Welcome to July… The month we’ve all been waiting for! You know – the month of Fly-In Breakfasts, Lunches, Show and Shines, Airshows and EAA Conventions. If you glance through the “Flying Events” section, you will see a number of excellent ways to spend your weekends in the presence of aerial machines and their caretakers.

Although we’ve been quite busy at work, I was able to sneak out a couple of weeks ago and commit aviation with a few of the club members. Al Botting, Stu Simpson, Barry Woods and Bernie Kespe joined me on a Friday morning excursion north. The plan had been to do Tipitinas for breakfast and then on to Ponoka for me to deliver some plans to a contractor, then back home.

Unfortunately, we arrived in Red Deer before the girls at Tipitinas and 45 minutes was just too long for our emaciated bodies to wait. Despite the fact that I drive through Ponoka on every trip to the cabin, I have never been at the Ponoka airport. We landed and passed the plans off to the contractor… UPS has nothing to worry about as it took five aircraft and five pilots to deliver one sheet of paper.

As we left Ponoka, the proprietor of Triad Aviation graciously invited us to return and offered us the use of his airport car any time we wanted.

We had talked about returning to Red Deer for our breakfast but decided that Linden deserved a visit instead. As I made the approach onto 34, I noticed a couple of power poles lying on the ground near the end of the runway. The power lines are still there, but it appears that progress is being made to bury them. At lunch, we met one of the locals and found out that the lines are being buried by the power company with no charge to the town. The materials were brought in last year and the work is underway now to allow the costs to be split up over two years. We were also invited to a fly-in breakfast once the lines were buried to celebrate the event. Hey, any excuse to fly for food is good with me!

June 20th was the date of Glen Bishell’s fly-in in Carstairs. The weather was phenomenal, and we had a great turnout from the club.

The week before was another spectacular weekend which saw about 30 aircraft from both the Lethbridge Sport Fliers and the CRUFC descend upon Vulcan for our annual get-together. We filled the ramp and took over a significant portion of the Vulcan Golf and Country Club’s dining room. A great time was had by all.

As I mentioned last month, I finally have my Artex ME406 ELT installed in the Christavia. Since I purchased mine six months ago, there have been a few convenient kits made available to assist in the installation. The version I bought required me to build a seven-wire harness between the panel and ELT with direct connections to the battery and the installation of a small speaker. The installation took about six hours to complete, two on the harness and another four on the installation.

The new kits come with switches that will fit directly into the old switch locations with no modification required (it took me half an hour to file the opening big enough for the new switch). There are also kits available that simplify the wiring by using telephone type cable instead of a custom harness. In addition, there are new 406 ELT’s becoming available with the GPS built right in at about the same price as the current non-GPS devices.

In addition to the new GPS, I came across a neat product for my SPOT device. I had made a rinky little mount for the SPOT but wasn’t really happy with it. Fortunately, I received a newsletter from SPOT which mentioned a new mounting device. For $44.95, you get a RAM mounting system that can either be suctioned onto a flat surface or clamped around a tube (0.75” to 1.25”). Having a tube aircraft, I used the latter to mount my SPOT.

Another thing I noticed is that they are again offering “free” SPOTs with a two-year activation (it comes in the form of a $169.99 rebate on activation). Check out the website at http://www.findmespot.com.

Just a final reminder that there will be no meeting in July or August making September 11th our next meeting date. Hope to see you at the many events over the summer.