Greetings Colorado Akro Enthusiasts!
I'm a little slow getting to this but here are some notes on our recent two chapter events; the annual party and the Feb chapter meeting.
Winter Fest Party - Jan 31, 2015
We had a nice turnout at the event on January 31st, but did miss some of our good friends. First, thanks to Tom and Laura Larkin for once again, hosting the event at their awesome air park home.
It was our intention to try to get in front of the arrivals and get the annual dues collection process in place as folks arrived, but we didn't get that in place fast enough. Thanks to Pat Fogarty for "working the crowd" and getting a lot of that done during the party. If you did not get your 2015 dues paid to Pat at the event, or if you weren't there, please send your dues to Pat so he can update the membership roster. I will get you the mailing info shortly. The dues go to help us run these kinds of chapter events, of which we plan more in 2015.
We did conduct a little business at the meeting and held the officers and BoD members election. For the record, our new slate of victim / officers is:
- President - Bob Freeman
- Vice President - Chris Leach
- Treasurer - Pat Fogarty
- Web Master and Master of All Geeky things - DJ Molny
- BoD - Thomas Shpakow
- BoD - Mike Forney
- BoD - Tom Edwards
- BoD - John Blum
- Note: we would accept 2 more BoD members... if you're interested, speak up
Doug Jardine was not able to attend but we want to thank him for his service as President over the last 12 months. He's enjoying (well maybe not) being very busy in his business as the construction economy locally is in a mini-boom.
February BoD and Membership Meeting - Feb 7, 2015
We had a light turn out at the Spirit of Flight Museum on Saturday morning. Thanks to Gordon Page for making an excellent meeting facility available to us. We had one fly-in attendee (me). Officers in attendance were: Bob Freeman, Thomas Shpakow and Mike Forney. Members in attendance were Dick Bevington, Lloyd Stoops and special guest (on a Saturday) Tom Larkin. Tom was in full costume headed to the airport for a 4 day trip but stopped in briefly. We had a new player (future member?) attend in Will Matthews. He is with the soaring club in Boulder and is working with Doedo and others to research an aerobatic effort within the soaring club (maybe in conjunction with the upcoming contest at the AFA).
Meeting Topics:
Aside from the usual small talk and hangar flying lies, we spent the majority of the meeting discussing and planing the 2015 calendar of events as it effects our club plans. Below are the resulting calendar highlights, the specifics of which are in the calendar summary below. For reference the yellow highlighted rows reflect unconfirmed plans, subject to change.
March:
- We are looking at a chapter event to go to the SkyVenture (Google SkyVenture Colorado for details). Might do this in conjunction with the Boulder soaring club if we need more for critical mass. This would be a fun event with practical value in terms of teaching you how to "get stable" in the event of an unplanned exit from your toy. T Shpakow is researching this one.
- March meeting suggestion is a weeknight session about mid-month to discuss "How to Fly the 2015 Sportsman sequence". This will be an excellent introduction for new members to some of the tricks of the trade.
- Late March, plan is to have a coordinated practice day to practice what we preached. Looking at running this event out of KLMO and practicing in the practice area north of Longmont.
- Later March, Judges School
- Learn how what the judges are looking for (and how to be sneaky in how you fly the figure) and as a judge, how to catch the sneaks.
April
- Practice, Practice, Practice
- Ben Lowell Aerial Confrontation - Air Force Academy
May
- Practice, Practice, Practice
- Planning & prep for June photo day, ground school on photo mission formation flying procedures
- Rocky Mountain Airshow (Aurora Reservoir with Thunderbirds)
June
- Group photo shoot day (air to air and ground to air)
- Contests in Texas and Nebraska (Western Region Championships)
July
- open but potential summer party
- Rain date for photo shoot
- Oshkosh
Aug
- Open but potential summer party
- Rain date for photo shoot
- WAC in France (anyone going?)
- Rocky Mountain Airshow
Sept
- Lamar contest
- Nationals
- Reno air races
Oct
- Open - prepping for the winter maintenance projects
Nov - TBD
Dec - TBD