N35BY

At last we bought a Super Decathlon. Quite a while ago my wife, Jan, and I had decided that someday owning a Decathlon made sense from a business as well as a personal standpoint. We imagined wintering in Santa Paula, CA and flying to McCall, ID for the summers. Of course, I’d continue to instruct from CP Aviation using their airplanes at Santa Paula Airport (SZP) during the winter months, but I’d use our Decathlon to instruct from Cascade (U70) and McCall (MYL) Airports during the summer months.

A Decathlon would allow us to travel to Idaho in half the time it currently takes to drive. An Idaho-based Decathlon would also give us access to other airports in the Pacific Northwest for summer training clinics. And since the majority of pilots I fly with travel from somewhere else, the logistics would be nearly identical at both locations: many students already fly commercially into LAX, BUR, or SBA, rent a car, and drive to Santa Paula. In Idaho, they could fly commercially into Boise, rent a car, and drive to Cascade/McCall. Even the drives from the major airports are comparable, though the drive to McCall is far more scenic as it winds along the Payette River.

We just needed to wait for the right time. Well, the right time finally came; N35BY was the right airplane. But it’s how this mostly Juneau White airplane with its Insignia Red and Maule Blue midlines came into our lives that is the real story here. As I’ve mentioned before, the aviation community is small; shared events, experiences, and airplanes connect those who are in it. Think Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

The Hand of Fate

The airplane had drifted in and out of our lives multiple times in the three short years since it rolled off the production line at American Champion Aircraft. Through no fault of its own, 35BY had been linked peripherally to tragedy while at the same time having been central to experiences of pure joy.

35BY was one of several Decathlons ordered by the late, great air show performer and American Champion Aircraft dealer, Bobby Younkin. The airplane bears Younkin’s signature “Bravo Yankee” N-number. Sadly, Younkin and his close friend, Jimmy Franklin, were killed when their airplanes collided during an air show routine in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. The date: July 10, 2005.

35BY was born three days later. Doug Dullenkopf of Screaming Eagle Aircraft Sales adopted the orphaned bird, and it soon proudly sat on the showroom floor here in Santa Paula. Jan and I would routinely browse Screaming Eagle’s inventory for the fun of it, imagining as pilots do what it would be like if we owned this-or-that airplane. 35BY immediately grabbed our attention. We poured over it, admiring not only the colors, but also the uniqueness of its predominantly white paint scheme (one of CP Aviation’s aerobatic students found this scheme so appealing that she later ordered a new Super Decathlon painted the same way). But we weren’t yet in a position to buy, especially a brand new airplane such as this. All we could do was look and dream.

The First Owner

The airplane didn’t sit at Screaming Eagle for very long. A student pilot from Santa Barbara, CA snapped it up. But this was no ordinary student. 35BY’s new owner had flown as a back seater in the Navy and later became a highly successful entrepreneur. Retired in his forties, the owner wanted to earn his PPL and learn aerobatics. The Decathlon fit the bill perfectly.

On September 7, 2005, I conducted a familiarization flight in 35BY with Max Rosenberg, the pilot who would be the new owner’s primary flight instructor. I’d flown with Max years earlier, giving him a checkout in an Extra 300. Max owns and operates Santa Barbara Aviation from Santa Barbara Airport (SBA). After 36 minutes and five landings, I climbed out of 35BY and the airplane departed for its new home.

I ended up brokering the sale of two new parachutes to 35BY’s owner as well. Per my recommendations, he purchased Mini Wedge Softies from Para-Phernalia, Inc. The chutes and carry bags arrived with a manufacture date of October 2005.

By March 2006, the owner was itching for some aerobatic training. I spent a day with him in Santa Barbara providing instruction in stalls, loops, aileron rolls, hammerheads, and 1/2 Cuban eights. We logged 3.0 hours with three landings and eight spins. A month later I returned to provide another day of instruction. We focused this time on loops, aileron rolls, normal and aggravated spins, and unusual attitude spin recoveries. We logged 1.9 hours, two landings, and a total of 19 different spins. But two noteworthy events occurred while flying 35BY along the California shoreline west of SBA on this day.

During a spin on the first flight, the engine quit and the prop stopped. Although this is not what you’d call a common occurrence, it does happen. It had happened to me several times already during my career teaching spins. Even so, it was momentarily disconcerting to see the prop freeze in place in the windscreen while spinning toward the Pacific Ocean a few thousand feet below. My job whenever this happens is to get the student to ignore the stopped prop and to remain focused on spin recovery. The priorities: first, stop the spin; second, restart the engine. This the student-owner executed flawlessly. Pressing the starter button once we had returned to level flight post-spin was all it took to restart the engine.

This type of prop stoppage usually results from the idle being set too low. If the hot idle (the idle RPM once the engine has thoroughly warmed up) dips below 600 RPM, then it’s possible to choke off the engine during a spin, especially if the pilot buries the throttle hard against the aft stop. Given the adrenalin and stress of a student’s first few spin entries, it’s easy to hang on tight to the throttle, forcing it hard against the aft stop. I call this particular throttle setting “fright idle.”

By contrast, the second event was one of those transcendent moments we as pilots are occasionally blessed to experience. Everything about the second flight felt right: the drone of the engine, the feel and smell of the airplane, the look of the sky, the taste and texture of the air, the ease of the maneuvers. I remember suddenly becoming acutely aware of my surroundings, marveling at the sensations of flight, the vividness of colors, the slowing of time, the absence of extraneous noise. I had entered the zone.

I remember studying the traffic below as it streamed in both directions on the 101 Freeway as we looped, rolled, and spun. Like worker ants marching between the nest and a bounty of food, the endless lines of cars moved inexorably along, each seemingly focused only on the bumper of the vehicle ahead. I actually felt sorry for them.

Oil platforms miles off shore stood steadfast in the cold, flint blue Pacific. Row after row of waves clawed at the craggy coast. From my perch in the back seat, I witnessed an amazing sight in the shallow, blue-green waters beneath the constantly looping airplane. There, two clearly visible shapes–like gray-green torpedoes–were parked beneath the water’s surface. The great mammals paralleled the shoreline. The skin of the larger was mottled; the smaller, safely positioned between the larger and the shore, instinctively held station. California gray whales, cow and calf, were feeding in the rich kelp beds far below. I looked for the pair each time the nose of 35BY pointed earthward–an untraditional method of whale watching to be sure. This was the last time I flew 35BY from Santa Barbara.

For Sale

The original owner and his family decided to travel the world on a boat built to their specifications; consequently, 35BY was put up for sale early in 2007. The timing, however, still wasn’t right for us. In March, I was teaching aerobatics to a pilot visiting from New Jersey. She was vacillating between getting something fun like a Decathlon and something more practical like a Piper Archer. I described 35BY to her and mentioned that it was available. A couple of phone calls later, the airplane was on its way to Santa Paula for her to look over.

The airplane arrived as beautiful as ever. My student instantly fell in love with it. But there was a catch: someone else was prepared to make the deal. Snap decisions and finances had to be arranged within hours if she wanted the airplane. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be for her. We tucked 35BY into our hangar for the night (the airplane sure looked good in there!). The next morning, the airplane went to Ray’s Aviation on the field for a pre-buy/annual inspection. Shortly thereafter, 35BY departed Santa Paula yet again, this time heading to Mesa, AZ and completely out of our consciousness.

Ours at Last

Flash forward 17 months. The time to shop for a Decathlon had arrived. Jan–a master at Internet searches–began looking for our airplane. Trade-A-Plane. Google. Aircraft Shopper Online. Even ebay. No avenue, no possibility was left unexplored. My e-mail Inbox was quickly flooded with prospects forwarded from her. I clicked on a link to Aircraft Shopper Online and up came a text-only list of Decathlons with N-numbers and prices. Scanning the entries, my eyes locked on N35BY. It looked familiar, but from where? Had I flown this airplane? Did I know it somehow?

A quick search through the electronic logbook confirmed my suspicions. Memories of our encounters with 35BY came flooding back. “I’ve flown this airplane,” I said to Jan. “It’s even been in our hangar!” A link took us directly to the airplane’s sales page, complete with pictures.

“We’ve got to get this airplane,” she said without hesitation.

“But it’s more than we’ve budgeted,” I lamented.

“We’ve got to have this airplane,” she repeated, this time with the emphasis and the nuance that only a wife can intone.

Pencil sharpened and price rationalized, I called the owner–a very nice gentleman, a retired Air Force pilot who previously had built and flown a Christen Eagle. A deal was made and we mailed a deposit the next day. We drove the 7-1/2 hours to Falcon Field (FFZ) in Mesa, AZ on September 2, 2008. We were done with the purchase by 5:30 that evening. At approximately 6:45 am the next morning, 35BY and I lifted off from Runway 04R, turning North before heading West to circumnavigate the Phoenix Class B airspace draped overhead.

35BY’s engine never missed a beat during the 3.8-hour flight to Santa Paula (fuel stop: Thermal, CA). The sky was clear and the air was smooth as silk the entire trip. I naturally arrived home ahead of my wife, so it was my responsibility to clean the leading edges as I awaited her arrival by Subaru. Jan pulled up to the hangar just as the last of the bugs were removed. The circle was complete.

Eight Weeks, Part III

Thermal, CA

Following the stints in Reno and Corvallis (see Part II) came my first-ever trip to Thermal, CA. Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (TRM) sits between Palm Springs and the Salton Sea.

Looming more than 10,000 feet high to the Northwest, San Jacinto Peak still sported a splotch of snow; to the South, a persistent plume of smoke marked the not-too-distant border with Mexico. Date trees and pepper fields dominated the local agriculture, while golf courses and gated communities highlighted the affluence of retirees and others who had migrated to warmer climes. And the nearby Chocolate Mountains provided a clear and constant reminder of the power and proximity of the San Andreas Fault.

Yet this was still the desert, with all its browns and its reds and its sand and its daily dust devils and its crystal clear visibility and its heat. Did I mention heat? Even though it was May, the contrast between Thermal now and Corvallis just a week earlier couldn’t have been more striking. The lowest low here: 61 degrees F. The highest high: 109 degrees. The mercury hovered between 105 and 109 degrees each of the four days on-site (all of Southern California was in the grip of an early heat wave, so at least the misery was widely shared).

Not even flying open cockpit in the Waco provided relief. The front cockpit was further soaked by heat from the 1942 Jacobs 755R radial engine, which more than offset any cooling effect from the 80 mph air swirling around in flight. We pressed on nonetheless. I was here to fly with Scott Silver, former Navy surgeon, retired lung transplant specialist, and now full-time airport bum with a penchant for Mexican dives, which were plentiful along State Route 86 between Thermal and Indio. I must say that the food was good—the harp-wielding Mariachis on Friday night, however, we all could have done without…

Scott and I alternated between his beautiful red 1991 YMF-5C Super Waco, which he purchased from Rare Aircraft, and his 2007 American Champion 7GCBC Citabria. We stalled, spun, looped, and rolled both airplanes, performed unusual attitude recoveries from botched maneuvers, and spent some time working in the traffic pattern. In between flights we cooled off inside Thermal Aviation, the local FBO run by Rafael Sierra, who also doubles as the President of the Palm Spring’s Pilots Association.

I took a refreshing dip in the pool at the Best Western Date Tree Hotel one evening, and another in Scott’s pool as part of a lovely barbequed steak dinner with him and his gracious wife, Kate, another evening. (The swims reminded me of the previous May in the indoor pool at Cragun’s Resort in Brainerd, MN. I was there to speak during a joint conference of the International Association of Natural Resource Pilots and the MN Seaplane Pilots Association. A free-floating dunker was made available for underwater egress training as well, which was highly educational for everyone who participated. We all got a healthy shot of water up the nose as part of the experience! Contrary to what you might think, and provided you remain calm and focus on the egress procedure, you only needed to be able to hold your breath for a total of about 8-10 seconds.)

While in Thermal, I received an e-mail from Joe Cabuk, a retired Air Force fighter pilot/instructor who is now the Director of Flight Ops for Monroe Air Center in Louisiana. Joe was responding to a series of articles I wrote in the March, April, and May issues of Aviation Safety magazine (Part I: The Problem with Flight Training, Part II: Safer Maneuvering, Part III: The Problem with Flight Instruction). In a series with a combined 7,000 or so words, Joe took umbrage with my use of the word “always” in the context that pilots would be better served if they would “always pitch for the speed they need.”

Normally I wouldn’t have responded to yet another invitation to joust over the roles of pitch and power. Rarely will either side in such a debate be swayed to change position, yet I was compelled to respond. And I’m glad I did! The result was a series of e-mails in which we presented our points of view on the issue. Along the way, we also got to know a little bit about each other, and although Joe and I have not met—we haven’t even spoken for that matter—we respect each other and look forward perhaps to one day swapping stories over a cold beer. I’m convinced that Joe Cabuk is a good man and a conscientious instructor; we just disagree on how best to teach our students about pitch and power.

Eight Weeks, Part II

Part I laid out the key stats for the busy-yet-typical time frame of April 11 to June 6, 2008. Now I’ll describe some of the highlights of the business trips I took during that period. Though accurate, “business” sounds so formal, doesn’t it? Especially when you consider the objective: fly some cool airplanes, with interesting people, in their own back yards:

Reno, NV

It seemed like this was the umpteenth time that the Aerobatic Company & Flight School had cajoled me into conducting a training clinic from their facility at Reno-Stead. Stead is about a dozen miles NW of downtown Reno; the school occupies a hangar behind Section A of the permanent bleachers erected near midfield along Runway 8-26.

People talk about how hot it gets in Reno. Oddly, I’ve not experienced that heat in all the times I’ve traveled there. Cold, snow, and wind certainly. But heat? No. This trip was no different: the low was 34 degrees F; the high reached 71 degrees F (that was on the day I headed home of course). And when you’re sitting in an unheated Pitts S-2B all day long at 9,000 feet MSL, it’s cold! I was prepared, however: thermal long johns, long-sleeve turtlenecks, flight suit, flying gloves, and a vest kept the cold (mostly) at bay.

I reached Stead just after noon on a Tuesday and was greeted by the usual strong, gusty crosswinds. Even so, we still put up a few flights. The second day, though, we were grounded as the wind reached 50 mph and was nowhere close to being aligned with any of the runways. Huddling around a kerosene space heater, we were convinced that the massive bi-fold hangar door was going to be blown in, so we moved the airplanes as far back into the corners as possible and called it a day. That lost day, however, didn’t prevent us from reaching the key objectives of the clinic: recurrent spin, aerobatic, and pattern work in the Pitts for some pilots, a Primary Smooth Achievement Award for one pilot, an Intermediate Smooth Achievement Award for another pilot, and two more of the Unlimited Smooth Achievement Award maneuvers checked off the list for flight school owner/operator, Tim Brill. Tim has been steadily chipping away at the various Smooth Achievement Awards for a long time. Last year we finally completed the Advanced Smooth Award requirements. This year we dispatched the one-turn inverted spin (entered from inverted, with a push out to inverted when done) and the “push up to vertical, 1/2 roll, hammerhead, pull out” off of the Unlimited list.

What really made this year’s clinic memorable, though, was the magnitude 4.7 earthquake that rocked and rolled Reno at 11:40 PM on Friday, April 25. Centered six miles to the West, the temblor woke me (and many others) up from an otherwise sound sleep. At first I thought I was dreaming about all of the Pitts landings that day–if you’ve ever landed in a Pitts, you appreciate all of the thumping, bumping, bobbing, and weaving that are part of the Pitts Landing Dance. This is further magnified at Stead by the abnormally wide and deep expansion joints gouged into the runways and taxiways at regular intervals. But as the haze of sleep dissolved into full consciousness, I realized that I was in bed! I’d rather have been in the Pitts; at least there you have some control over the undulating compared to none whatsoever during an earthquake. This wasn’t the first earthquake I’ve ridden through; after all, I do call California home. This one was tamer than the 6.7 Northridge Quake of 1994, centered about 35 air miles SE of Santa Paula.

Corvallis, OR

The weather in Corvallis in May was cool and overcast. The fields were lush and green; the surrounding mountains, obscured. Eighty-five miles SSW of Portland, Corvallis is home to Oregon State University. It definitely has that college town feel–young, hip, vibrant. And for a town of just under 50,000 people, Corvallis has a variety of pretty good eateries (flying and food sure seem to go together, don’t they?): Vietnamese for lunch on day one, Japanese Bento Box on day two, and “sustainable fine dining” on day three.

Sustainable fine dining. That meant a trip to Fireworks, a green restaurant located on the same plot of land as the First Alternative Natural Foods Cooperative. “Hippieville!” And I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, just a descriptive one. I know what some of you are thinking, but hey, the food, the atmosphere, the service, even the local artwork adorning the walls (colorful and new-agey as it was, replete with archetypal symbology) made for a deliciously fun lunchtime outing after a morning flying the Yak. Our waitress also happened to be a dead ringer for Lisa Edelstein (our waitress a younger version), who plays Dr. Cuddy on the TV medical drama, House.

McMenamins Pub became the place of choice for two out of the three dinners in town. And why not? Crackling fireplace, quaint bar, decent food, and microbrew ales on tap. The fact that their top selling beer is named “Hammerhead Ale” didn’t influence us one bit … well, maybe it influenced us a little.

Oh right, the flying: The main purpose of the trip, of course, was to fly the 360 hp, Yakolev-54, Russian Thunder with its new owner, Jim Bourke. Jim has been involved in aviation all of his life, making his mark in the world of radio controlled aircraft. Jim owns RCGroups.com, promoted as “the most active R/C Community on the Internet.” His blog not only describes some of the work we did in the Yak, but also Jim’s pre-Yak training, some of which he did with me in Santa Paula several months prior to the Corvallis trip. Jim is also heavily involved with Knife Edge Software, makers of Real Flight R/C Flight Simulator. (I tried my hand at flying Russian Thunder using Real Flight G4 on Jim’s work computer. An R/C’er I’m not–it was hopeless! A perfect opportunity for one who’s all thumbs anyway, but I still couldn’t hack it. Jim really enjoyed watching me ball up the airplane time after time…)

This was my first experience flying behind the 360 hp Vedeneyev radial engine. True to form, the low growl of that bulletproof engine never faltered as it steadily pulled us through the air no matter what we were doing. The airplane was a joy to fly and extremely agile in roll. The -54 behaved perfectly normally in every way as well: stalls, spins, slips, loops, hammerheads, aggravated spins, inverted spins, landings, etc. Every way but one that is.

Jim had described an interesting negative dihedral effect that we experimented with: from level flight and while holding the stick centered in the cockpit throughout, we could smoothly apply full left rudder and the airplane would execute a rather nice full roll to the right! We could likewise feed in right rudder and roll all the way around to the left. And had a competition aerobatics judge been watching from the ground, these rolls would have scored 8.0 or 8.5 out of a perfect 10. Amazing!

Yet flying Russian Thunder was a bittersweet experience. I had known the previous owner, air show pilot Eric Beard. Sadly, Eric was killed while hauling freight into Skagit Regional Airport (KBVS) in January 2006. It’s a small world; it’s an even smaller world in aviation. I first met Eric in the early 1990s when he was part of a new formation aerobatic team known as the AcroFlyers. The team used two Pitts S-2B’s. They also wanted to provide Emergency Maneuver Training (EMT) in between air show gigs, so I was hired to teach Eric’s partner and another instructor how to teach the EMT Program themselves. On a later trip to Washington, I even stayed at Eric’s home for a week as a guest instructor flying the AcroFlyers Pitts from Galvin Flying Service at Boeing Field. A month before the accident, Eric and I had a chance to catch up at the International Council of Air Shows (ICAS) Convention in Orlando, FL, where I had been invited to speak about safety in the air show environment. Eric was an enthusiastic ambassador for general aviation, and his untimely passing is a reminder to us all of the ever-present and ever-changing risks that are a part of flying.

The next post will highlight the trip to Thermal, CA to fly the Waco in 100+ degree heat. Until then, be safe…

Eight Weeks, Part I

This is the inaugural post to my blog, so I figured I’d start by recounting some of the recent goings-on in my life as a full-time flight instructor.

I completely and utterly surrendered myself to aviation about 1,080 weeks ago. Many would consider the path I’ve followed to be an unorthodox one—I guess you could call it “the airway less traveled.” And although eight weeks represents less than one percent of the time since I became immersed in the world of aviation, this recent eight-week period nevertheless typifies what I’ve been doing to avoid having to get a real job!

The Stats

Here are some interesting tidbits from April 11 to June 6, 2008:

• Strapped into an airplane (often wearing a parachute) 111 times
• Just shy of 80 hours logged
• 158 landings counted
• 259 spins counted (about 12.3 vertical miles rotating earthward!)

Operated from four airports in three States:

• SZP—Santa Paula Airport, Santa Paula, CA (my home base!)
• 4SD—Reno-Stead Airport, Reno, NV (of Reno Air Races fame)
• CVO—Corvallis Municipal Airport, Corvallis, OR
• TRM—Jaqueline Cochran Regional Airport, Thermal, CA
• Field elevations varied from -115 ft. MSL at Thermal-Cochran (yep, that’s 115 feet below sea level!), up to 5,050 ft. MSL at Reno-Stead.

Flew a dozen different airplanes:

• A Standard Decathlon (see 5035N)
• Two 7ECA Citabrias (older model years w/ wooden spars)
• A 7GCBC Citabria (2004 model year, metal spar)
• A Micco SP-26A* (one of only about a dozen flying)
• Two Pitts S-2Bs (see 80AS)
• A Zlin 242L (see 110AM)
• A Yak-54 (the only one currently in the U.S., known as Russian Thunder)
• A Waco YMF-5C
• A Piper Turbo Arrow III
• An Extra 300L (brand new w/ 19 hrs on it when we started, see 277E)

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*Note on Micco SP-26A, N585SK: To date, I’ve performed spins in 183 different, spins-approved airplanes (I’m not a test pilot, and since I don’t routinely stay at a Holiday Inn, I’ll only spin airplanes that are approved for intentional spins). While every airplane has its own personality when it spins, certification requirements tend to result in spins-approved airplanes that display similar behavior. “Similar” meaning “falling somewhere within the bell curve of expected spin behavior.” The Micco’s spin is certainly consistent with this, though I would consider it’s behavior being closer to one end of the bell curve: the airplane oscillates rather dramatically as it rotates!

Tom Nagorski, who operates Paragon Air Adventures in Belgrade, MT, flew the airplane to Santa Paula for a week of training in it. We spun the bird one, three, and five turns left and right. The rate of rotation was at the slow end of the spectrum, yet at each half turn, the airplane would roll practically to wings-level, pause there, and then roll back into a classic rotation. It did this consistently through three turns; beyond that, however, and even though the airplane continued to oscillate, the spin began to transition into a spiral. Recovery from the spins for our weight and balance was always prompt.

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Provided training to 27 pilots from very diverse backgrounds, with experience ranging from a Student with less than 100 hours of flight time, to an ATP with multiple tens of thousands of hours, including:

• Pilots representing eight States: CA, NV, LA, MT, WA, OR, AK, WA
• Two U.S. Fish & Wildlife pilots: one a Southerner; the other, part Yup’ik Eskimo
• Two Japanese pilots
• An FAA Inspector
• A 5′-11″ tall eighth grader who dreams of attending the Air Force Academy
• A hearing-impaired woman who is learning aerobatics & who competed during the 16th Winter Deaflympics in Utah in 2007
• A Boeing Flight Test Engineer
• Two doctors: an orthopedic surgeon and a lung transplant specialist
• Three flight school owners, an attorney, and an airplane mechanic, too
• And lastly, aviation author and icon Barry Schiff: we spent three-tenths together to satisfy insurance requirements to rent CP Aviation’s 7ECA Citabria (we flew 50380)

Two flights during this period had “issues” that were handled without further incident:

• A trim cable failure during a session of touch & go’s in the Waco
• A small engine fire during one engine start-up in the Yak-54

Ancillary Stuff

My business card lists “Author—Master Instructor—Speaker” below my name. In addition to the flying, I kept busy during these eight weeks with various other aviation-related activities as well. This included a dozen Internet posts, split between AOPA Forums and Uncontrolled Airspace Forums.

I also received an invitation from Master Instructor and host Russ Still to join his web-based Gold Seal Live Aviation Talk Radio team. Russ wanted me to provide one- to three-minute audio flying tips. The tips would run during live broadcasts and then be available for playback on their web site thereafter. In exchange for providing the tips, a banner ad linked to my own web site would appear during the broadcasts. The recordings would then be archived on a separate web page entitled, Flying Tips from Rich Stowell.

So I purchased a Samson Q1U USB microphone from Amazon.com per Russ’ recommendation and began playing around with it using GarageBand on my Mac. Similar to aviation programs I had worked on in the past, I needed to script about 150 words per minute of audio. The result was the scripting and recording of three Flying Tips, the first of which aired on May 29.

Giving back to the aviation community is also an important activity for me. In fact, pro bono service is one of the four categories needed to qualify for the Master Instructor Designation Program. Ten percent of the flight time logged with other pilots during the eight weeks, for instance, was pro bono.

I also contribute pro bono articles on a semi-regular basis to the International Aerobatic Club’s (IAC) Sport Aerobatics magazine. Since the deadline for the final installment in a four-part series about the Primary Smooth Achievement Awards Program was looming, I devoted some time to finishing the article. I voluntarily serve on the Board of Review (the sole member on the aerobatic side, in fact) for the new Aerobatic Instructor Designation Program administered by the IAC, too. During the eight-week period, I received, reviewed, and approved four applications: two for the CFI-Aerobatic designation; two for the Master CFI-Aerobatic designation.

The Ventura County Chapter of the Ninety-Nines has been putting on a popular and successful series of Pilot Proficiency Classes in our area for several years now. In addition to presenting one of the classes back in February, I and about 100 others attended a class presented by Barry Schiff in late April. The subject: “The Nuances of Mountain Flying.”

It was an aviation-packed eight weeks indeed! And it now looks like I need to add “occasional blogger” to my to-do list. In Part II, I’ll write about the trips to Reno, NV to fly a Pitts S-2B, Corvallis, OR to fly the Yak-54, and Thermal, CA to fly the Waco and Citabria.

Until next time, be safe…