Air Mail Division

The Air Mail Division seems to be getting quite a bit of activity from visiting pilots. Pilots remember to report your hours to your home division so that they are included in your total hours.

Alaska Division

Coleman Green is starting a leave of absence, which may last about 3 months. In the interim the duties of maintaining the roster and the web-site will be performed by Bill Von Sennet. He has already made some changes to the roster and news pages.

Welcome to new pilot Frantois Logeais bgak022!

Australian Division

Not much has been happening in the Australian Division over the past month except for an encouraging increase in the number of flight hours. It is good to see that things are starting to happen again and the threat of the division closure has been postponed as a result.

I am hoping to be able to present a special event again next year - to follow on from the Great Australian Air Race - perhaps with a "flying doctor" theme that visits some of the outback sheep and cattle stations. Most of these stations do not have the advantage of navigation aids and to find them requires pinpoint navigation accuracy. The flying doctor uses Pilatus aircraft but these could be replaced for this event by one that is not quite so modern.

For the uninitiated, some of our outback sheep and cattle stations are measured in hundreds of square miles and/or millions of acres and present quite a challenge to find their homestead airstrips.

Hint: Brush up on your navigation skills.

Cheers

Brian

Northern Division

A few new pilots have signed on, and congratulations go out to John Allison bgan024 who is in line for a promotion to Captain.

Welcome to new pilots Rob Neil bgan030 and Gianluca Gava bgan031.

Welcome back to John Kolmos who has rejoined the Northern Div as bgan029.

Southern Division

Not much happening here, except for “The Catalina Jaunt” which we are sponsoring.

From the General Manager

The feverish planning and last minute adjustments to the Catalina Jaunt are finally over and by the time this newsletter goes out the event will already be well underway. The Jaunt is the culmination of a lot of planning and effort by Bill Von Sennet, Rob Finn and a few other enthusiasts who have put their talents, time and effort into making what is proving to be a really enjoyable event.

These people deserve a lot of credit for a great job well done.

I have heard unsubstantiated rumours that a few people are working on the idea of reintroducing the Turbo Division which, if it is true, could be a very good thing BUT it will need YOUR support. The rumours don't go far enough for me to be able to spread some wild malicious gossip about what aircraft, flight plans etc., are being considered - but I'm working on it.

I would like to hear from anyone who has an idea of what we could plan for our next special event flight to be conducted probably around early December. Please think about this and send me a reasonably detailed description of what you would like to see as a special event.

Cheers

Brian

From the CEO

The FS2002 Hangar has a new addition. KLEX updated scenery by Coleman Green. The modern KLEX has been modified to represent the 1940’s Bluegrass Field at Lexington KY. There is a lake with “real” water for float plane operations adjoining.

The Catalina Jaunt is well underway. Most of the pilots are approaching Trinidad today. But its not too late to join in. The roster will be updated until Oct 31^st, 2002. The portion of the route from Miami to Trinidad has been a lot of fun. Short hops and a variety of airports and seabases. The weather seems a little rainy, but we are into hurricane season for the Caribbean. The last I checked we had 22 pilots registered.

One of the comments that pilots who responded to the survey made, was that our ranking system should be uniform in all divisions. Effective 10-01-2002 the Southern Div will change the hours required to become a Senior Captain to 500. All of the other divisions are encouraged to do likewise.

Don’t forget to check out the master roster to get an overview of the pilot activity. The August total was 652.97 hours.

Our web-site had 3,408 visits in August which is a record.

VATSIM is planning on re-creating the Berlin Airlift this autumm. The Berlin FIR (don’t ask me what that means) has been in contact with me concerning their use of the resources on our Berlin Airlift page. This event will be a challenge. I will keep you posted and put a link to their web-site on the bottom left of the main page when they are ready.

That’s all for this month, wheels up (unless your landing),

Bill