BAPA Anderson Flat fly-in

May 5-6, 2007

Went for the annual BAPA Anderson Flat fly-in near Yosemite. Same drill: get up at 3:45am to be at Ron's by 4:45am so that we (Ron, Mihir, and I) could leave in Ron's truck by 5am to be at the LZ and cabin by 8:30am. Long story short, got skunked the first day and spent wandering around trying to discover some alternate, old launches.

Actual launch

Met a bunch of nice folks, including Gene whose "cabin" is a gorgeous California mountain home with lots of details handcrafted by him painstakingly, and the "tents" we were housed in being better than the tent cabins in Curry village in Yosemite (nice beds, propane-fired heater, balcony,...). Spent the evening recovering from some shady breakfast we had in Oakdale, and couldn't properly enjoy Gene's pizzas fired in his handmade clay oven. Had a nice seated dinner in the evening on the large butcher block dining table, and topped it off with Jules' South African brandy that comes in plastic pouches so that the cricket team can surreptiously sneak it into their gear to use on the field.

Gene's cabin

Gene telling Ron how to make his own handcrafted clay oven

Dinner

Next day looked ok, so we got up to launch and waited around for someone to be a wind-dummy. This was a mellow, polite, "you first" kinda crowd, and even though almost everyone ('cept the 3 of us) was a P4, no one wanted to be first. Finally Jules, the jovial Proteas volunteered and went off, although with a rather heart-stopping barge through the bushes on take-off. Kim went next, and I followed after Ron. Kerry was taking pictures of all of us, and she got a couple of great ones of my launch and flight:

My launch

Hmm, could torpedo more aggressively!

Snow-capped mountains if you zoom in

Jules seemed to boating around in nice thermals, but when I launched, the clouds had moved in and covered the entire valley in shade for 15 minutes. Yup, nothing I could stay in, so it was a sledder. Anyway, we had all been warned many times about the long glide to the LZ, the lack of any bailout LZs anywhere (trees trees everywhere) and I didn't want to play around in anything I couldn't stick, so was especially conservative.

Praveen in the air

While the LZ is a bit intimidating when seen from launch, surrounded as it is by tall pilot-eating trees, it's not as bad once you get closer. Had an uneventful landing, and pronounced "another one for the log books". Unfortunately, the logistics of getting to and from launch seemed to rule out another flight. Not quite sure why, since the drive to launch from the LZ is only 20 minutes or so on a rutted track that is passable once it's dry. But for this crowd of pilots, it was more about socializing than flying since most have been flying for a long time and are pretty sated by now. Besides, 20 minutes after I launched, the sun came out again, and the people who launched 30-40 minutes after me had some good thermalling, although noone got up high enough to see the Yosemite valley which you can do from about 7000+ feet (lunch is at 5400 ft). Came back to the bay area by 7pm.

Dogwoods starting to flower