This Saturday, June 17, is the scheduled time for the monthly meeting of EAA Chapter 691. We plan to meet in Los Alamos, KLAM, beginning around 9:00 for people wishing to fly in or out of the airport. People who plan to go flying or who are interested in taking a ride, are requested to contact John George or Will Fox who will help coordinate. At 10:00 we plan to work on chapter projects, including cleanup and organization of the hangar used by the chapter, and construction of more project kits that have been depleted by recent STEM outreach programs. At 11.00 we will fire up the grill at the Western hangar to grill Hamburgers and Brats for all participants.
In our published schedule, our plan for this meeting has been to flyout to Reserve, an interesting destination in SW New Mexico, at the northern end of the Gila, west of TorC and Socorro. It also is very close to Negrito, a notable backcountry strip.
When we developed our schedule at the beginning of the year, we planned flyouts in late May and June, since these are generally prime time for flying, after the spring winds have subsided and before the Monsoon Season starts. Last month we were in the midst of an “early monsoon season”, with daily thunderstorms that postponed our planned flyout to Navajo Lake. This week we have seen a return of high winds around noon, a spring-like pattern projected to intensify over the next few days. Based on this forecast, the relatively long flight times to Reserve, and the presence of a TFR for fires along the route, the Board has decided to postpone the Reserve flyout.
We hope to reschedule this trip as well as the Navajo Lake flyout to later in the summer or fall. Given the increasing unpredictability of weather patterns we will need to be flexible in order to stay safe.