OK, confirmed with club president. Basically, If we were to allow a non-club/SSA member to be on the controls, and were involved in an insurance claim due to that, the insurance company would cover us. And then they would drop our coverage like a bad habit. They told the prez to never mention the word "Day Membership" again in their presence, and that they had been burned before on that and would drop coverage if Day memberships were a possibility. Sooooo the long and short of it is that we wont be flying in club Gliders for the Glide a thon. That's not actually a bad thing though. Matt has arranged for his old IS28-B2 "Lark" to be available for the weekend. Its built by IAR, and is a basically a tank, like Steve's IAR, except it doesnt have hard points. Its glide ratio is in the mid 30's, it sports negative flaps for high speed runs, and has a spacious cockpit. We will still be able to get tows from the club towplane.
I really like this arrangement. First, you will save a ton of money. Club tow rates are 1 dollar for every hundred feet above ground. For these flights we will probably go to 3000 feet to give you all plenty of time to see what towing is like, plus to get more time off tow. That'll cost you a mere 30 bucks. For those of you who were willing to pay 100 before, take a few extra rides, or you can just give me the extra 70!
BTW thats another advantage, we will have the glider all to ourselves, so we wont have to share if someone else from the club shows up. Of course the club still makes the money off the tows so thats good for them. Attached is a picture of the Lark taken south of the Ames airport.
One thing I want all you potential glider pilots to do. Go through the wingrunner course on the Soaring Safety Foundations website.
http://www.soaringsafety.org/school/wingrunner/toc.htm
We will need everyones help to make sure that things go smoothly the 31st. Matt and I will likely be flying all day, leaving you all standing around next to the runway. Find aerial photos of AMW and you can see that we have 2 runways with parallel taxiways. Hold short lines need to be respected and car traffic on taxiways must be limited. We also are under some pressure to minimize time on the runway. Matt and I are usually very good about this. I envision that we will have some sort of morning briefing to make sure everyone is on the same page as far as how the operation will go. We want to make it fun and safe for everyone, including transient piston/jet traffic.
Dont forget to get hotel rooms reserved, see a couple posts above here. Im getting excited folks, can't wait to see you all on the 31st!
