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The City of Dallas, Department of Aviation, Airport Operations Group were the people responsible for our Dallas Love Field Tour. They did an outstanding job! Mr. Timothy Smith is the Assistant Director of the group. Below is the letter of appreciation we sent after the tour.

Mr. Smith,

On behalf of the Majors Flying Club, I would like to express our appreciation for the excellent “Behind the Scenes� tour of Dallas Love Field that Jim Cennamo and his team orchestrated for us on Friday, May 10th. It was a fascinating tour that was very well choreographed and executed. All of the components including the old control tower, the robotic baggage handling, the ride on the Corbus 3000, and the tour of maintenance facility were well received. Of course everyone wanted to spend the day in the tower watching planes come and go and we were all fascinated by the robotic baggage handling system. While those were certainly highlights of the tour, what was striking and unexpected was the passion that Kevin demonstrated on the tour of the maintenance area. His attitude seems to reflect the attitude of Jim’s team and I suspect the attitude of many of the folks who work for the City of Dallas at Dallas Love Field.

Many thanks to Jim, Alex, Natalie, Kevin, Mr. Brown (fireman) and Mr. George Woodard, the Corbus driver and Texas A&M Football Hall of Famer (we had several Aggies in the group). There was a fourth person on Jim’s team who name I failed to write down but we know he was on the Employee Advisory board and a member of the Arts team. The goody bags provided by Kathy were a nice touch as well.

I suspect the folks who missed the tour will be looking for their chance in the future. Thank you for setting up the tour. Jim did a great job with all the planning and communication prior to the tour as well as conducting the tour itself. It was a lot of fun!

Majors Flying Club

The 1st quarter Membership meeting was held on Thursday, January 31, 2019 in the Majors Flying Clubhouse.

Prior to the start of the meeting, the Regular members convened in the MFC hangar to conduct the Board of Director elections for 2019. The nomination and election process was conducted by regular member Mike Smith. With a quorum of regular members present the following nominees were presented: Dennis Mathis, Dennis Harwell, Dennis Guinn, BJ Finney, Mark Armstrong, and Denis Rottler. There were no nominations from the floor and the nomination process was closed. By a show of hands, the list of nominees was approved by the regular members present. There were no votes against the list of nominees.

The meeting was called to order by the past president and newly re-elected member to the board, Mr. Dennis Mathis at 1730. Mr. Mathis greeted the sixteen folks present and recognized our guest speaker, Lt. Col Choya Shanhan from the Texas 450th Sulphur Springs Composite Squadron, as well as Tim Smith and Bill Power who are also from the Sulphur Spring Civil Air Patrol.

Mr. Mathis recognized Tom Hubert for doing the leg work to provide Arby's sandwiches, chips, and cookies. Of course Mr. Gordon Hay received the normal accolades for providing a batch of his now locally famous brownies!

The treasurer, formally know as the treasurer and currently known as a Board of Director elect BJ Finney, presented the positive financial status of the club. Dennis Guinn, another returning board member, presented the status of the airplanes. The Cessna annual is finished with only the paperwork remaining. The Archer will start its annual process in March with the wheel fairings coming off before the start of the annual to expedite their refurbishment.

Mr. Mathis reported on the status of the new (2) outside LED security lights, an effort to look into building Bay 3, and the start of the 2019 Ground School class in February.

A Solo Flight certificate was given to Robert McEnaney by his instructor, Mr. Dennis Mathis to celebrate Robert's solo flight in the Cessna on November 5, 2018. Congratulations Robert!

With club business being finished, Mr. Mathis introduced our guest speaker, Lt. Col. Choya Shanhan. Choya is the squadron commander of the Sulphur Springs Civil Air Patrol and gave a very professional talk about the role of the CAP in support Search and Rescue operations, natural disaster photography missions, communications support, homeland security, and other support missions for local enforcement agencies. Of particular note is the squadron's involvement in the Cadet side of the program. This squadron very aggressively grooms and guides Cadets through the program with an emphasis on the flying aspect of the program. There are many opportunities to fly for the CAP and Lt. Col Shanhan encouraged all of the pilots of the MFC to contact her to find out additional information. One of our members turned in their paperwork at the meeting and one or two other members had several questions for Choya.

The meeting was adjourned at 1830.

The Majors Field General Aviation Manager, Mr. Ty Helton, started early in 2018 to test the waters for a possible Majors Field Breakfast Fly-In in November. After several meetings it was decided that there would be enough local financial support, support from the local general aviation community, and support from the community to make the event a success.

The Majors Flying Club was asked to handle the breakfast part of the event and in a moment of weakness, the club said yes. Based on the turnout for a similar but smaller event in 2016, the club began the planning to feed 500 people in two hours that Saturday morning. Thanks to an impressive turnout of twenty four (24) volunteers from the Majors Flying Club, the club was able to meet and exceed its goals that Saturday morning. The griddles were fired up at 0600, the food line was open at 0800, closed at 1000, and by 1130 the hangar, griddles, tables, chairs, and cooking utensils were all cleaned and put away. It was an impressive showing of folks all moving in the same direction from start to finish to make the event a success.

To wit:
• 664 people signed in and we are assuming they all went through the food lines
• At least 1250 pancakes from 55 lbs. of batter and 10 gallons of water
• Around 1200 strips of bacon or about 70 lbs.
• 504 sausage patties or around 52 lbs.
• 17 gallons of orange juice
• Around 240 bottles of water
• An unbelievable number of cups of coffee

The Fall 2018 Scout Aviation Workshop was held on Saturday, October 6, 2018 and by all of our normal measures of success, it was another very successful event!

The event hosted fifty (50) scouts this year of which forty-eight (48) scouts chose to fly. As seems to be the norm for these events, the morning started out cloudy and even a bit threatening but by the time we were finished with the pre-flight event, the skies cleared enough to launch! The preflight effort was conducted in a very timely manner thanks again to Mr. Dennis Mathis and the eleven (11) planes and seventeen (17) pilots he was able to round up for the event. Thanks to those plane owners and all of the folks who help the scouts with the pre-flight event.

Following the completion of the pre-flight event, the flying portion of the event got underway. Engine start for the first round was around 1030 and all the flight were completed by around 1315. Lunch followed in the IFI hangar as well as the always well received demonstration by the L-3 fire truck. Those spray nozzles are impressive!

As is always the case for this event, there is a ton of behind the scenes effort required to coordinate, organize, plan, and execute the event. There are too many to mention to single out by name but everyone pitches in where they can to make the event a success. Just ask the photographer for the day, and we only had one this time, just how many steps he put on his Fitbit!

The 3rd quarter 2018 Membership meeting was held on Thursday, October 4th in the Majors Flying Club hangar.

Prior to the start of the meeting, the Regular members who were present adjourned to the clubhouse to participate in a vote to accept Revision L of the By-Laws. The motion was passed unanimously by voice vote.

The meeting was called to order by the president, Mr. Dennis Mathis, at 1732. Mr. Mathis introduced the special guests including Harry Andonian, Casey Weese (son of the guest speaker), Ty Helton, General Aviation Manager, and the guest speaker, Chuck Weese.

Several of the members of the Board of Directors including B.J. Finney (Treasurer), Dennis Harwell (Secretary), and Dennis Guinn (Maintenance Officer) presented reports for their respective functions.

Gordon Hay received a nod for his chef duties and his world famous brownies. Karen Smith receive kudos for providing the tomatoes.

The upcoming Majors Field Breakfast Fly-In was discussed including the call for volunteers.

Mr. Mathis introduced the guest speaker, Mr. Chuck Weese who provided a very interesting talk about his aviation career. How bad can it be if your day job is flying a Challenger 601! At the conclusion of his talk, Chuck was presented with a personalized coffee mug as a toke of our appreciation.

The meeting was adjourned at 1912.

The minutes for the meeting can be found on the October 2018 (Board of Directors) section of the Board Meetings webpage.

After going through several registration iterations, changes in the available planes, and worrying about the weather patterns throughout the week, the morning of Friday, September 14th dawned bright and sunny with a favorable weather forecast for most of the day. Eight hearty souls milled around the club hanger munching on sausage kolaches and donuts while the pilots readied the airplanes. The Archer was loaded up with four bodies and the other three bodies were used as ballast in Clarke's 182T. The Archer filed an IFR flight plan and Clarke went VFR with traffic advisories. We were wheels off the ground around 0900 and flew for an uneventful hour and a few minutes before landing at KOUN.

Ozzie's Diner is in the building adjacent to and north the control tower. Parking spots are conveniently located just a few feet from the door of the building. Ozzie's is not a very large place and you can tell by the tables outside of the restaurant and in the lobby that they get a fair amount of business. We sat down in time for the breakfast menu but were a bit early for those folks wanting lunch. The breakfast offerings were all good looking and reportedly very tasty. You sure couldn't beat the prices! Note - they are cash only with an ATM in the FBO if you get in a pinch. We sat there and visited long enough that the lunch menu became available. The 40+ folks (the median age is probably a bit higher but we don't want to insult anyone) were plenty full with breakfast but the young one in the group had a space available for a bowl of chili and some cornbread from the lunch menu! Impressive.

We stopped by the Airport Manager's office to say hello and to put a name to a face. She was very nice and gave us some good tips during the planning stages regarding transportation options. She was kind enough to pass out luggage tags from her goody bag for everyone. We coordinated with Cruise Aviation in an attempt to secure the courtesy car for the afternoon but unfortunately the person before us had not returned it in time for us to take it at noon. We secured two Uber rides and headed down to the National Weather Center.

The tour started around 1300 with about thirty folks. Our tour guide is a meteorologist who is working for the NWC and graduated from OU. He had an excellent tour guide voice and was very knowledgeable about the products, services, and operations of the NWC. We looked around at some the vehicles in the fleet including a couple of converted ambulances, and radar platform, and phased array radar platform, and some vehicles outfitted with instrumentation packages. Two of the vans in the fleet were being rented and sustained hail damage on one of the trips. They own them because it was cheaper to buy them to pay for the damages. The next stop was the local forecast offices for the Norman area. The offices were fairly sparsely staffed since it was a calm weather day and since a lot of folks had been temporarily assigned to help with Hurricane Florence. Lots of good information about local forecast, NOAA Weather radio, watches and warnings. We stopped in the hall to look at the Mesonet weather reporting system used in Oklahoma. They have a linked system of reporting stations all across the state which reports the basics such as wind, temperature, humidity, etc. The last set of offices we toured was the Storm Prediction Center for the entire US. In all of the offices they have a ton of displays showing all kinds of weather conditions.

The last stop was back on the first floor at the six foot diameter projection globe. They use four projectors to display a variety of images on the the globe. With a bit of video trickery, they are able to make it appear as if the globe is rotating but in fact it is the image that is being moved across the surface of the globe. They were able to show us several displays such as air currents and infrared images of storms over the entire planet. The infrared image showed Hurricane Florence being born of the west coast of Africa and making its way across the Atlantic to the US.

Another round of Uber rides got us back to KOUN and after consulting with the weather briefer and filing an IFR plane for the Archer we headed back around 1545. There was some weather in the area but with some altitude, a few turns, and some good timing, both planes were able to steer clear of any issues and get back to KGVT in about 1.5 hours. Love or DFW stopped accepting arrivals for a bit and the ADS-B Out stackup of planes east of the metroplex was impressive!

It was a good trip. The club has never been on that tour and as usual, the camaraderie was half the fun. KOUN is a nice facility if you are not an Aggie or a Longhorn, you get your money's worth at Ozzie's, and the NWC tour was informative and interesting.

A dozen of us made the trek to the intersection of Texas 183 and Highway 360 to tour the Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC). The C.R. Smith museum, the American Airlines Flagship University cafeteria, and the FAA ARTCC building are all somewhat co-located in the area bounded by Texas 183 to the north and Highway 360 to the east. It makes it fairly convenient to hit all three places as part of the tour.

Several of us visited the revamped C.R. Smith museum prior to lunch and the tour. One of the newest additions is a six foot diameter globe in the entry area. Apparently they are able to project a bunch of stuff on the globe but as they said, "we are still learning how to use the system". The morning of the tour they had it set up to show all of the AA flights and the OneWorld partner flights in the air all around the world! It was pretty cool. At the base of the globe they had interactive displays that would allow you to select airports all over the world and watch the air traffic in the those areas much like a FlightAware display. The museum added a few more kid friendly exhibits the kids could crawl around on and touch including the cockpit of an MD80. The good news is that is one less of those tin cans in service! The interactive "what if" scenarios in the middle of the museum were interesting although they definitely were spun to help AA soften the blow of flight delays due to weather.

After hanging out in a very well air conditioned museum for a bit, we strolled across the street to the AA Flagship University cafeteria. In the past, they had a wider variety of selections but on this day, it was a nice salad bar, a grill for sandwiches, and some dessert offerings. No lines, pretty fair food, and very reasonable prices. We were able to grab a long table and all sit together and tell lies. It is a very comfortable and convenient place to eat lunch and hang out between the museum and the FAA building.

Our tour was scheduled for 1 p.m. so we made our way down the street to the FAA Security office in time for them to scan us and our belongings and issue badges. Bryan Roberts met us a the guard shack and escorted us to the conference room. The presentation was similar to past presentations and outlined the varies sectors, boundaries as well as the six operational areas within ZFW. Those six operational areas are divided into thirty-five sectors comprise of sixteen low altitude sections (SFC-FL230) and nineteen high altitude sectors (>FL240). Majors Field is in the Quitman Sector and for us general aviation folks, specifically the Quitman Low, Sector 83 area. Bryan Roberts is a controller for the Quitman Low, Sector 83 area which made it a particularly interesting presentation. After the presentation and some questions and answers along the way, we all moved up the "floor". We were split among the various controllers and got to plug in and chat with a controller while they worked. Some of us even got to sit with the Quitman Low controller. Pretty cool. We moved over to the weather center and spent a few minutes with the on duty meteorologist. They have quite a nice set of displays at their finger tips and all kinds of weather data available to make their forecasts. It was interesting to see the NOAA Aviation Weather website being used by the meteorologist. Bryan took us back to the conference room for a question and answer period to end the tour. We had prepared a pretty good list of questions which he answered one by one as well as questions from the floor. The program is very focused on encouraging VFR pilots to take advantage of traffic advisories for both the benefit of the VFR pilot, other pilots, and the controllers.

It is a very enlightening program and one that every pilot should attend. The program really helps to demystify the intimidating ATC world!