CASCADE FLYER, October 2008, Vol. 08, Issue 10 Website: http://co-opa.com/ President's Message: Imagine you are 70,000 feet up, wearing a mercury spacesuit, while sitting in a WWII bomber that has been modified with glider wings as you fly through the dust of a recent atomic bomb blast. Or imagine you are working on flying laser weapons to shoot down ICBMs. I could not have imagined anything like that until our September speaker USAF Colonel (retired) John Carney took us all there. For those that missed that meeting you missed a good one. Many thanks to John for dropping by and sharing so many great stories about his long career in aviation. This month our program will focus on current state and local aviation from a government perspective. We will hear from Susan Palmeri, Bend Airport Manager, on the KBDN construction and airport news in general. Then we have Ms. Nan Garnick, the new owner-operator of Redmond based Butler Aircraft, and the newest Oregon Aviation Board member, as our main speaker. If you have any questions about airport operations in the state or in Bend then bring them to this month's meeting. As always pilots flock in to the Bend Flight Services building for aviation chatter around 6pm for hanger flying, dig in to our scrumptious pot-luck at 6:30pm and settle in for our (in)formal meeting at 7pm. Calendar: 20 November - Monthly Meeting 22 November - Monthly Flyout 18 December - Monthly Meeting & Holiday Party 20 December - Monthly Flyout 15 January - Monthly Flyout 17 January - Monthly Flyout 19 February - Monthly Flyout 21 February - Monthly Flyout Web doings: You can always get the newest CO-OPA newsletter on our website at http://co-opa.com. There are also archived newsletters going way back. To access the members only areas the username is "BDN" and the password is "123.0". There you can find the membership roster if you are looking to track down a fellow CO-OPA member. Random Thoughts: Andy Rooney on 60 minutes just did a bit on how everything is so much more expensive than when he was young. Hard to believe he was ever young, but I think I once was, and I think he has a point. With that in mind I did some checking up on the history of some prices. Gasoline gets a lot of blame these days. How has that price changed? In 1955 a gallon of mogas cost just $0.29. By 1969 that had only increased to $0.35, a mere 20% increase. Earlier this year gas prices peaked at around $4.60, a 15x increase from 1955. Sure gas has gone up, but you also need an airplane to put it in. Let's look at the stalwart Cessna 172. The 172 was introduced in 1955 at a base price of about $9K. By 1969 the cost had increased to $12.5k. The Cessna web site now lists a 'typical' 172S at about $283k. They do not list a base price but it would seem to be around $220k. I am sure it carries a little more load, goes a little faster, and has a much cooler panel but there is a real jump there! A 24.4x price increase since 1955. How does that compare to other transportation options over the same time? A basic 1955 Cadillac sedan cost about $4k. In 1969 a basic Caddy increased to $5.4k, about the same increase as the 172 over the same time frame. Now a basic new Cadillac starts at $37k, a 9.2x increase since 1955. Once a small airplane cost a bit over twice as a basic luxury car, now it costs six times as much. Both are safer and smarter looking. When you look at running that car the gas mileage is a lot better then 1955, but the gas mileage in the airplane is about the same. No wonder there are fewer pilots these days … relative to other expenses, flying really has become more expensive. Since most of us never manage to save any money, what really matters is how much our favorite hobby costs relative to a year's wages. In 1955 the median wage was about $4.4k, so an airplane cost an average wage earner about 2 years salary. In 1969 the median was $9.5k meaning that 172 then cost about 16 months salary. Sadly 2008 income will be around $50.5k meaning a new 172 now costs about 4.4 times a yearly salary. That surely gets worse when using after tax incomes. The good news is that, adjusted for wages, gas has hardly gone up at all and the Caddy has actually gotten a tad less expensive. It now becomes fairly clear why we have fewer new pilots than in years past; flying has just become relatively more expensive than wages and other expenses. Clearly what this world needs is a good, inexpensive airplane. Maybe the new Light Sport Aircraft category can fill the bill. Gary Miller How I came to aviation. by Ed Endsley My freshman year of high school was rather rocky. I wasn't a jock and that was what was required in my neighborhood to be popular and "included in all the reindeer games." But like, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, my pursuits tended to be more of the nerdy variety and when I discovered chemistry I was in heaven. It's lucky I didn't wind up in heaven or the other place. When I got kicked out of class for some unauthorized "experiments" I turned to some private academic explorations. And that's what led me to a rather disastrous episode that resulted in my banishment from formal education entirely. The unfortunate incident involved a rather unstable compound that was quite explosive and had the unique characteristic of being based on Iodine and nitrogen so when it blew up my locker it left bright purple stains all over the place. Not to mention the physical damage for some distance around. Now that was spectacular enough that the parents of the kid that slammed his locker door that set off the explosion got rather testy and I thought I was going to have to hide out until things cooled off. Literally. I don't think I would have been expelled for that alone except for the situation about buying the teacher's edition of the textbooks that had the quiz answers in the back. But all these things together got me an audience with the superintendent and by mutual agreement it seemed best if I continued my education elsewhere. Then they fired my mother who was a teacher in the same district. The consequences of my emerging adventures were beginning to reverberate. Fortunately the local airport manager had made a presentation at an assembly and I was enthralled with the idea of flying the real thing. Balsa was nice and the models on my ceiling were intriguing but the thought of really flying was attractive. I couldn't drive yet but I could fly! So now that I was technically a truant, I would ride my bike out to the airport and fly anywhere I wanted. Which I might add that on one occasion was to fly to Seattle and land a Piper Colt at SEA-TAC after a long-long straight in to 34R. Departure was kind of cool, out over the Olympics, except for that little encounter over McChord AFB. Then there was the toilet papering of the high school. I don't think anyone had done it from a thousand feet. The really cool part was getting it through the goal posts. There was a lot of conjecture about how it got across the roof of the gymnasium. Pieces of it stayed there until my classmates graduated while I was laying rubber in the parking lot during Pomp and Circumstance …. a suitable accompaniment to celebrate the quality of education I received there …. I'm forever thankful. I would probably have gotten away with the off field landings if they hadn't thoughtfully painted those huge registration numbers on the side of the aircraft. I couldn't understand why someone wouldn't be thrilled at having a plane land in their fields. The FBO manager landed pretty hard about that one. It's a good thing he didn't know about the others but I was still grounded during the reparations period. Perhaps some of my sweetest early aviation memories involve rock and roll. There wasn't anything quite as sublime as tuning the LF radio to KGON and cranking up the Supremes while cruising up and down the canyons south of town. Cuttin' sixty degree banked seven-twenty cookies in the canyons and buzzing cows was nice accompaniment to the sixties rock. This was long before headsets and rock & roll has never sounded the same since. Of course I don't play it on a three-inch comm. speaker anymore either. I blew my cover on the R&R rides when subsequent pilots nearly blew themselves out of the plane during startup. It appears that not everyone shared my taste in music over navigation. My early aviation experiences were influenced by my teenage sensibilities, or perhaps the lack of any conventional sensibilities. But I'm sure you've never had impulsive tendencies. At least at the time I had teenage reflexes, which I hate to admit, seem to have abated and abandoned me to some degree. So doesn't that mean I'm supposed to have acquired experience and wisdom??? So what I'm wondering is, when does the wisdom part kick in? Ed Endsley P.S. I'm starting to get senior citizen discounts now, except on AVGAS. --------------------------------------------------------- The 'Original Flapjack' There has been a fascination within the aviation community with unusual aircraft designs. One of these, with Oregon connections, was the Joy JX-5 'flapjack'. Development started in 1933, but it first appeared in 1937 at Vancouver's Pearson Field. The -5 suggests it was not the first model developed but it seems to be the first and the last by manufacturer Joy Aircraft of Portland. Looking at the location of the two 38hp Salmson AD-9 engines makes one wonder if Bernoulli was part of the Joy brothers' reading … but I digress … The first to actually fly this odd new plane was Portland 'aviator and daredevil' Danny Greco. On August 4, 1937, Greco was able to get the plane off the ground but it refused to bank and turn, resulting in a forced landing. The second and final flight, in 1938, didn't make it past the barbed-wire fence at the end of the airport ……... I wonder what unlicensed really meant? Did it help you mingle with the spectators and say "Who, me?" (you have to see the second picture in the PDF newsletter to understand this) COOPA officer contact info: President Gary E. Miller 109 NW Wilmington Ave Bend, OR 97701 541-382-8588 gem@rellim.com Vice President --------OPEN---------- Secretary/Treasurer Don Wilfong 210 SE Cessna Dr Bend, OR 97702 541 389-1456 dwnw@bendbroadband.com Temp Flyout Chair Don Wilfong 210 SE Cessna Dr Bend, OR 97702 541 389-1456 dwnw@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@spiritone.com