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Published: 16 January 2024

Happy New Year! I know that each year has its own personality, so to speak, and 2023 was no exception. While 2023 certainly had its challenges, I’m looking forward to building on some of the positives in 2024. As far as APA goes, we ended the year with a solid base of volunteers committed to continuing our important work of maintaining and improving our backcountry airstrips

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Published: 15 January 2024

    I hope all of you had a Very Merry Christmas and look forward to having a prosperous New Year. This report was written at the very end of December, and looking over the past year it has been an interesting time. Looking at it from my point-of-view, I don’t remember anything happening from an aviation standpoint that was really earth shaking. This past year I’ve

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Published: 16 December 2023

Greetings, It’s hard to believe that 2023 is coming to a close and the new year will be here before we know it. The winter flying weather has been stellar lately, and let’s hope it continues for the foreseeable future. Before we finish out this year, the APA team will be busy again this month closing out the 2023 Scholarship cycle. We had another good turnout this year with

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Published: 15 December 2023

    Lately, Saturday mornings have been great for flying out for the weekend breakfasts, except for one Saturday when the weather was a bit questionable, and a number opted to go to the local IHOP instead of flying. The flying conditions are just what we have been waiting for during the past long, hot summer. So now let’s get out there and go flying! I’m sure you

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Published: 16 November 2023

Greetings, I know many of you are probably as surprised as I am at the number of pilot deviations that Jim Timm summarizes in his monthly Executive Directors Report. They can cover the whole range of deviations from failure to follow ATC instructions, to runway and airspace incursions to TFR violations. While I’m sure they represent a relatively small percentage of the total

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Published: 15 November 2023

    With the hot weather behind us, the mornings have been great, and the aircraft performance has greatly improved, and I suspect the pilot performance has also improved to a certain degree. At least I hope so. With this changing season, and the shorter days, those of us that can’t, or don’t want to fly in the dark, it means a later takeoff time in the

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Published: 16 October 2023

Greetings, After a long and unusually hot summer, it looks like cooler temperatures and better flying weather have finally arrived. We held our first fly-in of the season at Pleasant Valley (24AZ) at the end of September. Although it was a bit windy, we had a great turnout, and it was good to see the airstrip being used again for a fly-in. The new windsock that Tommy Thomason

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Published: 15 October 2023

    Well, it appears that we might be finally getting into the fall weather, and the 110 plus days are behind us. Flying out for breakfast on Saturday morning the temps are getting good until about noon, and the flying has been great. This is what we have been waiting for, for a long time. It seems that as the season for flying is slowly waking up from its summer

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Published: 16 September 2023

Greetings, Although it’s still hot here in Arizona, we’re starting to see some faint signs of the coming fall flying season with marginally cooler temperatures and a little rain. As you may have read in last month’s newsletter and perhaps on our Facebook page, APA is gearing up for the fall season starting with a Backcountry fly-in at Pleasant Valley (24AZ) at the end of

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Published: 14 September 2023

    I thought we were supposed to be on the downside of summer, with the super-hot days in the rear view mirror, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at all! As I’m writing this for the September APA newsletter, the temp. outside is 117°. These are near peak summer temperatures. Even if you get up extra early to beat the heat it doesn’t work because by the time you