HIGHLIGHTS:
 

1. Nathan Bertoldi, a good friend and wonderful artist, brought a group of friends out to Avenal, first for his lady's birthday, and then just to be rewarded with a glider flight, something none of them had ever done before. Not only did they fly, but they partied, and slept and roamed around, and before all this, went into town to sample the world's greatest hamburgers at Debbie's. A fun-filled day to be sure and one that none will ever forget. Who knows? Maybe we'll see one or another of them return to take up the sport of soaring. Welcome to all of you: NATHAN, GERI, KABZAUG, CHATA, SHAUNA, NATALIE, AND DANIEL.

2. Here is what Morgan Hall said about the weekend:

"It took work and a commitment to going over the back of Black Mountain into the Parkfield area where the clouds were at.  Alex made the jump early and got up, it took me a while to go for it and finally was rewarded with lift to 13000.  From there it was a pretty easy run to the South end of CA valley where I dove across to tag the turn point at New Cuyama.  Getting back was a whole different story.  I was late in getting there and westerlies had filled in.  I was down to 5500 East of CA Valley on the temblor range looking at hopefully making Blackwell or Lost Hills. Thankfully nabbed a thermal back to 8000+ and poked home as carefully as I could. Of course the Avenal effect was in full force and at 25 miles out everything was buoyant and although I could have sped home, I took it easy to ensure I made the glide.  Alex and I hooked up 16 miles east of Avenal at about 6:45 and glided almost all the way to Coalinga before turning around and returning to Avenal.  I think I landed at 7:15 after 5:51 in the air.  Alex landed shortly thereafter.

Ramy and Matt out of Hollister flew all the way around Tehachapi and up to Mt. Whitney before gliding across the Sierra's.  Matt landed at Reedley and Ramy landed at Harris Ranch.  Amazing flights.

Morgan

My OLC trace:

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=828361

Alex's trace:

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=828829

A few pictures that I haven't put comments on yet.

http://picasaweb.google.com/morhall/Avenal516Weekend"

3. Alex Caldwell also had a great flight and part of it was with Morgan. Here's what Alex wrote:

"We had some fantastic flying on Sunday May 17. Morgan Hall, Rich Miller and I were out there along with Paul Hansen. Morgan had been watching the Dr. Jack blip maps for several days and was predicting excellent soaring on Saturday, and even better on Sunday.

Saturday was good, with a strong convergence way to the west of Avenal, between Parkfield and Paso Robles, and  marked by cumulus clouds. The guys from Hollister were running south on it at high altitudes over 12,000 ft,  but none of us could reach it from Avenal from a 2000 ft tow, so we spent the day from 4000-5000 ft. in weak lift, and never getting to the good lift in the convergence line. I had walked out of the house without my handheld radio, and my glider battery was dead, so had no communications, but Morgan generously loaned me a battery pack that would keep my PDA running long enough for a long flight.

Sunday, however, produced an even stronger convergence (shear line) with a very high cloud base of over 14,000 ft.   The shear line was again way to the west of Avenal, between Parkfield and Paso Robles, but the general lower level lift in the area near Avenal was much better than Saturday. I got to 6000 ft over Castle Peak which was enough to get to the Shear line, which was again between Parkfield and Paso Robles. I was committing myself to landing either at Parkfield or Paso if I did not contact the shear. Not to worry, there was 10 kt lift under the clouds in the shear line. Morgan chose to go north towards Coalinga where the shear line was closer to the

valley, which seemed a good choice and I thought about doing that also. But he eventually ended up coming back to the Castle peak area and contacting the shear in a similar manner to what I did a bit earlier. We both ran south once we contacted the shear and were quickly up into the 11500 - 14000 ft. working band. The clouds were lined up like a freeway going south. You could fly slowly and not lose any altitude, just slowing down in lift and speeding up in what little sink there was. I flew kind of lazily, not wanting to get low. But a higher X country groundspeed could be achieved by flying faster and then stopping to circle only in the very strongest areas of lift which were often 8-10kts. Morgan was a ways behind me because of his later start, but we met up over California Valley as I was coming back north and again at the end of the day near Blackwell and flew together for the last part of the flight and landed close to the same time.

http://www3.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=828829

The Avenal RASP made a very good prediction of the position of the shear line. This image shows the "Cu Cloud base where Cu potential is greater than O", for 1300 PST, or 1400 PDT.   Translated from "Dr. Jack speak", it shows where to expect Cu's and what the cloud base will be.  It corresponds almost exactly where the clouds were actually located and the cloud base was almost exactly what the RASP predicted.

http://alcald.homelinux.org/RASP/AVENAL/2009_05_17/zsfclclmask.curr.1300lst.w2.png

I also recorded these Satellite images from the U.S. Navy's  "NexSat" web site for the time frame between 1200 and1800,  so you can see how the shear line with it's fantastic cloud street developed that day. Some of the clouds marking the street were very small and wispy, so they don't show on these images.  It's an animated .gif, so if you view it in a web browser, it should cycle the images.

http://alcald.homelinux.org/NexSat_2009_05_17.gif

I also uploaded some pictures of flying the shear line here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/alcald/Soaring20090517

Alex Caldwell"

4. Everyone else had a great time on Saturday doing what makes Avenal the best gliderport in the West.