Traron Squadron

Dear Traron Pilots,
     It is July 1st and I imagine that most of you are well into the flying season.   Air shows are being held through out the country and I hope you are all showing your skills and abilities like never before. Down here in Florida, we aren’t doing much flying since it is hotter than a greenhouse canopy on a sunny summer day. Our air show schedule won’t pick up again until the fall. I’ve been trying to get the annual done on my SNJ but it has been difficult to keep my ambition up with the high temps and equally high humidity. I’m going to have to try to get this done in the winter next year. It does go against my usual grain to try and do anything that might be considered intelligent though. I’m going to have to give this whole annual thing a lot more thought.
     I’m afraid that things have been a bit quiet here at the home office and consequently, I haven’t had much information to pass on to all of you. The formation clinics that were usually held on the west coast in the winter and spring did not go off as planned this year. A combination of weather and low attendance came together to cause cancellation. I have been hearing from some of our formation pilots that they aren’t doing much flying right now due to the high cost of fuel and upkeep.   They have also been complaining about the difficulty of getting more than a couple airplanes together in order to practice. Same problem, fuel costs and upkeep. NATA did hold their pre-Sun n’ Fun clinic at Kissimmee, FL and it was fun but very little actual training went on. We only had a couple of newby pilots that were working toward their wingman cards. The rest of the group was just practicing and having fun. Can’t say that there is much wrong with having fun, so it was a good time. The total turnout was a bit smaller than some years but it was a good group and as always, the camaraderie was the most important aspect of the whole weekend. It’s always great to see old friends and get caught up on what has been happening in their lives. Several of the Kissimmee attendees were Traron members and I am always pleased to see them at any event, and I am always proud of the quality and skill they exhibit when they fly formation.   I still feel that our pilots are the best around. I may be slightly prejudiced but that’s only because I have flown with most of you at one time or another and you have proven your abilities to me.
     A group of CAF pilots along with a few others were planning a clinic in south Texas in early June but I haven’t had any information about how it all came off. If one of you guys would send in a report, I’ll pass it along to the rest of the group.
     I imagine that many of you are preparing to head for Oshkosh and I really am jealous. It doesn’t look like Laurie and I will make it again this year. We really miss going to the pre-OSH formation clinic and then flying into OSH for the week of festivities. I will be anxious to hear all about the experience from those of you that are able to make it this year. I’m sure the CAF will be well represented at both events so carry our banner high.
     I am starting to plan for our annual formation clinic at Odessa so I have attached a registration form for your convenience. We hope that we can partner with the Desert Squadron for our clinic once again but I have not had a reply to the inquiry that I sent to them as yet, so we will make that decision a bit later. We will try again to hold our ground school on Wednesday evening with our flying activities to be held on Thursday and Friday. If we can work it out, we will try to provide some flights for the more advanced pilots in order to challenge them as well. I know that it is hard for the carded folks to want to show up and spend a lot of money just to be a target, so in this way we can try to make it fun and challenging for everyone.   We truly need and appreciate those of you that do continue to show up “just to be a target”. The new guys really need our help and we need to be there for them, just as someone was there for us way back when. I hope the weather cooperates a bit better this year than it did last year.   In my memory, we have never had a CAF Airsho where the weather was as bad as it was in 2009. It has been hot, and it has been cold and we have had rain, but I don’t remember any show that was basically rained out in its entirety. Lets hope for a better year this year. By the way, the dates are October 6-7-8 for the clinic and the Airsho is on October 9th and 10th.

Keep ‘em Flying

Rick

P.S.     Since I started writing this newsletter, our community has received more devastating news. We have lost another of our friends in a T-6 Accident. Tim McDonald of Destin, Florida, and his brother in law were killed a few days ago. The preliminary report states that they were performing aerobatics over the gulf when they impacted the water. The scenario sounds very similar to the other accident that occurred in Destin back in March. From what I was told, Tim’s altitude was higher than the previous accident flight but may not have been high enough to compensate for altitude loss suffered from a maneuver gone bad. This is all speculation at this time, since the official findings have not been released yet and due to the nature of the accident, we may never know what truly happened. I know that I am very tired and discouraged from losing good friends and good airplanes. Tim was a really good pilot and a wonderful person and his loss will be felt by all of us. We can’t afford to lose people like Tim or Evan Zeiger, or any of the other great souls we have lost over the years.
     I would like to encourage all of you to take these recent accidents to heart and think about what you are doing in your T-6. None of us are flying as much as we should be and consequently, we are all rustier than we would like to be. The T-6 is a great airplane and we all love them but they are a particularly unforgiving task master if flown without regard to their quirks. Stalls can be very surprising, and if not corrected properly, large chunks of altitude can and will be lost trying to recover. Most all of us want to do low passes and aerobatics so keep those quirks in mind and don’t pull so hard on your pullups and play high. “Altitude is your friend” is a statement from training that all of us should remember. No one is going to be impressed by a smoking hole so play high. A friend of mine, who is an RC pilot, always told his students to “play at least 3 crashes high so you have plenty of time to recover from a mistake lest the ground rushes up to smite thee”. Stay alive and fly.