What a great month for flying! Most of the month of July was absolutely beautiful and afforded lots of opportunities to commit aviation.

The fine flying weather allowed a number of our members to make some extended trips. Bob Kirkby and Bernie Kespe made the trek to Oshkosh this year. I do believe that a couple of other club members made the pilgrimage as well.

Troy Branch made a couple of trips in the new RV-10, the longest being to New Brunswick with the entire family. I‟m sure we‟ll be getting an in-depth account of the trek in the next couple of months.

Stu Simpson, Al Botting, Brian Vasseur and Paul Vasseur flew up to Cold Lake on the 31st for the airshow. Stu has promised a story that will include an account of the “Lebanese Barber Pimp” (you’ll just have to wait for his story for that one).

There were also a number of local flying events that were well attended by the club, including the COPA Convention in Springbank.

I decided to take off the Thursday and Friday to help out with the event. The committee that ran the event did a splendid job. Everything ran smoothly and the volunteer force in attendance was very well managed.

Having the two days off, I made good use of the mornings to get in some flying. Thursday morning, I went up to the cabin in Bashaw to get some photos of the area for both our neighbours and ourselves. This time, I decided to try some shots with the windows open on the plane. This worked well with the picture quality being substantially improved over previous attempts.

The warm temperatures made this practical and the increased drag slowed the plane down nicely for the shoot.

Friday morning, Bernie Kespe, Stu Simpson and I made a trip over to Hanna and then back to Linden for lunch. The first thing we noticed was that the power cables have finally been buried at the south end of the runway. While we were there, we talked with one of the town officials and was informed that the town wanted to organize a fly-in breakfast to celebrate the “grand opening” of the Linden Field! The breakfast will be free, but they have asked that pilots inform them so that they can get some numbers of the folks they have to feed. See the information in the “Flying Events” section.

After lunch at Linden, I drove to Springbank to man my shift at the event. I was amazed by the number of aircraft in attendance! There were well over 100 aircraft involved in the “Wings Over Canada Centennial Flight” including a number of exotic and classic aircraft like Glastars, Glassairs, Beavers, Norseman, etc. Unfortunately, John Lovelace, the event organizer, taxied into some soft turf and buried his Piper Navajo up to the axles. After a substantial effort, the plane was jacked and pulled clear of the grass.

To accommodate all the traffic, parking was made available between taxiway Charlie and 25/07 and between taxiway Alpha and 34/16. Springbank ATC relinquished control of Alpha south of Charlie to COPA to manage. Everything seemed to run quite smoothly.

Once my shift was over, it was on to the COPA HoDown event in the Calgary Flying Club hangar. This was the event hosted by our club and organized by Garrett Komm. In between the sets by the band, local aerobatic performers put on aerial displays over 16/34. The fourth and final display was a formation, night aerobatic display with pyrotechnics by Ken Fowler and Eric Hansen of Team Rocket. Spectacular!

The next morning, I was scheduled to volunteer at 11 AM. This meant that I had to be up early if I wanted to make the AJ Ranch fly-in breakfast before that. Once again, this event was very well attended by our club members. I was a little concerned that the COPA Convention would have an adverse effect on attendance this year. In fact, the opposite was true! It seemed that a number of convention attendees had heard about the fly-in and headed down there from Springbank. Despite the volume of traffic, everyone seemed to be doing a great job of following correct circuit procedures.

With a full belly, it was on to Springbank for my shift. I have to applaud the controllers on staff. They were very accommodating and polite to all the aircraft operating in the area. Given the number of pilots coming in that were not familiar with the procedures and landmarks, I know that this was well appreciated.

Over the weekend, I was able to log about 10 hours of excellent aviating. This was good since the weather this week has certainly curtailed any flying at all. Fortunately, as I write this, I see that the weather is finally starting to break and there is hope for a good weekend of flying coming up!

See you all in September!