Crestline Soaring Society

The Hang Gliding & Paragliding Club for San Bernardino, CA, USA

The CSS is a non-profit organization (501(c)(3)) which exists to serve the foot-launched flying community in the San Bernardino Mountains - Crestline & Marshall Peak in particular - and Southern California and beyond in general.

Our club maintains launches in the San Bernardino National Forest and leases a landing zone, Andy Jackson Airpark, in the valley to ensure that our right to fly is not infringed. As a chapter of the United States Hang Gliding & Paragliding Association (USHPA) we play a part in furthering HG & PG nationwide. The club also sponsors fun events a few times a year which attract pilots from far and wide.

The CSS Website will have temporary outages beginning May 16, 2012 at 12 AM EASTERN time (9 PM Pacific) over a period of 24 hours. The webhost is migrating all of their sites to new hardware.

Harder, better, faster, stronger hardware.

Hello Hang Pilots
The Board is entertaining the idea of having a Ryan Voight Landing Clinic on June 2 and 3.
It would include multiple rides up the Big O Loop, videos of your landings and then group classes on just what you did and how to improve your technique, as well a dinner. The charge would be somewhere around $20 - $30 for the 2 days.
We need to know if there is enough interest in this to book Paul for the weekend.

Hello Hang Pilots
The Board is entertaining the idea of having a Ryan Voight Landing Clinic on June 2 and 3.
It would include multiple rides up the Big O Loop, videos of your landings and then group classes on just what you did and how to improve your technique, as well a dinner. The charge would be somewhere around $20 - $30 for the 2 days.
We need to know if there is enough interest in this to book Ryan for the weekend.

The quarterly Club Membership Meeting is this Saturday evening at the LZ after flying. Plan to be there for discusion about new things that are going on within the club and to share your thought. We are striving to make improvements all the time and we need your input. Come tell us what you want to see done. If it isn't flyable we will start around 6PM. If it is, we'll wait for you to land.

Hello members and others.

As you are aware we are working on making sure that the City of San Bernardino and the developers of the University Hills Project are kept aware of our needs as pilots with a landing zone adjacent to their development.

I will be working over the next two weeks to get face to face meetings with various city employees and council members and with the developer to address our specific concerns.

Membership renewal forms have been mailed out and you should expect to see them in the next few days. They were sent to the address you put on your last renewal, so if you have changed your address you will need to pick up a renewal form at the LZ or download it here:

http://crestlinesoaring.org/files/Application_Waiver.pdf

It is important to fill out the form completely and sign it both FRONT AND BACK. The back page is often missed. If you don't sign the back Dianne will hunt you down and give you grief. Your current membership expires May 31st, so be sure to get your renewal form and dues in soon. The storage container has a separate waiver that has been included for the people that use it. This waiver needs to be signed each year.

There's still some grunt work to do. Help still needed
Big thanks to all who worked on the new sprinkler system, especially Greg Hunter for the materials, design, and stickto.
itiveness.

Near the PG target.

"Zone 10" at the sou

We've got about 75% of the job done as of this evening. If you have a few hours to spare tomorrow anytime during the day please come by and help us finish up this project.

Chris van Velden (l) and Greg Hunter.

We had 9 pilots show up and 4 of us had 3 minutes each to share our story.
We talked about the growing number of members we have and how pilots come from all over the world to fly our site, we talked about our passion to fly, we shared that it would be great if the developer would give the park area to our not-for-profit corporation and we would make sure it was developed and maintained, and we talked about our relationship with Bobby Vega's Urban Conservation Corps. We summed it up by saying we want to be good neighbors and have a great relationship with the developers.

Hey Everyone!

Yep - parties 'cause we love them!

To celebrate the full pond this Sunday and Monday we are going to put in the new and expanded sprinkler system on the LZ.

We need lots and lots of people to assist so that the landing zone is not left with open trenches for any extended time.

Bring shovels, picks and work gloves.
We will provide food and drinks.

And, please, come even if you are unable to do the physical work. Your encouragement is worth much and we can have you pass out drinks and snacks and cheer us on!

Tomorrow evening at 6:00 there is a City of San Bernardino Planning Commission Public Hearing regarding the development of the property just east of Andy jackson Airpark.

Location:
San Bernardino City Hall
Council Chambers
300 North D Streeet
San Bernardino CA 92418

If would be wonderful if you all could join me and show that we are not a "species that is going extinct" as the chairman of the last meeting declared.

Martin Palmaz and Rich Hass (Executive Directors) will be visiting our site on April 11 and 12!
We will be having a barbeque on Wednesday, April 11 and there will be time for open discussion and questions and answers.
Please plan to stay after flying.

Megret

The Annual Spring General Membership Meeting will be Saturday, April 28 after flying - about 6:00.

Thanks to all who helped! 35 helpers and we needed them all.

I've been watching the NWS "point forecasts" for Crestline and Marshall Peak, and elsewhere, for a year now and they seem generally reliable. I decided to grab the data and incorporate it into the Crestline weather graph.

Now on the chart for each day you'll see the current conditions as before and the NWS forecast conditions for wind and temperature depicted as dashed lines. At first I was just connecting the latest reading for each to the next forecast value for each, so the lines went from solid to dashed. This was clear, but potentially misleading.

The 2012 CSS Wall Calendars are here - Price Reduced!

We've collected a fine bunch of images of local flying to keep you focused and inspired throughout the coming year.

CSS 2012 Calendars!

$10 each or three for $20
$15 each or two for $25 - All proceeds go to the CSS.

Thanks to Kevin Williams help monitoring, most of the simplex channels have been eliminated. Remaining below are the lesser noisy ones. Please pick a channel and try it out for a day or 2. Post your findings here and I'll update this post to eliminate again the busy channels so we can lay claim to a new club radio frequency.
144.310 quiet
144.320 quiet
144.330 some traffic
144.340 quiet
144.360 quiet

Information on a fly-in at Villa Grove, Colorado.
June 30 - July 8, 2012

There will be a Public Hearing meeting THIS MONDAY at 4 P.M. about the developement directly East of the LZ. In previous Meeting the developer was ordered by the Planning Commision to work out issues with us directly. We have not been contacted by the developer to resolve the safety issues of houses and parks on approach. We need to use this opportunity to ask the city council NOT to pass the measure until the developer complies with the order of the planning comission to work with us to mitigate these safety issues. Please come out and show your support by attending this meeting and voicing our collective concerns for safe operations.