New Season to Begin at Morgan On Saturday, March 31, the club gliders were assembled at Morgan, they are ready to fly and Lee Steorts is providing currency checkouts. For scheduling checkouts contact Lee at 272-6381. For scheduling the gliders contact Jay Thomson at 801-876-3342. The cost of tows will be $13.00 for the first 1000 feet and $1.00 per hundred after that.

Email from David Lane: We had a pretty good turn out for the glider assembly in Morgan and I am excited. Morgan offers good flying in the spring as evidenced by the wave that showed up everywhere. Jay and the crew at Morgan are ramping up. Real high energy folks. Their planned outings to Nephi and Moab should be a blast. Hope to see you at the field(s) this year! David Lane

Duty Officer Seminar It is recognized that not all members possess the skills to fulfill the Duty Officer responsibilities as outlined above. On Saturday, April 21, we will hold a seminar at Heber for members who need additional training in these areas:
1. Oxygen systems
2. General care and maintenance.
3. Accepted tie-down procedures.
4. Radios and batteries.
5. Movement of gliders
6. Flight-line operations.
For info contact Fred Wright at 801-486-6639 or email
The Duty Officer
Each Saturday during the soaring season a member of the club will serve as duty officer. The purpose of the duty officer is to help provide safe, enjoyable and hassle-free flying for club members. This duty rotates through the membership so than no person will have to serve more than one Saturday per season. If the duty officer performs his responsibilities the flights of the members will be more pleasurable. By contributing to the maintenance of the club gliders the duty officer has the right to expect his flights to be as trouble free as those he provides when he is on duty.

Duty Officer Airport Responsibilities
I. Duty officers should arrive at the airport by 9:OOAM.
2.Wipe down club gliders.
3.Remove canopy covers and clean canopies.
4. Perform inspection on each glider.
5. Check electrical systems
a. batteries.
b. radios
c. electric varies
6. Check Oxygen systems and fill if below 700*.
7. Assist in movement and launch of gliders
8. Assist in recovery and tie-down of gliders.
9. Place batteries on charger at end of day.

Duty Officer Club Responsibilities
1. If a duty officer cannot make his appointed Saturday he must arrange for a substitute from the membership. 2. Failure to show up or provide a replacement results in a suspension of flying privileges for a period of three weeks.

Duty Officer Signup
This season select your Saturday. Firs come, first served. Phone Dale Taylor before April 20th at801-785-8177 to reserve your day. After April 20th date; will be assigned as in past years and announced in the May newsletter.

Nephi Outing
From Lee Steorts:
Jay Thompson, who recently purchased, the glider operation at Morgan County Airport, has made a great offer to all glider pilots in Utah. In order to get acquainted with all of you and to promote camaraderie he has offered to bring his tow plane to Nephi to provide tows on Friday and Saturday, May 18th and 19th. The cost of tows will be the same as charged at Morgan, $13.00 for the first 1000 feet and $1.00 per hundred after that. He has offered to host a barbeaque Friday night as well. He also has access to a telescope and anyone interested can study the moon and stars or just sit around the campfire Friday night and swap soaring stories. Bring your folding chairs. There would be no charge for ferrying the tow plane from Morgan to Nephi but here would have to be a minimum of 10 planes participating. Jay says if this encampment goes well he would consider the same to Canyonlands Airport at Moab this fall. This will be a family affair so bring the kids and wife and perhaps stay overnight at Nephi. This is a marvelous opportunity to try out the Nephi area and to meet with other glider guiders from Logan, Brigham City, a Morgan, Cedar Valley, and Heber. Please let us know by May 1st if you would like to participate. It's going to be a lot of fun. Contact Jay Thompson at (801) 876-3342 E-Mail: agliderpilot@juno.com or Lee Steorts at (801) 272-6381 E-Mail: ldsteorts@msn.com

March Minden Trip Part I
by Parke Byron
Tuesday afternoon, March 20, I pulled out of Salt Lake City with the 1-34 tucked away in its trailer behind my Explorer and headed out for Minden, Nevada. Nine uneventful hours later, I arrived in Minden, literally in the dead of night. Minden is clearly the current Mecca for soaring in the United States, and is a viable contender for the international title as well. It sits in a flat little valley just east of the Sierra Nevada mountains and is home to one of the best combinations of thermal, wave and ridge soaring in the world. My personal hope for this trip was to achieve Diamond altitude in the 1-34. Day I Wednesday morning I lowed the trailer into the airport and promptly found High Country Soaring. Okay, so it wasn't a really big feat as the dozen or two glider boxes parked around their relatively new hangar was a pretty obvious tip-off. Bill Stowers was seated in the hangar working on motorcycle fairings. Motorcycles, I learned, is Bill's true passion. A close second is giving his frank opinions on anything that comes up in conversation. Five minutes with Bill will give you a clear picture of the lay of the land. Tom Stowers came out from the office area and promptly got me situated with a tie down spot, helped me assembled the 1-34, ran a portable air tank out to the glider for the main wheel, and briefed me on the local operations and cross country flying. All this despite battling a nasty bout of bronchitis, which, I learned later, kept him in bed for the next two weeks. High Country Soaring, from the owners to the tow pilots is an extremely friendly and helpful outfit, and I would highly recommend them to any other USA members heading out that way. Spend a few minutes chatting with them and learn something about soaring all the way back to the heydays at El Mirage. Check out their guest book and photo wall and literally see a who's-who hall of fame for soaring. Anyway, enough background, onto the soaring. Well, unfortunately, the forecast did not have any sign of wave for the next few days. However, unseasonable thermals were present, and cu's were popping at noon as I was setting up and pre-flighting. I started on tow at 1:50 p.m. on runway 30. A quick three minutes and we were circling in a thermal a couple of miles from the airport at 1500 feet or so. The criss-cross runway pattern had me plan a cautious tow release height to make sure that I had a little extra time in the event of an unplanned early return to the airport. I wanted to have extra height to study the runway spokes and hit the correct entry point, positively pick out the glider runway and not land on or into the power traffic on 34. However, after two tight revolutions in the thermal, it was time to give the tow pilot a break and I released at 2,000 feet. The thermal grew stronger and I was up to 10,000 fairly easily, eyeing the cloud base and guessing what the max height would be for the day. All my tows as well as every one else's ended up in this area which I learned to think of as a thermal garden. Tow planes, usually two in the air at a time, would just drop gliders off in the area giving each glider its own thermal to work with. People worked the thermal up and then would head for the Pine Nuts range to the east of the Minden valley and airport. I followed suit. I found myself with about three other gliders with one in my thermal. Radio chatter indicated most pilots were heading north to Virginia City, but there was a nice street to the south, and I thought what the heck, dare to be different. So, off I went. Cloud base was mostly around 11,500 to 12,600. For today, I wanted to learn the terrain a bit from the air and not push to far away from the home field. For this, I had my newly purchased sectional, but I didn't bring a GFS to minimize distractions. To the west of the valley the Sierras with their snowcaps were impressive as was Lake Tahoe, sitting just above the valley. Because of the deadening effect of that large body of water, it was basically death that way. To the south along the Pine Nuts were nicely distributed patches of clouds, sitting above snow topped peaks topping out around 9,000 feet. I reached the bottom of the Minden valley relatively easily. One wrong choice of clouds turned me back to the main ridge. A nice bare summit clear of snow got me back up to 11,000, and I continued south. My first attempt out of the valley was defeated by a cloud dropping some precipitation (rain/sleet). A second attempt heading more westerly got me over the hump and above Wellington, a few miles east of Topaz Lake. I continued south and crossed below Topaz Lake into California. A long slender valley runs south from the lake with highway 395 skirting the west edge. A cloud street ran along over the west rim and I followed this down until the clouds ran out at the bottom of the valley. In front of me were the Sierras, easily 10,000 feet, fewer clouds, and even fewer friendly landout sites. I retreated north, and over Coleville I found the strongest thermal of the day which got me to 13,500 feet From here I noticed a nice alignment of clouds that ran south-east across the valley towards Mount Patterson, so off I went. I got to within two or three miles of the summit when the clouds gave out. I was down to 12,600 and the summit was marked at 11,673. Just off the east side of the summit was a cloud, its base lower than my current altitude, and dumping water like an emergency shower. Discretion being the better part of valor, I figured this was far enough south for today. An accurate measurement on the sectional later showed that I was 43 miles from the airport at this point. I retraced my steps back up to the Pine Nuts. Some clouds still ran north from the point where I had started. I decided to try to head north to the Dayton Valley airport, which lies north of the Pine Nuts, as this would give m-e a nice triangle for the day with a finish at Minden. It was now around 5 p.m. and despite my layers of clothing, the effect of flying under clouds above 10,000 feet for three hours had me shivering pretty good. Again, the clouds ended too soon, leaving me about six miles short of Dayton Valley. The Minden Valley was starting to get shaded by the Sierras, not a bad time to head home. The radio traffic had died out a while ago. I was pretty much up by myself. I turned the glider towards the Minden airport only to find myself heading directly into the setting sun. Eighteen miles out from the runway, and I couldn't make out a thing where the airport should be. Again, my trusty sectional showed a power line visible to my left by the swath it cut through the cedar covered hills, that ran parallel to my course, and turned just a few miles from the field. With that, I was golden, and I cruised on home. Minden field is at 4717 feet, and I had 3,000+ feet when I got there to play with and study the runway pattern. For your first time landing there, I highly recommend the extra altitude. Of course, this doesn't apply to Walt who has taken off from Minden thirteen times, but has yet to land at Minden! Flight time for Day 1: 4.1 hour and 110 miles. Day 2 The next day the weather had turned. Over development was evident around 60% of the circumference of the valley by 11 am. I got an earlier tow, 12:50, taking off in front of Pete Russell of Sage Vario fame and owner of an original Glasflugel 304. Soar Minden was busy launching a soaring safari group of eleven gliders, who were intending to fly out to Hilton ranch (east of the Pine Nuts) and back, more on them later. Again the thermal field did its thing, and I explored a little while Pete (SV) got up to altitude. I followed him around for a while, watching the thunderheads develop around the valley. Already the bottom of the Minden Valley was closed off, and the storm cell was growing up the Pine Nut range. Pete headed off somewhere, and I ended up exploring some cedar trees at a closer range than I intended too after I tried pushing north towards Dayton Valley in an attempt to pick up where I left off the day before. A retreat back to the Minden side of the Pine Nuts got the situation corrected, and I was back near cloud base at 10,000 again, fat dumb and happy about 12 miles from the airport. Meanwhile, the chatter between Soar Minden and the safari on 123.3 was pretty intense. It seems that they all got out to Hilton just swimmingly. But, lo and behold, the over development had crawled right up the Pine Nuts and sat between them and Minden. A few brave souls were trying to go north on the lee side of the Fine Nuts in an effort to fly around the storm cell. The rest where just hanging out above the Hilton strip. Now, for me, there was this nice dark street running north of the Minden air-port up to New Washoe city, so off I went as behind me it was still clear in the valley to the south. The thermals under this street were soon peaking out at over 15 knots. I was rapidly being sucked up into the cloud and I was in the middle of the street, width-wise. I elected to bail to the west as to the east was another growing storm cell. Full spoilers and 80-90 knots airspeed and I was still not getting out of there fast enough. After a brief cloudy moment, I cleared the clouds and headed north again running on the east side of New Washoe city. Getting my bearings after everything calmed down, I saw the layout of two obvious large runways directly to the north of me. A quick glance at the sectional showed that I was about to fly above the Class C veil for Reno (8400/7200). In theory, I was okay being at 10,500 feet, but given the heavy cloud cover and being new to the area, a turn to the right seemed prudent. The cloud street was now shutting down as I headed south. Strong lift had given away to pockets of rain, sleet and hail. After a particularly loud bout of hail, it occurred to me that my chilliness m the cockpit would equate to icing conditions outside the cockpit. Sure enough, the hail was sticking to the leading edges giving me both sink and reduced airfoil performance, at over 20 miles form Minden and at 10,000 feet. Fun times! Actually, it was a no brainer, as the southern end of the street was still working and Minden only 15 miles away. Once in the sun again, the ice quickly melted away. However, for the safari, their fate was quickly being sealed. The cell from the south was continuing north and the cell over the Dayton Valley area I was avoiding to the east earlier was steadily moving south. The gap between them was less than ten miles. A run to the Pine Nuts was now a very questionable idea, and if the pilots on the other side couldn't get over the top in the next few minutes, the gap would disappear all together. From the radio chatter, they weren't even close. At this time, Pete Russell showed up out of the darkness. We were basically flying the west skirts of the storm cells over the city of Carson, about 14 miles north of Minden. Pete had me fly straight and steady while he did some passes to take photos. I caught a couple of him as well (see photo 2). We then crossed over to the west side of the valley and flew along the ridge looking down on Lake Tahoe. I lost Pete after a while and scrubbed a lot of altitude by heading down to the ski resorts in steady 5-6 knot sink. The east side of the Minden valley was now black. All of the safari people had landed out with the exception of one individual trying to locate Yergington. Someone later described the mass landout as a bombing run as there were gliders bombing out of the sky everywhere. Soar Minden had a busy evening ahead with mass retrieves being planned. The west edge of the storm line was creeping very close to the Minden airport and it was apparent that it was time to call it a day. Crossing the valley to the airport was full of micro-bursts and updrafts, definitely time to go home! The blowouts from the storm shifted operations from runway 30 to 12. Runway 12 is quite interesting as it involves clearing a power line along a road at the beginning of the runway. A sailplane was still occupying the cross section of 30 and 34, requiring my landing short. The 1-34 spoilers and 3300 feet of runway before the intersection allowed me to have plenty of clearance for the wires and easily stop at the first taxi way, well clear of the main runway intersection. Flight time for day 2: 3.0 hours. Watch for second installment.

Currency Requirements for Flying Club Gliders
A reminder that last year the flight rules were changed. The requirement for an annual flight review was changed to require a check-out if a member has not flown as pilot-in-command of a glider for 45 days. Paragraph D, Section 4 of the club flight rules reads, "A Member who has not acted as pilot-m-command of a glider for 45 days or longer shall undertake a Check Out with an Instructor". For most of us this means that we will need to arrange a dual flight with an instructor before flying club gliders at either Heber or Morgan.