October 18, 2006

AirSho is done, along with our clinic in Odessa. Already the planning begins for the Inland Empire Wing clinic at Riverside, CA. Two new ratings came out of Odessa: congratulations to Greg Kinnan (our webmaster) and Peter Scholl our newest Wingmen! And we have two "new" check pilots; Mike Anderson’s waiver came through and Randy Wilson got recurrent.

There was a Safety Ground School on Wednesday evening (with beer provided by Bob Stenevik) and the usual ground school on Thursday morning. That worked well and we will try and make that a regular event. There was also a check pilot meeting, the minutes to be posted when they are final.

Thanks to the Desert Squadron for their hospitality and to the folks at Far-Mor Aviation at ODO for their help in running the show.

We also had our picture taken by the 1^st Observation Detachment and look for information on the AirSho 2006 DVD later on this website.

There are a couple more events that I know of: Mike Anderson is having a formation fly-in (not really a sponsored clinic) with a bunch of signatories and check pilots at his place in MKO (Muskogee, OK) and there is another similar event in PTB (Petersburg, VA); both of these occur in November.

TRARON will help with any local clinic you guys want to hold, we will get you instructors/check pilots. All it takes is a 4-ship and an airport willing to work with you. Ideally, you should plan on a ground school Friday evening and as much flying as you can get in on Saturday and Sunday.

One last thing. The National FAST Board is in the process of changing several things: 1) There is no more T-34 Manual. It is out of print. The new National Formation Manual is in the review/editing process and will be available sometime next year. 2) The requirements for all positions are changing – I’ll put out more on that in a separate issue.

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE