy Thompson, Jim Nash-Webber, Rick Shepp, Kim Vandiver, and Walter Lob helped enormously. I've always felt much of my subsequent enjoyment of flying was due to the outstanding initial training MITSA provided and have tried to return the favor to the flying community here.
The only substantial soaring operations in the northern three-quarters of New Mexico are at Moriarty, about 90 miles from my home in Los Alamos. The Albuquerque Soaring Club (ASC) has been based at Moriarty since the 60's. The airfield was a thin strip of dust or mud until the mid-80's. Now it's been upgraded twice to a 7700 x 75 foot paved, lighted runway with paved ramps and lots of hangar space. ASC is a big operation, with approximately 80 members, 10-12 each of CFIG's and tow pilots, six club gliders, a score of privately-owned gliders, and two Pawnee tugs. In recent years, it has hosted the SSA national convention, the standard-class nationals, and the 1-26 nationals. A commercial soaring operator, Sundance Aviation, joined ASC on the field recently.
Soaring in the southwest is different from New England. We start high and go higher. Moriarty is at 6,200 feet. Any good spring or summer day produces 700-1,000 fpm thermals to 15,000-17,999+ feet MSL. The 10,700 foot Sandia Mountains are a dozen miles west of Moriarty, making lennies a frequent sight in winter and spring. Wave flights into the low 20's are fairly common. Flights above 25,000 feet are not so frequent (I've had two); Colorado has better high wave. Most days are flyable; ASC doesn't even have a mechanism for calling off the whole day. High winds scrub parts of approximately 20 days each year and thunderstorms prematurely end quite a few afternoons in July and August.
Having started my badge flying in a MITSA 1-26, I stuck with the Beetle of the soaring business and finally finished the last diamond in 1995, becoming the 27th person to earn all badge legs in a 1-26. (I work with two others on that list.) But more than half my 1,900 glider flights and 850 hours has been instructing. I got a CFIG ticket a few months after arriving and have been using it ever since, including a five-year stint as ASC's chief instructor in the late 80's before getting an examiner designation. I tow a bit, too, when needed. And each of the last three summers I've taught at Hobbs for a week in a Civil Air Patrol (CAP) cadet soaring encampment. Each year we start with about 15 ``green'' 14-16 year-olds and solo them in about ten days. Great kids and great fun.
Power flying has continued, too. Home base is the Los Alamos airport (LAM), which sits at 7,150 feet MSL atop a peninsular mesa jutting out (and downwind) from an 11,000+ foot caldera. The runway slopes, so it's ``one-way''--all take-offs downhill and all landings uphill--regardless of wind. With 500 foot deep canyons on three sides, tailwinds and turbulence are standard. After a half-century of unenlightened and restrictive ownership by the US government, the field just became public. Despite physical and political challenges, the general aviation community here is large and very active (50 based planes, 200 pilots, 15 CFI's). Not bad for a field not even on the charts when I moved here.
From LAM, I've ranged all over the continent, with my favorite flying area being Alaska. I also fly several searches each year in the New Mexico mountains with the CAP. A glider pilot's understanding of the interaction of atmosphere and terrain is extremely valuable to mountain flying . My glider rating now sits on an ATP (airline transport pilot) certificate beside ratings for single- and multi-engine land and sea airplanes and a type rating in the Citation-series bizjets. My CFI ticket also includes all categories and classes of fixed-wing aircraft. See what MITSA started!
Outside the cockpit, I still make my living studying and building high-power lasers, and exploring the interaction of very intense light with matter. For the past few years, I've run a lab of about ten people. And one cannot live in beautiful high mountains without hiking and climbing all the time; they're literally out the back door. On those uncommon occasions when weather prevents both flying and hiking, I entertain myself trying to design a light airplane, based on a glider airframe, capable of carrying a person up into the 60,000-70,000 foot region--a ``Poor Man's U-2.'' (Know anyone else investigating such possibilities?) Nothing will probably come of it, but I've learned much about aerodynamics and turbine engines. Much of this extracurricular fun will probably be curtailed the next four years as I just did something truly weird and got myself elected in November to the County Council that governs this city-county of 18,000. That's about a half-time ``volunteer'' job.
Keep up the good work. And don't hesitate to contact me if you're going to be in this part of the world: (h) 505-662-3159 or 3055 Trinity Dr, No. 525; Los Alamos, NM 87544; (w) 505-667-5040 or rbg@lanl.gov. Adios.
The Summer 1996 issue of The Boston FSDO Communicator contained the following article about John Wren's safety program. --Editor
We have added another bag of tricks to our agenda. TV shows.
We have just completed six, one-half hour TV shows that are being shown on cable TV. If they are not appearing on your cable station, simply contact the cable company and tell them you would like to see the ``Let's Talk Safety Show,'' sponsored by the Aviation Safety Counselors of the Boston FSDO. Notify Nancy Risso of the Boston FSDO (617 274-7130) and give her the name of the cable company and contact, and Nancy will notify John Wren, the producer, to forward the videotapes to the appropriate people. There is no charge for the tapes.
The current shows cover avionics, maintenance, aviation statistics, sport aviation, weather, and human factors. The panelists have accomplished a remarkable job explaining the subject matter.
During June we videotaped our next series. If there is any particular subject matter you would like us to cover, please contact us and we will do our best to fulfill your request.
In the meantime, on behalf of Gary Lopez, Nancy Risso, and the Boston FSDO Board of Directors, I certainly wish to thank the safety counselors and sponsors who have supported our work.
Vote for one person for each position:
Sign your name:
Print your name:
Mail this ballot to Mark Tuttle, 8 Melanie Lane, Arlington, MA 02174. It must be received by February 21.
Reservations requested:
Total amount:
Your name:
Mail this form and a check made out to MITSA for the total amount to Mark Tuttle, 8 Melanie Lane, Arlington, MA 02174. It must be received by February 21.
Remember: the annual meeting will be held on Sunday evening, February 23, from 5:00 to 9:00 PM at
Papa Razzi
16 Washington St (Route 16, westbound)
Wellesley, MA 02162
(617) 235-4747
The MITSA Board of Directors
Club email address: mitsa@crl.dec.com
Club web page: http://acro.harvard.edu/MITSA/mitsa_homepg.html
For more information about MITSA, you can contact the club by email, visit our web page, or contact Joe Kwasnik, our director of membership listed above.
The Leading Edge is the newsletter of the MIT Soaring Association, Inc. The newsletter is edited by Mark Tuttle, and published every other month (more frequently during the soaring season). The submission deadline is the first of each month. Please send any inquiries or material for publication to Mark Tuttle, 8 Melanie Lane, Arlington, MA 02174; tuttle@crl.dec.com
THE LEADING EDGE
The Newsletter of the M.I.T. Soaring Association, Inc.
February 1997
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