About 30 gliders from Williams, Hollister and Avenal enjoyed the energy in the air to make long, easy and scenic cross-country flights on the Central Coast. After launching all our Hollister guys, I just decided to play hookey from my maintenance tasks and take a BASA Pegasus to play.
5W,UV and U2 rigging:
On tow in 9JH behind Charlie Hayes in the Pawnee:
After Charlie took me to the lift and I started to thermal, he came over and thermaled with me in the towplane! (I didn't have camera out at the time so this pic is from another occasion)
We don't get to see this view on the instrument panel very often, going up at 400 feet/min at 12K!
1CH, 5KM, VN, GJ, U2, UV, BG, TG and 8L were all down over the Santa Lucias and some of the guys flew out over the Pacific south of Big Sur while TG turned Hearst Castle and VN flew over his house in the Carmel Valley! I headed down that way past the Pinnacles and got half-way across the Salinas Valley when I decided to return to the Gabilans and follow Yuliy up to Loma Prieta in the Santa Cruz Mts. Here are some of the flight traces as recorded on the On Line Contest run by a German Glider Club:
Monterey is off in the distance over the Salinas Valley from the Gabilans. The fog is covering Prunedale. Yuliy is in a DG-800, that little dot in the middle of the picture:
I left the Gabilans at 12.5K and got to Loma Prieta at 6K where Yuliy was already climbing in a good thermal.
Here's a zoomed shot of Yuliy porpoising on the way to Loma Prieta:
It was comforting to get back up to 12K again looking out over the Santa Clara Valley and San Jose:
ER and 1CH came in low under us, finally got up and followed 8L over the Santa Clara Valley to "Tiger Country" in the Diablos but I retreated to Hollister. Here you can just see two gliders circling down low:
Back over Hollister Charlie Hays and John Little were flying in 87R and I got some nice pics of them before landing after 3.5 hours of fun and frolic!
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