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