Short Wing Piper Club

Northeast Chapter Flyer

August 1998

EDITORS REPORT

        Well summer has come and gone and thanks to EL WEATHER what a nice one it was. I got to do some pleasant flying, a trip to the Ohio convention, an EAA flyin at Warwick, a trip to Camden County, NJ to a friends summer party, a trip to Sky Acres for lunch, a trip to Columbia Co. for a golf outing, our flyin at Jackie and Hanks' house in Alexandria, NJ, and Garnsey's. My trip home from Camden County Airport turned out to be very exciting. I departed at 10:00 PM, the airport was closed and I had to click the mike to activate the runway lights. I had a friend and his girlfriend with me. It was her first ride in a small plane and she was nervous, as you can imagine. I only have a two place intercom and I gave her the other headset so to be able to talk her through the experience, a mistake. My plan was to contact Mcquire Approach upon takeoff, get radar flight following and then get handed off to Kennedy Approach and hopefully get clearance through Kennedy's Class B airspace to Farmingdale. Mcquire's reply was " aircraft calling Mcquire totally unreadable". I couldn't understand why, I haven't had any problems communicating with anyone so I kept trying, checking the radio and getting the same response. Meanwhile the young lady in the back seat is hearing all this and not thinking I start talking to myself out loud, " what the heck's going on with this radio?" " Rico, is there a problem, is everything okay?" is her reaction. Now I'm trying to relax her while trying to figure out how am I going to get through the Class B Airspace, I can fly under it along the shore at 500 feet but then how do I contact the Farmingdale Tower. I can't remember what code to squawk on the transponder for no radio and how do I get the tower's attention for the green light. Never had to do this before. Fortunately the weather was clear and calm so I didn't have that to deal with. My flight bag was on the back seat and I had an extra mike, so I had her find it and it worked. I also have a handheld with all the attachments for the outside antenna and the headset so I had that option. The problem was trying to deal with the situation without having her panic. If I only had not given her the headset she never would had realized that we had a small problem. We finally made radio contact and the rest of the trip was a piece of cake. I still haven't figured out what went wrong with to radio, it works fine now. Something in the push to talk button must had been loose.
        A very pleasant time was had at Jackie and Hanks' Flyin. The turn out from our chapter was not that great but between the two chapters we had a nice crowd. The VanValkenburg's have a very nice home on acres of land with deer running through their back yard. The food, hospitality and weather left nothing to be desired. Thank you Jackie and Hank for opening your lovely home for us to meet.
        The meeting at Garnsey's turned out to be one of the largest meetings we ever had there. Sixteen planes and about thirty people. There were people present that don't even belong to our chapter, they probably heard that SKYKING would be attending. A few were friends of mine that I haven't seen in a while, still don't know how they knew of the meeting. Elections were held and the meeting agenda for the next few months were set. Our thanks again to the Garnsey's for the use of all their facilities. You couldn't ask for a better setting, guess that's why it is our best meeting of the year. Thanks also again to EL WEATHER.
        Received a nice note from Stan White, a chapter member from Vermont, along with some literature on RALLY FLYING . We had touched on that subject at our Burlington meeting. Stan is working on his Pilot's license and just bought himself a long wing. Hopefully he'll get his license soon so we'll have another plane to park at our meetings. I am forwarding the literature to our Pres. for his information.
        Two of our most active members are down with some health problems. Hank VanValkenburg and Joe Dille are sure to be at all of our flyins if at all possible. Ours prayers are with both of these fine gentlemen, GET WELL SOON JOE AND HANK.