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Al,
Those gliders are pretty hard to spot! Saturdays are the
most popular soaring days and there are probably more gliders in the air in CA
than anyplace else in the country this time of year. Tehachapi has a pretty
active glider port, there's another glider operation at California City 20 miles
east, another two further east towards Palmdale, and 50 miles northeast at
Inyokern. Sailplanes can be anywhere from a couple hundred AGL to 18,000' in
these areas. There are active wave windows when the wave is working near
Tehachapi and Cal City and there could be sailplanes as high as 30,000' on a
wave day. This area on up through the Owens Valley and into the Great Basin is
some of the best cross country soaring in the world so gliders could be anywhere
in the area.
I'll be soaring in that same area memorial day weekend.
Please keep an eye out if you fly through soaring country in the
summer!
Mike Wills
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 11:13 AM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: tehachapi [off subject]
could have been me he was talking
about at one time. I don't remember the altitude here, but we made it
to 16.5Kft with no engine. Had O2 for going higher, but the
wave was weak that day and we never could get into the laminar layer. My Bladder
was the limiting factor on staying up. This is looking at
California
City, Edwards is at
2 O'clock. The Viggen from
the national test pilot school went screaming by about 1000K feet below us on
this flight, we talked to the tower at Edwards....pretty cool. Awesome place for
aviation.
Monty
This was Sat.; about
15:00. My route was
a few miles west of you, going south. I was at 9500’; planning to climb to
11.5K as I approached the mountains, but after the call, and looking at the
terrain and the clouds; I concluded the sail planes would more likely be 11K and
up; so I stayed at 9.5 which still gave me OK terrain clearance if I picked a
low spot. The ride was a bumpy, but apparently clear of the
traffic.
Al
----- Original Message -----
Sent:
Wednesday, May 19,
2010 11:00
AM
Subject:
[FlyRotary] tehachapi [off subject]
I attended a homebuilt
sailplane convention in Tehachapi in my RV. there is a tow pilot there
who drops out of the sky in a Pawnee. I witnessed this amazing feat
while on final as he landed and got off the runway in what appeared to be a
controlled crash, actually leaving me plenty of time to land. what a
difference from my airport where the 172's power in from 2 miles out, the barn
doors dropped and we wait, and wait.....
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