KSGF News
January 2005

President’s Message

Greetings pilots and friends! I'm sure many of you receive one or more of the available aviation newsletters by e-mail or the Internet. I receive two versions from Avweb as well as all the stuff from AOPA. And I was thankful when AOPA kept me up-to-date on all the TFRs during the campaign. Probably like me, you skim over some of them pretty quickly. But it finally sunk in-I think it was this headline:

"TSA's JANUARY DEADLINE FOCUSES ON ACTIVE CFIs," from the January 14 issue of AOPA's "ePilot." The article continues:

In response to questions posed by AOPA, TSA officials said Thursday that they want to focus on compliance, not enforcement, as a January 18 deadline approaches for flight instructors to receive security awareness training. According to TSA, flight instructors who are currently providing any type of training to any type of student must complete the security awareness course by Tuesday's deadline.

I assure you, I think faster in the cockpit. I'm going, "Hmm, January deadline . . . Tuesday's deadline … wow, that's right now! It finally sunk in that if I wanted to keep instructing, I better take this training. So I went to my office, which was a good thing. There are twenty scenarios you are quizzed on in the training, and each one loads its images and audio separately. It took me almost an hour to finish it with a high-speed connection. It would have taken all day on the dial-up at home.

Some of it seemed a little silly, but actually I was impressed. It was generally quite sensible. Since I'm in the business of analyzing how words are used to communicate information, I'm always reading between the lines and trying to figure out "sub-texts", that is, what the deeper messages might be, especially from government and advertising/marketing sources. I was surprised at some of the answers. Sometimes, they seemed to take a scenario more seriously than I would, but also often the other way around. It was actually quite thought provoking and awareness raising, which I suppose is the whole point.

Anyway, after that training, I realize pilots and passengers should know some of this, obviously to know what to look for regarding security risks, but also if for no other reason than to avoid innocent behaviors which might unintentionally arouse suspicions. Therefore, I will explain a few points that might be of value to you at this month's meeting. Also, we must all now prove our citizenship to begin training for an additional rating.

You also need to know that while incidents of lasers being shined into cockpits are a new hazard, the authorities are planning to deliberately use lasers as a last warning if you bust the TFR around Washington, D. C.!

So, bring a friend and enjoy our program. It's a whole new world out there. See you Tuesday!

Earl Holmer