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May 22, 2002

Fred Glasbergen, President
Walter Klatt, Vice-President
Sandra Clark, Treasurer
Daryl Hegyi, Secretary

Mail to: Pacific Ultralight Flying Association
102-16071 82 Avenue
Surrey, B.C. V3S 2L6

PUFA Newsletter published by Glenn Ursel

From The President
by Fred Glasbergen

As noted in last month’s PUFA Newsletter, I attended a meeting held at Transport Canada’s offices in Ottawa on April 24th to discuss the  new written examination for the Pilot Permit - Ultralight Aeroplane.

Arlo Speer and Kareen Tarr from Recreational Aviation and Special Flight Operations and Hank Hemming and Rejean Mayer from Flight Crew Examinations represented Transport Canada.

There were five industry representatives including Adam Hunt from COPA, Scott Cornwall, ultralight flight school operator, Cathy Tinney, trike instructor, Kathy Lubitz, UPAC President and myself, ultralight flight school operator and President of PUFA.

The exam will consist of 80 questions in four sections including 24 on air law, 16 on meteorology, 16 on navigation and 24 on general knowledge.  The student must get 60% right of the entire 80 questions and therefore does not have to pass all sections.

The group also reviewed the new Study and Reference Guide that will be used by students to prepare for the written exam that will now apply to all student pilots, not just those wishing to carry passengers.

Editorial Note
by Glenn Ursel

As I write this, there has been another snowfall in southern Alberta!  What strange weather!  Bit dicey for long distance flying at the moment, eh?  Not too bad locally here in Lotus land, although between frequent rain spells and my working in Alberta this winter, I haven’t done much flying.  Maybe that will change as summer approaches.

As us retired guys often do, I was recently visiting our local ultralight shrine (the Airflow office), having coffee (now charged for) and chatting with Fred and one of his ultralight instructors, Erin Aron.  As Fred periodically does, he gave me one of his sales pep talks to go up for a half hour dual instruction flight.  Contrary to my usual reticence based on economic criteria; i.e. lack of money, I acquiesced this time since he said I would go up in his new Rans S-12 Airaile that was recently approved in the amateur built category rather than as an advanced ultralight.  Was I glad I did!  It was a lot of fun and Erin actually let me do a couple of touch and goes after he told me what to do and demonstrated one.  I may even do more of this in other planes.

This month we have a great article from Gordon Brogan about his (and our) friend Karl Heep who died a few years ago of leukemia.

This is the last newsletter until September so have a good summer and safe flying!

To Bumble Bee from Eagle

It's almost the 28th day of May and I am sure many of you have cleaned off the winter's dust and are already flying.  Spring promises summer with its long warm evenings and sunny days of fun in the sky.  The spring of 1997, five years ago, was very similar except it was mixed with sadness for we had lost one of the best and most genuine fliers of our group.

My dear friend and flying buddy, Karl Heinz Heep, had passed away after a long six year fight with Leukemia.  Karl, has it really been five years ago?  It feels like only yesterday that you and I were out flying our Lazairs together.

Let me tell you about my special friend Karl. Karl was born on November 8, 1928 in Steinheim Germany.  He grew up there and was only 11 years old when the Second World War began.  The six year turmoil of the war would have a profound effect on Karl and his future.

Often, over coffee, he told me stories of  how  he had seen terrible things.  Karl had witnessed the worst and the best of our species.  I listened with great interest, for in 1952 as a young boy on my way to England on holidays, I had seen first hand the destruction of the war on the island of Malta and in London.  Seven years after the war, London was still a mess with blocks upon blocks of rubble and bombed out buildings.

Like so many young men of his time, Karl's first flight was in a hand towed glider with the Hitler Youth Corp.  "Oh yes, it was just like joining the boy scouts"  he explained, "none of us knew what lay ahead; it was just pure excitement and camaraderie".  Can you imagine having a twenty boy winch team running in front of you?  Slowly at first, you would gather speed and the bumpy ride would get rougher and rougher; then, suddenly the ground and all the noise fell away and one would enter the smooth magic realm of flight.  Like a giant bird on silent wings, the  pilot would quickly pass over the heads of the team below and down the slope to a touch down at the bottom of the hill. The young tow group would watch spellbound. Upon landing and its promise of a future ride, the young enthusiastic group would run down to join the glider and eagerly pack it up the hill, ready for the next launch.

Later, at the age of sixteen, Karl found the flying fun took on a far more serious note when he suddenly found himself enlisted to go and fight for Germany.  By the age of seventeen, Karl  was managing to stay one step ahead of the recruitment police.  He recalled spending many a night sleeping in farmers’ barns and scrounging food to stay alive.  He knew getting caught would mean a one way  trip to the local concentration camp.  I am sure even being German  would not have saved him from the fate that befell so many.  Finally the long war was over, but post war Germany was in ruin so it is understandable that Karl jumped at the  opportunity to emigrate to Canada.  Here he  worked at Alcan in Kitimat and later at UBC as a steam engineer, running their heating system.

I met Karl around 1985 and we hit it off from the start.  He enjoyed designing mechanical devices and coming up with innovative ways of doing things.  We really had a lot in common for two people coming from such different backgrounds.  At the age of seventeen,  I had enjoyed flying radio control planes in Kenya, East Africa when, at the same age, Karl was struggling to stay alive.

In those days, Karl and I kept our Lazairs down at the King George airfield.  He would frequently come around to my hangar to see the latest modifications.  I recall him being very supportive when I was having problems designing a redrive for the Rotax 185 engines. The redrive drive belt had once again been eaten by the engine and I was despondent and wondered if  it would ever succeed.  "Eagle, don't  give up!" he would say with a smile.  “Keep at it,  I know you can do it."

History proved him right and, years later, Karl asked me if I would mind if he copied my redrives for his Lazair.  I had fabricated mine from angle aluminum, but he decided to improve upon it with aluminum castings.  He set about the tedious task of making wooden patterns for casting the redrive and its two pulleys and, in return, he insisted on giving me two sets of castings which I carefully packed away in a box.  The redrives really helped us with the low powered 18 HP Lazair,
especially when it came to float flying, and float flying our Lazairs is what we loved to do.  Exotic destinations like Ganges on  Saltspring Island and Silver Bay, and the far reaches of Pitt and Alouette lake were at hand.

Believe me, at thirty miles an hour in a Lazair, all destinations are far off ...  and perhaps that was the magic of it all.
 
 

With the promise of a sunny weekend, we would fly our planes over to the Fort Langley floatplane base, then rush home to get the floats and drive back to the base for a weekend camp out by the Fraser.  Fred Glasbergen had shown us what could be done with a Lazair on floats and in those days we were on the leading edge of ultralight float plane technology.  I assure you, there is nothing more beautiful than flying a Lazair ten feet above the river as the setting sun turns the Fraser to a sea of gold. Karl and I, together with other Lazair float fliers, spent hundreds of happy hours flying the local waterways.  Occasionally, Snoopy would join us at the float base.  In those days he had the latesttwo seater Lazair with

whopping 20 HP KFM engines on each wing.  Karl and I watched  with envy as his silver monster roared to life and jumped out of the water in half the distance of our little birds.

Each summer there would be an interval when Karl disappeared from the flying scene.  We all had learned to expect it, honey gathering time had arrived!  Karl was an avid bee keeper, and when the combs were full of honey his Lazair was grounded.  A week or so would pass without Karl; then, suddenly, he would appear with a big smile and an even bigger jar of honey for each of us.  You guessed it; Karl's handle was Bumble Bee.  We were all 30 mph Lazair fighter pilots in those days and jocks had to have a handle, none of those prissy sissy idents for us!  We had seen Tom Cruise in Top Gun and we were armed with the latest in high tech. communications gear.  CB radios ruled the day.  I had designed an inexpensive system using CB radios so most fliers could afford communications.  Now, there was no more wondering where the other pilot had gone.  We could ask positions and check locations.  There were famous call signs like Hiac, Snoopy, Winco, Old Bailiff, White Swan, Collector, Red Baron, Yellow Banana, Popeye, Saran Wrap,  Air Wolf and Ice Man.  There was even the Flying Condom.  There was Liberty, Throttles and Stubble Jumper -  the glamour girls.  You could tune in on the CB radio on any weekend or sunny evening and be entertained by the chatter of the top guns.

It surely was the golden age of ultralights as Quicksilvers and Lazairs ruled the skies of Quick Silver Valley!  (See complete list of CB below.) I, together with many other PUFA members enjoyed years of fun and friendship with Karl.  There was the summer time get together when the squadron would come over to my place for a barbecue and later we would roast wieners around the campfire while discussing the complexities of aerodynamics or simply planning the next days activities.  Then, there were the quiet times camped under the stars at the float base.  Karl tried different aircraft; he even bought a single seat Beaver on floats and flew it for a while, but sold it to return to the slow and graceful Lazair which was his real love.  Perhaps it reminded him of those early childhood days of flying gliders down some far off green hill in Germany, those early care free days of his youth before the war.

Sadly in 1991 Karl was diagnosed with Leukemia, only two years before he was due to retire from his job at UBC.  Fortunately, with medication, he managed to keep on going for another six years, although in the last few years he did not fly much as the medication was taking its toll and I could see that life for him was getting quite difficult.  It was the early spring of 1997 and Karl was once again going to visit his mother in Germany, so he dropped by to have a coffee before he left. We talked for a while, then it was time for him to leave.  Usually in the past, we would just shake hands and he would leave with a smile but this time he came over to me and gave me a rib crushing bear hug which was quite unlike  Karl...  Little did I know at the time that this was his farewell to me; somehow he knew he would not be returning.  It was the last time I ever saw him.

Karl's son asked me to give a eulogy at the funeral.  I wondered what on earth I would say and if I would choke up under the stress of it all.  It was one of the hardest things I have had to do but Karl's words came back to me from years before "Eagle, you can do it" so, with his help, I managed to pull it off by recalling some of the crazy antics we had carried out...   Surprisingly even managed to have the tear soaked relatives in the front row laughing and crying at the same time.  Humour surely binds the wounds of sadness.

Now, five years later, on a lovely warm summer evening when the setting sun bathes the landscape in tones of red and gold and the shadows of the trees below grow long and dark, there is a quick fleeting glint of silver off my wing tip and for a  moment I am almost sure I see Bumble Bee, my wing man.

Good bye, Karl, it was my pleasure and privilege to have known you in this great  adventure we call life....  Perhaps we will meet again when the honey is done.  I hope you are lucky and find a friend like Karl.

Gordon Brogan