Aero Club Albatross Ridge Seminar 3 Weeks Away!

Hey Guys,

Be sure to sign up for the second seminar in this winter's lecture series! With over 40 people signed up and the seminar less than three weeks away, now's the time!

ACA Ridge Seminar: February 17th: https://aca-ridge-soaring.eventbrite.com

Broadly, we are following the themes of theory, technique and safety. Bob Cook, a CFI for over 40 years with thousands of hours of glider experience will boil down the basic airmanship and judgment that is required to ridge soar. This will be followed be Daniel Sazhin's talk on ridge weather. This talk will address, what makes a ridge work and why? What makes ridge lift stronger or weaker than expected? After lunch, Jonathan Leal, a hang-glider and glider pilot with over 30 years of soaring experience and a 500 mile flight in his 1-26 will do a geographic tour of Blue Mountain and highlight the trouble spots, explaining how and why the air is expected to act as it does. This will be followed by a discussion on NW ridge soaring technique by a panel of our club's most experienced ridge pilots. Robert Templin has completed many 750 km triangles and 1000km flights in his LS3 and Ron Schwartz is the 1-26 pilot extraordinaire, having completed a 1000km diploma in 428 last year. Any gliderpilot knows that most soaring questions are answered with it depends! These three panel members will discuss and debate questions such questions.

Our next talk will be a tour of Blairstown's SE Ridge by Bill Thar. Bill is the club's president with hundreds of hours of ridge experience and has dozens and dozens of flights on the SE ridge. Lately he zips around in his Windward Performance Duckhawk, leaving everyone else in the dust! Blairstown is special as the "backside" of our ridge can actually support really massive cross country flights in conditions that are quite different from the normal post-frontal "routine". The workable ridge is over 200 miles long, only has one 4 mile upwind jog and is generally quite landable. However, thanks to the more stable SE winds, high probability of precipitation and certain sections that lack good landing options, it has its own unique challenges.. Bill Thar will discuss these challenges and also the addition of the "Tuscarora transition", which has extended the range by another 30 miles to the Maryland Border!

We will conclude the seminar with a talk by Robert Dunning, the club's Safety Committee chairman. The safety commitee (consisting of Rob Dunning, Jonathan Leal and Daniel Sazhin) has reworked by the Pilot Guidelines, especially with a focus on Ridge Soaring. We will be introducing new policies for both club members and visitors who fly the Blairstown Ridge, to be implemented immediately in the spring ridge season. These goal of these policies is to create a culture of safety, a system for coaching/mentoring and a pathway for pilots to advance from beginners to experts.

The schedule is as follows:

Ridge Seminar- February 17th
10:15-11am Ridge Soaring Theory/Technique- Robert Cook
11:15-12pm: Ridge weather- Prediction and dangers- Daniel Sazhin
12pm-1pm: Lunch
1-2pm: Soaring Blue Mountain NW- A talk by Jonathan Leal about flow; where, how and why does the air do what it does on our ridge system. Followed by a panel discussion with expert ridge pilots: Robert Templin, Ron Schwartz and Jonathan Leal
2pm-2:45pm: Soaring Blue Mountain SE- Bill Thar
3-3:45pm: Operations. Ridge guidelines + getting checked out. Guidance for visitors and club members- Rob Dunning: Safety Committee Chairman
4:30-6pm Social Hour-Buck Hill Inn