Blog Archives

SDHGPA Little Black documentary Update

1/30/2015

Saturday (1-31-15) will be our 1st day trying to film the SDHGPA Little Black documentary flying segments.

The 800 will be open for experienced HG pilots only. HG pilots must be cleared through Bill Helliwell to gain access to the 800 and to fly.

We are also looking for a good showing of strong P3s and up pilots to be in the air during the prime time of the day that can handle mixed wing Air traffic awareness.

Please be supportive and give those involved in filming launch priority and keep an eye out our for top landing at the 300.

Info on the Documentary can be found in the Nov 2014 Meeting Minutes: http://www.sdhgpa.com/minutes-news--articles/archives/11-2014

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SDHGPA Palomar New-years Fly-in 2015 & XC Contest Awards

1/15/2015

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Annual New Years Fly-in

What a great way to start off the 2015 new year with a great fly-in at Palomar!
A Big thanks goes out to The Pala Tribe for letting use the LZ for our Fly-in BBQ for the extended hours and all those that helped to make this such a great event.

Bill Helliwell's Write-up and account of the Fly-in

Weekend Mountain Flying Report 10, 11 January

It is amazing to me how good the weather forecasting is. Here we are Sunday, the day after the fly-in, with rain all over the county just as predicted.

The fly in at Palomar on Saturday turned out great. There were around 50 paraglider pilots and 10 hang glider pilots. My prediction was we would be able to get to 3,500', Steve predicted close to 6,000'. Maybe if I had predicted higher I would have been able to get higher too!

Three hang glider pilots took off from the Smiley launch. The rest of us used the Main Launch. The improved WestSouthWest facing launch is perfect for HG use, wide and smooth with a slope of 2.5 : 1. It is plenty long enough. With a light breeze of 5 mph I was solidly flying on my RX less than half way down the cleared slope. There is also a grassy set up area near the take off but out of the way of those preparing to take off.

The sun was blocked by high clouds all morning and into the early afternoon. A few paragliders and a couple of hang gliders took off and struggled to have extended sled rides. A little before 2:00 the clouds thinned and moved and the sun instantly started warming things up. Paragliders in the air started climbing. Those of us who were set up, got in line and off we went. I took off at 2:15. There was lift but I was having trouble using it effectively. At one point I was 400' below launch. The lift was there and I finally started using it, climbing all the way around in my circles. Eventually I topped out at 3,800'. I could see others much higher, maybe they read Steve's forecast, not mine.

Notable HG flights were by Butch, Chris and Floyd. They all were able to get near 6,000'. John Heiney top landed, flying a king post glider. The fact that he was able to do that, safely, in a clear area, not interfering with gliders preparing to take off, says a lot about how much work has been done to clean up the set-up/take-off area.

Palomar is a fun place to fly. On a light day with lots of pilots, everyone had a good time.

Bill H.

Fly-in Lost & Found:

Two found lost items were turned in. Please mail SDHGPA@gmail.com with a full description and we will get them back to you at the next meeting or sooner.

GPS - ______________ Brand & ______________ Model
Fleece Pants over by the HG tear down area. ______________

The Rich Matros Memorial X-C Contest 2014

All SDHGPA Annual Members are eligible to participate in the Annual Rich Matros Memorial X-C Contest as a benefit included with your dues. The Contest is worth your membership fees alone! You just have to sign up for the contest (your 1st year in the contest) and post your flights.

The 2014 XC Contest Award Recipients:

PG Division:
1st Place & Grand Champion: Dmitri Soloviev
2nd Place: Steve Rohrbaugh
3rd Place: Peter Hill

HG Division:
1st Place & Grand Champion: Butch Peachy

Milestone Shirt Awards:

One shirt is awarded to each pilot for his/her longest straight line XC distance passing the following Mile Marks:
A pilot's first flight over 10 miles (1st year achieving).
Flight over 25 miles.
Flight over 50 miles.
Flight over 75 miles
Flight over 100 miles, miles listed

2014 XC Score Sheet Page:

2014 XC Contest Score Sheet

For the XC Contest Rules and How to Join - See:
http://www.sdhgpa.com/xc-contest.html

SDHGPA XC Contest Info

SDHGPA Notes and Announcements:

Our Next Scheduled SDHGPA Meeting will be Feb 18th unless otherwise posted or changed on the Official Calendar.

Please always check the Official Gmail Calendar for the dates and times of our upcoming Meetings and Events.

Note that there is no scheduled meeting in January other then the fly-in we just had.

SDHGPA Calendar

Check the SDHGPA Calendar on our Web site under SDHGPA on the navigation menu, or add the Official SDHGPA Google Calendar to your own calendar app to make it easier to follow SDHGPA meetings and events. https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=sdhgpa%40gmail.com&ctz=America%2FLos_Angeles

SDHGPA Membership

Thank you to all that have renewed their Annual Memberships for the 2015 year. People like you make it possible for us to continue supporting free flight in San Diego County and maintain our sites.

If you have not already done so, Please update your membership and print out your 2015 cards before heading out to fly all San Diego sites.

You can check on your SDHGPA membership status at: http://www.sdhgpa.com/current-sdhgpa-members.html

All vehicles in the Palomar LZ and launch must have parking permits displayed on the dash for Pala Tribal Security and the Smiley's . It is also a good idea to display the SDHGPA parking pass at all other sites so that we can account for all pilots at the end of a flying day if a vehicle remains.

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SDHGPA Dec 2014 Meeting Minutes

1/14/2015

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SDHGPA Meeting Minutes, December 2014

As recorded by Dave Metzgar

2015 Board Elections:

Nominations were closed, one slate was nominated:

Steve Rohrbaugh, President
Greg Hunter, VP
Roger Marsh, Safety
Dave Metzgar, Secretary
Bill Helliwell, Treasurer/Site Director

Elections were conducted. Votes were accepted both electronically and in-person.

31 votes were registered, 30 in favor of the nominated slate and one abstention. Is that how you spell abstention? Anyway…

Angela was semi-convinced to be the Event Coordinator, but she insists on some help. From the friendly, social, active pilots reading these minutes.

Appointed positions: Events Coordinators for the year as slated were ratified :

Angela,
Dale, and
Wild Bill.

The Events Coordinators' job is to assist in organizing club events and encouraging participation.

Other Club Buisiness

It was decided that meetings would continue on the current schedule, with no meeting in January. The annual New Year’s Fly-in would be held at Palomar during January, on either the 10th or the 17th, weather permitting. Fly-in will be announced via the club’s e-mail list, website, and Facebook page.

A site clean-up was conducted at Palomar, with much apparent improvement in the launch conditions.

Brianna Kufa suggested that her family might have a large shop area where we could set up both re-packing operations and a high-ceiling simulator swing. We should have Roger contact her about possibilities for a repack clinic and reserve deployment session. Before summer requires actual deployments.

Two recent members were contacted recently, and said they had paid their dues and filled out all the forms but had never received any e-mail announcements of club meetings or events. Since these were the only two people I asked about these things, it seems likely that many new members are not being integrated into the email distribution list. We should discuss this at the next meeting or attempt to remedy it immediately – our communications are the only way we have to bring members into the community, and god knows we need more sense of community given the recent turnout.

Communication & Email List Discussion: As to the two new members. How new were they and who are they so that we figure our how they slipped trough the cracks?

It is likely that our welcome email ended up as spam junk mail to the recipients. All members should add SDHGPA@gmail.com as a contact and approved safe sender.

We send all of our mass emails out via a single recipient Club email address and BCC the club members so that emails are not publicly shared. This however may trigger some recipient email systems to put our emails into a spam, social, or promotional folder unless they have added SDHGPA@gmail.com as a contact or approved safe sender. Others bounce due to wrong or changed emails. If new member emails bounce, we try to contact them by other means to get it corrected.

In the beginning of the year Bill & Steve try to be quite diligent at processing the Membership spreadsheet database and gmail email list with a welcome email. However later in the year, we only process them once a month and Nov/ Dec were grouped into one in Dec.

We could look into an autoresponder / email robot that could send to each individual on a list. But most of those are pricey and just one more thing to manage. Some of it could be automated. But at year end and start would be a a fair amount of work to set up.

AWebber is something like $20/ month and would not fit into our small budget. Mailchimp is cheaper and would probably work fine for us. I think the 1st 1-2k members are free, but they nickel & dime the features to make it work if you need something more then the base features.

Managing Membership Year lists would require importing in and out of lists.

Emails going out would need to be built using the MailChimp editor (like building a web page). Not as quick and easy as sending out an email or adding a list to the gmail calendar invite.

We can look into this as a longer term project unless someone would volunteer to help in this area

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SDHGPA Annual New-Year Fly-in

1/8/2015

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SDHGPA Annual New-Year Fly-in and Awards Ceremony Saturday January 10th 2015 at Palomar!

Check this page for info updates up to day of fly-in.

Green light for WX on Fly-in Date:
Right now the weather for this weekend the 10th is looking good for a fly-in.

We also have a green light from the Pala Tribal Council for the fly-in & BBQ.

Site: Palomar
Date: Jan 10th 2015
Where: Palomar Main LZ
(Pala Roberts Ranch - 15450 California 76 Pauma Valley, CA 92061) (map)

SDHGPA 2015 Membership is required to fly Palomar and for this event BBQ.
(Full Annual Membership or Visiting Pilot membership is valid for this event. However Visiting Pilots will not receive gate codes & must fly with Full Annual Members for access)

This will be a great event!!!
For those that have not been to Palomar in the past year, we have greatly improved the site with the Pala Tribe. We now have two great launches, an improved large HG bail-out LZ, and a great large LZ down in the valley that is PG and HG friendly into the wind with a long run-out that is easily landable even with an ATOs. Palomar Site Guide.

The Pala Main Launch is the recommended preferred launch for this fly-in even for the HGs. This is to minimize impact on the Upper Launch and the Main Launch provides a safer/ cleaner into the wind launch. (Note main launch is not in a wind shadow that is common with the upper launch and can be 5-10 mph more wind as a result)

Parking & Vehicles:
Please coordinate and carpool to launch from the Main LZ.
Parked cars in Pala LZ and Palomar Main Launch, and Smiley Launch must display the SDHGPA Member Vehicle ID/ Gate Pass. Main Launch is recommended even for the HG pilots for this Fly-in to minimize the impact to Smiley Launch. For those that insist on using the upper launch, Max 4 vehicles may be at Upper Smiley Launch at any given time.

In the Main LZ, We must not park in front of block the Roll-up Doors and Shade Structure in the LZ in the main part of the day. Pilot Parking is to the south of the Office Doors and depicted in the Palomar Site Guide.

Prime Launching times for experienced Palomar pilots have been from 1-3 with flights extending till dusk in the past few weeks. Peak heating is at 2pm. Beginning and early intermediate pilots should avoid the peak heating hours even this time of year.

Last weekend we launched at about 2:30-3 after the launch work party and flew in thermals till sunset. (Surprisingly we found multiple 500fpm thermals at that late hour and this time of year. The Face heats and works even if the wind is light.) All thermal pilots were able to top land.

Some may want to launch Erlyer or later, Please adjust your flying time and schedule to meet your own skill level needs. Many P2 and H2 Pilots have been getting in some great flights early and late in the day making multiple flights.

Time Table (rough time line) :
11:00 - General Meeting Time & Set-up in LZ:
12:00 - Drive to launch
12:30 - Site intros on Main Launch
1 - 4:00 - Launching (it would be great if we could minimize the impact on Smiley launch and encourage HGs to use the main launch)
~3:30 BBQ Set-up & Start Cooking
~ 4pm - BBQ starts
~5:30 - Awards Ceremony – During BBQ this year

Post Flying BBQ:

BBQ Starts ~ @ 4pm
Main Course will be provided by the club however it is primarily a potluck; so plan to bring an appetizer, side dish, salad, or dessert to share. Please also bring any drinks you might want. BYOB

Angela A., Wild Bill, & the Social committee would like some help from some volunteers to help coordinate food pickup, set up and break down. Also, if you have a charcoal grill that you would be willing to bring, that would be great. Ideally, we can get these things coordinated by mid day on the Friday before the event so that everything runs as smooth as possible on Saturday.

Please Comment below and or contact Angela (angelolina@gmail.com) or Wild Bill to help and coordinate on the event planning side.

Photos from last New-Years SDHGPA Fly-in @ Palomar

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Meeting Minutes, News, & Articles

SDHGPA Little Black documentary Update

SDHGPA Palomar New-years Fly-in 2015 & XC Contest Awards

SDHGPA Dec 2014 Meeting Minutes

SDHGPA Annual New-Year Fly-in

SDHGPA

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