The full newsletter, including photos can be downloaded from
COOPA website: http://co-opa.rellim.com/

CASCADE FLYER November 2004, Vol. 04, Issue 11


PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE:

I would like to thank Dave Hice from Epic Aircraft for
coming out to speak to us last month. He was full of
information on the new company and it's products. It
was news to me they built the prototype almost
downtown in Bend. I must have driven by their factory
every day for a year and missed it. The thought did cross
my mind that it was an awfully large "Powder Coating"
factory for Bend, but I never suspected it was a cover for
an airplane factory.

Ground breaking on their new building at S07 will be
this December. It is just amazing to see how fast the
Bend City Council can move when properly motivated.

Just after our meeting Epic announced they are also
going to be building a jet aircraft in the new building.
With companies like Epic our town should become as
good a place to work as it is to live. You can check out
more info at: http://www.epicaircraft.com/

More thanks to Greg Philips for updating us on the great
things he is facilitating at the Bend Airport. Nelson
Road is finally under construction, the AWOS site is
selected, the East Side is being opened up and a lot more.
These things might have happened eventually without
Greg but he has sure been speeding things along
smoothly.

Last month Clay Trenz put out a call for help. He is still
trying to locate the video tape taken of Cal Butler's talk
for us. Does anyone remember who taped it? If you
think you remember please contact Clay or myself so he
can preserve this valuable oral history.

This month's speaker will be John Taylor. John is a
former Naval Aviator; a member of the now expired
Bend Airport Ad Hoc Committee, and teaches a class at
Mt. Hood Community College on Aviation Business.
John will present some of the material he teaches at
MHCC, and, if we are lucky, a few Navy stories as well.
The MHCC Aviation website is here:
http://www.mhcc.edu/aviation/

Next month, when history repeats itself, will be the best
meeting of the year. The annual Christmas Party! Mark
your calendar; December 16th will be the big night!

If you have any ideas for speakers, or presentation topics,
please forward them to me. Our speakers' calendar for
next year is wide open.

Elections:

You are probably sick of elections, but there is one more
to go. You need to perform your patriotic duty and vote
for chapter officers. There have not been a lot of
volunteers for the executive committee so if anyone
wants to get more involved then raise your hand on
Thursday. Maybe the threat of being stuck with me for
another year will be sufficient motivation?


Calendar:

18 November - Monthly Meeting
Election of 2005 Officers.
20 November - Monthly Flyout

16 December - Monthly Meeting
Xmas Party
18 December - Monthly Flyout

20 January - Monthly Meeting
22 January - Montly Flyout

17 February - Monthly Meeting
19 February - Monthly Flyout


Web doings:

Check out the CO-OPA website if you have missed the
recent newsletters:

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

To access the members only areas the username is "S07"
and the password is "123.0".

Weather.gov has put up a webcam pointed directly Mt.
St. Helens from the North. Their intent is to show the
volcano caldera but it is also a great view of the weather
in the vicinity. Check it out here:

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pqr/msh.php

Lest we forget, our own Bend and Sunriver Airports also
have great webcams, courtesy of SunAir, Sunriver Resort
and Viewports:

http://www.viewports.com/airport.php?city=S07
http://www.viewports.com/airport.php?city=S21

Regards, GARY



SAFETY CORNER: by Joel Premselaar

"Seeing is believing," the old adage says. Well, 'taint
necessarily so! Yeah, I know what you're thinking,
"Here he goes again; pontificating about vision." There's
a lot more to the subject than I'm presenting herein.
After I discuss the "Gibson Effect," and other landing
allusions in the next installment, I promise that I'll move
on to other subjects.

I don't know the reason for it but, in the aviation pubs ...
er ... publications, O.K. in the pubs too, the subject of
vision from a pilot's perspective is somewhat neglected.
This is serious stuff, but I'll try to make it brief. Some of
the following applies to night and some to both day and
night conditions.

Your eyeball has rods and cones. You knew that. At high
light levels, you see both details and color with your
cones, which are concentrated at the center of your eye.
The field of view of your cones is deceptively small. The
number of cones drops precipitously as they depart from
the center. No doubt, you also knew that you have a
blind spot about 17° on the nose side of each eye. In the
dark, the cones barely function, if at all. Your best vision
is with your rods and they grow in numbers toward the
edges of your field of vision. In the rod mode, everything
is in shades of gray and details are compromised. The
rods are highly susceptible to oxygen deprivation. That's
why the military demands that you start using oxygen at
5,000' MSL at night. When pulling "G's", the brain is
deprived of oxygen carrying blood so you start blacking
out from the periphery. Just before blacking out, it
appears that you're looking through a tube. One other
thing, you have dutifully taken half an hour to night
adapt haven't you. Yeah! Right!

When scanning for an airborne target. Remember your
rods and cones. Stare sector by overlapping sector. If
you swing your eyeballs, they'll jump and you'll not see
the target called out to you by ATC. Remember also that
ATC calls out the target relative to your magnetic course
and not your longitudinal axis. As proof, challenge a
companion to smoothly swing his/her eyes across the
room and watch them go spasmodic. Now have them
track your finger as you move it across the room. Their
eyes will track a moving target smoothly. If you do spot
a target anywhere in a sphere around you and it grows
larger while maintaining a fixed relative position to you,
you've become a player in a game of "chicken" 'cause
you're on a collision course. You may very well have a
target out there on a collision course if you're in the
boondocks scanning without radar support. Change
heading every so often to induce relative motion. You're
more apt to see a moving target than a fixed one.

Consider the above as you read on. While staring at a
bright star, select a faint star 15° to 20° to one side of it.
Now try to look directly at the faint star. Well how about
that? It disappeared. Want to see it again? Look back at
the bright star. Lo and behold, there's that faint star right
where you first saw it. Lesson learned: when it's dark,
and you want to see a particular object, don't look
directly at it.

Weird things happen when you encounter a single point
light source at night. This is not hard to come upon in
eastern Oregon. Stare at it and it will appear to move.
That's an autokinetic illusion. You can produce this
phenomenon at home in a dark room with a single point
light source at the far side of the room. Moreover, if your
wings are level and you spot a light on the ground and
somewhat to the side, you'll get a true perspective of
altitude. Banked toward the light, it will appear to be at
your altitude and you'll instinctively want to climb.
Banked away from it, you'll swear that you've gained
altitude and swear aloud as you pitch into oblivion. Fly
directly at it. Pitch change will fool you; e.g., nose up
creates the illusion that you're at a safe altitude.

Night crashes in airports serving about 20 cities that
included Tokyo, Mexico City, and Big Springs, Texas
tweaked the curiosity of Drs. Con Kraft and Charley
Elworth, both of Boeing. They found a common
denominator for the crashes. Each runway involved
served a lighted city that spread out and slanted upward
beyond its airport or had a humped runway. The
background lights created a deceptive reference for the
pilots on the approach. Kraft and Elworth simulated the
situation with an adjustable backdrop and "flew" eleven
of twelve experienced test subject pilots into the ground
(yours truly among them). From the figures, note that the
minimum speed addressed is 120 mph. 1.3 x Vso for us,
the "bottom feeders" of our atmosphere, is 78 mph. In
terms of time to the runway, the difference would be
negligible; however, we'd be closer to the runway when
we scattered aircraft parts short of it.



BELIEVE THE VASI!

Think twice about planning a night arrival at an airport
that fits the above description and does not have a VASI
or its equivalent, especially if its approach is over water
or unlit terrain. If you or someone you know has a
private airport (A heads up to Don W. and Don M.;
maybe Madras or the county will fund the following) I
will, upon request, provide plans of an inexpensive "Poor
Man's ILS" used by the Navy at Moffett Field (San
Francisco Bay area). The Poor Man's ILS adds another
dimension to that provided by a VASI in that it provides
both glide slope AND azimuthal inputs to the pilot. It is
constructed using plywood panels and 4"X 4" posts or
other materials of choice.

Haze, whether weather created or caused by your
windshield's condition, will make you think you're high
in your landing approach resulting in a clear-cut case of
OOPS and OOFDA!

If the terrain or lights behind a hill are disappearing as
you approach it, you'll make a definite impression on
Mother earth. If the terrain or lights behind the hill do
not change, you'll ricochet off its top. Happiness is
seeing the terrain or lights emerging from behind the hill.

When VFR on top, do not use the clouds as a reference
for the horizon; they can be slanted any which way and
so will you be.

Digest the above and then think: "John Kennedy Jr.
Accident" With a 'fright' instructor aboard, experience
how subtle an entry into a "Grave Yard Spiral" can be.



RULES AND LAWS:

The rules are made by men who think that they know
better how to fly your airplane than you. The Laws (of
Physics) were made by the Great One. You can, and
sometimes should, suspend the rules but you can never
suspend the Laws.



THE ALVORD DESERT by Steve Wright

The Alvord Desert is a large dry lakebed located in
southeast Oregon, just east of the Steens Mountain. One
of the attractions of the area is a hot springs, located on
the southwest edge of the lakebed, near a gravel road.
The beauty of the Steens Mountain, combined with the
adjoining flat desert/dry lakebed, is fabulous. The
weather in the summer can be quite warm, 80's - 90's.
Nights can be chilly. The hot springs always warm the
body up. The nighttime stars are infinite. The Alvord
Desert is a dry lakebed only part of the year, in the warm
summer months. Other times, the lake can be wet and muddy.

Bobbie (my wife) and I have been flying to the Alvord
Desert for the past 2 years and this year marks the third.
The area is also accessible by road, with reported travel
time from Bend to be 4-5 hours. Typical flying time in
my Cessna 175 is 1.5 hours. Landing the airplane on the
dry lakebed is smoother than most paved runways. We
typically park the airplane on the edge of the dry
lakebed, near the gravel road and hot springs. We bring
all our camping gear, food, and lots of water. I hear this
is one of the driest areas in Oregon. Starting this past
September, I began thinking about the Alvord Desert,
trying to plan a camping trip there. Weekend after
weekend, it just seemed to not work out for me for one
reason or another.

October arrived with a great Indian summer. I had been
watching the weather and knew that warm weather had
to be nearly over. The weekend of October 15th-17th
looked pretty good, although I knew a small front was
expected toward the end of the weekend. Prior to our
departure from Bend, it looked to me like the
Bend/Burns/Alvord Desert areas would not be affected
significantly by this cooler/wet weather. We departed
Bend on Friday, 10/15/04, around 12pm. The flight over
the high desert was nice. We had a slight tail wind,
which is always nice, and negative turbulence. We
meandered up and around the Steens Mountain, viewing
small lakes, streams, and fall colored aspen trees. The
top of the Steens is nearly 10,000 MSL. And appearing
over the east side, a beautiful white, dry lakebed.

As I figured there was some wind pushing west over the
top of the mountain, I did not fly over west and straight
down to the lakebed as there was sure to be
rotor/turbulent winds. We flew down the south side of
the Steens, eventually veered to the east, and approached
the desert from the southeast. This all looks so nice. We
circled the area near the hot springs, checking the color
of the lakebed: light tan color good, dark brown color
bad. With various car, ATV, motorcycle, land yacht
tracks on the desert floor, all looked well for landing. We
stepped out of the airplane around 1:30pm. It was 79
degrees outside with little wind.

Within about 10 minutes of landing, a pickup with two
guys drove up and offered us a ride to the hot springs.
How nice. However, we declined for the moment, mainly
due to just arriving. We unloaded all of our camping gear
and got the airplane tied down. I have been told by more
than one person to make sure the airplane is tied down
really good. The Alvord winds could really get strong
sometimes. Later that afternoon, we walked over to the
hot springs. Those hot springs do wonders. We always
seem to meet nice people there too. We figured it was
about a 15-20 minute walk to the hot springs from our
airplane. A relaxing stroll back to our camping spot,
Bobbie set up our tent, I cooked up some dinner, we
enjoyed a beautiful sunset, and had a nighttime campfire.

Saturday morning arrives. And it was nice on the desert,
weather wise. The days temps got up into the lower 80's,
abundant sunshine, and we even saw a few dust devils in
the area. We took a hike up to the local orchard. The
peaches, plums, and apricots were well gone, but there
were lots of juicy apples. Hiking back down from the
orchard lead us to the hot springs. Once again, the
heavenly soak. While at the hot springs, a guy walked
up, who I recognized. His name is Carl. He is 86 years
old and lives in a house about 1 mile south of the hot
springs. This is the only nearby house. Carl is basically
the caretaker for the hot springs, which is actually owned
by the Alvord Ranch folks. The Alvord Ranch house is
10 miles north. We had a good soak with Carl and
learned a lot about the area. He offered us a ride back to
our airplane and tent after our hot soak. We gladly
accepted. Carl had previously told us a bunch of flying
stories too and I got the idea he really liked flying. I
offered to take him up for an evening airplane ride. His
eyes got real big; you just knew he wanted to fly. So off
we went. We flew about a half hour loop around the lake,
over plateaus, hills, valleys, saw a bunch of wild horses,
flew over Carl's house, then in for the easy greaser
landing. We enjoyed another evening meal and a good
campfire. More stars and a small crescent moon. That
evening after we retired in the tent, the wind started
kicking up. Must be the front moving thru, so I thought.
Our tent blew, rattled, and shook most of the night. I
think I got 2 hours of sleep.

Sunday morning arrives ... Still windy ... I got out of the
tent to see some pretty wild looking clouds all over the
place. And these clouds were moving like racecars. Not
the time to be flying. I consider myself a fair weather
flyer. Leaning in the conservative direction and making
the no go decision when there's any question. The
original plan was to fly home Sunday morning. Our other
plan was to fly home Sunday evening if we needed to
wait longer for this front to move thru. It was cloudy and
windy most all day Sunday. We went to the hot springs
in the late morning ... Ahhhh ... Met some more nice
people. A few raindrops fell on us from time to time. We
headed back to camp for the afternoon. I took about an
hour-long bicycle ride on the desert, by Carl's property,
and up in the hills. Then headed back to see Bobbie and
have some dinner. We still had a couple hours of
daylight and thought we might just try for one more hot
springs dip prior to dinner.

The time was about 430pm +/-. We started walking away
from camp toward the hot springs when it started raining,
big drops. We decided to not go. We turned around and
got into the airplane to get out of the rain. The rain really
started coming down hard. The wind was gusting out of
the south. It was about 55 degrees. I had called Redmond
AWOS and Burns AWOS a couple times. Bend was at
6C for quite some time, Burns had recently dropped from
17C to 5C. This sounded like a pretty cold dose of air
coming in. We are in the airplane and it is getting more
windy by the second, pouring down rain, hail starting to
mix in. At some point, I noticed the wind shift from
south to northwest and the temperature started dropping
fast. We went from 55 degrees to about 37 degrees
within a half hour it seemed. The airplane was rocking
and rolling. We didn't want to get out, but we sure didn't
want to continue this uncontrollable ride. The airplane
was tied down and holding, but one time the airplane
seemed to pop up a few inches. Could this thing get
airborne with the extreme wind? I started seeing my
airspeed indicator coming off the bottom. Not good. It
registered higher than 45 MPH with some of the wind
gusts. Much of the desert/dry lakebed ground around the
airplane was muddy and slick by now. We looked out the
windows as our tent was blowing, shaking pretty hard,
leaning, being pushed sideways, and flattened.
Finally, one of the tent supports broke. The tent stakes
were pulled out of the ground due to the wind and rain.
The tent flipped over. It was starting to get dark, the
wind and rain were not letting up, and our tent and gear
were ready to fly across the desert. I decided to brave the
elements and go rescue some of our gear out of the tent
before it was lost. I transferred a majority of the camping
gear from the tent into the airplane. Got soaking wet in
the process and was slipping and sliding over all the
mud. Back in the airplane I went. We were waiting and
hoping this mad storm would calm down. Well, it didn't
calm too much, although, now the airspeed indicator was
registering 35-40 for gusts. I told Bobbie we should get
out of the airplane, make a run up to the road, and head
over to Carl's house. We were getting anxious for some
permanent shelter.
It was dark by now and we had been rocking and rolling
for about two hours. I could see the lights on in Carl's
house from the airplane. The house was about 1 mile
south. I gathered a backpack full of essentials and we
made a run for it. Running up through the sagebrush
away from the lake, ground was a bit muddy, wind in our
face. We made it up to the road in a few minutes, then
turned south toward Carl's house. We made it to Carl's, it
was about 8:00pm, they took us in, fed us dinner, and
gave us a nice dry/warm bed to sleep in ... Ahhhh ... We
were out of the storm. I slept pretty good that night. We
had been told we might not be able to fly out for a couple
days or more due to the wet desert floor. An option
considered was towing the airplane up to the gravel road
for take off. Or, we might not be able to fly out due to
adverse weather.

Monday morning arrives. I looked outside and saw a
beautiful, mostly clear sky. The weather looked good.
Now, the big question was, is the lake bed dry enough to
fly off? We had a quick breakfast at Carl's, who gave us
a ride over to the airplane to check the damage and see if
we could fly out. The desert floor was dry enough, the
airplane was in good shape, the tent, that's another story.
A look at the Steens Mountain revealed a dusting of
snow. Clouds obscured a majority of the mountain.
However, the south side of the mountain looked clear.
We gathered all our gear, packed the airplane, and flew
out of there. The flight home was done at about 7,000
MSL most the way. Clouds were broken and overcast
above us. Snow was noted on a majority of the ground
below. As we neared the Bend area, the clouds began to
get lower, so we got lower. As we got within 2-3 miles
of Pilot Butte a light mist rain started. No problem, we
are there. It looked like we flew through the small
window of opportunity from the Alvord to Bend.

WE MADE IT BACK !!! I think if we had not flown
back Monday morning, it might have been several days
before the weather was VFR again.
That was one big cold front, a bold start for the
2004/2005 winter season. Lessons to be learned: Be
prepared, have options, carry tie downs, help those in
need, and enjoy every day here on Earth.
A true and memorable Alvord Desert trip we will never
forget.


A BIT OF HISTORY:

The only DC-2 left flying in the US ... and if McDonald
Douglas had not been 'acquired', this one may not have
been added to the Air Museum at Boeing Field!
This particular DC-2 came off the line as No. 77 (out of
156), on March 13, 1935, to join the Pan Am fleet (also
another bit of history).


SEPTEMBER FLYOUT:

Gary took some great photos which didn't get into last
month's Newsletter ... here is a selection ...
(in the PDF file on COOPA website)


REDMOND TOWER TOUR: Sat. Oct. 23.

Plans were made to fly to Nampa, Idaho, have breakfast
and visit the Warhawk Air Museum ... well ... with the
weather looking like it was not going to co-operate, a
contingency plan was made to meet at the Fountain Place
Restaurant, have breakfast and then go on a tour of the
Redmond Tower. We were set, no matter how the
weather turned out and Dwight said if we were able to
fly somewhere just call them on the tower frequency and
cancel the tour.

We met at the Flight Shop and after a consideration of
the weather we decided to head for the Fountain Place
where everyone ate their fill...It was good food, good
service and we did a lot of hangar flying. Some of the
issues on the ballot were cussed and discussed and I
think we solved most of the worlds problems.... now if
we could only get the officials in power to listen to us.

The group consisted of: Gary Miller and his son Daniel,
David Sailors, Ed Endsley, Mike and Ann Bond, Don
and Norma Wilfong, and three new members Volney
Sigmund and Curtis and Jackie Turner. It was nice to
see some new faces along with the regular gang...We
hope they will become regulars at our meeting/potlucks
and on our fly-outs.

After our breakfast we headed to the foot of the
Redmond Tower where we were all checked in (Security
Check) and then we headed up stairs (there are a lot of
stairs) where you emerge into a whole new world with a
panoramic view of the surrounding area. If they were
watching with binoculars I think they could see the
planes coming and going from Bend Municipal Airport,
Cline Falls Airport, Pilot Butte International Airport and
maybe even Sunriver Airport..

Dwight and Kevin went out of their way to make our
visit pleasurable, their friendliness and their willingness
to answer our many questions made the whole visit not
only a lot of fun but educational as well. Be courteous
and let them know where you are and where you are
going if you are in their area. We spent quite a bit of
time up there visiting and enjoying the view. If you get a
chance to talk to them (not on the tower frequency) be
sure and thank them for everything.

You missed a good time. We hope to see you at the
meeting/potluck on Thurs. evening Nov. 18 and then we
hope to be able to go to Nampa to the Warhawk Air
Museum on Sat. Nov. 20. I will be checking things out
and will e-mail everyone with updated plans. If we
cannot go to Nampa then we will try for somewhere else
... or ... maybe just hangar talk at a local eatery.

We wish you all Blue Skies and Tail Winds ...
Don & Norma Wilfong