Saturday, June 15, 2019

WEATHER
Visibility:  Pretty far
Wind: Light
Altitudes: 3,000-ish
Time Aloft: Modest
Max Lift:Modest
Temperature:Getting to be Summer
Comment: Mellow day in Avenal
Tow pilot: Julie B.

Erich Harding Solo'd Today!


Don Flinn said "CCSA has a young man who is currently the youngest solo pilot in California.  Just a few months past his 14th birthday, Erich Harding soloed in N3613F AKA"Big Bird" for 15 minutes today, reaching an altitude of 3000ft.  Please join our instructors, all of whom enjoyed helping Erich achieve this milestone, in congratulating Erich on his accomplishment."

Just before the launch.

Taking out the slack.

About to go wings level for first solo launch.

Erich Harding's First Solo - with his instructor, Don Flinn


Julie and Bob are refueling 5U from the new fuel cart.  Jim has prepared an excellent set of instructions for how to use the new fuel cart, which can be found here.

And, also thanks to good work by Jim and Richard and others, 22S has a new metal skid, some other upgrades and is about ready to return to the air.

Saturday, June 8, 2019

Saturday, June 1, 2019

Steve and the Lightning Bolt

CCSA Member Steve Schery has been flying his Carat self launching sailplane out of New Coalinga Airport and contributed this cool picture along with this information: 

"It was taken from the wing tip camera of my feathered Carat on Saturday, 1 June 2019, about 2 pm pdt.  The location is northwest of Coalinga at 8000 ft near Wright Mountain, camera looking NW in the direction of Panoche.  It captures a thunderstorm in the background and small (distant) lightening flash see in front of my prop tip). I'm the pilot."