5,000 FT Roller Coaster in the California Sierras

Of course this was after your run up to Schulman Grove last Monday.
Cool. So now I know why I heard: "Duo, Whitney, 14,000" and not long
afterwards: "Duo, Whitney Portal, 9000."
(then not long after that: "Duo, south of Lone Pine, 6000")
At least the lift was decent under the OD by Cerro Gordo and we all
got home.
Jim

On May 31, 9:55*pm, 33 wrote:
we punctuated the
weekend with a roller coaster ride from Mount Whitney peak ... I
shot a video of the ride and loaded it on YouTube for anyone that is
interested. It can be found at *http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjTmNJmJXbk

Thanks for a great video. In watching it, when you were very close to
terrain your ASI appeared to be between 60 and 70 kts most of the
time, with at least one excursion down to 55. Was that an optical
illusion due to the lens? If not, in hindsight would you have
maintained a higher speed?

Your later post noting that "flying close to the terrain can be
dangerous and should only be performed with adequate separation
according to personal safety margins" was an important addition.
Thanks for that! One of the recommendations in a talk I gave to the
PASCO Soaring Safety Seminar in 2007

http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/...2007_talk.html

was to urge more experienced pilots to include such cautions when
relating exciting flights to an audience that might include those with
less experience and includes a link to an NTSB accident report in
which a student pilot was probably killed partly because of a lack of
such warnings.

Thanks again for the video.

Martin