The Tri-Valley Flying Club is a nonprofit club of 38 pilots who share three airplanes at a county airport on the inland side of the East Bay hills. We own the airplanes outright, the members run everything, and nobody makes a profit. The point is simple: flying a well-maintained airplane for a lot less than renting one, with people who care as much as you do about doing it right.

I'm Gerald Chau, the club's safety officer. By day I design hardware for a company in Silicon Valley. I got my private certificate in 1988 and my instrument rating in 1995, I have about 850 hours, and nearly all of them are in these three airplanes. I volunteered to keep this page because our old page was a scanned copy of the bylaws, and because I believe that if the information is easy to find, people follow the rules. Corrections are welcome. I'd rather be right than consistent.

"Wet" means fuel and oil are included. Rates are charged by Hobbs meter time.

Joining the Club

The initiation fee goes into the engine reserve, so every new member helps pay for the next overhaul. Student pilots are welcome; three of our members are working on their private certificates now, and our instructors are members too. Membership is capped at 40 so the airplanes stay available, and as of this week there are two openings. Come out to a safety meeting and meet us first. We'd like to meet you before you trust us with your weekends.

How Scheduling Works

• Reservations go in the schedule book in the club office at the airport, or by calling our scheduling voice mail. Mitzi Green, our scheduler, posts the week's schedule on the members' bulletin board and e-mails it to everyone on Sunday nights.
• Book up to 30 days ahead. No more than two weekend reservations on the books at a time.
• Daytime weekend reservations are limited to four hours unless you're going overnight.
• Overnight trips have a minimum charge of two Hobbs hours per day on weekdays and three on weekends. Talk to Mitzi before you book anything longer than three days.
• Cancel at least 24 hours ahead when you can. If you're more than 30 minutes late with no word, the airplane is released to whoever's waiting.
• Bring it back on time. If weather keeps you away, call. Nobody will ever be criticized for staying on the ground, but the next member needs to know.

Checkout and Currency Rules

These are the club's rules, which in several places are stricter than the FAA's. Where the FAA rule is the one that matters, I've said so.

Maintenance

Lionel Coker, our maintenance officer, is an A&P mechanic, and he works with a maintenance shop on the field. Every airplane gets its required annual inspection, and our bylaws also require a 100-hour inspection, the way a flight school airplane would get one, because ours fly 250 to 300 hours a year and we'd rather find things early. A few dollars of every Hobbs hour go into an engine reserve so the money for an overhaul is in the bank before the engine needs it.

The squawk sheet. Each airplane has a clipboard in the seat pocket. If anything is wrong, or even odd, write it down before you leave the airport: what, when, and what you were doing. Lionel reads every one. If it's something that makes the airplane unsafe, write it up, put the red DO NOT FLY tag on the yoke, and call Lionel or any officer. You will never be blamed for grounding an airplane. You will be very unpopular for not writing something up.

Fly-Outs

Once a month we pick a destination and fill all three airplanes, with members who need time sharing the flying with members who'd rather look out the window. Usually it's the classic "$100 hamburger": a lunch at an airport in the Sierra foothills, three hours away by car and about one by air. Upcoming:

Club Officers, 1999

Merlin flew for an airline for twenty-nine years and has been teaching in our airplanes since he retired in 1994. He has a gift for making you feel like the mistake you just made was a perfectly normal thing for a good pilot to do, right before he makes you do it again until you stop making it.