Three members pass their check-rides this weekend

The Greater Houston Soaring Association is proud to announce we had three pilots pass their check-rides this weekend. Brad Hansen, Bill Cooke, and David Buttram will now have their Private Pilot - Glider certificate. Thanks to Gregg Squires, the Designated Pilot Examiner who flew in from San Antonio. Also a big thanks to our GHSA instructors, especially Mike Brooks, Michael Hunter and Lou Landucci who helped get these guys ready. We also need to mention and thank those volunteers who made this weekend's flight operations possible.

Photos from the Memorial Day Soaring Event

We hosted a soaring event over Memorial Day weekend, 2019. We had a great time with pilots from all over Texas.

Many of these photos are by Osvaldo Bins Ely.

GHSA now has a Mach 0.1/Condor 2 soaring simulator!

We now have a soaring simulator! Come check it out!

Jason Bridger, Todd Hahn, Alex Hahn and Michael Hunter put the Mach 0.1 soaring cockpit together on Friday night. Todd and Alex had previously built the computer and setup the Condor 2 soaring software. Because of the on-and-off weather on Saturday, some of our students used the simulator already! This will be a great addition to our set of instructional tools.

Check out the photos below:

Annual Banquet

We had 28 people at our annual banquet last night. Everyone attending had a good time. Lou almost burned the place down with his 12 pound brie.

Here are the awards:

Total Glider Flights (non-intro, non-instructional): Dak Davis - 130 flights

Total Glider Flight Hours (non-intro, non-instructional): Dak Davis - 68:39

Average of Longest Five Flights (From GHSA, non-contest): Steve Nichols: 4:05

Tow Pilot of the Year: Adam Harris, 111 tows

Intro Pilot of the Year: Dak Davis, 45 flights

Iron Man of the Year: Uwe Prigge 103 flights (73 instruction, 2 intro, 33 tows)

Flight Safety Crew Person of the Year: Jason Bridger, 117.3 hours

Dispatcher of the Year: Beth Aslaksen: 118.8 hours

Maintenance Crew Person of the Year: Travis LaGrone, 136.6 hours

Volunteer of the Year (total volunteer hours, exclusive of board time): Craig Shoemaker, 336 hours

Thank you to ALL of our volunteers. You make this organization possible!

Click on the right side of the photo to scroll through the photos.

Instructor Refresher Course Hosted at GHSA

This past weekend, we hosted a two-day Flight Instructor Refresher Course (FIRC) that instructors must take every two years at our aviation center. Thanks to Rich Carlson, Tom Johnson, Russ Howard, and the Soaring Safety Foundation who put on the class and to Jamie Shore of SCOH for organizing. We had instructors and non-instructors from GHSA and from several other glider clubs attending. Lots of good discussion and learning!

We also had operations this weekend, and had 16 flights, including two introductory flights.

Work Day at the Field - Thanks for all the help!

Wow, another great day, even though the field was too wet to fly (sound familiar? argh!)

We had a work day today at the airfield. By my count, at least 24 people were here helping out, including a few new members who jumped right in. We pressure washed the deck and the hangar doors, cleaned out the hangar, worked on hangar door maintenance, painted door number lines, replaced light fixtures in the AV center, repaired the pump house, washed windows, and worked on lots of other miscellaneous fixes and improvements.

Gary and Uwe cooked breakfast and lunch for the hungry volunteers.

Thanks to everyone who came out today! It was great! And thanks much to Jason and Ken who organized the effort and did a lot of planning and prep work to make this a successful event.

Thanks to Uwe for the photos.