Palomar SDHGPA Fly-in

Great day at the SDHGPA spring fly in at Palomar Mountain.

See this flight on Leonardo
Fantastic turnout with at least 30 people up on launch at 1pm. SDHGPA Club President Steve Rohrbough gave a site briefing as the first pilot swooped around in ridge lift above us, creating some excitement about flying to come.

Club President Steve giving the site briefing

On cue the thermals turned on, and people were soon climbing out. Top of lift was limited to 1400m (just about the height of the Smiley hang glider launch) due to the inversion, but lift was abundant to that height on most of the ridgelines.

Entertainment until the thermals turned on

A lot of pilots including me crossed the valley to the north to the next ridge, although going further was limited by the inversion and valley breeze of 9-15km/h.

The thermals were a bit bumpy up the main ridge as they mixed with the inversion, so it wasn't the perfect Palomar day. There were some fairly low airtime students flying and the conditions were a little challenging for some of them.  Overall lots of fun and probably 50+ flying hours were clocked up in total by the group of pilots who flew.

I flew for 1hr 40min, including 30 minutes of playing out in the valley practicing drifting with the light thermals that were triggering consistently around the main road - perhaps by constant traffic going to the three Indian run casinos in the area. There seemed to consistent lift coming out of various spots in the valley, although several pilots that tried to do the 5km crosswind glide to Pala Mountain ending up landing in the nursery.

Heading out to the LZ about 300m above the orange orchards. 
 In the haze on the horizon is the Pacific Ocean. Pala Mountain is the peak middle right. 
The LZ is obscured by my pod

Down at the main LZ there was a party atmosphere all afternoon, with BBQ under the shade of the Roberts Ranch building. Access to this site and use of the Ranch facility has involved a long and sensitive negotiation process process for the club, so kudos to Steve and other club members for all the landowner and tribal communication required, and site cleanup done late last year.

Party in the shade with space to pack up gliders out of the hot sun. Luxury!