Our safety meetings are the second Wednesday of every month at 7:30 p.m. in the club office at the airport. They run about an hour, there's coffee and usually cookies from Ellen, and members are asked to come to at least four a year. Here is what we talked about this past year, with the main points for anyone who missed one. These are notes from a club meeting, not a substitute for instruction or for your handbook.

October 14, 1998: Carburetor ice
All three of our airplanes have carbureted engines, and the Bay Area's humid air makes carb ice a year-round possibility, not a winter one. It's most likely with high humidity at temperatures well above freezing, and at reduced power, as on a long descent. First sign is usually a slow drop in RPM. Apply full carb heat and leave it on; the engine may run rougher for a moment as the ice melts before it gets better. Use carb heat before reducing power for descent.

November 11, 1998: Winter weather
None of our airplanes is approved for flight into known icing, so the freezing level is the most important number in a winter briefing. Pacific storms bring low freezing levels over the Sierra; in the Central Valley, winter means tule fog, which can sit on the ground for days. Get a full briefing and have a plan to turn around.

December 9, 1998: Bay Area airspace
A refresher on the San Francisco Class B and the Class C areas at Oakland and San Jose. You need a clearance to enter the Class B, and "radar contact" is not a clearance. We went over the VFR corridors and practice areas, and the value of flight following on every cross-country.

January 13, 1999: Weight and balance
We weighed volunteers (bravely) and ran the numbers for a typical family trip. Full fuel, four adults and weekend bags put either 172 well over gross weight, and the center of gravity moved aft as the bags went in. An overloaded airplane climbs poorly, stalls at a higher speed and is harder to recover. Off-load fuel or a passenger. Do the math every time.

February 10, 1999: Engine failure after takeoff
Merlin's annual lecture on the "impossible turn." If the engine quits at low altitude after takeoff, land more or less straight ahead, picking the best spot within about 30 degrees either side of the nose. Trying to turn back to the runway from too low has killed a lot of pilots. Decide before every takeoff, out loud, at what altitude a turnback would even be considered, and in which airplane, and stick to it.

March 10, 1999: Fuel management
Running out of fuel, or running a tank dry with fuel in the other, is one of the most common causes of engine failures, and it's entirely preventable. Dip the tanks every flight; never trust the gauges. Know your burn rate and keep a clock running. The FAA's VFR reserve is 30 minutes in the day and 45 at night; the club asks you to land with at least an hour. In the Archer, switch tanks on the hour and write it down.

April 14, 1999: Spring winds
Crosswind technique, gusts, and the mechanical turbulence over and downwind of the hills when the afternoon westerlies come through the passes. Know each airplane's demonstrated crosswind component and your own personal limit, which is probably lower. Add half the gust factor to your approach speed.

May 12, 1999: Mountain flying basics
For the summer trips over the Sierra: cross ridges and passes with plenty of altitude to spare, approach them at an angle so you can turn away toward lower ground, expect downdrafts on the downwind side, and go early in the morning before the air gets hot and rough. If you've never flown in the mountains, take an instructor the first time.

June 9, 1999: Density altitude in the Sierra
The meeting I wish everyone had attended before the Tahoe season. Density altitude is the altitude the airplane thinks it's at, and on hot days it's far higher than the field elevation. A handy rule of thumb: add about 120 feet for every degree Celsius above standard temperature. South Lake Tahoe sits at about 6,300 feet; on a 90-degree afternoon the density altitude there is close to 10,000 feet. At that altitude a 172 with two people aboard climbs poorly, the takeoff roll gets much longer, and the trees at the end of the runway don't move. Go early in the morning, travel light, lean the mixture for best power before takeoff, and run the performance charts honestly. If the numbers are marginal, wait for evening or don't go.

July 14, 1999: The summer marine layer
Every summer, as the Central Valley heats up, cool air from the ocean gets pulled inland, and with it the low stratus of the marine layer. It pours in through the Golden Gate and the gaps in the coast hills in the evening and overnight, and often doesn't burn off the Bay shore airports until late morning. Our field, on the inland side of the hills, is usually clear when the Bay is covered, and that's the trap: it's easy to take off into blue sky and find your destination, or your way home, under a solid deck. Check the weather at your destination and alternate, not just out the window, and don't count on finding a hole.

August 11, 1999: Spatial disorientation and night haze
On the night of July 16, a Piper Saratoga went into the ocean off Martha's Vineyard. As of this writing the NTSB has released only a preliminary report and has not determined a cause, and we are not going to guess at one or second-guess anyone. But the conditions that night, darkness over open water with haze, are the conditions every pilot should understand, so we spent the meeting on them.

Over water at night in haze, the horizon can disappear entirely, and there are no ground lights to replace it. Your inner ear can't tell a slow, steady turn from straight and level flight, and after a while in a gentle bank it will tell you, convincingly, that you're level. If the nose drops and the airspeed builds, the instinct is to pull back, which only tightens the turn. That is the graveyard spiral. A well-known study from the 1950s found that pilots without instrument training who flew into instrument conditions lost control in about three minutes on average.

What we took away: on dark nights over water, mountains or empty country, you are flying on instruments whether or not you're on an instrument flight plan, so be current and be honest about it. Get instrument instruction even if you never plan to fly in clouds. Know the forecast visibility and decide beforehand what you'll do if the horizon goes away. And in our part of the world, a summer night over the Central Valley with smoke and haze, heading toward the dark foothills, can look exactly like that night. In the weeks after, Merlin took eleven members up for an hour of unusual-attitude recovery under the hood. Everyone who went said it was the best hour they'd flown this year.

September 8, 1999: Fatigue and get-home-itis
The IMSAFE checklist before every flight: illness, medication, stress, alcohol, fatigue, emotion. Eight hours from bottle to throttle is the legal minimum, not a recommendation. The hardest decision in flying is to stay put on Sunday afternoon when you need to be at work Monday morning. Always have a plan B (a motel, a rental car, a train ticket, an understanding boss), and remember the club's rule: nobody is ever criticized for not bringing an airplane back on time because of weather.

Ideas for future meetings are always welcome. So are speakers. If you've had a scare and you're willing to talk about it, you'll do more for safety in this club in an hour than I can in a year of meetings.

Gerald Chau, Safety Officer