On Sunday, February 15, 2015 at 11:56:46 PM UTC-8, Ramy wrote:

As for Mimden/Truckee area and other Great Basin soaring sites, they are great but only for 3-4 month during the summer. The rest of the year is wave or nothing, so unless you are a die hard wave pilot, your soaring season will be short. All my soaring buddies who moved from the Bay Area to retire in Minden area fly much less than I do...

Ramy

Ramy,

Not to be argumentative, I flew my Stemme S10-VT out of Napa for 5 years. Soaring there is very interesting and challenging, lots of variety, ridge, convergence, thermal, limited wave, and pretty much all of that in typically weak conditions below 5K agl.

I moved to Minden 12 years ago. If you are suggesting the thermal season at Minden is but 3 or 4 months, I disagree, unless you are referring to that portion of the season where you risk twisting your vario needle off and for romping cross country flying. Add a few of months on each side of that to account for more moderate conditions, and still able to head down to the Whites etc, and you have a thermal season that stretches from March (thermals to 16K) to November (thermals to 15K). Yesterday's report said 4 knots to 9.9K - but I wasn't flying so can't confirm what it really was.

Ridge, when the wind is out of the NE to E, provides great opportunity for scenic flying the eastern flank of the Carson range, though seldom much higher than 1.5K over ridge. Lots of fun!

Throw in wave and only in the dead of winter are there sometimes periods of a week or so with zip for soaring.

The above accounts for almost 300 days of the year.