Best consistent ridge soaring site

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.

On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 10:13:12 AM UTC-7, 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.

http://higlideracademy.com/

On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 10:13:12 AM UTC-7, 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.

East: Ridge Soaring in Pa or Jersey Ridge Soaring (Blairstown).
Central: Talihina, OK Oklahoma Soaring Association
West: Logan, UT; Utah Soaring Association
Hawaii: Dillingham Airfield

For east, don't forget Mifflin in PA or New Castle in VA.

Dillingham Airfield on Oahu is the absolute best ridge soaring site. The trade winds are very consistent. The view is impossible to top. A 500 foot tow and you are off. Leave the ridge and fly out over the ocean to look down at the coral reefs.

I have done it five times. The winds failed to blow on only two days. Within two days things were good again.

On Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 7:05:37 AM UTC+3, wrote:
Dillingham Airfield on Oahu is the absolute best ridge soaring site. The trade winds are very consistent. The view is impossible to top. A 500 foot tow and you are off. Leave the ridge and fly out over the ocean to look down at the coral reefs.

I have done it five times. The winds failed to blow on only two days. Within two days things were good again.

I don't think you've really experienced ridge soaring until you've done a 50 km or 100 km or longer run at high speed without turning.

Doesn't look possible there.

Along the chain on the east coast of the island, maybe, but that's a totally different wind direction than would make Dillingham local ridge work.

On Wed, 15 Nov 2017 23:51:07 -0800, Bruce Hoult wrote:

On Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 7:05:37 AM UTC+3,
wrote:
Dillingham Airfield on Oahu is the absolute best ridge soaring site.
The trade winds are very consistent. The view is impossible to top. A
500 foot tow and you are off. Leave the ridge and fly out over the
ocean to look down at the coral reefs.

I have done it five times. The winds failed to blow on only two days.
Within two days things were good again.

I don't think you've really experienced ridge soaring until you've done
a 50 km or 100 km or longer run at high speed without turning.

Doesn't look possible there.

Along the chain on the east coast of the island, maybe, but that's a
totally different wind direction than would make Dillingham local ridge
work.

The Dillingham ridge looks as if 7-8km should be easily usable. But, the
section of the Pennines centered on Cross Fell and easily accessable from
a winch launch at Eden Soaring is 12km. This section works in wind from
SSW through NW and in good conditions 60km will work. In addition, a
decent easterly sets up wave directly above the airfield and westerlies
can give wave off the Lake District on the other side of Eden Valley.

As Bruce says, you could get 40km on the east-facing ridge past Kailua,
but how often do you get an easterly there and does it wave?




--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

Consistent is the key word here. When its good, the Pennsylvania (and north and south) ridges are great. But you can go for weeks without a good ridge day. Just look at the flights for this year on OLC. I'm told by those have been doing this much longer than me that ridge days were much more common in the good old days. I'll second the suggestion to call Tom Knauff. If its predicted to be a good day you could almost certainly get a ride with Tom or one of his instructors. Be careful, though. When the soaring bug bites you you'll wonder why you spent all that time and money getting a power rating. ;)

Mike

Not to get too persnickety on this subject, but I don't think it's true that there were more ridge days in the past. There are a lot more ridge-soarable days than folks realize in the appalachians, including backside (SE) days. But, a lot of folks don't come out for the marginal ones or the ones where the day is going to die early, which are often good training days. In fact, it's probably ridgeable right now, should be tomorrow morning, backside on Saturday, then NW again on Sunday. If you are "on the property", you might be able to get several days in, even if they aren't the sort of days you'd drive 4 hours for.

I have to look, but I think we had at least a dozen backside days this year and a similar number NW (which is a bit low), though we couldn't fly at Blairstown on several good NW days due to tow operations or other issues.

P3

On Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 1:41:30 PM UTC-5, wrote:
Consistent is the key word here. When its good, the Pennsylvania (and north and south) ridges are great. But you can go for weeks without a good ridge day. Just look at the flights for this year on OLC. I'm told by those have been doing this much longer than me that ridge days were much more common in the good old days. I'll second the suggestion to call Tom Knauff. If its predicted to be a good day you could almost certainly get a ride with Tom or one of his instructors. Be careful, though. When the soaring bug bites you you'll wonder why you spent all that time and money getting a power rating. ;)

Mike

I've wondered if there was an actual data to back up the recollections and have never taken the time to look into it. And you're right about marginal/short days. In the case of Ridge Soaring, its remote enough for most pilots that conditions have to be pretty good to justify the trip. Those days have been pretty scarce, at least in my opinion. I'm pretty sure there are many more days that are suitable intro/training flights.