1. Peggy Harbick decided to give hubby, John, a birthday gift of a glider flight. This was the weekend and both Peggy and John, Peggy's parents, John and Van Reynolds arriving for the day. John was first aloft and afterwards said he was "hooked". He and Alex Caldwell had a great flight of nearly an hour, gaining altitude almost at will. Apparently John was at the controls much of the flight and it seems he is headed for a license in gliders. We hope so and wish him well if he does make that decision. He'd make a great club member.

2. Peggy's Dad, John Reynolds, was next and he, too, enjoyed a nice long demo flight. I doubt John Reynolds will take up soaring as a hobby but one never knows. It might be fun for both of them to do it together.

3. Bart Klusek had an interesting first flight, taking off on runway 31, staying low, and finally releasing and landing in the field just to the northwest of the airport. Seems the dive brakes were open on takeoff and prevented a rapid climb to an altitude from which he could either return to the gliderport or continue on soaring. We towed the glider back through the soft dirt, through a very NARROW fence gate, and back onto the field. Never one to quit, Bart immediately launched again and had a great second flight. I'm sure Bart will keep this landout in mind each and every time he launches in the future.

4. Morgan Hall and Julie Butler assembled the Duo Discus and launched on a multi-hour flight up and down the Temblor Range just to the west of the gliderport. Here is their summary:

We had a 4.5 hour or so flight. After a late start, we were able to get up to about 8K over Black Mountain and head west to the convergence. There were some nice cloud markers down California Valley which we followed all the way to Mt. Pinos. I hooked a thermal at the south end of CA Valley and took us up to 12,600.
We connected with Ramy who was on his way back from Mojave and flew with him back up the valley with a much harder time getting above 7K. Once we got back to 41/46 split Morgan got us back up to 8K or so in a thermal and we went back to Black Mountain for a little bit. Everything was shutting down over the mountains by then. We didn't find much out over the valley, so came back in to land and realized neither the Blanik nor the Orange Crush were on the ground. We finally spotted Pancho and Bart and flew back up to take some video of them. Morgan will have that available at some point. Pancho was looking pretty happy about his 2+ hour flight! Pretty awesome. It's too bad not more people came out. It was a really awesome day to get up high and stay up for a long time.   Julie

5. Pancho Herrera flew the Orange Crush for a nice long flight that just might have been his highest and longest to date. He's coming along nicely and will be taking his checkride this summer.

7. We finally got the tail feathers of Big Bird finished, having been recovered and painted. Now that glider is available and we're back to two Schweizers.

8 It was another very warm day with the density altitude reaching 3500 feet.

9. Thanks to Harlow Voorhees for his continued assistance as our busiest tow pilot.

10.

The next day, Alex Caldwell had a LONG flight in the 2-33. Here is his story:

I flew on Sunday in the Orange Crush for a butt crunching 6 hour flight. Ramy Yanetz had landed at Avenal on Saturday, and spent the night at the clubhouse after a very long flight from Hollister to Mojave and back.   Morgan arranged with Peter Mersino to tow him on Sunday so he could get back to Hollister (of course he went way south again from Avenal before going back to Hollister).  I decided to come out and take advantage of Peter being available to tow.  The RASP was predicting an even better day than Saturday (which was a good day), with a convergence line marked by cu's and altitudes of 10,000 ft near Avenal and 12,000+ to the south.   I had my flight recorder working this time and got 27th for the day in the U.S in the OLC.

Not too bad for a 2-33.  Of course, the OLC classic rewards physical endurance and staying up as long as humanly possible, while making some kind of progress over the ground over everything else. Speed is really kind of secondary.  With the handicap, you can do well in any glider, as long as you can stand to stay up that long.

We took off at 12:30.  There was a good convergence line that was displaying cu's before noon. But I never could connect to the clouds with the 2-33,  as they were way west of Avenal, over the ridge west of Parkfield by the time I got up. I wasted a lot of time at the beginning of the flight trying to get up on top of Black Mtn. thinking I might be able to get to the clouds. But later I found that I could make more distance because of a better altitude AGL, by staying over the valley along hwy 33 and was getting quite high, even though it was blue.  I got to just over 10,000ft over the Darcy Strip area at the high point.   My OLC strategy was to make as many "Yo-Yo" legs to the N and S as I could, centered on the house thermal over the Tank and Barn near Avenal. As the conditions got better, I went N. to Coalinga and S. to 33/41 two different times. As the lift got weaker near the end of the day, I made the legs shorter to make sure I got back to Avenal. With the glide computer, I could stretch the legs further than I would if I was just using my Mark I eyeballs, but still have a generous safety margin to get back to the field with certainty. 

The flight trace is here if anybody is interested:

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=1311682