TRAINING NIGHT ANNOUNCEMENT 2023

Training season officially starts this Tuesday March 15, 2023 and will continue every Wednesday until Wednesday, Nov 1, 2023 (DST expires in early Nov). Conducting flight training does depend on the weather. Extreme weather, wind, or rain may cause cancellation of training for that week.

Non-students (eg, signed off club members) are strongly encouraged to help with flight training. We typically have several students each week. In addition to flight instruction, help is often needed in the areas of having a spotter, radio expertise, aircraft setup and debugging, and just plain encouragement and advice. Also, we sometimes have first time visitors come to the field, and we need someone to make them feel welcome and explain what we do.

We try to start at 5pm, and fly until sunset or 8pm, whichever occurs first. We fly when weather permits. This means we do fly in high winds, but not in continuous rain, nor snow, nor when it’s ‘too cold’. If no instructors are available on a particular night, training will be cancelled that night via text message to the known students.

We offer training on basic aerobatics (e.g. loops, rolls, inverted flight, Immelmann, split S, hammer head turns, etc). And we offer helicopter flight training.

We strongly emphasize safety, from ground procedures, to pre-flight checks, flying procedures and etiquette, post-flight procedures, and field communication/courtesy.

All students are required to bring user manuals for their radios and their planes.

Recently graduated students are encouraged to bring their next ‘step up’ plane to the field for assistance with the maiden flight, and, if required, additional instruction on advanced controls (eg, learning to use flaps, landing gear, etc).  

Non-students (eg, signed off club members) are permitted to fly during training nights, subject to the discretion of the instructors. Usually, the instructors grant permission, especially for students who have recently graduated. However, experienced pilots should not bring a new plane out to the field and expect the instructors to shut down the runway for your maiden flight. In addition, please do not bring a new engine or turbine to the field for break-in. Even at the far end of the runway, the noise makes it difficult to communicate with the students. There are six other nights of the week available for this type of activity.