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Welcome to the late summer edition of SOSA News. Despite COVID 19, we've had a pretty good flying season at SOSA and some remarkable flights. Just look at the OLC and you'll see flights like the one Luke had earlier this summer that took him along most of the North Shore of Lake Erie. That said, it's been far from your average year. COVID protocols have meant big changes to how we operate on the ground. Under the stellar leadership of the SOSA BOD, we've been able to fly and fly safely. Below you will find some updates on the happenings at SOSA.
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Aug 2020
SOSA News
CFI Report
COVID has forced us to completely re-think operations and particularly flight training at SOSA. Some of the “new” and different ways of doing things may carry over into post COVID operations because they are just more efficient and effective than the traditional methods. The capability for an instructor to review the IGC flight trace of a student’s solo flight and discuss it with the student from the comfort of his living room via Zoom existed before COVID – it just didn’t occur to us to use technology that way.
We have currently nine instructors prepared to fly dual with students which is less than half our normal training capacity. I hope we will be able to add two more instructors to this group shortly. We have sized our training fleet accordingly. Currently we are operating 2 ASK-21 and 2 Juniors. The Duo Discus which was insured after the July 15 step-down date at a considerable discount can also be used for some training elements such as spins. We will probably activate the third Junior soon.
Initially we tried to form exclusive instructor/student bubbles to minimize the risk of COVID transmission but that proved to be too inflexible. We are now aiming to assign every student a primary and a secondary instructor which seems to be working well.
It is our goal to solo every student who started in July or earlier, by the end of the season and to bring every student who was solo in July to the successful completion of his licence flight test.
Another objective was to provide training and coaching for our newly licensed pilots to introduce them to the magic of cross country soaring. This culminated in the XC Training Week in early August, spearheaded by Rafael Bravo. Despite a rainy start, the week was very successful. The Duo Discus flew 9 missions, each with a different trainee, covering almost 2000 km. There were several single seat flights, some accompanied by “shepherds”, which resulted in a 300km Gold flight and several personal bests.
Hopefully we will continue to enjoy great soaring conditions throughout the summer and into the fall.
Joerg Stieber, CFI
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Proving Grounds Update.
The summer of 2020 may have us keeping social distance, but SOSA pilots are also practicing their soaring distances with the local Racetrack and standard triangle flights as part of Proving Ground.
Eleven pilots have posted 24 Proving Ground flights. Several have flown different aircraft (yes on different days) to compare performance. The results are interesting as the’ fastest’ plane, our Duo Discus, does not have the fastest speed.
One pilot was not satisfied with just doing Triangle 1 on the day but added in the Racetrack for two Proving Ground scores on the same day. Some have flown the Racetrack two or three times in the day. The fastest flight of the three is official performance to report.
Overall, eleven pilots have logged 24 Racetrack flights using the ASK-21, Junior, LS-4 and Duo-Discus. The handicap system levels the speeds for comparison. The result is that we have flights achieving speeds (kph) in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s (almost 90).
Regardless of your speed, the Racetrack and triangles are there to help you practice essential cross country skills.
Triangle 1 (Rockton-Brantford-New Hamburg- Rockton)
Triangle 2 (Rockton-Tillsonburg-Stratford-Rockton)
The process is simple. Log your flight on your phone or download a copy to a data stick from the Flarm. Send the igc file as an attachment to sosa@soaringtasks.com
You can also upload the igc file to OLC to help build the club total. We are currently number 1 in Canada in terms of points, kilometers flown and number of pilots participating (42 pilots).
https://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-3.0/gliding/clubRanking.html?st=olc&rt=olc&c=CA&sc=&sp=2020
Have fun. Fly safe!
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Latest SOSA method of moving glider to and from flight line. New soft earth wheels have been installed and so far the project is a total failure.
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An old ad featuring a Schweizer 1-26. In the early days of SOSA, many pilots would smoke. One pilot (who died of cancer) used to have one of those soft bean bag type ashtrays that he would put on top of the instrument panel. Upon launch, he would usually have a smoke dangling from his mouth. It was always a wonder that it didn't fall into his lap.
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This edition of SOSA news is light on content. Please send me your stories, photos and news to: h10cate@mac.com
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