The February 1993 issue of the Skylines newsletter carries the minutes of the club's first annual membership meeting, held January 22 at Shane Neitzey's office in Manassas, Virginia. Treasurer Bela Gogos reported that the young club—founded in 1992 by Gogos, Bob Leyendecker, Leo Meacher, and James Postma—logged 465 tows across 50 operating days at the New Market airport, with membership holding steady at 33 active members. The books closed the year a mere $94 in the red, a result President Spencer Annear called 'excellent for a new organization.' The meeting elected a new six-member board (Annear, Gogos, Kit Carson, Neitzey, Jim McCulley, and Ralph Wentzel) and settled on a slate of officers. Board discussion touched on the money-losing ASK-21 lease, a donated radio for the Pawnee towplane, the feasibility of a club answering machine, and reciprocal membership with the Mid-Atlantic Soaring Association and Ridge Soaring. A recruitment handout laid out two options for prospects: a $30 'donation' ride in a two-place glider to 3,000 feet, or a ten-day trial membership for $20. Phil Jordan announced that the club brochure had gone to print, the Operations Manual was 99% complete, and Sporty's-branded polo shirts, caps, and a silk-screened T-shirt bearing the slogan 'Soaring is flying pure and simple' were available for group orders. The issue closes with the March 1993 duty-officer and tow-pilot schedule.
This issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter opens with board minutes covering a healthy $6,500 treasury, new tow-letdown procedures, and the long-awaited Operations Manual finally heading to press. The real drama, however, lives in two dispatches from the wave world: a tongue-in-cheek account of an Air Traffic controller at Petersburg, WV, who told a flight of Marine A-6 attack aircraft to watch for gliders in the wave window, only to be met with the question, "Why should we care about some gliders?" — answered, smugly, with "They're above you, sir!" — and a sobering safety article by Jim Kellett that traces the physics of mountain-wave rotors from his own near-fatal tail gust in a 1-23 over Mt. Mitchell to the March 1991 crash of UAL Flight 585, a 75,000-pound Boeing 737 slammed into the ground near Colorado Springs in nine seconds by the very same microbursts glider pilots seek out for lift. Kellett's close timeline of the 737's final 90 seconds, with its oscillating airspeed and sudden 4-g inversion, lands as a stark reminder that no one is immune to the rotor. Rounding out the issue are circle-diameter and time-to-fly reference tables contributed from the Mid-Atlantic Soaring Association, a detailed May-through-August duty-officer and tow-pilot staffing schedule, and a proposed student-pilot competition pitting the earliest solo and Private certifications against one another.
The April 1993 issue of Skylines carries the minutes of the Skyline Soaring Club's board meeting alongside a thrilling first-person account from Secretary Ralph Wentzel, whose routine 200th flight in the club's ASK-21 turned into a nearly four-hour, 65-to-70-mile cross-country that he dubs a "Fantasy Flight." Launched with young local pilot Matt as passenger, the pair rode extraordinary thermals—vario pegged at 10 knots, climbs estimated at 1,200 to 1,500 feet per minute—over the Massanutten, through the Fort Valley, and up to 8,200 feet AGL near Mount Jackson before a hard, spoiler-full return to New Market. The board minutes cover a range of club business: a declining membership count (28 active, 5 inactive), a debate over ending the Temporary Member category and offering a $50 "blue light special" initiation discount, Ed Rainey's offer to sell and finance a club radio, bird-nesting problems in the Pawnee towplane, and a request to ATC for a dedicated wave window west of New Market. The issue also solicits member articles and requests updated contact information for the club's address list.
The Skyline Soaring Club's June 1993 edition of SKYLINES arrives brimming with fresh energy. A new editor steps in at the helm as Phil Jordan steps back from publishing duties, and the board minutes from the May meeting reveal a club in visible growth: two new tow pilots (Jim McCulley and Paul Dawson) have been checked out, relieving the veteran tug crew of Spencer Annear and Shane Neitzey who had been flying overtime. Jim McCulley also marked a personal milestone, logging more than five hours in a single flight in his Schreder sail plane on June 6, the same day new member Joe Smith signed on. Piet Barber earned his Private Pilot-Glider certificate, and Fred Winter squeezed in time to get the club's ASK-21 through its annual inspection. The board debated the safety of the Schweizer tow release on the Pawnee, tightened landing-threshold policy, and approved a reduced initiation fee to spur a membership drive ahead of the July 24 Front Royal Airshow, where the club has been invited to fly and display its gliders. Rounding out the issue is a warmly nostalgic essay by Jim Kellett, "Contrails," which transports readers back to the 1966 Capitol Area Soaring School at Godfrey Field, recalls the era's soaring statistics and aircraft prices, and closes with a reproduction of Sam Wright's 1966 poem "Listen to the Wind." Duty schedules for July through October and detailed end-of-day checklists for duty officers and tow pilots are included as practical appendices.
The August 1993 issue of Skylines, the monthly newsletter of the Skyline Soaring Club, carries the minutes of the July 28 Board of Directors meeting, in which the club formally adopted a revised Article IV of its bylaws establishing a detailed tiered membership structure spanning Charter, Full, Probationary, and several Special categories (Trial, Transient, Event, Service, and Affiliated Club), along with a published fee schedule covering a $500 initiation fee, $240 annual dues, and per-minute aircraft-use rates for the club's ASK-21, 2-33, and 1-36 sailplanes and tow operations. The club also welcomed three new members—Tim Ettridge, Wolfgang Frauenfeld, and Joe Parrish—reported a successful recruiting effort at the Front Royal Airshow, and announced an ongoing experiment in running operations from a hilltop overlooking the grass strip, with water and power provided courtesy of FBO Ed Rainey. Maintenance notes covered the 2-33's recurring Braunschweig tube issue and the tow plane's pending tire replacement, while the board directed that the runway's displaced threshold be marked to improve safety. A general membership meeting was set for October 1 at the Falls Church Civic Center, and the editor, Ralph Wentzel, apologized for a two-month publication gap before promising a more robust issue to follow.
The Skyline Soaring Club's October 1993 issue opens with minutes from the club's annual membership meeting at the Falls Church, Virginia Community Center, where Treasurer Bela Gogos reported a record 457 tows (up from 369), a shrinking loss, and a modest membership dip to 33. The newsletter carries a heartfelt update on Gogos's successful open-heart surgery for a major arterial blockage, performed just days after the meeting. The issue's centerpiece is a thought-provoking safety article arguing that soaring training equips pilots with instincts power pilots lack: a 1985 fatal accident near Los Angeles in which a 7,000-hour power pilot tried to out-climb a powerful sink and was killed, contrasted with the glider pilot's instinct to lower the nose and accelerate. Pilot-instructor Steven Philipson's ongoing (and largely ignored) campaign to get the NTSB and FAA to recommend basic sailplane training for power pilots is recounted. A second technical piece warns members about the flutter-speed trap at altitude, where true airspeed can exceed limits while the indicated needle still looks safe, in anticipation of the club's mountain-wave season. Rounding out the issue are calls for tow pilots and CFI-Gs, a volunteer effort to repaint the PAWNEE's wing struts, a safety seminar on tie-down ropes and runway-crossing discipline at New Market, and a reminder that all club maintenance must be cleared through Director Jim McCulley.
The November 1993 issue of *Skylines* carries the club's most consequential news in years: Maintenance Director Jim McCulley has secured what appears to be a near-final FAA approval for a designated "Wave Window" that would allow Skyline members to fly above Flight Level 180 (18,000 feet) in wave conditions, with a go-ahead expected by mid-January. The proposed flight area stretches from New Market to Sky Bryce along the Blue Ridge. The issue also recounts a remarkable 75-minute flight on November 6, when McCulley and the newsletter's editor towed the newly airworthy ASK-21 (N341KS) to 5,000 feet and discovered a narrow, fast-moving band of 400-to-800-fpm lift that neither could immediately identify—later attributed to the convergence of a cold easterly air mass pushing ahead of a low-pressure system. Other items include the Pawnee tow plane's winter annual inspection (Dec 15–Jan 15), the 2-33 glider's upcoming inspection, hangar-floor gravel work, Paul Dawson's near-completion of tow qualification, a new membership-participation committee chaired by Joe with a report due at the January 14, 1994 meeting, and an invitation to the Kelletts' Christmas party on December 11.