Well, it’s  been a rough couple weeks in our aviation community.

In Ft Morgan, August 31, the IAC was having an aerobatic competition formally known as High Plains Hotpoxia, and changed the name to Kyle Scott Aerobatic Dustup, to honor Kyle, who was the Operations manager at the Ft Morgan airport who died in an accident a year ago spraying fields. During the competition, Kristen Morris was landing her Extra E300 and had a midair collision with a 172 landing at the same time.  Kristen had a passenger that survived and both people in the 172 survived. If you’ve seen pictures of the accident, it’s amazing that anyone survived. Kristen was formally a C-130 pilot with the Air Force, and was currently a first officer for SkyWest airlines.

On Friday morning, September 5, a Beech 35, crashed at Centennial after takeoff and both occupants were killed. As of this writing, there has been very little information about the crash or occupants.

My message, or reminder, is to Be Aware, Be Patient, and Be Safe. Vance Brand Airport is very busy and has a lot of student training. Have good situational awareness of other aircraft in the pattern, and make sure your position calls are clear. With all the student traffic, be patient. They are trying to figure it out and put it all together. And Be Safe… so what if you have to do a 360 for spacing to get in the pattern, or a go around. That just allows you to get to fly longer. Bad things can happen to anybody, and it will happen fast. Be Aware, Be Patient, and Be Safe.

This Saturday, September 13, my hangar, H15-44, meet and greet at 9:45 and program at 10:00, followed by a light lunch. This months program will be presented by Ben Bernstein. He is an aviation meteorologist. Graduated from CSU 1990, worked at NCAR for 18 years focusing on aircraft icing and leading the development of the operational products that are shown on NOAA’s aviationweather.gov site. In 2002, he started “Leading Edge Atmospherics” to support aircraft manufactures with flight testing and certification for in-flight icing. He’ll present and discuss this work and some interesting experiences he’s had along the way.

After our gathering, LOPA will be hosting a Q & A session for Matthew Popkin, who is running for City Council, and Sarah Levison, who is running for mayor. The information forum will be held at Rick Baselier’s hangar from Noon to 1:00pm.  Ricks hangar is directly west of my hangar, 14G.