[Co-opa] COOPA September newsletter

Thu Sep 18 12:25:26 PDT 2008

Apologies for the late newsletter... had a major computer
calamity, but almost back to normal now.
Gary posted the full PDF version on the website last night.

Mike
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CASCADE FLYER September 2008, Vol. 08, Issue 9

Website: http://co-opa.com/

President's Message:

Many thanks to our own Richard Benson for
braving the left wing press, the paparazzi and ugly
crowds to educate us on mountain flying and his
beloved Monument Airport (12S) for our August
meeting. His exhortations for change in our flyout
schedule resulted in a heroic and patriotic turnout
on the 13th of September for his gathering at
Monument.

For those that missed it, 12S is a one way curvy
asphalt runway with a 5% grade set in the beautiful
John Day River valley. I can confirm that Richard's
advice for a happy landing there was spot on. Just
focus on flying a normal pattern keying on the
touch down zone and ignore the optical illusions
that the tilted runway can cause. That made the
landing a piece of cake only improved by the
desserts at the fine lunch awaiting us.

BTW, we hope Debbie has forgiven Richard for the
Bass already...

This month we have Mr. John Carney, USAF
Colonel (Retired) for our speaker. Check out Ed's
program announcement for a taste of what we can
expect.

Plan to come by around 6pm for hanger flying and
stick around for our Olympic class pot-luck at
6:30pm and the meeting at 7pm.

Calendar:

16 October - Monthly Meeting
18 October - Monthly Flyout

20 November - Monthly Meeting
22 November - Monthly Flyout

18 December - Monthly Meeting
20 December - Monthly Flyout

15 January - Monthly Flyout
17 January - Monthly Flyout

My Inbox:

Kerry O'Neal, the Sales Manager for Aero Facilities
dropped me an email about the 73 new hangers his
company is building on the east side of the Bend
airport just north of the Epic facility.

They are planning to sell the T-hangars as buildings
of 8 starting at $600k. If you want something
bigger they have 60x60s, and up to 100x100s, for
$300k to $1.175M. You can find a plat and some
sample architecture at
http://www.aerofacilities.com

If you want to get on their waiting list to rent a
hanger, or want to buy one, then contact Kerry at
koneal at aerofacilities.com.

Web doings:

The Deschutes Country Commissioners have shot
down the Bend Municipal Airport Urban Renewal
Plan, for now. There is a link to the plan near the
top of our home page. You can also see our
newsletters, useful aviation links, and more on our
web site: http://co-opa.com/

To access the members only areas the username is
"BDN" and the password is "123.0".
Random Thoughts:

ADS what? Almost 10 years after ADS-B was
launched in Alaska as a test program pilots are still
asking that question.

According to www.ads-b.com, ADS-B is an
acronym that stands for:

Automatic - It's always ON and requires no
operator intervention
Dependent - It depends on an accurate GNSS
signal for position data
Surveillance - It provides "Radar-like" surveillance
services, much like RADAR
Broadcast - It continuously broadcasts aircraft
position and other data to any
aircraft, or ground station equipped
to receive ADS-B

That is the sort of clear as mud description that only
a policy wonk could love, but it is really fairly
simple. A simple transceiver, called a UAT, is
attached to your aircraft GPS that periodically
broadcasts your current position and speed on a
shared 978Mhz channel. Any other UAT can grab
those position reports out of the ether and display
them to ATC and to pilots in the air.

This system has many advantages. It is as fast and
accurate as your GPS, which is much more precise
than RADAR. No ground equipment is required,
other aircraft in your vicinity receive your position
reports directly and in real time. No waiting, and
hoping, that ATC has seen traffic of interest to you
and relayed a traffic alert to you before you are
counting the rivets of the other aircraft.

The only ground equipment in the system is a
simple transceiver. That ground equipment allows
ATC to receive position reports from all ADS-B
equipped nearby aircraft and relay position reports
acquired from traditional RADAR back to your
cockpit. That means that even if you are the only
ADS-B aircraft in the area you still receive
automatic real-time traffic reports.

Sounds great, but when can we get it? Currently
the FAA plans to cover the US with ADS-B ground
stations by 2014 and then proceeds to
decommission 50% of all RADAR sites by 2020.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Once there is good ground coverage my aircraft will
need to be upgraded for ADS-B. Now the ouch
part. There is only one UAT on the market now,
the Garmin GDL-90, and it costs almost $7k, before
installation. That UAT then does me no good until
it is hooked up to a panel mounted GPS display.
Something like the Garmin MX20 is required and
that is likely another $7k installed.

So it looks like I am stuck with good old flight
following for a while longer. At least until the FAA
rolls out the system and either prices come down or
the stock market goes back up. Then I'll be able to
spot my own traffic and the sky will get a lot safer

September program

Plan to attend the Thursday, September 18, 2008,
Central Oregon - Oregon Pilots Assoc. meeting in
the Bend Airport Flight Services Terminal Building
at 6PM for a pot luck dinner and a very special
program. Everyone is welcome!

Mr. John Carney, USAF Colonel, (Retired), will be
our special guest speaker. Mr. Carney is a USAF
Academy, and Air Force Institute of Technology,
AFIT, Wright- Patterson AFB, graduate with
advanced degrees in physics. He has worked on
nuclear weapons testing, laser weapons testing, and
satellite imaging systems. His military service also
includes several positions in the Pentagon and the
US military delegation to France. His distinguished
career spans Vietnam to the space age with a
biography too long to enumerate here. You'll need
to meet the man and hear his very impressive
stories...

Don't miss this opportunity for a very inspiring and
informative evening. Bring your friends for flying
fellowship, fine food, and fabulous fun!!!

http://co-opa.com/
Ed Endsley, CO-OPA Program Chair
ed at edendsley.com

Airshow of the Cascades

….was held at Madras (City-County) airport
August 23-25 on quite a warm, cloudless day …

Although the COOPA contingent was a 'select few'

…. I observed the longest flightline, about a half-
mile of airplanes, that I've ever seen at Madras; all
visitors. …

…. and a pair of contrasting aerobatic performers.

The prerequisite daytime pyrotechnic 'attack' …

… and a more gentle, nighttime display from
Manfred Radius' sailplane.

A 'blast from the past' … the Thunderbirds at
RDM, 'led' by a Horizon Dash 7. I'm guessing
circa 1997

Thanks to Ed Endsley for the last two from his
photo archive. I don't know whom to credit for the
Monument photos since Don Wilfong sent me
bunch taken by several attendees.

Mike Bond

Why I Fly …

1976 C-177B Cardinal owner Jim Semmes recently
posted the following on the Cardinal Flyers newsgroup.

Today I thought it would be a good idea to clean out my
bulging overstuffed dresser drawers. At the bottom of
one of my drawers I found a couple of paragraphs I had
written after being inspired after a particularly enjoyable
flight in my Cardinal. It went like this:

Yesterday, I lifted off Imperial County Airport in my
sleek, tan and brown Cardinal. It was going to be a
beautiful late afternoon hop. Broken white cumulus
clouds hung overhead at about 6,000 feet with an
overcast at 8,000 feet. The air was still and cool. I was
flying by myself with less than half fuel so my plane
quickly left the ground and climbed skyward. I later
found out that my wife, Margie, had seen me takeoff as
she was at the store and saw me head westward towards
our home.

As I continue to climb, I approached the base of the
beautiful puffy white clouds scattered everywhere. As I
skirted toward the top layers, I saw the sun sinking on
the horizon sending sunbeams in every direction and
lighting up blue pathways to dart in and out of. The
majesty of the moment was breathtaking and made it
quite easy to forget everything but the quiet serenity of
what surrounded me. This is what flying was all about, I
thought; magic, peaceful, almost intoxicating.

As the sun dropped and the clouds grew darker, I
descended through the openings below. As I came down,
closer to the airport, I heard voices on the radio saying
the winds had picked up at my home airport. As I entered
downwind, a pilot who had just landed responded to my
position announcement that the winds were squirrelly,
gusting from various directions in excess of 18 knots. No
problem, I thought, as I drew closer to final approach,
making periodic adjustments to stay aligned with the
runway. And, as I crossed the numbers and gently let
down, I squeaked the Cardinal on the asphalt completing
what had been a beautiful evening flight.

Shortly after I shut down my plane, Margie appeared in
the Tahoe just on the other side of the fence. She had
come from the store where the winds had gusted
suddenly and strongly. She wanted to be sure I had
gotten down all right, and seemed happy to see me. After
I put the plane back in the hangar, I called the FBO to
gas the plane so it would be ready for that next magical
flight. Yes, flying is in my blood and always will be.

Thank you, Cardinal, for lifting my spirits again.

September 13th fly-out

WOW !!! We had a really great fly-out........We had a
total of seven (7) planes there on the Monument Airport
and 2 couples drove.......The Motel was full with 8
people from our group staying overnight......plus there
were 3 of our group that flew home on Sat.
afternoon.......there was also several others that either
flew in or drove in.

The weather was absolutely beautiful without a cloud in
the sky.......it was quite warm but not too warm. Richard
and Debbie were the perfect hosts.....they provided
transportation to and from the motel, the airport and from
breakfast on Sunday morning.

We had quite a spread for our picnic with Debbie having
prepared the main dish plus chips and dip, everyone
brought something or picked up something at the local
store, we had lots to eat, some beer (only those that were
not flying until the next day had any beer) and we had
pie and ice cream along with a few other deserts. All in
all it was a fabulous picnic in a very quiet
setting..........Cell phones do not work in Monument so
we didn't have any interruptions from phones.
Monument is a quiet little town with very friendly
people.

The local Tavern served some great hamburgers, with all
the trimmings, to some of us on Sat. evening. A few of
the locals had a rousing poker game going (I would have
liked to have gotten into that one). We didn't hang
around too long and then went back to the motel for the
night.

The owner (a real nice lady) was there working until
2:30 AM and then was back there at 4:30 AM to start
fixing the breakfast for our group....Let me tell you she
sure knows how to put on a breakfast......We had eggs,
bacon, link sausage, hotcakes, bisquits and real sausage
gravy along with juice and coffee. We all ate until we
couldn't hold any more..........
The Tavern normally doesn't open nearly that early and
they don't normally serve breakfast.
This gives you an idea of how friendly the people in
small towns really are..........she offered to do this just
because we were coming to town to visit Richard and
Debbie and she knew we would all be hungry..........

We are hoping that Richard and Debbie will make this an
annual event.........if it draws even more people (and we
hope it does) we can move the picnic down to one of the
two local parks.......If you were not able to attend this one
you really missed a great time...........maybe next year.

Ed Endsley walked out into the field next to Richard and
Debbie's home ( they baled the alfalfa hay, loaded the
bales and hauled it off the field while we were there)
where he picked up a handful of alfalfa hay (we are not
sure what he planned to do with it and were afraid to
ask).........well when he came back with his prize he decided
to crawl over the fence instead of walking around..........
We have attached a picture of Ed as he (not so
gracefully) climbed over the fence with the help of a
ladder that Debbie brought to his rescue.

Hope to see you next fly-out........

Don Wilfong

And last, but not least, the Monument (12S)
flightline …..

========================================================================

COOPA officer contact info:

President
Gary E. Miller
109 NW Wilmington Ave
Bend, OR 97701
541-382-8588
gem at rellim.com

Vice President
--------OPEN----------

Secretary/Treasurer
Don Wilfong
210 SE Cessna Dr
Bend, OR 97702
541 389-1456
dwnw at bendbroadband.com

Temp Flyout Chair
Don Wilfong
210 SE Cessna Dr
Bend, OR 97702
541 389-1456
dwnw at bendbroadband.com

Program Chair
Ed Endsley
63505 Bridle Ln
Bend, OR 97701
541 382-6414
ed at edendsley.com

And finally, send Newsletter inputs to
Mike Bond
22052 Banff Drive
Bend, OR 97702
541 317-8443
mvbond at spiritone.com