Best places for a soaring pilot to retire?

On Tuesday, December 26, 2017 at 11:00:59 PM UTC+3, wrote:
i want to post a reply with a suggestion not put forward yet, but also post up a related topic..

Suggestion -- fly out of Ephrata Washington ... you can live a LOT of places, but the hidden gem I'd suggest is Richland WA.

Yes, nice place.

I was in the USA based at Seattle for a couple of months in winter 1998/9. On Jan 1 (Friday) I drove with my family to from Seattle to Richland via Yakima to stay with some internet friends there. We had a look around the area on the Saturday and then drove back to Seattle via Portland on the Sunday..

The terrain and climate looked nice, and 250k - 300k is a good size for a nearby metro area. Big enough to have almost everything, not so big to have traffic.

Looks like it has lots of nice connections to SEATAC and LAX and less so to Salt Lake City, Denver, MSP, SFO.


Ephrata has excellent soaring -- perhaps not quite as good as Moriarty etc

Somehow, I always had the impression when I saw this name that it was in New England somewhere.

And the Richland area has excellent health care and a more cultural things going on that you would expect -- the big DOE laboratory makes it a highly-educated community. It's very sunny there, not terribly hot in the summer, and almost no snow during the winter.

Yes, looks good. Much like Canterbury in New Zealand. Or the Pyatigorsk area here (coincidentally formerly a centre of uranium mining and processing).

* I'm a CFI-G/ASEL, got my -G in 1971, and I love teaching, particularly in the club setting. I'm also a tow-pilot, have towed using just about every towplane type used in the USA, currently tow in Pawnees. I realize nobody wants to take an unknown pilot at word-value, but I am looking for places that have some interest in another CFI and Towpilot ... who isn't guaranteeing to hang around for ever. But I can fill-in tow on weekdays etc. I've instructed in everything from 2-22s (at Torrey Pines!) on up, currently instruct mostly in G-103s - own a Discus B and a Ka-6.

If you're not wedded to taking your own glider with you, several clubs in New Zealand take on foreign instructor/tow pilots to enable a seven day a week operation in the summer (northern winter). They're not paid positions, but you get free food&board and an old car to drive and all the flying you want.


* any idea of really relocating needs to pass "the Annie test," and so far that seems a high barrier, and a lot of places that glider people like just aren't going to pass it.

I'm not familiar with that one.