Saturday October 27th!!  2018 at Palomar

A Halloween Costume Themed SDHGPA Fall Fly-in

Come on out and share the sky with the San Diego free flight crew.  BBQ main course & soft drinks will be provided by the club after flying - feel free to bring any appetizers or side dishes you'd like to share & BYOB.

For detailed Site info, see the Palomar Site Guide

​If you haven't flown Palomar before or checked out the site guide this year for updates, please read the site guide prior to arrival.  It may save you from landing in a burial ground or from wandering into rotor, or it may even help make your flight epic!

Cost: 

Free to SDHGPA Members & $5/ non flying guest BBQ donation is appreciated

SDHGPA Membership is required to participate in the Fly-in at Palomar and covers the BBQ.

Any new (late) Annual Memberships joining for the Fly-in (after October 20th), will be rolled over into a 2019 Annual Membership as an added bonus treat.  Late membership Roll-over normally starts in November.
(Full Annual Membership, or Visiting Pilot membership is valid for this event. For non flying guests, a $5/ person BBQ donation is appreciated)

Please take care of Memberships and print parking passes before driving out if not current.
All memberships are on line and easier with a strong connection. . . ​
To Check Current Membership Status

The Social Committee would like some help from some volunteers to help coordinate, set up, BBQ and break down. Also, if you have a portable Fire Ring that would be great!

Please also RSVP via the Club Calendar invites or RSVP form below.

RSVP Responses

Last years PALOMAR DE HALLOWEEN ICARNAVAL was a great time,  Looking forward to this years!

I should probably start naming names: Bill Davis was the one who saw the opportunity to shove me into a thermal over at Little Black, and I’ll probably always remember his super simple and intensely shared advice over the radio: “Keep turning, ya knucklehead!” ​

As funny as it sounds, that’s really all you need to get started with thermalling, although that’s just the start of the invisible elevator game.

Chris Cote spent lots of time at Blossom with me going over what he looks for and how he understands the sky from the ground and from the riser-feel once he’s skyward. It’s always nice to get the perspective of someone who has put in a ton of time in a very short period (and who holds more than one of the local site records.)

Ivan Guajardo was also more patient than he needed to be when it came to talking through the first steps of Blossom and the crossing to El Capitan, and Mike Dowdall has been about the most generous and encouraging pilot I’ve met on launch.

Yes, Phil Russman was there barking his occasional gems of wisdom, Paton always drops the technical flying info-bombs, and before he got sucked into buying a house, Robert Michiels was a fairly constant wingman. ​

I got to enjoy the glory of a hike with Dave Metzgar and hear his gravelly version of what’s right and wrong in the world of paragliding, which is one of those experiences that just makes you want to hear more.

On a few car rides to club meetings or out to Horse with Josh Gelb I got an exceptional and interesting view into club history, including many lines that are rarely flown now and the genesis of the Palomar launch.

​Finally, an exhortation to those of you who either haven’t renewed your membership yet OR who are new and wondering what a membership actually gets you.

One of the reasons San Diego is such an excellent and reliable place to fly is that we lean heavily on just a few people to do all the paperwork and admin “stuff” to keep our sites open. ​

Access to Horse, the permission to fly Palomar, the ability to put up weather stations, keeping sites maintained, the website itself, and keeping us an insured & recognized club in good standing with USPHA is frankly a huge PITA.

The easy way is to take the money you’d spend on your sweetie for a cheap dinner once a year and pay your membership dues. That’s a one-time action that allows the 4 or 5 people who do 98% of the volunteer work that keeps San Diego such a great flying area to keep on slaving away on our behalf. ​

Oh, and if you find anything other than a cheap dinner in San Diego for under $40, let me know!​

The hard way is to volunteer to actually do all that paperwork, and there is a TON! ​

While I’d encourage you to volunteer, it’s far easier and also pretty effective to just pay your dues. We’ve got about 100 pilots who haven’t renewed yet, which represents a good chunk of our yearly income as a club. If you fly any more than 3 times a year it’s basically a no-brainer to continue supporting.

Finally, if you’re new and thinking about joining SDHGPA, please do!

Most club members are happy to chat with you and share as much as we know, along with introducing you to potential flying buddies and mentors. You can eat $40 worth of tacos at any one of our fly-ins, so if you’re a hungry pilot, think of coming to multiple fly-ins as basically being paid to fly and eat.

At $40 per year for a full annual membership, this is about the most valuable spend you’ll make this year. Ping us with any questions, and see ya in the sky!

Cheers,
​Nik Hawks

​A work party will be announced when we are ready for the installation depending on the location selected and manpower required for that location install.

For this 4th station, we chose the Ultrasonic wind sensor like at Palomar and Laguna for less maintenance and more obscurity due to no moving parts. The rest of the system is similar to the other club stations that are also solar powered and send data over a cellular network connection. Data is then sent to the Holfuy Data hosting site and WEB based data visualization. ​

Look for the LB WX station data to be coming live in the next month and find the data on the SDHGPA WX Station Page along with the LB Site Guide.  You can also use the holfuy stations Apps available for iOS & Android. 

Elsinore convergence animation / slideshow hr by hr
From XC Skys on a classic day 9-27-18 starting at 9 am till 6 pm.

Watch how the day develops and progresses. The colors are showing top of usable lift and the scale is on the upper right. From blue to green then yellow are the higher altitudes. 

Note that the Eastern side of the Santa Ana Mts / Santiago Saddleback coastal range (that block & hold back the westerly winds and also referred to the E's Back Range) typically develop 1st before the flats heat up to be workable. Many times, it becomes a patience & waiting game while trying to hold onto altitude before crossing over into the flats.  A lot of times, it is beneficial to hold onto the Back Range until the West pushes through. Once the west pushes through, it is time to go with it and try to stay slightly ahead of it as a tail wind, as the cooler west diminishes the Back Range's productivity, and the Flats turn on.

​Blossom Site Update: Asking for everyone’s support to help counter the proposed sand mining project in the valley. Nik is leading the current efforts and has written a October Update post about what is needed to Help Counter the Sand Mining Project.

Event Planning:
10/27 Halloween fly in:  Need help with stuff for fly-in
Bill has some stuff but needs pickups to transport - Joseph, Luke, etc...
​Steve to put up sign up sheet – See Sign-up Genius link on Halloween Fly-in info page
 
USHPA Film Fest 2018 at UCSD 11/17? Or at Palomar with a fly in 11/17/18

• Kim is working details to get co-sponsorship with a UCSD sports club to bring the costs down to a reasonable level.
• Default / Back-up location will be Palomar
• For more info see and follow the Film Festival Event page

A few days after the meeting, the Board determined that Palomar would be the best Event location from the proposed locations.

Other Club Business:
Memberships:
Dues the same for next year, approved by board unanimously

Lots of people not renewing but still flying:
Ask em to join if u see em. Best tactic in my experience - present it as an essentially voluntary and supportive action, of little cost - a way of protecting and maintaining our sites and doing right by your fellow pilots.

SDHGPA 2019 Elections
SDHGPA Board Nominations & appointed committee positions for 2019 will open at the next scheduled meeting in November. Please think about how you would like to be support your flying community in this next year.  Elections will be in Dec - Jan via mail in ballots. 

LiveTrack24 SDHGPA Group
Steve R- everybody should use LiveTrack24 and sign up for the SDHGPA tracking group, so we can find em. Any tacking device dealio from satellite Spot or Garmin inReach type to cell phone app can be linked and combined in LiveTrack24. Our Livetrack24 Group is a good way for us to merge all of the different tracking devices and methods into one location for our SDHGPA group to quickly and easy access pilot locations for retrieve or emergency purposes.

A good practice is to use both Satellite and phone app for tracking for redundancy and that the cell apps can fill in more data points between the 5 or 10 min satellite tracker data send intervals. (If using phone for tracking, it is a good idea to also use a back-up battery supply)

​Bill D. - everybody that doesn’t have a dedicated SOS-sending satellite tracking dealio is basically committing suicide. But if they want to go with wimpy-ass LiveTrack, whatever. Maybe we’ll come find em, maybe not.   And off we go into the abyss . . . 

Topic Discussion: ​ Weather Tools
Great talk by Chris Cote on weather-casting tools and how he uses them to crush the rest of us in XC-land. If you missed it, it’s your loss. Or gain - if you or I tried to fly in some of the crazy conditions he calls “awesome”, we would just be scared out of our minds and likely give up paragliding for golf. 

Cheers, 
Dave Metzgar