DG Flugzeugbau GmbH, the manufacture of DG and LS series gliders, released their 2009 calendar here. They are PDF files, and you can download and print them by yourself. When Matt Gillis and I looked at the calendar, we were pleasantly surprised that the photo Matt took of me on Sep 13 was used as the photo of July.

LS8 (GS) flying over Sierra Nevada
(Photo by Matt Gillis)

Matt is known to take awesome aerial shots while he himself flying glider. More photos he took in the same flight can be found in this album. Check out his other photo albums and videos, too.

Geotagging images

I just finished geo-tagging most of the photos I took this summer. What is geo-tagging? Geo-tagging is the process to embed geographical location information in Jpeg photos.

If the photo file embeds information about the location where they were taken, you can do interesting things like this; go to this album, and click "View map" or "View in Google Earth" link on the right-hand side of the page just below the map. You can see the photos placed at the locations where they were taken.

"View map" mode

"View in Google Earth" mode
It's actually easy to geo-tag photos. All you need are the photos, the IGC file of the flight, and a few free software. I did my work on Windows, but the same tools run on Linux and Mac, too.

There are three steps. I'll explain each step in detail.
1. Convert IGC file to GPX format.
2. Adjust the timestamp of the photo to the precise time it was taken.
3. Embed lat/lon information in the photo.

Step 1
There are many tools to covert one GPS format to another. I used GPSBabel. I went to the directory where I saved my IGC file (it's convenient to save it in the same directory as the photos), and ran the following command.

gpsbabel -i igc -f myflight.igc -o gpx -F myflight.gpx

Step 2
This step is not necessary if your camera's clock is set precisely. To save your time, adjust your camera's clock as precisely as possible before start taking photos. My camera's clock was off by about 3 minutes, so I needed to do this step. I used Exiftool to adjust timestamp of each photo. To move back the timestamp by 3 minutes 20 seconds, I went to the directory where I saved all photos, and ran the following command.

exiftool -AllDates-="00:03:20" -overwrite_original *.JPG

Then I checked the timestamps by running the following command.

exiftool myfirstphoto.JPG

If you don't know the amount to adjust, just go to step 3 first, show the photos on Google Earth, and see if they match actual locations. If they don't, come back to this step, and adjust until they match.

Step 3
There are many tools to embed lat/lon information to a Jpeg photo. I used gpsPhoto.pl. A little downside of the program is that it requires Perl, so you need to install Perl if you are doing this work on Windows. Another tool is Geotag which is written in Java. For the final step, I went to the directory where I saved the photos and the GPX file, and ran the following command.

gpsPhoto.pl --dir . --gpsfile myflight.gpx --timeoffset 25200 --overwrite-geotagged

The timeoffset is the difference between GMT and the time zone of the camera clock time by seconds (25200 seconds = 7 hours). Change this value depending on your time zone.

Once you geo-tagged all photos, start Picasa, and view the album which contains the photos. If they were geo-tagged sucessfully, you will see a compass icon at the lower-right corner of each photo. Select all photos in the album, and click Geo-Tag icon (Google Earth icon).



Google Earth will start up, and shows your photos at the locations where they were tagged to. Verify that they look reasonable. If they don't, go back to step 2, re-adjust the time, and restart Picasa to reload the updated photos.


You are done!

All photos from my flights in this summer
laid out on Google Earth
Click here to download KMZ file

Here is an advanced application, 3D photo album. I geotagged all photos with not only lat/lon coordinates but also the altitude the photos were taken. Below are screen shots of the photos shown in Google Earth. Each photo is floating at the altitude it was taken, and has a link to my Picasa Web Albums. Click here to download the KMZ file.

Attended William's VSA seminar. Kempton Izuno talked about his 900km flight out of Williams flown this June in his ASH25. The talk included many cool HD videos.

Photo by Tom Jue (borrowed from this page)

Sawyer Award

Attended PASCO Annual Safety Seminar and Awards Banquet at Alameda Library and Oakland Aviation Museum. We had many very interesting talks.

Speaker	Title
Eric Rupp	Flight to Calexico
Marc Ramsey	Winch Activities Update
Rex Mayes	California Skyranch
Sergio Colacevich	Ably Award Update
Fred Lasor	Wave Window at Minden
Mark Beadle	The Working Relationship - ATC and Glider Pilots
Roman Wrosc	Roman Designs Winch Equipment
Einar Enevoldson	Steve Fosset's Perlan project

Eric did a very good presentation including video and real-time playback of the GPS trace of his flight from Hollister to Mexico. I have no idea how he can sync his talk and the flight playback while handling audience questions at the same time, and finish a 1-hour talk right on time. There were also two talks about starting winch operations in this region. The winch operation has potential to dramatically reduce the cost of flight training, thus is a key to introduce this wonderful sports to young people. Einar Enevoldson is the director of Perlan project, former NASA test pilot, and the co-pilot of Steve Fossett in the project. He and Steve achieved an amazing altitude of 51,000 ft (current world record) in a mountain wave in a commercially sold pure glider in 2006. His next goal is 90,000 ft.

At the end of banquet was the Award ceremony, and awards were given out to those who made significant contribution to the soaring community and to those who made outstanding flight achievements this year.

To my big surprise and honor, I received Sawyer Award for the cross-country flights I flew this year. I shouldn't say this myself, but this is one of the oldest and most respected award in this region that had been given out to the pilots who accumulated the most cross-country points throughout the season (the points are based on the distance, speed, performance of the glider, and pilot handicap factor). All flights from October 14, 2007 to October 13, 2008 were counted. If you look at the list of past receipients of this award, you'll find a familiar name or two if you fly in this region.

Ramy Yanetz, one of the best cross-country pilots
in the region and two-time winner of the award himself,
presenting me Sawyer Award
I have to admit that the main reason this award fell on to me this year was that I had a relatively high handicap factor because this was my first real cross-country year. I'd like to thank many people who helped me getting into cross-country, especially Ramy Yanetz and Yuliy Gerchikov. Ramy, Yuliy, and I happened to spend one week together in Parowan this summer (7/5, 7/6, 7/7, 7/8, 7/9, 7/10, 7/11). This turned out to be a priceless educational opportunity for me. I learned numerous big and small tips about long cross-country flights from them. They continued to be good mentors after I came back to Truckee, too.

Below are a couple of my best flights in this summer.

The first one was on July 8th at Parowan, in which I made a round trip to Grand Canyon. The cloudbase was pretty high (~18,000ft), but I had to fly over a big gap of quiet air between Kanab and Kaibab plateau, and it was reasonably thrilling. Not to mention, the scenery was awesome.





The second best flight was on September 7th from Truckee. I flew to White Mountain (a.k.a. White Mountain corridor), and came back. The cloud street over the mountain range was impressive. Photos are posted here, and a video I took over the Whites is here.

Went to Williams for the end-of-season Oktoberfest. The wind was strong, so I didn't fly, but a few people flew and caught a wave. Sergio flew with Alby trophy and made a 300km round trip to the Pacific Ocean. Despite the weather, the dinner party had quite a few guests. Rex announced his new plan for California Sky Ranch.




Agenda and dinner menu

Flew 320km at Williams. Towed to Tree Farm with Rich(7HV), and released at 5,600 ft.

There was a 7 kts lift 8 miles south west of Alder Springs up to 12,000 ft. With that altitude, I was able to reach a cumulus over Black Butte. The strong lift there brought me up to 14,000 ft. There, I could see a few cumulus west of T15, but they were very far. I decided to head up there anyway, and did reach them, but they weren't as reliable as the could over Black Butte. I circled under Rich for a while, but 12,800 ft or so was the highest I could climb. By then, I could see some cumulus popping over Ruth, so I headed there. But the lift there was sort of broken. I spend 20 min or so there, but the situation didn't improve, so I decided to turn south.

On my way back, I met Frank (F1) over Anthony peak, and flew with him in a couple of thermals. Caught a good thermal over a rock between Snow Mountain and Goat, which gave me a ticket back to Williams. Frank climbed even higher, and cleared Ramsey Gap.


Looking south from north of Ruth

Flew 320km

Flew about 300km at Williams. Towed to Tree Farm with Ginny(G3), and released at 6,500 ft. Caught a thermal, headed Snow Mtn, then St. John, went and Sheet Iron. Flew a few miles further north, but couldn't find anything, headed south. Came back to Tree Farm, then Goat Pass, and went a few miles further south, but couldn't find anything, so headed north again. This time, I wanted to try different path, so headed to Hull Mtn north of Gravely Valley airport. This was a mistake. There was a thermal over Hull Mtn, but it went up to only 8,700 ft. That wasn't comfortable altitude to come back to the east ridges, but I managed to catch another lift between Hull Mtn and Sheet Iron, and was able to back up on the ridge. There, I headed to Black Butte where I caught a good lift up to 11,000 ft. The lift allowed me to clear Anthony Peak, but there was nothing between Black Butte and Anthony, so I turned back south there. On my way back, I used the same thermal over Black Butte, and circled with Luke(C1). A few people including Luke, Rich(7HV), Peter(PK), Bob(JH), and Peter Dean went further north by heading to Eagle Peak directly. But they reported that they had very hard time at Eagle Peak. With a few more lifts, I cleared Ramsey Gap, and flew back to Williams.

Climbing with Luke(C1) near Black Butte

Flew in a wave for 4.5 hours. After climbing up to 12,000 ft over Mt. Rose, went down to Carson Valley where Yuliy reported 5 to 7 knots of wave between Washoe lake and Mt. Rose. But the wind wasn't too strong (around 16 kts), and it wasn't until I lost to 10,500 ft when I finally caught the wave Yuliy reported. Once in a stable spot, the wave (more like a wavelet) consistently gave me a lift to 18,000 ft. Then I cruised south to Feele Peak. This was the best part of this flight. I was flying at 100 kts at 17,900 ft without loosing any altitude. Then I headed to Topaz Lake where Yuliy again reported another wave. Between Feel Peak and Topaz Lake, the air was unpleasantly quiet, but there was surely a wave over Topaz Lake. This one was very weak, and gave me only 1 to 1.5 knots, so I decided to dump some water.

However, when I operated the dump lever, there was a cracking sound, and the water didn't dump. I suspected that either cables in the water dumping mechanism or the water in wings froze up, or both. The glider was flying fine otherwise, and Yuliy was further south then, so I was tempted to keep flying, but the cracking sound clearly indicated that something broke inside the glider. So, I decided to head back to Truckee while there is still daylight left to do any troubleshooting. Except for using a wavelet 5 miles north east of Feel Peak, I almost headed straight back to Truckee. I arrived near the airport, and operated the dumping water again, but it wasn't still working. I wasn't sure what was happening, but the water freeze in the wings was still a possibility, so I stayed between 9,000 ft and 10,000 ft for about 1.5 hour to melt it as much as possible. I tried slow flights and stalls a few times to see if there is any uneven load on the wings. Finally, I felt comfortable with landing with the situation I was given, so I landed on rwy 19 as usual. The landing was pretty normal, and I thought I was able to dump all water in the air after all the troubles. But when my left wing gently dropped on the ground, I learned that I wasn't. In fact, I still had all water I loaded before the take-off. I was glad that I didn't have too much water today (I had 24 gallons on wings and 3.5 litter in the tail).

After landing, Mike Mayo helped me to figure out what went wrong. It turned out that a tiny plastic clamp that attached the dumping cable to the wall came off. The cracking sound was from the plastic clamp. Without the clamp, the cable loosely hanged in the cockpit, and couldn't sustain enough tension to open the dump holes. If I knew, I could have pulled the cables by hand to open the dump holes. I was glad that it wasn't anything more serious that broke! I think this is what happened; the water around dump holes under the wings froze, and locked in the valve. When I pulled the levers forward, the cables couldn't move the valves, got too tight, and released themselves from the cockpit wall by breaking the clamp.


Flying higher than clouds. The cloudbase was around 13,000 ft, and I was at 17,700 ft in this picture.

Flew 234km
More pictures can be found here.

Flew to 5 miles east of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. I started with 30 gallons of water in wings and 3.5 litter in tail, but dumped it for 25 sec on my way to the south. The could street ended around USMC, and there were only step stone clouds, but lifts were still good (7 to 10 kts) along the same line as the cloud street. There was a soft spot west of South Lake Tahoe airport which cost me some time. After coming back to Truckee, I tried to go north, but clouds started to dissipate, and couldn't make it. There was a big blue gap north of Sierraville for about 20 miles. Many people who started much earlier than me went as north as Mt Lassen.

Half Dome

Flew 497km

Flew to Mt Rifter (west of Mammoth airport). I carried 30 gallons of water in the wings, and 3.5 litter in the tail. I think Harry Fox had the best flight of the day. He flew Pegasus without water, flew over 500km, and achieved 118km/h. He had a stretch of 163 km without circling on his way back from the south to Truckee.
After coming back to Truckee, a very good (7 - 10 kts) lift over Brokeway pass brought me back to 16,500 ft, so I used it to make an extra trip to Sierraville.

An aerial shot of me taken by Matt Gillis

Flew 487km

Flew to Bishop, which is about 160 miles away, and came back. This was my longest flight from Truckee so far. I climbed to 13,000 or so over Mt. Rose, and ventured out to Carson Valley. Caught another thermal right in the valley which brought me up to 14,000 ft, then headed to Pine Nuts. Over there, I climbed to 18,000 ft, and headed further south. There were plenty of clouds which I could use as a step stones, so the way to Boundary Peak wasn't too difficult. There was a good deal of west wind at that time, so I worried about coming back, but by the time I turned back, the wind shifted to south-west and it was alright. After I reached Boundary Peak, there was a cloud street all the way to Bishop. I could go even further to Lone Pine, but decided that that was enough for my first flight over Whites. I didn't turn at all when I was flying over the mountain range except when I shot some pictures of Whites and Boundary Peak. I turned back north around 4:30pm. The way back was a bit tricky because the straight line between Hilton Ranch and Truckee was all blue. I took a detour to the north, and used some Cu's over Yerington, then took my final glider to Truckee. Tony Gaechter (1A) was ahead of me all the way. Trying to catch up with him was a good exercise.

I had 24 gallons of water in the wings and 3 litter in the tail, but I left that I should have had more water.


Whites mountain range

Flew 579km
More pictures of Whites can be found here.

Flew to Mammoth airport. This was my longest flight from Truckee so far. I had 24 gallons of water in the wings and 2.5 litter in the tail.

Mono Lake

Flew 433km

These two days, thermals started very late. I took off around 3pm, and released over Hot Rock. Climbed to 12,000 ft without much struggle, and headed east. I hit another one over Martis Peak, and yet another one 6 miles south of Mt. Rose. The last one brought me up to 15,000 ft. Then I headed south over the Sergio's Elevator until I could closely see Spooner Pass, but the air was quiet. I headed back north, caught a few more good ones which brought me back to 15,000 ft again. I came as north as Verdi Peak, then headed west to see how things were like there. Despite dynamic landscape which looked good thermal sources, there weren't much activities except for some bumps. I landed 5:40pm after flying 2.7 hour.


Washoe Lake

I was the only private pilot who flew from Truckee today. The forecast was pretty weak - 4 to 5 kts thermals up to 12,000 feet. But after releasing at 7,800 feet near Brockway, and I caught a good thermal over North Star's second parking lot, which brought me to 12,000 ft. Then I headed to Mt. Rose. There, I was able to climb up even higher to almost 14,000 ft, breaking the forecast. With that high altitude, there no reason not to venture out to Carson Valley, so I did, but once I passed Carson Valley, the air was totally dead. I went as far east as I could comfortably do, but didn't hit any clue of a lift. I turned back, decided to crawl over the city just in case those large factories and parking lots generated thermals. I went down as low as 7,500 ft, but finally caught a weak but workable 1 kts lift. After a half-an-hour test of patience, I came back to 9,500 ft. Gaining a slight hope to fly back to Truckee, I decided to use the hard-earned altitude for the ridge east of Sergio's elevator. I was just hoping a different type of airmass activities over the hills, but with a pleasant surprise, I hit a wave. The 2 to 5 kts wave gave me additional altitude to 13,000 ft, and that was enough for me to glide back to Truckee.


Working a wave (note the red line on PDA which denotes a lift)

It was a wave and thermal day. After thermaling to 12,500 ft or so, I went down to Carson Valley, where climbed to 18,000 ft in a wave. Then I headed south east to Pine Nuts mountains, and caught another wave behind Mt. Siegel. I climbed back to 18,000 ft again, and headed further east to cloud streets east of Mt. Hawthorne. There, I could use some clouds, but they already started to dissipate, and I was only able to maintain 15,000 - 16,000 ft range. It was almost 4pm then, so I decided to head back. I was hoping to hit another wave behind Mt. Hawthorne, but there wasn't one. I headed back further west, and came down to 12,000 ft or so over Hilton Ranch. I thought I might land on Hilton Rance, but there I hit a good consistent wave despite the relatively low hills west of Hilton Ranch. I was able to go back to 18,000 ft again. With Truckee barely in the glide range, I headed straight to Truckee, hit some sink after passing Pine Nuts mountains, and hit another wave near Washer Lake. But stupidly, I didn't climb high enough there. I started my final glide when my computer showed a 2,000 ft margin on Brockway pass, but as soon as I came over Sergio's elevator, I hit a great sink and also was welcomed by an increased head wind. Being not able to see Brockway due to the sunset, I decided to turn back to Carson valley, where my hope to use the wave I hit earlier was crashed. I landed on Carson City airport around 6pm. Later, I heard from Buzz (11W) that he started his finale glide from Carson City at 17,000 ft, and lost 5,000 ft before he reached Truckee.


Clouds 13 miles east of Hawthorne

Flew 4.5 hours at Truckee, and went as south as Mt. Grant. After climbing to 12,500 ft in a thermal near Truckee airport, flew down to Carson Valley, and struggled there for about 1 hour. At 7,500 ft, I finally caught a good one over a white mine north east of Carson City airport. But still the top was 11,000 12,000 ft. I gradually headed east to Pine Nuts range, flew south along the ridge, and only after I reached Mt. Sigel, I was able to climb over 16,000 ft. It was already around 3:30pm. There, I saw a cloud street starting at Mt. Grant to the south, so I decided to at least turn Mt. Grant. As I reached there, the cloud started to dissipate, but there was still working part. I went up to 17,400 ft, and the cloud completely disappeared. I only needed to earn a few hundred extra feet over Mt. Sigel again to get back to Truckee.


Lake Tahoe in the clear air

More photos can be found here.

I flew only Sunday this weekend, but it was still worth going up to Truckee. I went up to 17,500 ft in an interesting convergence lift. The cloudbase was 14,500 ft on the west side of Carson Valley, and 17,500 ft on the east side. I heard some radios talking about Sweet Water and such, so I tried to go south. But there was a wall of low cloudbase between Carson City and Minden, so I gave up, and headed north instead. I
think everyone who flew from Truckee Sunday went north. There were some OD north of Truckee, and at least one landed out. I flew from Carson City to Air Sailing straight, and that line was never blocked by OD, so I used the same line on my way back, and made an easy back to Truckee. Those who went farther north suffered from OD. There was a landout as far as Adin.


Using convergence lift dodging clouds

A big OD about to dump water

Heavy rain shower on the lake surface

Based on yesterday's experience, I decided not to fly, and spent a couple of hours waxing my ship.


The wax I use

I took off around 1pm. The highest I went up about 12000 ft over Brockway, so I decided not to go out to Carson valley. I landed after short one hour. Several people ventured out to the south anyway, and five landed out on Carson airport.

Woke up in the morning, and found that the smoke is back. The visibility was less than 5 miles. Yuliy, Seth, and I went for breakfast at "Coffee &" in the old downtown Truckee. We came back, and hanged around and asked around other people if they were going to fly.


Truckee airport in the morning

Sergio and Ramy took off with water anyway, and Yuliy was the next. Then around noon, the wind started to pick up, and the visibility got noticeably improved. Everyone including myself prepared to launch. I took off around 1:50pm, and released in a 9-kts thermal over the airport. I climbed up to 11,000 ft, headed north west (apparently I misheard Hans' pirep of a wave), couldn't find anything, came back to the same thermal at 8,000 ft, backed up to 11,000 ft again, and headed south west. Over the Northstar ski resort, I was able to contact a weak wave (1.5 kts), and climbed to 12,500 ft. I decided to try the same route (going south along the west side of Lake). On hwy 84 near Squaw Valley ski resort, I contacted another weak wave (1.5 kts), climbed a bit, and continued on to the south. Sure enough, right around 4 miles south of Tahoe City where I caught the best wave yesterday, I contacted a stronger wave (3 kts), which brought me to 14,000 ft. I headed south again, and flew 4 miles or so gaining 500 ft just like I did yesterday, but then I started to observe a sink. Remembering the sink I had before I reached the city of South Lake Tahoe yesterday, I turned back, flew the same path and gained another 500 ft to 15,000 ft, and decided to go east of the lake this time. Like yesterday, a few other pilots including Sergio, Ramy, and Yuliy already used the Minden wave earlier. I crossed the lake, and arrived Spooner Pass at 13,000 ft.


Crossing Lake Tahoe at 15,000 ft
(if you have a highspeed connection, click here, and watch in high quality)


The earlier reports said that a strong wave was west of Washoe Lake, so I headed there only to find a consistant sink. Apparently, I was flying between the primary wave and the secondary wave. When I came somewhere between Washoe Lake and Mt Rose at 11,000 ft which was the lowest altitude I had heard from those who caught a wave there earlier, I finally hit -10 kts sink, so I headed to Carson City airport. Then at 9,000 ft, over the south end of Washoe Lake, I hit a strong wave (max 11 kts), and maxed out to 18,000 ft in 25 minutes. Then I wondered what the best use of this altitude was other than annoying Reno Approach. Ramy and Yuliy were further south then, around Mono Lake. I thought about heading south too, but the area between where I was and Whites was totally blue. The top of haze was way below me, and was indicating that I could not expect a thermal to back me up to this kind of altitude if I get low. I headed to Pine Nuts mountain range up to Mine turn point, but wasn't convinced that I should go further, so headed back to Washoe Lake, did a little video shooting, and flew over Mt Rose to go back to Truckee. When I came to the east-side foot of the ridge that starts from Mt Rose, I hit a strong wave again, and learned that this was the wave other pilots had used earlier that day. I wasn't flying west enough to catch the wave on my first attempt. After I came back to Truckee area, I headed north west to see where sierraville was, and landed at 6:13pm. It was a 4.4-hour flight.

More pictures can be found here.

Drove up to Truckee in Yuliy's car Friday night, and stayed at the bunk house. In the morning, Seth, who share the bunk house, Yuliy, and I went to Buckhorn Espresso & Grill for breakfast.

Flew at Truckee for 3.9 hours. The smoke wasn't as bad as 2 weeks ago when I dropped my glider here. The visibility was around 10 miles.

Caught the first thermal over the construction area north of runway 19, but it topped off around 11,000 ft. Headed to Mt Rose, and caught slightly higher thermal which brought me up to 13,500 ft. But then the lift became unreliable, and I kept going up and down between 12,500 ft and 13,500 ft for a while. Then I decided to go south along the ridge on the west side of Lake Tahoe. Shortly later, after I passed Brockway, I contacted a weak wave (1-2 kts) at 11,500 ft, and backed up to 13,000 ft. I kept going south, and contacted another weak wave over Tahoe City at 12,000 ft, which backed me up to 13,000 ft again. I kept going south again, and hit a stronger wave (2-3 kts) around 8 miles south of Tahoe City over the Lake water surface. I stayed there for 35 minutes, and climbed to 17,000 ft. The wind was 25-29 kts throughout the flight. I again headed south, and flew 4 miles or so without losing or even slightly gaining the altitude. Then the air started to sink, and kept sinking until I turned north over the city of South Lake Tahoe. By that point, I had heard other pilots' reports of Minden wave on the east side of the ridge on the east side of Lake, but decided to just fly straight north over the lake to Brockway because it was already 6pm. I enjoyed a great view while flying over the lake. Arrived at Brockway at 13,000 ft, and hit the same first wave I used today. Climbed there a bit, flew over Tahoe Donner XC ski area, and landed at 6:50pm.

Flying over Lake Tahoe

After I landed, I found that Truckee's annual BASH BBQ party had started. I had a fun chat with Tony, who was also an LS8 owner, and his wife Nancy. Thanks Silverado Soaring for hosting a great event!

More pictures can be found here.

Which camera is the best for the glider cockpit?

I recently bought a new digital camera Panasonic Lumix FX35 to take pictures while flying a glider.


My previous camera was Nikon Coolpix 7600. It's a 7-megapixel camera, and is capable of zooming from 38mm to 114mm (35mm film equivalent). I was satisfied with the picture quality, and also liked the fact that it uses standard AA batteries. There is no need to carry around another battery charger in my bag. This is perfect for travel, so I took lots of pictures with this camera in various places. All albums in my Picasa gallery from 2002 to May 2008 are taken by this camera.

However, once I started to take aerial pictures, I started to feel that 38mm isn't wide enough. Also, 10-megapixel cameras are now commoditized and sold under $300, so I decided to upgrade. My requirements were as follows.

1. Has 28mm or wider lens
2. Decent image quality
3. Point-and-shoot compact digital camera

I chose Lumix FX35 primarily because it has 25-100mm lens. The 25mm is one of the widest lens you can get for a compact camera. An image taken by a wide lens often suffer from the barrel distortion, but this camera does not have that issue much. A drawback of this camera I often read was the noise in the higher ISO range especially above ISO400. So, those articles tended to conclude that this camera was not for indoor shots. But when I am flying, it is most likely sunny and I have plenty of sun lights to keep the ISO low and still have a fast shutter speed, so this isn't an issue, either.

A digital SLR takes better pictures of course, but if you want to take shots outside the canopy, its size becomes a problem.

Lumix FX35 also takes High Definition quality videos of size 1280x720 at 30fps. However, I found that my old camera's 640x320 at 30fps video was good enough for shots from a glider. After all, I am going to post them on YouTube, so the original quality will be lost.

Sample shots taken by Lumix FX35 can be viewed in my Picasa gallery starting from "Williams 6/6/08".

Sample videos taken by Lumix FX35 are posted below. Also, I uploaded the original files here.







I considered a few other candidates. Nikon Coolpix S600 was the closest second, and another one was Canon PowerShot SD870 IS. The reason I didn't choose S600 even though I have been a happy user of Nikon was because it can take only 190 shots with a fully charged battery while FX35 can take 290. PowerShot SD870 IS could be a good choice, but it is an 8-megapixel camera, so it won't be much of an upgrade from my old camera.

Woke up at 7am, and left Parowan for Truckee. It took 3.5 hours from Parowan to Ely, and 5.5 hours from Ely to Truckee. Considering the smoke condition in California, I decided to place my glider in Truckee for now.

Before I started this 2-week glider safari, I thought that all these drivings must be painful parts of the trip and something that I have to bear to have fun with glider. I was wrong. These long drives are actually also fun part of the trip.

Arrived at Truckee at 4pm. Joined Soar Truckee's Saturday BBQ. Stayed at their bunk house. Hans was there with his new glider Ventus 2C. He just made his first flight today. Congrats Hans! Darren's family already arrived from Parowan yesterday. Harry arrived late evening, and Yuliy arrived around midnight.

A 566-mile drive from Parowan to Truckee



A 360-degree view of somewhere on highway US50


As a summary, in this 2 weeks, I flew 10 flights and 42.2 hours. I flew a 600km, a 500km, a 400km, a 300km, and shorter flights. The goals I had before this trip were to fly 300km and to fly over Grand Canyon. I have to say that they were achieved 120%, and I am very happy. I also drove over 1500 miles!

We checked weather in the morning, and found that another round of thunderstorms are coming to this area starting from today continuing over the weekend. When we arrived at the airport, some people already started to disassemble their gliders. Ramy, Yuliy, and I waited until we became the last three. Yuliy went up in his motor glider, but Ramy decided to leave and spend time with his family in Las Vegas. I could see the over-development clouds not too far from Parowan in the east, so I decided to follow everyone else, disassembled my glider, and put it in the trailer.


Ramy checking weather every morning

Around 7pm, a thunderstorm hit the town. I was back in the apartment, but Yuliy was still flhying, and I started to worry. I called him on my handheld radio on both 122.8 and 123.3, but had no answers. It turned out that he landed half an hour before the thunderstorm hit the town, and tied down his glider securely just before it started to rain. I had forgotten that he was an experienced cross country pilot.


Rain and hail

On our last night at Parowan, we had a nice dinner at Rusty's Ranch House in Cedar City.

Matt, Ron, Michael, Me, Harry, and Yuliy

Now that I flew 500km, my new goal was a declared 300km which is one of the diamond badge requirements. I configured Volkslogger and set an 300km out-and-return task between Start C and Kaibab Lodge. Kaibab lodge is on the Kaibab plateau next to Grand Canyon. This way, I can achieve my goal, and also take more pictures of Grand Canyon. At 11:45am, I towed up after Ramy did, but didn't hit any lift even when I reached 3,000 ft AGL. I asked Ramy how he was doing, and he said that he towed all the way to the other side of the ridge which is east of Parowan airport. Indeed, that's the only place I could see clouds. So, I did the same thing, and released around 4,000 ft AGL. That was a right decision. I instantly found myself caught in a 10 kts thermal, and got an easy 18,000 ft. Then I flew back to Parowan, turned Start C turnpoint at 15,300 ft, and headed to another cloud over Ceder Breaks. Got up to 18,000 ft again, and headed further south. But at 25 miles from Kanab airport, I ran out of clouds, and it was perfectly blue all the way to Kaibab plateau. Also, for the first time, I was able to see through the haze and find what's on Kaibab plateau. A huge towering OD, almost the same size as the plateau, was there. It already had dark virgas on its east half. With the blue hole between the plateau and me and the OD, it wasn't a difficult decision to give up another Grand Canyon tour.

So, I headed north, and tried to join others who headed east. I picked a few thermals near Bryce Canyon, and was able to keep high until I came to 15 miles north of Escalante airport. There were still clouds, and they even looked like forming a street. But the base was broken, and there was an active thunderstorm 10 miles south of Escalante airport. I gradually lost altitude. I did everything I could to make use of broken lifts, and also went to the small canyon north west of airport to find any lifts from the heated rocks. At one point, I was able to back up to 14,000 ft, but that was the top. The thermal from heated rocks was not connected to the cloud, and was not strong enough to push me up to 18,000 ft again. I went up and down, and started thinking about landing at Escalante. I flew over the airport at 5,000 ft AGL so that I can give my final shot on the sunny hills west of Escalante. But the air was totally calm there. Probably the thunderstorm cooled down the surface, and killed all thermal sources. I landed on Escalante airport, which is 50 miles away from Parowan, at 3:42pm.

The airport was unmanned. I pushed my glider into the taxi way by myself, and called Parowan airport to ask for an aero retrieve. Yes, I had a full five-bar signal on my Sprint cell phone. Jeff came in his Cessna 150 about 1 hour later. Upon take-off, he suggested a creative way to hold the wings level and off from the rugged runway surface.

I also found that the runway was slightly uphill towards 13. This wasn't an issue for us this time because we had a weak wind from 130.


The flight was 4 hours. It was a short and long flight. It wasn't a successful flight, but it felt good to try every intelligence, skills, and knowledge I had to the last minute. After all, glider was safe, I was safe, and I can fly again.


Flight trace

Bryce Canyon again

A thunderstorm south of Escalante

Using bushes as wing stands for take-off (didn't work well)

More pictured can be found here.

Since I couldn't take pictures of Bryce Canyon and Ceder Breaks yesterday, I decided to go there again to take some. I flew with 36 gallons of water (wing load = 9.6 lb/sqft), but it was too much. I dumped half of it, then the glider started to climb better. I think this glider flies best when it had 24 gallons of water.

Bryce Canyon National Park

A lot of more pictures can be found here.

The flight was 4.6 hours, and the total distance flown was 250km or so.

Before landing, I dropped by Brian Head (a peak inside Cyder Breaks park). The BASA president Harry Fox was there by car, and was calling gliders to shoot pictures of them. Thanks so much Harry for taking great pictures! These will be my treasures.



Me (GS) approaching Brian Head with Cyder Breaks in back
(photo by Harry)

Me (GS) flying over Brian Head
(photo by Harry)

The location of Brian Head shown on Google Earth (click to enlarge)

More pictures taken by Harry can be found here.

At night, we had a big BBQ party at Joy's house. Thanks Joy for a great dinner!