Last week, as with the previous several years, I spent some time away from work to attend the Air Sailing Cross Country Camp (see events) in Nevada. That's a week long educational camp for glider pilots who are looking to expand their soaring horizons beyond the reach of their local airport.
I attended four years ago as a participant and have been going back every year since then as a "lead pilot" or mentor to the participants. The weather conditions are different every year and we have a different crowd of people attending, but we always have educational classes in the morning and some fun flying in the afternoon.
This year, however, was a bit different, since Kathleen (my wife) was one of the participants. And as luck would have it, I got to be her lead pilot. We were fortunate to fly on three different occasions in the BASA DG-1000 (N451CH).
I happened to have my camera handy for two of those three flights and have the pictures on my Flickr photostream in two different sets. The first was on Tuesday when we had the chance to do some ridge soaring: DG-1000 Ridge Flying at Air Sailing. Here are a few shots.
The second set is from Friday when we flew from Air Sailing to the Truckee Tahoe airport so that we wouldn't have to disassemble the glider and trailer it there: DG-1000 from ASI to TRK. Here are a few shots.
I also have GPS traces from each flight and some great 3-D animated playbacks that give you a sense of our flight paths. I'm working to convert those into movies I can stick online here too.
See Also:
- First 5.5 Hour Flight out of Air Sailing (2004)
- In the Nevada Desert for a Week... (2004)
- For My 31st Birthday: Long Flight and a Smaller Version of Me (2005)
Posted by jzawodn at June 10, 2008 09:46 PM
