Group 2 Flight Clinic at CCR, OAK, PAO and RHV

By 1st Lt Karin Hollerbach, photos as noted.

This weekend, a number of Group 2 pilots participated in a flight clinic, with emphasis on refining everyone’s takeoff and landing skills.

The clinic started off with a ground school session. Since this was a Group 2 event, and we’re all scattered around the Bay Area, we avoided everyone having to travel to a single destination by having the ground school session online. In our virtual meeting, we reviewed common takeoff and landing problems, as well as factors causing them and ways to avoid and/or mitigate them – prevention always being the best option!  Maj Michelogiannakis led this discussion, which was a mandatory part of the clinic.

We were lucky with the weather – after forecasts earlier in the week showed likely precipitation during the day, we had benign VFR conditions and a very high overcast layer only, as well as minimal wind.  OK, maybe not ideal for those pilots specifically wanting to work on their cross-wind takeoff and landing techniques, but great for those of us focusing on other aspects.

Maj Michelogiannakis (L) and Capt Fenolio (R) after their sortie at KOAK.
(Credit unknown - a nice person at the airport.)

Most of the flights were conducted in our G1000 182s, and a couple of people flew the 206 at KRHV.

Capt Brown and I were both assigned to the 182 at Concord airport, KCCR, flying with Maj Ironfield.  We all had a good time and packed an awful lot of takeoffs and landings into 2 short sorties! Twelve landings and two go-arounds later, I know I met my training goals in my sortie.  Thanks to Maj Ironfield (and all the other instructors) for making himself available for this training!

All in all, we had 13 pilots participating in this clinic, flying four airplanes at four different airfields: 4 instructor pilots, 8 trainee pilots, and 1 incident commander (who had to remain on the ground to so that the rest of us could fly safely).

Maj DeFord – Incident Commander (Squadron 188)

Lt Hollerbach (L), Capt Brown (C) and Maj Ironfield (R) between
sorties at KCCR. Photo by Lt Col Tinnirello.

At KOAK

• Maj Michelogiannakis – Project Officer and Instructor (Squadron 188)
• Capt Fenolio – Trainee (Squadron 188)
• 1st Lt Kraus – Trainee (Squadron 188)

At KCCR

• Maj Ironfield – Instructor (Squadron 188)
• Capt Brown – Trainee (Squadron 188)
• 1st Lt Hollerbach – Trainee (Squadron 188)

At KPAO

• Capt Arasmith – Instructor (Squadron 10) 
• Capt Hartman – Trainee (Squadron 80) 
• 2d Lt De Bleecker – Trainee (Squadron 10) 

At KRHV

• Lt Col Sena – Instructor (Squadron 80)
• Maj McCutchen – Trainee (Squadron 10) 
• 1st Lt Gross – Trainee (Squadron 10)