Land, Sea and Sky

A recap of a great day of Wave Flying out of Santa Ynez.  Initially I wrote this as an email to my hang glider friends, so it has a slight skew towards specifics that our local hang glider community is tuned into. Many years ago, before the Perryometer (the name of our weather station, implemented and maintained by Perry) was up and operational out at Plowshare peak and long before XCSkies, RASPs and other localized weather resources, we used to just make the drive to Plowshare and see what we found.  I can remember a lot of days where we got to launch and found it blasting to 45mph up the face.  Maybe something that Patrick would now tackle with a speedwing, but generally it resulted in a lot of hang waiting and quite a few days of driving down the hill and heading home. Sunday I had the opportunity to taste a new variation of that day.  The RASPs were forecasting strong N winds up high and predicting wave in the Santa Ynez area with wave bars off the  Sie...

With a reasonably strong front forecasted for Saturday and unpleasant weather in Los Osos in the morning, it wasn't looking too promising for thermal soaring. There was a decent chance at wave forming up though and Steve had already made the drive down from the Bay Area to tow for the day. Everyone else on the schedule dropped off, probably due to the rain in the forecast or just being out of town for the holiday. Julie and I were headed out with the plan that at a minimum I could get some work done around the airport and she could go visit her grandmother in Fresno. As is usually the case, the best way to bring on good soaring is to set your mind on accomplishing other things. By Paso Robles, things had cleared slightly and there was just a scud layer at 6 or 7k. By Cholame, the scud was breaking up and two clearly identifiable wave bands were showing over the mountains west of Avenal. The base of the clouds looked to be about 6000 or 7000. Looking NW from Hwy 41 W...

From Land, Sea and Sky LX, ILEC, Cambridge Instruments, Borgelt, all manufacturers of excellent panel mount glide computers. Interface to a PDA and you've got moving map, speed to fly and navigation all at your finger tips. The only real drawback to these instruments is the price. $1000 to $6000 depending on used/new and what options loggers and integrations are required. I've been keeping my eye on the used market for something to drop into my ASW-20 which currently has a very old Zander 820 flight computer. It provides speed to fly, but no navigation capability in a modern sense. While on vacation in New Zealand I picked up a copy of their soaring magazine and stumbled across a short article about an open source project called XCSoar that provided glide computer capabilities on a PDA and even more interesting, on a PNA (Personal Navigation Device). Many of us already own a Garmin Nuvi or StreetPilot of some sort that would qualify as a PNA. XCSoar won't run on a Ga...

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...