The Leading Edge in Asia’s Sport Aviation Newsletter Issue 8 Nov 2009 Lake Woodland Issue Club News Paul Norrie, Editor Terry Hockenhull, President Welcome to the rainy Since I penned the last newsletter, season issue. The a lot has happened at the club. As months of July, August you may know, Jeff HilI passed and September bring the away in May this year leaving the most rain to this area of club without a General Manager. A the Philippines. Typhoons big ‘thank you’ to Marc Obrowski are also a frequent occurrence. The Philippines who ably stepped into Jeff’s shoes, experiences about 20 typhoons each year. With this albeit on a temporary and part-time amount of rainfall, it can take a few days before the basis to look after matters while we water drains off the runway and suitable flying went through the process of finding a new manager. conditions return. When the skies clear and the sun Out of the blue came Christian Gehrig who had seen comes out, we can encounter most glorious flying an advertisement for the position (placed by Rolf conditions. It is usually calm and the landscape is Dunder) a couple of green as far as one can see. As we come to the close years back. Having of the rainy season, I look forward to many more just ordered a perfect flying days. Fascination from the Enjoy factory in Czechoslovakia, Angeles City Flying Club Chris focused his www.angelesflying.com/ attention on finding a Aero Club new home for www.groups.yahoo.com/group/Aero_Club/ himself and his Yahoo Groups ACFC www.groups.yahoo.com/group/acflyingclub/ aircraft in either the Al Malcolm’s Yankin’ and Bankin’ Philippines or www.yankinandbankin.com Thailand. Very much on the off-chance 1 Club News that Angles City and Christian Gehrig 2 Club Operating Hours & Hangar Access the club might nicely fit the bill, Christian flew over in July, was interviewed 3 Fire Safety in the Hangar by the Board of Directors and appointed as 4 Ultralight Cross Country Adventures probationary General Manager. Christian’s youth, enthusiasm and interest in aviation left us confident ACFC Newsletter 1 that he would be able to take over the reins of the club and handle matters Christian Gehrig’s Fascination in all of our best interests. In fairness, Christian achieved much during his short time with the club however, the arrival of his Fascination has made him more aware than ever of the delights of flying in the Philippines and he has graciously agreed to step down from the position to free up more time to engage in his personal activities, sports and recreation. At the same time Christian applied for the job, Tony Willis, formerly with the Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers – British Army popped into the club to inquire about the position. We are delighted that Tony has now agreed to take on the position of General Manager, and he started on 2 November, 2009. Tony has a great background in running hotels and country inns as well as his army background, and I feel that once he is settled into the position, he will bring a degree of stability (which we have been sadly lacking over the last year) to our club operations. The next piece of news is that we now have a new club logo. It took many weeks to get our designer to come up with a simple image that reflects our club and sport. The brief given to the designer stated that we are a full service flying club offering ultralight flying and instruction to members, and joy rides (TIFs) to casual visitors and tourists. We are targeting upwardly mobile Filipinos, both male & female, and foreigners (Koreans, Japanese, Europeans, Americans and Asians) all in the age bracket 16-60. The logo must represent fun, flying and our location and use no more than 3 colors (blue, green and red). The image should show some movement, rather than a static image and when viewed by a potential customer or member, the logo must reflect that ultralight flying is easy to learn, fun to do and safe. Our landscape, including Mt. Arayat, should be included, while keeping the image simple and easy to reproduce on T- shirts, caps, posters and other marketing materials. Hope you like it guys! It took over 20 revisions to finally get it right! Some of you will have seen the new logo gracing our signs that now direct our visitors and guests from Angeles City to the club. Unfortunately, we have been beset by appalling weather over the last couple of months and this has meant that we have posted the lowest flying hours for the June to October period in over 5 years. As I have said in the past, we need to keep our flying hours up. Nonetheless, we now have a solid income stream by way of hangar rentals and membership, and provided these are paid on time, we are in the enviable position of being able to weather out the bad months. Let’s just hope that the lack of flying over the last couple of months will prompt you all to get out to the club on more clement days and fly! Lake Woodland We hear Helge Halstad, former owner of the GT500 (before selling it to Roy Vivash & Al Malcolm) is still in Europe and currently suffering through a serious illness. We all wish Helge a speedy recovery and a return to the Philippines. New members have been slightly neglected so I thought it might be an idea to include a mention of all those who have joined the club since January this year. They are Peter Soderberg who joined the club in early January. Brian Ewald joined our club in March this year, followed by John Dickey in May. John is an Australian national who works in the oil industry and was seen at the club nearly every day for about 3 weeks while Boy Guevarra put him through his paces on the basic flying instruction program. Congratulations to John who soloed in RP-S1457 on May 24; he plans to make a return trip to the Philippines (and the club) towards the end of the year. Carlos ‘Inaki’ Sievert, area manager for ACFC Newsletter 2 Petron Corporation, also joined the club at the end of May and soloed in our Quicksilver on July 30. Rene Luspo who works with ABS-CBN soloed on July 26, although he was only able to manage a single circuit due to weather. However, I’m pleased to report that we see Rene at the club most weekends building his hours and clearly enjoying the whole experience of flying in the Quicksilver. Colin Velasco joined the club in August with his brother Kevin Velasco and John Jansen. John is a general aviation (GA) pilot so it took him a couple of hours of familiarization before he flew solo on August 20. James Stanford Wolf is an engineer in Ohio USA. He has a lot of flying experience in multi-engine planes and also powered paragliding. He soloed on his second day at the club in October 26. James First Solo Initiation says he had no plans to try flying ultralights however, his girlfriend brought him to the club as a ‘surprise’! James expects to be back in the Philippines in January next year. Our latest two members are Daniel Mcluskey and Martin Russell. Acquisition of a New Aircraft: A couple of months ago, we heard the sad news that Allan Stevens had passed away from cancer. Some of you knew Allan; others just knew him as an infrequent visitor from Hong Kong who bought the old yellow Drifter about a year back and had it rebuilt at the club. Peter Heilveil, one of our more seasoned club members and pilots agreed to assume all debts on the aircraft (outstanding hangar rentals, parts, rebuilding and maintenance charges, etc.) with a view to purchasing the plane from Allan’s estate. Your Board carefully considered his proposal and we all agreed that this would facilitate prompt settlement of a sizable outstanding account and guarantee future hangar rentals. A few members had proposed that the club acquire the white Drifter as a club aircraft either by purchasing it from Allan’s estate or alternatively declaring the aircraft abandoned and securing ownership through legal process. While we recognize that the club is woefully short of aircraft at the moment, the Drifter has never been an overly popular aircraft. Indeed RP-S1458 (grey Drifter) flies less than a third of the hours flown by our Quicksilvers and S-12! Similarly, there was the suggestion that the club undertake the same process that Peter proposed. This was briefly considered but rejected for a number of reasons. It would have been very costly in time and would probably require a significant outlay of money in order to go through the legal proceedings necessary to transfer ownership from Allan’s estate. We would then have had the option of keeping the plane for members, at a high cost to the club, or selling it. Peter was prepared to take the risk; the Board felt it imprudent for the club to do the same since we could lose money on the deal. The latest news, hot-off-the-press, is that Peter has managed to finalize a deal with Allan’s wife and will soon take legal ownership of the Drifter. There is still some work to be done to get the aircraft flying again and I know Peter is raring to go on the final rebuild, painting and flight testing.