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.