Sorry to contradict in light of your unfortunate experience at Region 9, but
we routinely look down at the Lincoln Station airstrip. Renny Rozzoni drove
out there after your accident and took several pictures from the road and
from the strip. If I still had them, I'd post links. Maybe someone else
will.


wrote in message
...
As part of my new 12-step crash recovery program, I have taken a sacred vow
to never go to a new soaring site without a thorough Google Earth review of
all airports/airstrips in the published site waypoint database. When I find
that airports in the database aren't there anymore (and there are always
some - think Lincoln Station at Moriarty) - I manually modify my personal
waypoint database so that I don't try to fly to a non-existent airport
(again).

I have completed my preliminary review of the current Minden waypoint
database, and although I only found a few missing/abandoned airstrips, I
found that a LOT of them are problematic - usually due to a runway that is
nominally much too narrow for an 18 (or even a 15) meter glider. I say
'nominally' because such an airstrip might be more than adequate if the
surrounding sagebrush or other vegetation is low enough - but that's hard to
tell from the GE imagery.

I have placed photo sets (usually 2 but sometimes 3 photos) of each problem
airstrip, along with a Word document containing captioned versions of the
photo sets on my Google drive at

https://drive.google.com/folderview?...sha ring#list

Each photo set contains an overview shot showing the airstrip's orientation
and distance from Minden, along with a closeup of the airstrip itself, with
the runway width shown via the GE 'ruler' tool. Some sets have a third
photo showing a nearby alternate (usually a real airport with decent runway
widthh)

If anyone has additional information about any of these airstrips (or any
new ones discovered that aren't in the database yet), please post it here so
all Minden-bound pilots can benefit. If someone wants to copy these files
over to the Minden Soaring Club site, that's fine by me too.

Hopefully the contest organizers will consider modifications to the database
as appropriate ;-).

One last note. One of the airstrips in the database is 'Black Rock City'
which turns out to be the site of the annual 'Burning Man' festival. The
airstrip itself is nowhere to be found (or at least I couldn't see it), but
the GE image was coincidentally taken during the festival period when the
city was actually there (in theory, everything is carted away at the end of
the festival) - neat!

Regards,

Frank (TA)