Top 20 XC Soaring Sites in the US

At 18:27 27 December 2016, JS wrote:
Many places are seasonal.
The Appalachian chain with "a low up high and a high down low"
is loads of
=
fun.
But the best soaring is often where nobody would go on vacation,
the Great
=
Basin being a decent example.
Tonopah, Nevada is a great place for Summer XC but other than
the brewery
t=
here is little infrastructure left on Doon.
Ely has much better infrastructure, but no longer has regular
tows
availabl=
e. Don't think they have a brewery, but the hardware store has a
great
sele=
ction of stainless metric hardware.
You can fly the Great Basin from quite a few places along the
edge. The
Uta=
h locations are shy on decent beer.
Moriarty's pretty consistent weather combined with a relatively low
cost
of=
living has attracted many. And it has a brewery.
Come to think of it, Tehachapi has a brewery too.
Internationally, you won't find much population density (especially
with
an=
y wealth) outside of Windhoek, Namibia yet it's obvious that
Bitterwasser,
=
Kiripotib and Pokweni offer tremendous soaring. December always
seems to
be=
the best for them. Wonder if they have a brewery?
Jim


The brewery is in Windhoek - not very far down the road (in the
scale of Namibia). Products get a pass mark!

I think you're missing a few points. Here's an example: Harris Hill is an extraordinary historical repository for glider pilots. The weather is sometimes dodgy... but what's more fun, doing 200 miles on a day when no one else goes cross country, or doing 300 miles on a day when everyone else does 500?

The area is really safe because it's filled with airports. The weather is challenging, leading to a learning experience on every flight. The takeoff over a cliff is breathtaking. And when you land, you're surrounded by great camaraderie, amazing history, and a really beautiful landscape.

So... don't just look at the numbers. There's more to gliding than just distance.

Very interesting. And all the whining on here confirms a well known fact - glider pilots who are stuck inside for the winter are a bunch of grumpy grinches. Let's hope spring gets here soon! In the meantime, come join us for some our year round flying in Houston Texas. Ha!

Frank that was a lot of work. I wonder if results would change if only top 3 scorers were used instead of entire club? But then I guess that would be crunching 270 x 3, or 3 times the work.

Casey, I suspect that would change the results, but more work than I'd want to do.
I do encourage others to try different analyses and let us know the results.

Nice analysis. There's no perfect metric, but you certainly tagged some decent ones - lots of miles logged, lots of long flights, high average flight distance. Yes, there are remote soaring sites where you can have a nice time flying not as far or as reliably, or with as many other pilots around, but mostly reliable weather to fly long distances with other soaring pilots seem like decent criteria to first approximation. As a comparison, you might consider taking out OLC flights flown during contests or OLC camps, just to see what the normal organic XC flying looks like when there aren't events being hosted. You could also sort purely by average OLC distance to pick out the hidden gems - but I'm nit-picking.

9B

At 16:22 27 December 2016, V1 wrote:
Looking for cross-country soaring sites to visit on vacation? Places to
ret=
ire with top-notch soaring?

I=E2=80=99ve done an analysis based on three years of US OLC (Online
Contes=
t) flight data covering 270+ sites, more than 40,000 flights, and in
excess=
of 5 million miles flown. YMMV.=20

Map is at
https://drive.google.com/open?id=3D1...cOt1JiGjVPQ&u=
sp=3Dsharing

For more details about the analysis, see the Soaring Club of Houston web
pa=
ge:
https://sites.google.com/site/soarin...oaring/cross-=
country/top-20-us-soaring-sites

To our European and international pilots (hint, hint) - would be great if
s=
omeone would create a similar map for Europe, or global. Great publicity
fo=
r your club or location - within a day of posting this to US
SSA=E2=80=99s
=
Facebook page (reposted to many club=E2=80=99s pages), the Google map had
o=
ver 2000 views.

Frank Allen, SCOH

Hi Frank. Looking to tour the USA in my dotage. Would be nice to see your
map. Could you post a tinyurl please?

In UK soaring is definitely weather dependent. It is also about where you
can get a tow in a decent glider. If you are over this side between April
and August, look me up at Booker which is just 20 minutes from LHR. You can
take me flying in our Duo.

Jim

Hi Frank. Looking to tour the USA in my dotage. Would be nice to see your
map. Could you post a tinyurl please?


Thanks Jim.
The links were in the original message, so I assume that given the various software used to read ras, the links may have gotten striped out for some readers. Alternate directions to the main page:
* Go to the Soaring Club of Houston website (scoh.org)
* Click on drop-down menu for About Soaring - Cross Country
* Click on the link in the Top 20 US Soaring Sites box
* From the resulting page, you have links to the map, and the supporting spreadsheet and word document.

PS - I used to subscribe to the British Soaring magazine. Always amazed me to see their annual map of UK soaring sites, with gliderports about every 30 kilometers throughout much of the country - sweet!

On Wednesday, December 28, 2016 at 10:47:32 AM UTC-7, V1 wrote:
Hi Frank. Looking to tour the USA in my dotage. Would be nice to see your
map. Could you post a tinyurl please?


Thanks Jim.
The links were in the original message, so I assume that given the various software used to read ras, the links may have gotten striped out for some readers. Alternate directions to the main page:
* Go to the Soaring Club of Houston website (scoh.org)
* Click on drop-down menu for About Soaring - Cross Country
* Click on the link in the Top 20 US Soaring Sites box
* From the resulting page, you have links to the map, and the supporting spreadsheet and word document.

PS - I used to subscribe to the British Soaring magazine. Always amazed me to see their annual map of UK soaring sites, with gliderports about every 30 kilometers throughout much of the country - sweet!

In the UK, I'd head off cross country when cloud base reached 1800agl because if I fell out, I could get a launch from the next club en route;^)

OMG give me a break! Ionia, MI is #1 and every other site is second. ;-). My basis is number of racing tasks last year. Checkmate.

Fun article, but it's going to get torn to shreds now by the winter and it's grounded soaring pilots.

One last time: Ionia, MI is #1

Sean
7T