Sunday, July 04, 2010

Independence Day weekend at Tehachapi - Saturday

Several of us are at Tehachapi (Mountain Valley Airport) for the holiday weekend. We'd planned to keep the PW5 and the Grob 103 tied down here for the summer, available for anyone who wants to come up for a weekend. Unfortunately it was fairly windy (not so much as to be dangerous, but enough to tear up the thermals), so that's where they stayed on Saturday - tied down.

A couple of the club members had never been to any of the well-known landout sites to the north of here, so four of us got in my truck and visited several of them. It's very helpful to see a site from the ground and get an idea of the landmarks, obstacles, slope, ground access etc.
First up was Cantil, a broad empty field right off the paved road. It looks really good, and it's nice to have another site now that the Honda Track access road is closed.

We stopped briefly at Wide Spot, and all agreed it's useless as a landing site. It was always marginal, and now there's a big sign at the north end. So cross this one off the list.

Brad's Landing Place was next. This is a concrete-covered aqueduct a few miles off the paved road. We checked out two or three different roads in to it and found that the road right next to Robber's Roost is the easiest and shortest. We also found a secodn section of the aqueduct that also looks landable. I'll measure it on Google Earth and compare it to the section already documented.

We visited Inyokern airport and met some of the glider and tow pilots there.

Cinder Cone dry lake is a nice long lake, very smooth. It would be possible to aerotow from it. The road in is a bit rocky.

Coso Junction dry lake is also very smooth, and the road in is shorter and smoother. Both Cinder Cone and Coso currently have wind socks.

Maps show an airstrip on the other side of the highway from Coso Junction, so we checked it out. It's really just a field, and appears to be on private property. We don't think it's usable.

Sunday has started out nearly calm, so I'm hoping it will turn out to be soarable.

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