Soaring News - March 2025 Update

A Note From Club President Bob Kuehne

Happy New Year Aviation Enthusiasts. I am so ready for the upcoming Soaring Season! Our aircraft are currently in heated hangers going through annual inspections and should be ready to fly very soon. Additionally, your club Board of Directors and committee members are hard at work investigating ways to make the season a great success, with refinement and growth across marketing, membership, training, and connections with other communities.  Finally, we should have some great new ways to track flights both daily, and for you to review personally and for the club across the season, all online. 

Our annual mandatory safety meeting and general club meeting is scheduled for March 29th. Please join is in-person (though we will extend a Zoom invite to those who can’t make it) as we lots to cover, and as usual, some really important experiential learning from last season to build upon. Until then, stay warm, and remember that sunshine, thermals, and partly cloudy skies are coming soon! 

Introduction - Tow Pilot / Marketing Committee Chair Rob Johnston

Hello Adrian Soaring Club, guests, and soaring enthusiasts. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rob Johnston and I joined the club mid-summer 2024 as a Tow Pilot. I've been a life long aviation enthusiast. My love for flying started as a young boy attending air shows throughout the midwest with my father. I've been flying since I was a Junior at Indiana State University. I have been participating in various forms of Sport Aviation, flying clubs, and Experimental Aircraft Association Chapters for many years. I hold an airplane single engine land certificate and I am instrument and commercial rated - I've also built and flown many RC Airplanes! I have thoroughly enjoyed flying the club's Pawnee towing gliders and the associated "hanger talk" that comes with it is always entertaining. I look forward to more towing/hanger flying this season with Adrian Soaring Club. See you at the airport soon.

New Committee - Marketing

We are excited to announce the formation of a new Club Committee - Marketing. Rob Johnston and Jeremy Bonnough are working together with the Board of Directors to overhaul our marketing, guest engagement, and community outreach. They will be working on some "basics" to begin with like communications with club members, updating the website/newsletter, developing engaging content for our social media sites, and putting some basic processes in place to engage with guests, the community, and potential new members through some basic marketing actions. Look for more on this exciting effort in the near future. If you have any suggestions, send Rob an email at rjohnst3@gmail.com

Social Media – We Need Your Content! 

Jeremy Bonnough has done a great job updating our social media pages (facebook, Instagram, etc.)!  We plan to leverage these platforms to drive awareness to the club.  In order to be successful, we need visually appealing, high quality images, videos, and graphics.  We are going to ask everyone to take more photos and videos this year (when appropriate, and with safety in mind) and share them with Jeremy and Rob so they can keep the content on our social media pages fresh!  Not a pro-photographer?  No worries, take a bunch and we will edit accordingly! 

Want to take better photos and videos with your phone?  Here are some simple tips to take video and photos from your phone like a pro: 

• Clean your lens!  Simple, but everyone forgets! 

• Shoot at different angles, high, low, close, far 

• Social Media platforms like videos made in portrait format so hold your phone vertical 

• Know your phones camera settings – there are many!  Go to YouTube and search “how to film better videos with my phone” - here is one for the Apple I-Phone!  https://youtu.be/ZoVL1FbaSys?si=pJovllLvxt7kq7Sq 

• Rule of Thirds – Turn on the grid feature in your phone camera settings and use to guide your image placement 

• Place the most important elements of the photo at the intersection of the lines 

• Leave the other two thirds of the image open to create negative Space! 

Hanger Work Day Sunday, March 16th at the ASC Hanger 10:00AM - Finish

Please join us on Sunday March 16th at the ASC Hanger for a work day. We plan to complete the annual inspections for the Grob 103, the K-7 and the Standard Cirrus. We will need assistance moving the gliders, handling the wings, etc. This will be a great opportunity to meet our A&PI Evan Dyer who will be supervising with members assisting as appropriate.

Club Member Safety Meeting - March 29th, 10:00AM - 2:00PM at the Lenawee County Airport FBO Conference Room

The clubs annual safety meeting will be on Saturday March 29th from 10:00AM - 2:00PM at the Lenawee County Airport FBO Conference Room. The first portion of the meeting will be dedicated to club business followed by our annual safety briefing. We will use the remaining time to do some hanger clean up. There is no flying planned for this particular day (there is a slight chance instructors may do their currency flights).