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Previous Metting's Minutes

11/29/07

 


The November meeting was convened at 7:00 PM at Carl R’s Café.  The guest speaker was Master CFI Doug Stewart, the "National Certificated Flight Instructor of the Year for 2004."

 

Doug used real-life examples from his 10,000 hours of flight time to discuss how the mistakes he has made could have led to very serious consequences.  He explained “human factors” play a large part in accidents, and described how various distractions and pressures can lead us from the safety of our regular routines toward hazardous conditions.  Doug focused on activities that we might casually dismiss as “that couldn’t happen to me,” and described how circumstances might lead even a prudent pilot to break from their routine and make a mistake.  He discussed low fuel conditions, low flight, getting confused in an unfamiliar airplane, and how distractions, such as an open door, have led to deadly consequences.  Doug was an interesting and entertaining speaker, and we appreciate him coming up from Columbia County to visit with us.

After the presentation, President Larry Reinstein made a few short announcements.  Larry has obtained a copy of the Club By-Laws.  They call for the installation of new Officers in April, and the development of a slate of candidates in the spring.  A Nomination Committee consisting of the existing officers and committee chairs must meet. 

Larry brought up the desire to have a year-long list of fly-outs developed.  There was general consensus that this would be a good idea.  The Member Directory is still in development by Bill Scheidegger. Larry turned the floor over to Chris Hatin, who discussed the Holiday Party (see below).  The Club has spent some funds on a projector and sound system for speakers, and finances remain positive, according to Treasurer Gail MacDonald.

Several members reported issues with access to sections of the GFPOA.org website.  This could be because they have not actually signed onto the website as members.  Others report they have to sign on each time, and that the site does not “remember” their past login.  This is probably because their computers do not have “cookies” enabled and the members were asked to check that this setting is checked on their web browsers.  As always, we are looking for content for the web site and the Newsletter. 


 

09/27/07

 


 

The Meeting was held at Carl R's Cafe.  Approximately 25 attended.  

 

Meeting opened with an introduction of each member by him/herself.

 

Guest Speakers Lt Col Anita Martin, Commander Civil Air Patrol, Middle Eastern Group  and Major Brian Bebedict, standards evaluation officer, chief pilot, check pilot, gave an informative talk on the Civil Air Patrol.

 

President's Report

 

We need volunteers to take on the following responsibilities --currently lacking

  • Events Chairman and committee members
  • Communications Chairman-- we need someone to organize and implement a PHONE CHAIN.   Ideally this is a member who uses email and has a phone.   This will enable us to get last minute announcements of meetings and events to the membership
  • Trips and Fly-outs - Although we have had a few organized fly-outs over the summer, there does not seem to be alot of enthusiasm for this activity...at least for organizing them.  

There is a website--  meetup.com which hosts a very active pilot group (NE Pilots) and we will continue to forward announcments of these trips (and link to the site?) for our members.   That way, when an interesting destination is announced, members of GFPOA can go along and meetup.

 

AOPA expo---several members stated that they will be attending.

 

Chris Hatin announced that he and his wife have put together a plan for the club winter holiday party.   Tom Clements made a motion to have the party as Chris detailed it - motion seconded and passed.  It will be at the Great Escape Lodge on Dec 6th, and the tentative cost for a full dinner is $32 per head     Anyone interested in helping to organize this evening event should contact Chris Hatin.

 

The next meeting will be held on Thursday,  October 25, 2007.  Guest Speakers will be from FAA.  (Albany ATC) All meetings will continue to be LAST thursday of month and a show of hands yielded overwhelming consensus to keep meetings at Carl R's.

 

The November meeting is Thursday 11/29/07.  The speaker will be provided by Chairman of Safety Committee--Jerry Caruso

 

Tom Clements made a motion that if funds were available, the club should purchase a Projector and Public Address System.  The Motion was seconded and carried. 

 

Vice President Report -- Keith Harris nothing to report at this time

 

Apologies were made on behalf of the us post office re the post card mailings.

 

Discussion ensued of mailings, newsletter etc. - One Member said he really misses getting hard copy newsletters regularly.

 

Slightly more than half those attending said that they do not need the hard copy and the club should save money.

The following was more or less decided—

ALL MEMBERS SHOULD BE CONTACTED BY EMAIL AND ASKED IF THEY ARE SATISFIED RECEIVING ONLY ELECTRONIC VERSIONS  - A NEW PHYSICAL MAILING LIST WILL BE CREATED FOR ALL THOSE WHO PREFER HARD COPY 

GAIL MACDONALD HAS OFFERED TO LABEL AND STUFF ENVELOPES TO GET THE NEWSLETTERS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS TO THESE FOLKS

The president requested that  perhaps other content could be contributed by someone at each of the other airports, eg

News from Heber

News from Granvile

News from Island Bob's

News from ??

 

Meeting adjourned at 9:15 p.m. 


05/31/07

 The meeting was convened at Uno's at 7:00 PM by President Larry Reinstein.  Larry presented updates on some of the new club activities.  He introduced Bill Scheidegger, who has offered to take the photos of all of us and create a member’s directory.  Bill will bring a camera to the picnic to start to take the photos. 

Geoff King passed around samples of name tags for our meetings and is requesting feedback on which style to use.  The name tags and directory will help us to get to know each other better, particularly for those of us who have been introduced to somebody five times and we still forget their name between events.  Some of the members expressed an opinion that the name tags would formalize the meetings unnecessarily.  Larry did an informal test at the end of the meeting and approached a table with four members and asked each of them if they knew his name.  Only two of the four members knew the name of the President of the club who just finished conducting a meeting.  That convinced me that the name tags and directory are a good idea!

The club is planning a number of fly-outs and events over the next few months.  Larry summarized these activities.  They are listed below in Upcoming Events.

With all the upcoming activities planned, we will skip Thursday evening meetings after the May meeting until the last Thursday of September.

The guest speaker was Dick Bovey, owner of the Argyle Airport and very active flight instructor.  Dick did a presentation on floatplane flying.  He showed the types of floatplanes and seaplanes (those with boat-type hulls).  Just about everything that can fly, from ultralights to heavy turboprops, has been put on floats.

He discussed weather factors, and how one can use waves, flags, smoke, and “black water” to identify wind direction, speed, and areas of turbulent airflow.  He pointed out the hazards of waves, boat chop, and surprising to many of us, glass-smooth water. 

The rating is pretty easy if you are already a private pilot.  Ground school and training can be done in a weekend, and a lot of the training is related to boating, since a floatplane pilot has to know the rules of the road for boats.  Some of the aviation rules are different too, for example, an airplane taxiing to take off has the right of way over a plane setting up to land.

Contact Dick if you want to learn more about getting the rating.

We will not have any formal dinner meetings over the summer.  The next meeting will be Thursday, September 27, 2007.  We will send out a postcard reminder, an e-mail reminder, and post the confirmed location on the web.   Unless other arrangements are made it will be at Pizzaria Uno, Upper Glen St. (Rt. 9), ½  mile north of Aviation Rd.  Cocktails at 6:00 PM, Dinner at 7:00 PM. 

04/26/07

The meeting was convened at Uno's at 7:00 PM by President Larry Reinstein.  Larry described some of the new club activities.  We will have name tags made for everybody and photo head shots of all of us so that we can get to know each other better, particularly for those of us who have been introduced to somebody five times and we still forget their name between events.  Bill Scheidegger has offered to take the photos.

The club is planning a number of fly-outs and events over the next few months.  Larry summarized these activities.  They are listed below in Upcoming Events.

As Larry discussed above, Geoff King offered to work on name tags for our meetings.  We will also develop a Members List with photos for our web site.  These efforts are intended to help us get to know each other better despite our failing memories.

Bob Singer reported that the monthly Newsletter will alternate with a postcard, so you will be hearing from us every two weeks.  The mailing labels show the last year through which your dues are paid, so please get up to date if the last year is not listed as “2007.”

With all the upcoming activities planned, we will skip Thursday evening meetings after the May meeting until the last Thursday of September.

The guest speaker was Jim Morzillo, Saratoga Soaring Association http://home.nycap.rr.com/ssa/  Jim presented us with a PowerPoint presentation on Glider Flying and Operations, and also what it takes to become a Glider rated Pilot.

The Glider rating is pretty easy to achieve for somebody already with a private rating.  Beyond the rating, there are a series of steps that demonstrate increasing competency, each involving longer flights, including some very long cross country flights.  Jim convinced us that gliders might just provide the most fun for the buck of anything aeronautical.

He discussed weather factors, and how one can use thermals, ridges, or other topographic features to seemingly defy gravity.  The planes at the Saratoga Soaring Association run the gamut from two-place trainers to high performance singles.

Instrumentation on the gliders is pretty simple, and generally familiar to a pilot, but the VSI is replaced by a variometer, which is a very sensitive vertical speed indicator that makes an audible indication of climbs or descents.  Another difference is a yaw “meter,” which is just a length of cord hanging in view.

Tow operations seem tricky, and following right behind the tow plane is one of the harder tasks to gain.  The landing is pretty easy, as the pilot has a lot of control over vertical descent rate, including spoilers to rapidly kill lift. 

Of particular interest to us power pilots is how gliders need to fly the pattern at their low speeds, which can put them into traffic conflicts with power planes.  They generally do monitor the CTAF radio frequency, even if they do not respond.  Remember that the glider has the right of way.

Jim will have some new recruits after that presentation.

The next meeting will be Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at Pizzaria Uno, Upper Glen St. (Rt. 9), ½  mile north of Aviation Rd.  Cocktails at 6:00 PM, Dinner at 7:00 PM. 

Program: Dick Bovey, CFII, DE, and operator of Argyle Airport, will speak on obtaining the seaplane rating.

03/29/07

The meeting was convened at Uno's at 7:00 PM by President Larry Reinstein. Larry announced that Keith Harris has graciously offered to organize a picnic at the Glens Falls airport in June. The date will be announced soon. He asked everyone to update their address and e-mail addresses by checking a spreadsheet he passed around.

Treasurer Gail MacDonald provided a Report that is included in this newsletter. Secretary Bob Singer apologized for the later delivery of last month’s newsletter. The low-cost, high-convenience mailing service that he used was very slow. He’ll post the material sooner next month, but he also urges everyone to focus on the e-mail copies so that we can eventually do away with the expense of mailing.

Keith Harris described a beautiful resort in Canada where he goes and recommended that other pilots join him. It is 250 miles north of us. Contact Keith for details.

The guest speaker was Marshall Stevens, Manager of KGFL, Warren County Airport. He spoke about national, state, and local issues that may effect our airport. The biggest national issue that we face is the potential for user fees to be instituted for users of the National Airspace System. The NAS has worked fine with funding by excise taxes on fuel, but the FAA proposal to add fees can seriously alter our ability to use the NAS. On the State level, there is a beneficial proposal that may eliminate sales tax on the sales of planes.

Locally, KGFL has undergone a lot of change. Two new corporate hangars have been built in the last year, plus the brand new maintenance hangar. Almost all the surfaces have been repaved in the last few years. A new Precision Approach Path Indicator lighting system will be installed to replace the old VASI that has been taken out of service. No new LPV instrument approaches are planned, but the FAA can create new approaches without notifying the airport.

The maintenance staff was praised by members for doing a great job with snow removal. Marshall explained that the staff tries to accommodate the needs of pilots but sometimes maintenance interferes with pilot activities. Since the airport is owned and operated by the County, rules for use must go through the administration. It takes a year for a new airport event to be reviewed and approved. A suggestion to add runup areas off to the sides of the departure ends of the runways was offered.

Thank you Marshall for an interesting and informative talk!

02/22/07

The meeting was convened at Carl R's at 7:00 PM by new President Larry Reinstein. Larry described his vision for the Club, that included:

1. Traditional monthly meetings, to be held the LAST THURSDAY of each month. Topics can range from different types of flying, information about airports and flying trips, and especially topics that enhance safety. Meetings will not always be at Carl R's. The next meeting will be March 29 at Uno's Pizzaria on Upper Glen Street. This restaurant has a private room, and a big screen TV for presentations.

2. Three to Four outside social events per year. Barbeques, Boat trips, the Holiday Party, etc.

3. Fly-outs to interesting locations. The next fly-out is to Alton Bay, NH, on March 3, 2007, weather permitting.

4. More opportunities for pilots to share experiences, trade rides in each other's planes, and develop more sense of community. To expedite that, Larry distributed a sign-up sheet for people to volunteer for committees.

Larry introduced the other officers, Keith Harris (Vice-President), Gail MacDonald (Secretary), and Bob Singer (Secretary).

Bob gave the evening's presentation, entitled "Where are the Clouds?" This safety-related presentation discussed planning strategies for pilots of small planes to safely complete cross-country flights in the winter-time. Emphasis was placed on web-based weather tools that can be used to avoid clouds, where icing presents the greatest winter-time hazard. These tools were illustrated with actual examples from flights. In case you missed the presentation or want to review the material, the entire presentation is available here. Links to the web sites described in the presentation are also available on the Links page in this website.

Gail presented outgoing President Ric Mark with a plaque and token of esteem for his service to the Club.