CASCADE FLYER December 2006, Vol. 06, Issue 12 Website: http://co-opa.com/ President's Message: The 99s had a wonderful Holiday party last week. That will be a tough act to follow but we will try our best with this month's CO-OPA meeting. Per our usual schedule the meeting will start with a bit of hanger flying at 6:00pm, followed at 6:30pm by our potluck. The club will provide the main dish and the membership will provide the rest of the trimmings. At 7:00pm we will have a short meeting followed by our main event: the Yankee Swap. Everyone needs to bring an aviation related white elephant gift. New or used doesn't matter. Maybe there is some unused gadget at the bottom of your flight bag that needs a new home? Maybe even a tailwheel spring? Wrap it up and place it under our tree. Then watch the fun. Expect this to be our best meeting of the year so be there or be square. Many thanks to Bill Conklin for dropping by last month. It is always interesting to hear what is going on at Air Life and Bill had some great stories to tell. Calendar: 21 December - Monthly Meeting - XMAS Party 23 December - Monthly Flyout? 18 January - Monthly Meeting 20 January - Monthly Flyout 15 February - Monthly Meeting 17 February - Monthly Flyout 15 March - Monthly Meeting 17 March - Monthly Flyout 19 April - Monthly Meeting 21 April - Monthly Flyout 17 May - Monthly Meeting 19 May - Monthly Flyout Web doings: Want to do your own research on aviation accidents? Halfway down the links page is a link to the NTSB Aviation Accident Database. You can search accidents by date, place, aircraft model and many other variables. As always, the CO-OPA website contains recent newsletters and other goodies. http://co-opa.rellim.com To access the members only areas the username is "BDN" and the password is "123.0". My Inbox: Barbara Malcolm from Incredible Events has been sending put emails to get the next Aviation Day off the ground. As hard as it is to believe it really is time to start planning for next summer. Please consider volunteering to help make next years event the best one ever. Drop me a line if you would like to help. Random Thoughts: Looks like it is time for me to go back and re-study some of the aviation basics. Last week I was reminded that I had forgotten the NTSB definitions of an aviation accident and an incident. To qualify as an accident to the NTSB things have to go really badly. Much more badly than a layman would expect. Here are the relevant parts of NTSB 830.2: "Aircraft accident means an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, and in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage." Clearly if someone is seriously injured you have an accident in anybody's definition. What I had forgotten is how bad damage can be and not qualify as "substantial damage". "Engine failure or damage limited to an engine if only one engine fails or is damaged, bent fairings or cowling, dented skin, small punctured holes in the skin or fabric, ground damage to rotor or propeller blades, and damage to landing gear, wheels, tires, flaps, engine accessories, brakes, or wingtips are not considered `substantial damage' for the purpose of this part." In theory this means you can have a really hard landing, collapse the landing gear, seriously shorten your spinning prop, and ding your wingtip as you careen to a stop, and you still do not have an accident in the eyes of the NTSB. I am positive that if I did a tiny fraction of that amount of damage to customer equipment they would no doubt consider it an accident. So what does my hypothetical hard landing mean in the eyes of the NTSB? They would call it an incident. "Incident means an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations." Or maybe not; as a final test of the definition I went to the NTSB online Aviation Accident Database. With just a little searching it was easy to find several simple gear- up and gear collapse "accidents" with no injuries or serious damage. Looks like the practical definition of an NTSB Aviation Accident is not so simple after all. No matter what you want to call it, accident or incident, let's not have of them in 2007. Stay safe out there. Gary E. Miller President Our Christmas charity program is going as planned; a very nice and deserving young lady has been selected by the teachers to receive our help. Some of the teachers are so pleased with the selection they are going to donate to our cause too. The shopping will get underway very soon and we will have an accounting and photos at the January meeting. Thanks to all that participated in this heart-warming event, you can feel good knowing that through you efforts a deserving but less fortunate person will have a wonderful Christmas. When this young lady was asked if there was anything in particular she would like to have, she said "I have always wanted to take one of the names from the gift tree in the mall and buy a gift for one of the children" "can I please do that?" Best wishes to all.........keep the good thoughts going.........enjoy each day to the utmost and always remember: Yesterday is history......Tomorrow is a mystery.....Today is a gift....that is why they call it the "Present". …………. Don & Norma Wally Olsen and Evergreen Field By Ed Endsley My memories of Wally Olsen and Evergreen Field in Vancouver Washington are prompted by a CO-OPA Flyout this last year. I flew with Gary Miller in his T- 210 and we were accompanied by Curtis Turner in his Apache. As we came down the Columbia Gorge we flew the ten-mile DME around Portland Class C on our way to Scappoose. I could see the green space of Evergreen Field surrounded by urban Vancouver and it brought back memories of flying out of there a decade before. Gordon Baxter wrote a memorable column about Wally, his airplanes, and his airfield, in his usual Bax Seat style for the January '95 issue of Flying Magazine. "The Ol' Man and the Jenny." Wally was 82 then. Wally and Evergreen are gone now but I want to tell you about the experiences that are special to me. Many of you may have much more to tell and please let us know about your experiences. This was one of those special aviation sanctuaries that Wally preserved and many of us benefited from. I met Wally on a bad day when one of his customer- friends had deliberately crashed the beautiful Champ that I had come to fly. In depression and desperation, despondent over losing his medical, the pilot destroyed himself and the Champ. So sad. It was a few days before we could move on. On April 27th, 1995, Wally and I sat on the bench out front where he and Lindbergh once sat talking. Wally didn't say how Charles had dropped in but Charles wanted to fly Wally's Champ so Wally propped it for him and went back to the bench to wait. I hoped I would fly the same airplane and sit in the same seat Charles did. Due to the circumstances, I was unable to do that, but I do know I sat on the same bench with Wally that he had shared with Lindbergh. Wally told me that this plane I was about to fly was the plane he flew to Alaska a few times and I wondered about such an endeavor but understood the little Taylorcraft was quite a bit newer then. Wally didn't talk a lot unless he had something to say, but he had a lot of things to talk about. He told me stories while we waited and I was aware that I was in a very special presence. I was so naive that one of the few things I remember, and probably the most important thing for that day, was when he looked directly at me to make sure he had my attention and said "don¹t retard the throttle on final until you've got it made, there's no way to restart the engine if it quits." Sounded like pretty good advice to me when I saw the surrounding development from down wind. Wally's Evergreen oasis was the only unimpeded flat spot besides the Columbia River. Going for the river, I would have busted Portland International Class C and drowned. Landing short would mean malls, parking lots, and six plus lanes of automobiles. Keeping the pattern tight and high with big slips to touch down made sense. Getting in and out of the Evergreen area was a one-way deal. Located in a radical cutout of the PDX class C five-mile layer there was only a small route out to the northeast under a two thousand foot floor to the second layer until you were ten miles out. No electrical system, no radios, just VFR in the purest sense. Landing on the grass was like leaning back on a snowboard in powder with a little slippy-slidey. Just like the rest of my coordination efforts at aviating. It was wonderful to feel that three point slap, slip, and slide. After I taxied up and got out I saw Wally looking my way. I gave him this big silly great goofy grin and he nodded back. I'll grant you that I'm no Lindbergh but I think I felt some of the same stuff Charles did when I flew Wally's T-Craft at Evergreen. Thanks Wally. Ed Endsley 2007 CO-OPA MEMBERSHIP DUES In the past, we depended on word of mouth or e-mails to notify the members that annual dues were due Jan. 1. This has not worked very well and many members have said "send me a bill"......so........a snail mail bill is in the mail to everyone on our mailing list except those that have already paid. We hope this makes it easier for everyone. NOVEMBER FLY-OUT FUN: On Nov. 18 we had our monthly fly-out, the destination was John Day, OR (5J0). We awoke to a beautiful day and met at Pro Air. There was definitely frost on the pumpkin…. Gary Miller had a substantial layer of frost on the wings of his plane. With the help of a tie down rope (the old rope trick) two of us were able to quickly remove the bulk of the frost and the sun finished the job for us. We had three planes, eleven people and one dog…. Gary Miller (and his co-pilot Paige The Poodle) flew Gary's Turbo Centurion, Gary Meyer and Denny Morris rode with them on the trip to John Day and on the return trip Gary Meyer and his wife Bindy Beck-Meyer rode back to Bend with them. Mike and Ann Bond in their Cardinal RG gave Bindy Beck-Meyer and Nancy Morris a ride to John Day and on the return trip they had Gary Meyer and his wife Bindy riding back to Bend with them. On the return trip Mike treated his passengers to a practice Instrument Approach into Redmond and then one into Bend. Don and Norma Wilfong flew from Pilot Butte International out to Bend where they picked up their long time friends Lyle and Rosalie Nelson for the trip over and back. Lyle is a pilot but hasn't been doing much flying for several years. John Day has three courtesy cars and our group made use of all three. The FBO called the Grubstake Café for us and made reservations so, by the time we got there, they had our table all set up for us….both the service and the food were good. We always enjoy going to John Day. We certainly appreciated the hometown type welcome and friendly service we received. After we all finished eating we went to the Kam Wah Chung Chinese Museum but they were closed … we (the Wilfongs) have visited there before and it is quite interesting. I would suggest seeing it when you are in John Day. Gary and Don both flew over the "Lands Inn" airport, just North of Dayville and sized it up for a future fly-out destination. It is a private grass strip that is up on the side of the mountain ….we (Don & Norma) have been there before and found it to be very user friendly. The runway was a little rough but did not present any problems. The grass in the parking area was a little tall so we had a slightly green prop and nose wheel pant. We (Don & Norma) will not be able to make it to the Dec. potluck/meeting which is always a very, very!!! fun event …….we will definitely miss being there. We want to wish all of you the best for the holidays and wish you blue skies and tail winds for the upcoming year. Don & Norma Wilfong ___________________________________________________________ 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 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@myexcel.com