Panoche Fly-In, Sept 23-24 '06

This past weekend, Sept 23-24, 2006, was a fly-in at Panoche.

If you have Google Earth, you can view the geography in detail. I'll also provide links to browser-based satellite images, in case you don't want to install Google Earth. To see any of the small images expanded, click on them.

The Panoche landing strip is a dirt strip on private property, 35 miles southest of Hollister Airport.

There's a hanger with 6 or so very old, very beat-up airplanes that most likely will never fly again, and a few other old buildings.

Landing Strip
    in Google Earth:
http://thams.com/references/PanocheLandingStrip.kml
    on Yahoo Maps:
http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/index.php#mvt=s&maxp=search&trf=0&lon=-120.880015&lat=36.610933&mag=1

The strip is in the Panoche Valley, which is an area that is pretty good for soaring...much better than the Hollister area. The hills that surround the valley do a good job of keeping the cool sea air from getting in, which would otherwise limit thermalling conditions (as it frequently does in Hollister).

Here is the whole valley.
    in Google Earth:
http://thams.com/references/PanocheValley.kml
    on Yahoo Maps:
http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/index.php#mvt=s&maxp=search&trf=0&lon=-120.885658&lat=36.613392&mag=5

There are multiple sources of lift around here. Sometimes, the valley itself provides good lift. Other times, the hills around the vally have good thermals.

Just for reference, if you want Google Earth to "fly" back to Hollister, open this link:
http://thams.com/references/HollisterMunicipal.kml

SoarHollister brought down several tow planes and a bunch of gliders (club-owned gliders as well as gliders owned by individuals). Some people flew both days and camped overnight. I just flew on Saturday. I drove down Saturday morning; the drive through the hills into the Panoche Valley was really beautiful. About 40 or so people were there, counting pilots, family members, and onlookers who came over from the bar.

The forecast for lift was pretty good.
Here is a model that predicts the best updrafts one might find, for that Saturday. The colors represent the strength of the potential lift, and the black countour lines represent the actual terrain countours.

The little white "2" is in the Panoche valley.

This model predicts the theoretical top of the lift, again for Saturday.

You can see from these that the best lift is predicted to not be in the valley, but over the hills to the west of the valley.

When I got to the field itself, you could really tell you were no longer in Santa Cruz.

There is a bar right across the road, and everyone there was either very cowboy or very biker. Nobody in sight wearing sandles or drinking Starbucks.

Across the road at the landing strip, it was a different story...

People were assembling their gliders,

doing repairs.

We had a "pilots' meeting," where rules were established (for races and for safety).

There was also some eating of BBQ.

And then got to some flying.

It's important to remember to close the vents when you're taking off...that tow plane kicks a lot of dust back at you. Someone joked that you've got IFR conditions for a brief while during roll.

I flew with Drew (my first instructor), in his Duo Discus, which is a spectacular airplane. (It should be...they cost in the 6 figures). It moves so smoothly, and fast. This is a ship that really wants to fly. In fact, it doesn't want to land...it has about 45:1 glide ratio!

Here it is, about to take off:

Here's a shot from the air, taken from Drew's plane.

You can't make out the landing strip in the picture, but if you look at 11'oclock relative to the nose of the airplane, it's way out there. You can see from the instruments that we're flying almost 70 knots, and we are in a 200 foot-per-minute updraft.

In this one, you can see another glider, almost straight ahead.

On this flight, we had released from a low tow at about 1500 feet above ground, and from that flew for about 80 minutes. (I did most of the flying, but Drew took the controls several times, which is when I snapped the pictures.) It is a real joy to be doing a greater amount of soaring these days, as opposed to gliding.

This little boy was taking his first flight in a glider. His dad, sitting next to him, is regarded as a superman around here...he is able to do things flying cross-country at which other people just mavel. The pilot, in front of them, is Drew, my first instructor. The boy's mom was terrified by the prospect of her son going up in the air, but when they landed, the boy was elated.

Here's an artsy shot of Drew's plane.

The rest of the photos can be found here.

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