CASCADE FLYER July 2006, Vol. 06, Issue 7 Website: http://co-opa.com/ President's Message: Last month we finally connected up with Joe Smith the President Elect of the OPA. It was worth the wait. Joe's presentation has been well honed with constant practice traveling to the various OPA chapters and it showed. Everyone clearly enjoyed the program. It was good to hear how Joe is reaching out to the AOPA, the ODA, and the Oregon pilot community on our behalf. To do our part we must also reach out to both our fellow pilots and the younger generation of potential pilots. In that way we can build and protect the community of pilots and ensure its continuity to the next generations. This month our program chair Ed Endsley took Joe's charge and ran with it. Ed has reached out to the younger generation for our speakers. Several students from the aviation program at COCC will be dropping by. Good things are happening at the College and it will be fun to hear about the program from the young pilots in the midst of it. Calendar: 20 Jul - Monthly Meeting 22 Jul - Monthly Flyout 17 Aug - Monthly Meeting 19 Aug - Monthly Flyout 19 Aug - OPA Annual Membership Meeting in Eugene 21 Sep - Monthly Meeting 23 Sep - Monthly Flyout 19 Oct - Monthly Meeting 21 Oct - Monthly Flyout Web doings: People were having trouble remembering the web site name, so I donated the $2 and got a purchased a new and very easy one to remember one: http://co-opa.com/ The old web URL will continue to work so all your bookmarks and links will continue to work. I expect to see cyber squatters on all the similar sounding domain names soon, so bookmark the new URL now. To access the members only areas the username is "S07" and the password is "123.0". In honor of our new airport ID(s) the username can also be AEB, BDN or KBDN. My Inbox: The Bend Municipal Airport Aviation Day 2006 is now just a great memory. Thanks to all the countless people that helped make it such a wonderful day. The rough consensus is that around 3,000 people dropped and their were at least that many smiles walking around. The biggest ones were on the faces of people stepping out of the helicopters and airplanes after their scenic flights. Media coverage was pretty skimpy this year, except for KFXO's Whitney Noziska. She had one of those great big grins after her helicopter ride and flashed it during her evening news story on the event. Shame on Z21 and the Bulletin for no coverage of the event at all. This qualifies as an Inbox item because the event committee has been sharing emails on what went right and what could be done better next year. If something comes to mind then please drop me an email so we can make next year's event even better. This is also on Outbox item. A lot of people from a lot of groups helped plan the event for months and months in advance. These included Brandon Wilcox, Butch Roberts and Barry Howarth for Professional Air, David Sailors for CO-OPA, Greg Phillips for the City of Bend, Nancy Lecklider for the 99s and CO-OPA, Ray Dillard for the EAA, and many, many more. If you get a chance please thank them for their hard work and dedication. This year we had wonderful professional help from Barb Malcolm of Impressive Events and it showed in the little things. Now that Barb has seen how it all works we can expect even better support from her next year. Random Thoughts: My last month's musings brought several questions from the membership. They mostly came down to two questions. One, what good are these downloadable sectionals now on the CO- OPA web site? Two, where exactly did you fly from S07 to CVO? (Yes it was still S07 then). Clearly the answer to the one is the way to answer the other. You can see that in this image (at least in the PDF version of the newsletter). For those of you reading the text version, what I have done is taken the image of the Klamath Falls North sectional, cut out just the area of interest and drawn over it my flight path. I hope the image has reproduced clearly, but if not you can go to http://co-opa.com/charts, download a copy of the sectional and see the area. This is a great way to flight plan and works even if you left your charts in your car, flight bag or the airplane. The red line is the route I mostly take. Basically I am hugging the east side of the ridge until crossing over at Waldo Lake and then following the Willamette River drainage down to Eugene. Several people suggested the alternate route in blue. This has the advantages of being straighter, a bit lower and remains over highways. The disadvantage is that the top of the pass (Pengra Pass) is a lot narrower. Fly them both in good weather and make your own choice. Keep in mind that this is a route I take in low (8,500ft?) ceilings but only with very good (50nm+) flight visibilities and stable conditions. If I cannot see almost to Eugene from the pass, or it does not look to stay that way for a long time, then this is not the way to go. Don't even think about flying this route in low VFR until this is a comfortable area of your local knowledge. Gary Miller. Ed Note: Be aware you are crossing the Waldo Lake Wilderness Area where you should be 2000' above terrain ? the lowest crossing point is at about 5600', meaning a 7600' min altitude ? marginal for a 8500' ceiling (Gary does add a '?' after it!). July Meeting Plan to attend the July 20 CO-OPA meeting in the Bend Airport Flight Services Building at 6PM for a pot luck dinner and a very special program. This will be your chance to hear someone under the age of 50 tell us about their life in aviation. Several students from the COCC Aviation Program will speak to us about their experiences, hopes, and dreams in aviation; moving ahead into the new millennium. These are bright young people who share our love of aviation and are actively involved in academic study for degrees and advanced ratings. Don't miss this opportunity for a very entertaining and inspiring evening. Bring your friends for flying fellowship, fine food, and fabulous fun!!! Ed Endsley The Jump to Light Speed I really got the itch to do a space excursion when the price dropped below 2.2M in the 2020s. The possibility of establishing a retreat cabin on an asteroid was appealing. As time was drawing on, I thought it might be appropriate to enlist some capable friends in the scheme. In the early twenties as affordable boost to Earth orbit became normal, the next step was to lift and stockpile supplies. Most stuff we could just park in geostationary orbits and expect to grab it on the way by. My associates had a wide variety of skills affording comprehensive techniques to accomplish this adventure. My good friend Anna was the best astrophysicist that I knew and she could do the wildest navigational calculations intuitively in her head. Allen had been invaluable in many excursions involving quasi-legal escapades that enlisted 'extra collective', make that purloined, resources for previous adventures with jets and rockets for parties involving graduate student spring break celebrations. Now Nick was a gem. He could do anything of an electro-mechanical engineering nature that anyone could conceive of. I'm still wondering what I bring to such a beautiful group of minds but I seem to be able to hold my own in discussions and I'm a pretty good gorilla chemist and pilot. So here we were on the brink of pulling this off. The plan was to set up a base on an asteroid as a vacation getaway. We'd chosen one about 35 miles in length and on the closer side of the Kuiper Belt so we didn't have to thread through all the detritus. That would give us an easier approach with our interplanetary scooter. This scooter was a brainstormed idea. It would be sort of like a large luge sled with rockets. Fairly light to boost to orbit in a shuttle ship and then just leave it tethered to the space station between trips. With such a good power to weight ratio the trip to the asteroid should take about two days with favorable solar orbital dynamics. The return was going to be a piece of cake. Anyone with a Ph.D. in amusement park rides and a minor in roller coasters could pull off a free return trajectory to slingshot around the moon and slide into Earth orbit near the space station. To be continued... Ed Endsley, on vacation June Flyout Ed Endsley was the only one who showed up for the flyout, and unfortunately our plane was full as my Pilot Son, Scott, and his wife Claude, joined us, so we did not have a seat for him today. Obviously, Father's day, and a Sunday to boot, is not the way to go for the COOPA club, as there was no interest. Olympia is a neat airport and full of aviation enthusiasts generated by the active Olympic Warbird Museum. It was well organized, right on time, and the Airshow was very impressive with major aerobatics done by an F6 Hellcat, P-51 Mustang, four AT-6's, a TBM torpedo bomber, a Douglas Skyraider, a Chinese CJ-6, a Russian Mig 17, a Sukoi aerobatic spectacular, several other Russian trainers that I had never seen before in both jet and radial engine types that astounded us with their aerobatic capabilities, an Apache attack helicopter, a huge Huey that put on an impressive show and dropped a Ford Taurus from 3000 feet right in the middle of the airport, and an amazing mix of all kinds of 1940's military aviation both big and small. The static display had some superbly restored Stearmans, a magnificent Howard DGA-15, and an assortment of Beavers, D-18's, and world-class aerobatic airplanes. The show ended promptly at 3:45 PM and we were in the air at 4:00 pm and home in Bend at 5:30. The over the top route direct to Portland and Olympia, and direct return turned out to be the right way to go with smooth air all the way over and back. Lots of clouds at 6000 feet with plenty of large holes to climb down through going in, and even more when we left. All in all it was a very enjoyable day. Curtis Turner Birdbrain? My son climbed Middle Sister today and called me with some bird stories when he got back to Bend. He saw a bird perched on the tip of the highest rock on Middle Sister that, from his description, I believe was a Rosy Finch. But the better story is about Ravens. When he and his climbing partner were within a few hundred feet of the top they dropped their packs and walked up the remaining distance without them. On the way back down they chased several Ravens away from their packs. Then they saw that the birds had opened the zippered pockets on each pack. In my son's pack they had found his last energy bar still sealed in its tough wrapper, and had opened it and left him with an empty wrapper. My son is not (yet) a birder, but he gained a new respect for "bird brains" today. -- Ed Would you fly in this ? #1 Two men dressed in pilots' uniforms walk up the aisle of the aircraft. Both are wearing dark glasses, one is using a guide dog, and the other is tapping his way along the aisle with a cane. Nervous laughter spreads through the cabin, but the men enter the cockpit, the door closes, and the engines start up. The passengers begin glancing nervously around, searching for some kind of a sign that this is just a little practical joke. None is forthcoming. The plane moves faster and faster down the runway, and the people sitting in the window seats realize they're headed straight for the water at the edge of the airport property. Just as it begins to look as though the plane will plow straight into the water, panicked screams fill the cabin. At that moment, the plane lifts smoothly into the air. The passengers relax and laugh a little sheepishly, and soon all retreat into their magazines and books, secure in the knowledge that the plane is in good hands. Meanwhile, in the cockpit, one of the blind pilots turns to the other and says, "You know, Bob, one of these days, they're gonna scream too late and we're all gonna die." Would you fly in this ? #2 Even though the Aeroscraft dwarfs the largest commercial airliners, it requires less net space on the ground than any plane because it doesn't need a runway. The airship takes off and lands like a helicopter. This is a sort of flying Queen Mary 2 that could change the way you think about air travel. It's the Aeroscraft, and when it's completed, it will ferry pampered passengers across continents and oceans as they stroll leisurely about the one-acre cabin or relax in their well- appointed staterooms. Unlike its dirigible ancestors, the Aeroscraft is not lighter than air. Its 14 million cubic feet of helium hoist only two thirds of the craft's weight. During takeoff and landing, six turbofan jet engines push the ship up or ease its descent. The rigid and surprisingly aerodynamic body, driven by huge aft-mounted propellers, generates enough additional lift to keep the behemoth and its 400-ton payload aloft while cruising. To minimize noise, the propellers will be electric, powered by a renewable source such as hydrogen fuel cells. A sophisticated buoyancy-management system will allow precise adjustments in flight dynamics to compensate for outside conditions and passenger movement. The automated system will draw outside air into compartments throughout the ship and compress it to manage onboard weight. This two-football-fields-long concept airship is the brainchild of Igor Pasternak, whose privately funded California firm, Worldwide Aeros Corporation, is in the early stages of developing a prototype and expects to have one completed by 2010. Pasternak says several cruise ship companies have expressed interest in the project: The craft would have a range of several thousand miles and, with an estimated top speed of 174 mph, could traverse the continental U.S. in about 18 hours. The Aeroscraft does not fly high enough to need pressurization. During the flight, passengers would peer at national landmarks just 8,000 feet below or, if they weren't captivated by the view, the cavernous interior would easily accommodate such amenities as luxury staterooms, restaurants, even a casino. COOPA / POSSIBLE FLYOUT DESTINATIONS for 2006 Airport Identifier Comments Albany, OR S12 Restaurant Astoria, OR AST Restaurant & Marine Museum Baker City, OR BKE Air Show Bandon, OR S05 Courtesy Van to great Restaurants Caldwell, ID EUL Restaurant Chiloquin, OR 2S7 Restaurant Coeur d'Alene, ID COE Restaurant - Overnight ??? Condon, OR 3S9 Maybe Brown Bag Lunch Bag location Dalles, OR/WA DLS Restaurant Eugene, OR EUG Restaurant & Aviation Museum Florence, OR 6S2 Courtesy Cars to great Restaurants Gold Beach, OR 4S1 Restaurant & Rogue River Mailboat trips Hillsboro, OR HIO Airshow Independence, OR 7S5 Restaurant & Museum with bicycles provided to get there Klamath Falls, OR LMT Restaurant Lewiston, ID LWS Restaurant Lexington, OR 9S9 Brown Bag Lunch Location McMinnville, OR MMV Airshow. Spruce Goose Aviation.Museum, shuttle provided Medford, OR MFR Restaurant Nehelam Bay, OR 3S7 Maybe Brown Bag Lunch Location Nampa, ID S67 Restaurant & P-40 Museum Richland, WA RLD Restaurant Salem, OR SLE Restaurant Tillamook, OR S47 Restaurant & Military A/C Museum Walla Walla, WA ALW Restaurant - Overnight ??? NOTE: Great Outdoor locations will be chosen for Brown Bag Flyouts PLEASE CHECK THE LIST, & E-MAIL YOUR COMMENTS ALONG WITH ANY ADDITIONS OR DELETIONS THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE. Thanks, Curt Turner. curtis@bendbroadband.com ____________________________________________________________________________ ______ COOPA officer contact info: President Gary E. Miller 20340 Empire Blvd., E-3 Bend, OR 97701 541-382-8588 gem@rellim.com Vice President Nancy Lecklider 3054 NW Clubhouse Dr Bend, OR 97701 541 330-1853 leckone@bendcable.com Secretary/Treasurer Don Wilfong 210 SE Cessna Dr Bend, OR 97702 541 389-1456 dwnw@bendbroadband.com Flyout Chair Curtis Turner 20386 Big Bear Court Bend, OR 97702 541 317-1670 curtis@bendbroadband.com Program Chair Ed Endsley 63505 Bridle Ln Bend, OR 97701 541 382-6414 ed@edendsley.com And finally, send Newsletter inputs to Mike Bond, 22052 Banff Drive Bend, OR 97702 541 317-8443 mvbond@myexcel.com