CASCADE FLYER October 2010, Vol. 10, Issue 10 Website: http://co-opa.com/ This your last COOPA newsletter, at least from me. Interest has been dwindling and inputs non-existent, so after almost 6 years, I am resigning as Newsletter Editor for COOPA, effective with this issue ….. Mike Bond President's Message: Last month's meeting was an experience we'll not soon forget …. Professional Air is now closing at 5pm and the doors were locked. Instead we had a short but productive meeting upstairs thanks to Chef Dave Hatfield of Cafe 3456. You can check out a Z21 story on Dave's cooking here: http://www.ktvz.com/chefs-table/24001411/detail.html Be sure to drop in this month to see what mayhem may happen. Bring your ideas, your enthusiasm and let's have a great meeting. Festivities start at 6pm in the Flight Services Building. Chow down at our 6:30pm potluck and stay for a formal program at 7pm. Calendar: 21 October - Monthly Meeting 23 October - Monthly Flyout 18 November - Monthly Meeting 20 November - Monthly Flyout 16 December - Monthly Meeting - Holiday Party! 18 December - Monthly Flyout 20 January - Monthly Meeting 22 January - Monthly Flyout Web doings: It is election season and the TFRs are popping up here and there on little notice like cumulonimbus. Luckily TFR alerts are also popping into my inbox. One of the nice benefits of having signed up for email alerts on FAASafety.gov. The days of telephoning a briefer to read you the teletype printouts are finally ending. As always you can check out current and past CO-OPA newsletters, view our membership list and view hot aviation links on our website at http://co-opa.com To access the members only areas the username is "BDN" and the password is "123.0". My Inbox: Nothing stays the same except change. More change is coming to the OPA. After some grumblings from advertisers the OPA is going to print the Propwash on dead trees again. Maybe not every issue, but at least a few every year. Random Thoughts: I fall in and out of love with eBay.com. It should certainly be banned from any work setting. During the Airshow of the Cascades in Madras the sound technicians seemed to spend more time surfing ebay for car trinkets than working the sound board. While cruising eBay a few weeks ago I noticed 90 Loran items for sale. Since the Coast Guard bulldozed the Loran transmitters last February it is really hard to imagine any use for these items except as paperweights. There are no bids for any of the items so either the sellers did not get the memo or they are hoping that some poor sucker buys one. Random Thoughts --- continued: Now for the love part: When GPS started replacing Loran, II Morrow made two generations of panel mounted GPS that slide into the same tray as my old II Morrow Loran. That has kept the resale price of these old units quite high. Luckily not all the sellers bother to check market prices before listing their unwanted items for sale. The result is a perfectly working GX 55 now sits in my panel. All it took was to slide out the old Loran, slide in the 'new' GPS, 4 screws to swap antennas and I am in heaven. Plus of course a PayPal bill. If only other airplane upgrades were as painless. Taking my turn to waste time on eBay, I check out the prices of other items in my instrument panel that will die one day. Looking at the prices it seems that pretty soon it will be cheaper to upgrade to a glass cockpit that to replace a few gyros. Either way it will not be cheap so time to save some more pennies. Virgin Galactic Spaceship Completes First Solo Flight Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has completed its first manned free flight of a spaceship intended to eventually take customers on commercial space flights. Virgin Galactic space flights are the brainchild of Branson, who heads up the Virgin empire. SpaceShipTwo, also known as the VSS Enterprise, was piloted by Pete Siebold and Mike Alsbury. Virgin Galactic was testing whether the spaceship could successfully release from its mothership and glide back to Earth. The ship did indeed release at 45,000 feet and land safely at Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The mothership, named the WhiteKnightTwo, had flown 40 times prior to this free flight, including four trips during which the VSS Enterprise was attached. On July 15, Virgin Galactic flew for the first time with a crew on board. "The VSS Enterprise was a real joy to fly, especially when one considers the fact that the vehicle has been designed not only to be a Mach 3.5 spaceship capable of going into space but also one of the worlds highest altitude gliders," Siebold said in a statement. "This was one of the most exciting days in the whole history of Virgin," Branson said in a statement. "For the first time since we seriously began the project in 2004, I watched the world's first manned commercial spaceship landing on the runway at Mojave Air and Space Port and it was a great moment. Now, the sky is no longer the limit and we will begin the process of pushing beyond to the final frontier of space itself over the next year." A seat on Branson's spaceship will cost $200,000 per person, with refundable deposits starting at $20,000. There is interest, however. Virgin Galactic has managed to sell seats to about 300 people from more than 40 countries. The CST-100 spacecraft can fit seven people, and is expected to be operational by 2015. Sailplane Self-Launches Over the past few decades self-launching sailplanes have become popular with pilots who want the ability to reach soaring altitude on their own, or have the ability to save themselves from landing out if they push their luck on a cross country flight. Now they can save themselves with a bit more thrust than the competition. Several people have experimented with jet engines on sailplane, but a small New Mexico company plans to start selling them soon. Desert Aerospace is building an alternative to the expensive self-launch gliders made in Germany by combing a high-performance glider and a jet engine designed for use in unmanned aerial vehicles, both made in the Czech Republic. The PBS TJ-100 weighs only 45 pounds and produces 240 pounds of thrust. Desert Aerospace has modified the two-seat TST-14J sailplane to accept the tiny jet engine. For takeoff, the jet engine sits directly behind the cockpit and allows the glider to climb at more than 900 feet per minute. Once at soaring altitude, it folds down inside the fuselage and retractable doors provide an aerodynamic covering leaving the sailplane looking like any other glider. The jet engine does burn more than 20 gallons per hour, but with such impressive performance, a good soaring pilot will only need to run the engine for a few minutes to get to sufficient altitude. And of course there's always the option to just light the fire for a little fun at the end of the day as well. Desert Aerospace is still testing the prototype that made its first flight earlier this spring. There aren't a lot of performance details or a price yet. … and finally, customized approach plates are now available … ====================================================================== 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 Temp Fly-out Chair Don Wilfong 210 SE Cessna Dr Bend, OR 97702 541 389-1456 wilfong.d@gmail.com Program Chair --------OPEN---------- Newsletter Editor --------OPEN----------