The Skyline Soaring Club's January 20 annual meeting at the Falls Church Community Center produced a newsletter brimming with momentum for the club's fourth year of operation. Treasurer Bela Gogos reported that 1994 tows rose 18 percent and total flying time jumped 28 percent to 429 hours, while outlining a board-approved plan to use initiation fees to pay down capital debt to $1,000 by year's end and eliminate it entirely by 1996. President Spencer Annear called 1995 a "landmark year," citing New Market airport's new management under Linda Rainey, a host of field improvements, and a packed calendar that includes a wave camp at Petersburg, West Virginia (featuring the Pawnee, 2-33, and 1-36), a Spring Fun Day with contests and picnic, a Community Day with public rides, the Vintage Sailplane Regatta at Waynesboro, Virginia, and a Fall Fun Day. A unanimous vote elected the 1995 Board of Directors, welcomed new director Joe Parrish, and set the tone for a season the club hopes will cement its long-term viability. The issue closes with the full March-through-December duty roster, assigning duty officers and tow pilots for every scheduled weekend of the year.
The Skyline Soaring Club's April 1995 newsletter is dominated by Joe Parrish's vivid first-person account of the club's Petersburg, West Virginia Wave Camp (February 18–26), where he logged a Gold Altitude flight to 17,800 MSL in the ASK-21, describing the wave as a perfectly smooth, panoramic ride with the oxygen system kicking on past 11,500 feet and radio contact with pilots as far north as Cumberland, Maryland. The issue also records the induction of four new full members — Tom Brice, Colombe Chappey, Rich Pickett, and Jean-Francois Gibrat — the signing of a one-year hangar lease at New Market's Valor Field, and an urgent maintenance warning about the ASK-21's aging canopies. Board minutes cover a new takeoff protocol at New Market, the Schweitzer 2-33's return to service after lengthy maintenance, recruitment efforts over the early Internet, and plans for the Annual Safety Meeting (May 5) and the Skyline Spring Fun Day (May 13, rain date May 20). A full 1995 duty roster, running from April through the Christmas break, rounds out the issue.
A remarkable month of soaring achievements anchors this issue: Treasurer Bela Gogos completed his FAI Diamond Badge with a 5,000-meter climb out of Minden, Nevada, becoming just the 806th American pilot ever to earn the distinction, while Joe Parrish logged his FAI Gold Altitude leg at Wave Camp in West Virginia and Kevin Fleet picked up his SSA A badge. The club's calendar is packed with the Spring Fun Day on May 13, the New Market Community Day on June 10 (featuring a hot-air balloon dealer, a skydiving outfit, and the local Pilot's Association), and an International Vintage Sailplane Meet in July drawing antique sailplanes from Europe, Canada, and the U.S. The board also approved trial memberships for Civil Air Patrol cadets, set aside funds for a hyperbaric-chamber altitude-physiology training session at Andrews AFB, and appointed a Chief Duty Officer to address recurring no-show problems. A full duty roster for the remainder of 1995 rounds out the issue.
This July 1995 issue of Skylines celebrates the June 10 Community Day at New Market Airport, where the club provided 25 glider rides to local residents and airboss Tom Osinkosky logged 179 flights. A newly appointed Secretary—stepping in after Ralph Wentzel's request for inactive status—welcomes members with an open invitation to contribute letters, opinions, and stories, and proudly announces the club's new World Wide Web home page, built by Piet "Hammy" Barber and Joe Parrish, featuring photos of Charlie Lee's plane and Emie Klimonda's famous "grey Poupon". The issue also highlights the club's growing connections to the broader soaring community via the Soaring Society network, with members from Shenandoah Valley Soaring, Blue Grass Soaring, and the Mid-Atlantic Soaring Association already active on the net, and a new member directory with e-mail addresses in the works
This August 1995 issue of Skylines opens with a dramatic first-person account from Spencer Annear, who describes an off-field glider landing near Lexington, Virginia, in which he bounced from hillock to hillock across a rolling hillside he had mistaken for flat ground, only to be rescued by a Super Cub that had to claw for altitude to clear a tree line on its own landing. The issue also reports that 16-year-old Curtis Phillips passed his private pilot (glider) examination at the Bermuda High Soaring School in Lancaster, South Carolina, and profiles member Jan Makela, a Searle Pharmaceuticals executive preparing for his FAA checkride after a year of flying with Skyline. Club members Jim Kellett and Shane Neitzey recount their attendance at the inaugural International Vintage Sailplane Meet at Harris Hill, New York, where roughly fifty vintage machines drew about 200 participants from a dozen countries, including a Shempp-Hirth Minimoa once owned by Wolf Hirth and designer Rudy Opitz himself. The newsletter closes with a reminder that the DuPont Regatta, commemorating a 1930s record flight from the Blue Ridge to Frederick, Maryland, will be held September 22–24 at Waynesboro Airport, alongside a pointed call for members to pitch in with field work and scheduling rather than waiting for a commercial operation.
This September 1995 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter is a lively snapshot of a small Virginia glider community at the dawn of the internet age. The star of the 'Meet the Member' feature is Piet (Hammy) Barber, a 23-year-old George Mason graduate who maintains the whois database for the U.S. military's classified SIPRNET network by day and is working toward an instructor rating in engineless flight by weekend. Fellow member Jonathan Kans, a genetics Ph.D. from the University of Chicago now at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, describes being 'hooked' on his very first tow and enjoying the ground time with clubmates as much as the flying. The issue also carries the editor's good-humored self-incrimination for dinging the right wing of the club's 2-33 glider on a hangar-door post, a plea for the anonymous culprit behind a major K-21 fuselage damage to 'fess up,' a correction to the 1995 DuPont Regatta dates at Eagle's Nest in Waynesboro, a Civil War reenactment at New Market Battlefield, and the unanimous Board vote welcoming Linda Raney as Skyline's newest honorary member.
The October 1995 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter leads with what it calls the "REALLY BIG NEWS": the early-September escape of Ed Raney, the ostensible owner of New Market Airport and a 1994 felony tax-fraud convict, and his armed confrontation at the field on September 8. According to the report, Raney approached the airport office with a knife after allegedly writing a death threat against his wife, Linda, who had been managing the airport in his absence. A flight instructor present in the building held the escaped prisoner at gunpoint until the New Market Police chief, who had been at the office warning Linda of the escape, took control of the situation. No one was injured. The issue also covers the Fall Membership Meeting held at the Falls Church Community Center, where the updated Duty Officer Checklist and a new "Do It Right!" training videotape were highlighted; a one-day FAA hyperbaric-chamber altitude training course available for $20; the FAA's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking #95-11, a sweeping rewrite of FAR Parts 1, 61, 141, and 143 that would establish separate powered and non-powered glider class ratings, with a comment deadline of December 11, 1995; and the upcoming Fall Fun Day soaring competition and pot-luck cookout on Saturday, October 14 (rain date October 21). Two "Meet the Member" profiles introduce Stephen Szibler, a multi-talented runner, musician, and aspiring astronaut, and veteran pilot Jim Kellett, who has logged roughly 1,100 glider hours since earning his license in 1966, holds a Gold badge with one diamond, and serves as Director of the Mt. Weather Emergency Assistance Center near Winchester, Virginia. A closing section, "Getting Wired…," lists the e-mail addresses of Skyline and neighboring-club members, a snapshot of the early days of the internet in the soaring community.
The November 1995 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter captures a club in rapid growth and reaching beyond its own fence. Members are rallying around a proposal for a proper long hangar with curtain walls at Valor Field, modeled on the M-ASA Frederick facility, while a broader inter-club movement takes shape along the Shenandoah Valley: the Shenandoah Valley Soaring Club has formed a working group, the Skyline Board has voted to waive guest security deposits for M-ASA and SVS members, and a suggestion has surfaced to create a multi-club "council" stretching from Tennessee to Pennsylvania, echoing the old Appalachian Soaring Association. Three new members join the roster, including Fred Daams, who brings a lovingly restored Romanian Lark to New Market and simultaneously lists his French-built Pegase (ASW-19) for sale. The "Meet the Member" section delivers two extraordinary biographies: Joe Parrish, an MIT aerospace engineer on NASA assignment at the University of Maryland developing a spacecraft-servicing telerobot, and Bela N. Gogos, a WWII Hungarian Air Force pilot who flew ME-109s and Stukas, was sentenced to twenty-five years by a Soviet military court, endured the Lubianka and a labor camp above the Arctic Circle, and went on to earn an FAI Diamond badge and five international patents. Shane Neitzey is congratulated on the club's first altitude diamond at New Market, and the calendar fills with a FAR Part 61 briefing, two CFI(G) clinics, the club's first all-hands planning meeting in January 1996, and the tantalizing prospect of hosting the 1996 DuPont Regatta for vintage sailplanes.
The December 1995 issue of the Skyline Soaring Club newsletter is a lively snapshot of a small Virginia glider club at a moment of growth and self-reflection. The club announces its first-ever all-members brainstorming session (January 6, 1996) to set direction on everything from tow-pilot scheduling to the future of the airport, followed by an annual membership meeting and officer elections. A packed 1996 calendar includes Tom Knauff's CFI clinic at Frederick, the Soaring Wave Camp at Petersburg, the SSA Convention in Huntsville, and the DuPont Regatta. The "Meet the Member" pages deliver two vivid biographies: Spencer Annear, who went from CAP cadet spotting B-36s and B-50s to Boeing 727 and Minuteman missile work, to law school, to the US Patent and Trademark Office, and finally to soaring instruction and club presidency; and Rob Shallenburger, a US Fish and Wildlife Service bureaucrat who rebuilt a Stinson L-5, flew it across the Hawaiian islands, and joined Skyline to finally make the jump from power to gliders. The issue also congratulates new member Matt Little on his solo in the club's 2-33 and his FAI "A" Badge, celebrates Curtis Phillips' feature in SOARING magazine, and reminds members that the club's website now posts the newsletter days before the hard copy arrives. A potluck Christmas Party at the home of Piet and Stacey Barber closes out the year.