Why are there no wolves in Scotland, Al?

At 08:30 28 December 2004, Al Eddie wrote:
Alaska...

That would be where they've embarked on wholesale slaughter
of wolves for no other reason than 'sport'...!

Beautiful though the Alaskan wilderness is, it will
now be forever tarnished by the blood of the most endangered
mammal species on the planet. What is it you all want
to do, drive them to extinction...?

Shame on the Alaskans for allowing this to happen,
and shame on their governor, Frank Murkowski, who signed
the approval.

Disgusted Al...

At 06:30 28 December 2004, Pete Brown wrote:

And for the 'I'd love to hear THIS guy's story'

Tom Johnston of Anchorage, Alaska has SGS 2-33A N1200S

I'd REALLY like to know what kind of soaring is in
Anchorage...

Well..since you asked..my furst flight in this particular

glider was in 1991 out of Birchwood, Alaska with and
my
latest was this fall out of Palmer, Alaska.

Actually, there are several active gliding pilots
in Anchorage -- they
even have their own Yahoo Group.


In the winter, Anchorage isn't much colder than the
northern midwestern
states of the USA. In the spring the snow melts,
and a typical summer
day is quite pleasant. Probably lots of good soaring
around all those
mountains.

Our season starts towards the end of March in a typical
year
and ends up towards the end of October.

We have good thermals, especially in April and May.
I have
been to 10K from a field elevation of 98 ft (Birchwood)
and
wave to 14k. The wave goes much higher but we don't
have O2 yet.

In addition to wave and thermal, we get shear zone
lift that
we haven't yet really figured out yet and the mysterious

Eagle River vortex beckons.

Flying privately we have a 1-23g, a Pilatus B-4, a
Jantar, A
Russia AC-5M, and a Stemme. The CAP has a fleet consisting

of a 1-34, 2 ASK-21s, an L-13, a 2-33, and an L-23.

As of the early fall, Alaska Wing CAP Glider program
was
3rd most active in the nation in flights this year,
behind
only CA and MN. Just to put that in perspective, CA
(667
flts) has a population of 35 million, MN (906 flts)
5
million, and AK (567 flts) ~650,000.

Put another way, MN has nearly 8 times our population
and
had only 1.6X our flts and CA nearly 54 times our population

and 1.2X. For our size, we are 5 times more active
than Mn.

Of course Mn has a short season and some adverse weather,

perhaps accounting for their relatively poor showing.

Even worse, Minnesota has no mountains...how boring!

Yes, the mountains are spectacular and we have the
pictures
to prove it on the yahoo site.


--

Peter D. Brown
http://home.gci.net/~pdb/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/akmtnsoaring/