Land, Sea and Sky

A January 2020 1000K attempt from Avenal Morgan Hall and Kempton Izuno    Jan 16, 2020, 1:00pm Seeing it coming January 7th 10:46am Kempton is texting me that he sees a super day for southwest wave out of Paso Robles on Thursday the 16th. Coastal range should trigger enough wave to access it from relatively local to Paso. Nixus happens to be rigged at Paso Robles and might be available. Many hurdles to cross for that to happen though. It's right in the middle of additional flight testing and verification. We agree to watch the forecast and let things firm up. I do block my calendar out at work just in case. I alert Jim Payne and Paulo Iscold about the possibility thinking that Jim may want to use Nixus for a flight. If not, I am hoping it will be available. Then we wait. Will it improve, degrade stay on track? Kemp: Morgan and I had known each other for years but never flew together. With many years of mentoring cross country pilots in each of our...

Walt Rogers got me excited that the weekend held an opportunity to continue my quest to capture the egg from it's nearly permanent home at Air Sailing.  Great conditions were called for in the Great Basin, the challenge as always is connecting from Avenal to the desert. I had a plan, a westerly line down the California Valley, jump to the Sierra Madre's near Santa Ynez and run the convergence past the Tehachapi's connecting to the Sierra and blasting north hoping for something late in the day near Minden for final glide into Air Sailing.  Sunday, we'd take a tow out of Air Sailing, egg safely tucked in the Duo and fly back South hopefully getting to 18k somewhere down near Mammoth and dead glide our way back across the Sierra and the valley towards Avenal. Conditions looked like they might allow for an early (for Avenal) start around noon.  I was set to go it alone in the Duo as Karl was flying our ASW-20 with Julie willing to crew should I end up short or need a re...

Saturday, November 8th Julie took to the air in the CCSA Schweitzer 2-33 for her very first solo flight. With a perfect launch and tow to 1000ft she released and flew the pattern to a landing and a rollout right back to her starting point. Probably her best landing yet. Only to be topped by the next two as she took two additional pattern tows to complete the first phase of her training and her solo flight requirements. It was a great thing to be a part of. A little more than 2 months ago she took her very first flight in a glider on August 30th with our soon to be instructor Harold Gallagher . That trip was as a passenger in 105 degree heat out at Avenal. I took a demo flight that day as well. While I had been lucky enough to find some good thermals and climb to cooler air, Julie's ride had been one of not too much altitude and plenty of work for the 40 minute flight. We drove home and she wasn't too sure about the whole thing, while I was intrigued by the challenge o...