Newsletter Template Apr 2013
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In this issue: PCA Safety Seminar 2013 2 BFA Radio Freq. / BFA Youth Summer Camps 5 National Geographic - People’s Choice 2013 6 Mark Your Calendars 6 Press Release—NASA Super-Tiger Balloon 7 How I Got Into Ballooning 8 Canberra Balloon Spectacular 9 San Diego Zoo Aerophile 10 For Sale - Equipment From Bob Schaible 11 Sunrise Calendar / Protect Your Hearing 13 Denni Barrett - Maiden Voyage of the Black Pearl 14 Monthly Meeting Minutes 15 Club Information/Membership 16 Volume 4, Issue 4 April 2013 DownWind Chase The Official Newsletter for the Pacific Coast Aeronauts PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE We did it! The PCA Safety Seminar really came SKYPE Membership Meeting: Scheduled for together on March 23rd. Wed. April 3rd at 7:00pm Pacific. Please try to I can’t say enough about the efforts by some of join in. Contact me if you need info on Skype. our members to make this event special. Linda David Wakefield Walton did a superb job getting it all together [email protected] and many others joined on the day of the event to help out. I mention them all (I hope) on the next few I’ve changed the header of this page, removing pages so I’ll spare you here, but I must thank the redundant “Mark Your Calendar” area. I am Linda Heisig for her outstanding and thoughtful working to gather more events information and effort at keeping everyone fed. Wow!! Thanks get it to you in one place. You’ll find the more Linda! complete “Mark Your Calendar” section on page six of this issue. As I’ve mentioned here before, Scorch is putting together a flight at the Children’s Hospital Cen- I’m also working on a compiling a list of annual tral California in Madera. The idea is to bring regional events covering the states of California, the balloons to the kids who can’t come to the Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and balloons. It is scheduled for April 6th with April Idaho. Coming soon? 7th as a backup. He says he already has 10 or If you have suggestions or comments I would be 12 balloons and would like to include more. We happy to hear them. are expecting to have “Air George,” the hospi- Last note: As we move into our Spring season, tal’s helicopter flying there as well to take video there have already been a number of high visi- of the event from the air. If you are interested bility accidents/incidents, one here in California in this event, contact Scorch at: and others both in the USA and around the Dexter Cauffman world. This is a good time to take a breath, go [email protected] back to our check lists and revisit the things that keep us all safe. Cheers! I have also sent more complete information as an email blast, so you may find this in your David email. © Pacific Coast Aeronauts, April 2013 Page 1 Downwind Chase PCA Safety Seminar 2013 We had our 2013 Safety Seminar on March 23rd and it was a great success. Total count was 53. After registration finished and things got moving, Linda started setup of the “PCA store” with wearables, pins and lots of other nifty balloon goodies from the PCA supply, leftover items from the 2011 Monty Dinner and WHAMOBASS, as well as donated items from members including Larry Seiler and Bob Schaible. Thanks Guys! At the end of the day, unsold items were turned over to Jeff Haliczer to help fill the swag bags for the junior balloonists at summer camp. The presenters included Leigh Bradbury, Deke Sonnichsen, Tim Brady, Mike Veliz, Jim Abell, Pat Moore and Dana Thornton. Helen Kendrick was master of ceremony and “good sport of the day” for her willing and tolerant participation as Tim Brady’s “victim.” Please bear with me, there were a lot of people who went all out to make the seminar: Linda Walton did an amazing job of putting the whole show together and making sure nothing got forgotten. Thanks Linda!! Special thanks to Linda Heisig and her team for the food purchase and set up, Les Kossow and Willie for the video setup, Bill Wissel for arranging and paying for the room as well as providing 2 projec- tor screens, George Walton for loading and unloading the car and doing whatever Linda asked him to do, Laurie, Linda and Jim setting up registration Les Kossow and his son Willie setting up the video setup Steve Turner, his Grandson and Linda Everyone beginning to arrive (Continued on page 3) © Pacific Coast Aeronauts, April 2013 Page 2 Downwind Chase (Continued from page 2) Laurie Pownall for running registration and being available to help immediately after she walked in the door, Jim Bondi and Jamie Hustler for helping with “whatever,” and Linda says I need to mention “that Dave Wakefield guy who found some speakers, generated the application and distributed it to all of the club members.” Ho-hum. The big thing was, we had a great seminar, great presenters who went all out, including some really great Powerpoint presentations, and we got to be there together. Here are some more pictures of the day: Even Deke got a name tag Leigh Bradbury Linda Heisig was ON IT, keeping us all fed and energized from before 7:00am until it was over at 6:00pm THANKS LINDA! (Continued on page 4) © Pacific Coast Aeronauts, April 2013 Page 3 Downwind Chase More from the seminar: Deke Sonnichsen Magic Bob, Helen Kendrick and Tim Brady Jim Abell Pat Moore At left: Dana Thornton © Pacific Coast Aeronauts, April 2013 Page 4 Downwind Chase #BFA Youth Summer Camps BFA Youth Summer Camps Registration Docs Jeff Haliczer has made several documents available for download: Camper Reg.: http://www.cheersovercalifornia.com/2013BFAHSBCReg.pdf Adult Volunteer Reg.: http://www.cheersovercalifornia.com/2013BFAHSBCAdultVolReg.pdf BFA Radio License Update The BFA's application for a FCC group radio license is still pending before the FCC. Our frequency coordinator indicates it may yet be another couple of months before the license is officially granted and we receive the paper work. (That's supposing that the sequestration forced budget cuts don't cause additional delay. Our application was filed on December 7, 2012. Average approval time is 3-4 months). In the interim we are allowed to operate on the allotted frequencies under FCC Rules 90.159 - Temporary and Conditional Permits. Once the license is awarded we will post a PDF form on www.bfa.net whereby each BFA member can add their name and BFA# to the form and download a copy of the license. In order to use the BFA license your radios must be narrow banded otherwise you and the BFA could be fined $8,000 per offense. The frequencies allocated to the BFA are: 151.5050000 MHz 151.6250000 MHz 158.4000000 MHz 451.8000000 MHz 456.8000000 MHz 456.8125000 MHz At Right: Coming to a launch field near you © Pacific Coast Aeronauts, April 2013 Page 5 Downwind Chase National Geographic People's Choice Adventurer of the Year Congratulations to 2013 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year Felix Baumgartner! For the full National Geographic story, pictures and interview visit the site at: http://tinyurl.com/cqoe4cb Mark Your Calendars! The following PCA events are currently on the 2012 Calendar. Please contact me with dates and infor- mation for missing events. • PCA Online Meeting - April 3rd @ 7:00pm Pacific • Children’s Hospital Flight - April 6th in Madera, CA • ABRESCO 2013 - May 3-5, 2013 • Wings of History - May 18, 2013 San Martin AP • Sonoma County Hot Air Balloon Classic - June 15-16, 2013 Windsor, CA • BFA Youth Balloon Camp - July 20-25, 2013 Reno, NV • Great Reno Balloon Race - September 6-8, 2013 • ClovisFest - Sep 21-22, 2013 Clovis, CA • Montague Balloon Fair - Sep 21-22, 2013 Montague, CA • WHAMOBASS - October 26-27, 2013 Coalinga, CA © Pacific Coast Aeronauts, April 2013 Page 6 Downwind Chase Feb. 4, 2013 J.D. Harrington Headquarters, Washington 202-358-5241 [email protected] Rebecca Powell Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va. 757-824-1139 [email protected] RELEASE: 13-037 NASA'S SUPER-TIGER BALLOON BREAKS RECORDS WHILE COLLECTING DATA WASHINGTON -- A large NASA science balloon has broken two flight duration records while flying over Antarctica carrying an instrument that detected 50 million cosmic rays. The Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (Super-TIGER) balloon launched at 3:45 p.m. EST, Dec. 8 from the Long Duration Bal- loon site near McMurdo Station. It spent 55 days, 1 hour, and 34 minutes aloft at 127,000 feet, more than four times the altitude of most commercial airliners, and was brought down to end the mission on Friday. Washington University of St. Louis managed the mission. On Jan. 24, the Super-TIGER team broke the record for longest flight by a balloon of its size, flying for 46 days. The team broke another record Friday after landing by becoming the longest flight of any heavy-lift scientific balloon, including NASA's Long Duration Balloons. The previous record was set in 2009 by NASA's Super Pressure Balloon test flight at 54 days, 1 hour, and 29 minutes. "Scientific balloons give scientists the ability to gather critical science data for a long duration at a very low relative cost," said Vernon Jones, NASA's Balloon Program Scientist. Super-TIGER flew a new instru- ment for measuring rare elements heavier than iron among the flux of high-energy cosmic rays bom- barding Earth from elsewhere in our Milky Way galaxy.