News

February Activity — Spot Landing Contest

February is traditionally the time for our spot landing contest. This year, the contest will be held at Gila Bend (E63) on Saturday, Feb 17.  We will meet at the Gila Bend airport at 8:30am. We will finish up before lunch, and return to the DVT airport restaurant for lunch. If you’re planning to participate, please RSVP to Michael Gibbs as soon as possible. We need a good turn-out to have a decent competition, so we encourage your participation. If you haven’t tried this before, come join us. The more the merrier!

As we did last year, we will use the revised scoring method, using the shortest distance of each pilot’s landings rather than the sum of the distances.  The rules are available here.

We are again including the “dead-stick” landing option in the competition. Each pilot will have the option of making any landing from a power-off approach. For this option, power will be reduced to idle at the start of descent on downwind, and is not to be reapplied prior to landing. Spot landing performance based on the reference line will be evaluated with a scoring incentive for the dead-stick option:  half (50%) of the measured landing distance will be used for the scoring of the power-off landing.. The goal is to demonstrate landing performance in a simulated engine-out situation. The pilot will adjust pattern size and application of drag to land on the desired spot. As always, safety is the primary consideration, so any reapplication of power necessary to ensure a safe landing is always the first priority.

Poker Run Results

The Poker Run was held Nov. 18th and was very successful. We had good weather, great participation, and a good lunch afterward. Our route this year was Deer Valley to Casa Grande, Coolidge, Marana, Ak-Chin, and then back to Deer Valley. This southerly journey worked out fine except for Casa Grande. For some reason every other Saturday pilot in the valley wanted to go there at the same time we did. Didn’t they realize we had it reserved?!

The card drawing and results are as shown here:

Congratulations to Kevin with a Full house with Jacks and Aces. Hmmm, this excellent hand was very suspicious but we had 10 witnesses, so it must be legit.

February Activity

Our next event,  the Spot Landing Contest, will be held on February 17. Start practicing.

November Activity — Poker Run Results

We had a very successful Poker Run on November 19, with 11 contestants and 6 airplanes participating. The prize winners were the following:
1st — Mike Gibbs with two pair, kings and 10’s
2nd — Steve Grothe with a pair of aces
3rd — Cheri Vetter with a pair of 10’s

This year’s route went from Deer Valley to Payson, Globe, Kearny, and Ak Chin before returning to Deer Valley. Afterward, we met for lunch and the card showdown at the DVT restaurant. Thanks to everyone for participating, and to Kevin and Cheri Vetter for distributing the boxes on Friday.

Event Calendar

Do you have suggestions for Star Aero Club fly-ins? We will be putting together the event calendar for the upcoming three months at each quarterly meeting. Bring your fly-in ideas to the meeting and have a voice in the planning process.  If you can’t make it to the next meeting, we’d still like to know where you’d like to go and what you’d like to do. Drop an e-mail to Michael Gibbs.

A preliminary schedule for the quarterly meetings and a few of the traditional events for 2016 is available here: (no longer available)