On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 12:13:12 PM UTC-5, wrote:
Where is the best consistent ride soaring site in the USA. Recently got my PPL, and I'd love to experience ridge soaring. I've Only flown in the flat lands.

If by consistent you mean always being able to count on staying up as long as you want on nearly every day of the year then Dillingham is pretty hard to beat. I did over 100 days of flying there over a three year period and only had 1 flight where I had to land before I was ready to call it a day, and that one was my fault for flying into sink while I was low.

You get *maybe* 3 to 5 days per year that are not good for soaring, so you can plan on flying any day and there is no worry about the weather being bad...

Once you tow to 1000ft, you can stay up as long as you want on the ridge, it's actually hardly any challenge to just fly around at 3000-4000ft all day going back and forth between Kaena point and Mt Kaala. So basically between 10am and 6pm there is always constant ridge lift. And by midday, there is usually a good thermal over the far end of the runway as well, although you have to be careful of the skydivers who are just to the east of there.

There is also wave lift at times, one day while I was there Elmer (the owner of soar Hawaii) took the Grob 103 to 23,000 and would have gone higher if they had been dressed warmer.

On the Waimanalo side of the island, the ridge is actually longer but not many people fly on that side. Some guy did a 36 hour duration flight there in a 1-26 years ago.