[Pilots] End of the fiscal year approaches!

[Greg Bestul]

Hello MN Wing Pilots,

The end of the fiscal year is upon us! All funded missions (except A9 maintenance) will be ending this Friday the 26th at 7:00pm local time. If you are flying a funded mission you need to be on the ground by this time and promptly debrief you sortie, so that all the flights can be reconciled.
For B and C missions, these close on Tuesday Sept 30th at 7:00 local time. Just like the funded missions if you are flying one of these missions you will need to be on the ground by this time and promptly debrief you sortie.
When the new missions start showing up and are green, make sure when you enter your sorties they are on a MN mission. At the beginning of each fiscal year we have a lot of pilots that enter sorties on NCR missions, so be careful when choosing your mission.
We are into the midst of our fall plane washing season. I have heard form 21D, STC, MIC HCD, and LVN about them getting their planes washed. For the other squadrons, take advantage of the nice September weather and get your plane washed! Let me know when you have completed washing your plane so I can get it recorded.
Capt. Greg Erickson will be taking care of flight time management from now on, so for those that are responsible for sending in the end of the month flight logs please email them to Capt. Erickson at gerick001 at comcast.net<mailto:gerick001 at comcast.net> and myself at gbestul at mncap.org<mailto:gbestul at mncap.org>
A couple of items related to flight time management. Make sure your entries are accurate in WMIRS and on the flight log sheets. Make sure to close out your sorties in a timely manner, many times pilots figure on debriefing a sortie later and it gets forgotten and never gets closed out. Finally, if you are swapping planes at the SGS wing hangar, please put any log sheets into the flight log box located on the desk at the back of the hangar.
We have had a couple of ground handling incidents in the last couple of weeks that I will bring to your attention. One happened at the SGS wing hangar. As a G1000 C172 was being moved into the hangar, the plane was stopped outside the hangar to assess its position. When stopped the main tires were in a crack in the pavement. When the tug was started again the resistance of the main wheels in the crack caused the nose tire to come out of the “box” on the tug and the tail contacted the ground. Luckily only a minor scratch happened. We learned a few things from this incident. The ramp outside our hangar is not good. We will be working with the airport to try and get this resolved. Secondly, there is not any “hold down” mechanism on the aircraft tug, so the nose tire can move up and down. We are contacting the tug manufacturer to see about such a device. Our G1000 C172’s are tail heavy which makes the nose light to start with and any bumps or cracks can cause problems.
The second incident involved a C172 being towed across the airport. The FBO was towing the plane and due to an unclear chain of events, the end result was substantial damage to our plane. We are working with NHQ, maintenance, and the FBO to determine what course of action will be taken.
I’m looking forward to seeing what our final flying numbers for this fiscal year are. It looks to be another record breaking one for flight hours, and cadet orientation flights.
There is still some funded flying left, so take your last proficiency flight, form 5/91 or orientation flight soon!

Take Care, Fly Safe,
Capt. Greg Bestul
Minnesota Wing Director of Operations
Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Air Force Auxiliary
612-251-4786
GoCivilAirPatrol.com<https://www.gocivilairpatrol.com/>
MNCAP.org<https://www.mncap.org/>
[cid:2ee00d2b-7aa5-4201-8fec-7836c59184cb]


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