Crestline Soaring Society

The year is almost up, I suppose I should actually gin up some activities. While I can do a ham cram or some other non-flying activity, or an activity at our home site, in this case I am thinking about a road trip. Here's the problem with road trips: who wants to go anywhere in the Spring and Fall seasons, when it likely will be best at home?

But, December is another story.

December 13th, I invite everyone to join me in a day of chasing the wind. I'll call this a "Three Hour Tour," not because we'll only be gone a few hours (try all day), but because the radius of the chase will be 3 hours. That basically takes us up to Santa Barbara or down to San Diego.

Here are my preliminary plans:

1. Meet at the AJ LZ at 8:00 AM
2. Call the destination (early contenders here, suggestions?)
- Alternator / Alternator LZ / Beach in Santa Barbara
- Black Mountain in San Diego
- Other sites broken out by wind direction (North sites/South sites/etc)
3. Depart by 8:15 AM
4. Walk the LZ, leave retrieve cars
5. Fly short or fly long for those who want to go XC
6. Collect the strays and meet at a joint for dinner on the way home.
7. Get home kinda late and, hopefully, happy.

Some guidelines
- Let's be punctual on the departure. The last thing I want to be in is a hurry. How to avoid that? Leave early.
- Everyone should have a radio and have flown with it in the previous month. It's not a deal killer, just highly recommended.
- The primary goal is to fly safely. A close second is to have fun.

This trip is aimed at mid-level intermediate pilots who need more sites for their next rating. That's why some of us got all over California in the last year. Based on my experience, I encourage h2s/p2s and freshly minted h3s/p3s to come along with the idea of being drivers to check out the sites and learn from the experiences the other pilots have that day. That's a little lesson I came up with based on my own trip to a new site this weekend.

Please respond with thoughts, suggestions, etc.