2019 Winter Update

George Rosel is LOBO's New President

by george rosel

Hello LOBO members and greetings from Colorado. I write as your new president, and along with Jeff Edison and Sandy Gainza, one of three new board members duly elected at our 2019 LOBO Landing in St. Louis MO. We three new board members are replacing Jeff Edwards, Claudette Colwell and Chris Rust. These retiring board members will be sorely missed and it will be a huge challenge for us to fill their shoes! However, they have agreed to hold our hands during the ongoing transition and will continue to counsel us moving forward. We will also continue to have the guidance of board members Bob Pastusek, Steve Bradford, and Mark Sletten. 

Your new board is excited, ready and willing to take LOBO to the next level. By the time you read this we will have had three board meetings, negotiated a great aircraft insurance incentive discount for LOBO members, and met with Las Vegas airport managers and venue sales staffs for next year’s conference. However, in order to serve the needs of the Evolution and Lancair community, it is paramount that you understand we need your help and volunteerism!

What can you do?

All LOBO members routinely work with pro-build/repair shops, paint & interior, FAA, and avionics, mechanics, etc. We members must put more pressure on these vendors to join us at our gatherings and come armed with presentations and specific examples of real-time issues to discuss. If we want good and informed speakers about the topics we care about our vendors and pro-build shops must step up. A great big thank you must go out to Brad Simmons for his attendance the last several years. He came to St Louis loaded with samples, examples and a willingness to share… something that we did not take full advantage of. By the way, is he the only one working on our airplanes that has important information to pass along??

New Challenges

Your new board members are very motivated to serve this wonderful organization and we are eager to move forward with LOBO’s long-standing vision of Safety, Service, and Social activities. This vision the founding members laid out for LOBO is GREAT and will stand the challenges of time, long past the initial owners and builders of these wonderful airplanes! In fact, less than half of LOBO's members today built their own aircraft. By all available information, these airframes have an almost unlimited service life, so if we take care of them, “second owners” will become a trite and out-of-date expression!

A New Board

The new LOBO board will serve its membership in the following way:

  • George Rosel – President, 4P-T, Centennial Airport (KAPA), Centennial, CO, 303-995-5501
  • Steve Bradford – Treasurer, Evolution, Muscatine, IA
  • Bob Pastusek – Secretary/Maintenance, 4P, Spinks Airport (KFWS), Ft Worth, TX 
  • Mark Sletten – Webmaster, Legacy FG, Shafer Metro-East St. Louis Airport (IL48), Saint Jacob, IL
  • Sandy Gainza – Events, 4P, Napa County (KAPC), Napa, CA/Minden-Tahoe airport (KMEV), Minden, NV
  • Jeff Edison – Training, 4P-T, Memphis, TN

Scuttlebutt

Since our 2019 Landing in St Louis there has been much “LancairTalk” about the lack of substance for certain interests, especially for Evolution aircraft. Hopefully that group can provide us with topics and speakers for our future gatherings. Also, we’ve regularly asked you to provide us with ideas in preparation for past Landings, and always welcome willing presenters for hot topics as well. Along with ground and flight training, our goal is to provide at least three tracks of simultaneous presentations at our conferences. We agree with the issues as discussed in recent posts at LancairTalk.net, and we believe we can address them better than we have in the past—but only with your help as outlined above! Although we believe and understand the need for additional ground and flight training throughout the year, we hope the entire Lancair/EVO community will stand together and fully support our LOBO annual events by volunteering their time and effort.

You can expect much more instructor participation at ALL our events moving forward. LOBO is considering incentives for training providers—including reduced conference expenses—to encourage them to “come early and stay late.” Your new Board feels it is vital to LOBO’s mission of safety and training that our instructors be present and be available to provide ground and flight training with their customer pilots. Please understand, LOBO does not endorse any instructor or associated company, it instead encourages the use of LOBO’s training syllabi for flight and ground instruction. To make it easy for you to choose a provider and arrange for your own training, LOBO will continue to publish a list of Lancair instructors on our website. We should all be aware that the Pilot in Command (PIC) of each aircraft is personally responsible for this training and compliance with all FAA regulations. This responsibility includes ensuring your chosen instructor is qualified in type, and approved on their insurance policy (if applicable). 

Planning Ahead

As I write this, your new Board is barely three weeks old, yet we have already negotiated a nice insurance discount for those LOBO members who participate and attend our official annual conferences. Look for a detailed announcement from Gallagher Insurance in the latest LOBO eNews. You will NOT want to miss any future LOBO annual events! Additionally, your new Board is already working to secure next year’s LOBO event venues. Several board members have traveled at their own expense to meet with airport managers and hotels in the Las Vegas, NV area. We have now secured the airport destination to be the Henderson NV Airport (KHND) as well as the meeting venue to be the Green Valley Ranch & Spa. Our goal is to have as much planning and lead time as possible before the holidays. Please consider early registration as a Christmas or Valentines gift! Venues considered were Henderson and North Las Vegas Airports, Caesars Palace, Luxor Resort & Spa, Tropicana, Green Valley Ranch & Spa, Southpoint Hotel & Casino, and Sunset Station Hotel & Casino.

As you can see, we have lined up a great location and itinerary for all to enjoy. Expect a private tour of Nellis Air Force Base, home of the United States Thunderbirds—in between ramp walks to enjoy our beautiful airplanes, of course. By request, we plan to add personal in-aircraft ground instruction to our next year's “Pinch Hitter” course for spouses. An evening dinner show on the Las Vegas strip may also be in order. Time to just relax by the pool may be part of your wish list. And yes, there will be lots of time to donate your money to the tables. With typical desert weather and ease of travel connections (if you decide not to fly your own plane) we expect this to be our largest event yet. Come by plane, train, or automobile to make it so… just don’t miss this one! 

In the mean time, your new LOBO board is here to serve you. With your help we can take it to the next level. 

Be an active part of our team!

For questions/comments on this post contact George via email: g.rosel [at] lancairowners.com.