“Instead, if I bring a pilot out there they have to find and pay an instructor multiple hundreds of dollars to observe their flying skills that they have already proven to the instructor who gave them their P2.”

These are just my personal opinions (and maybe I’m wrong), but we have to try to protect our site from unnecessary accidents, and one way to do that is to have our professional local pilot instructors assess a new pilot’s skills. This is not the easiest site to fly and is rated a P3 site for good reason.

Most people are not aware of this, but some instructors elsewhere sign people off with a P2 before those pilots are ready for it, or they sign them off after a bunch of simple training hill flights, or they come from a site that doesn’t have the kind of topography and punchy desert thermals that we have here at AJX. I’ve seen a bunch of visiting P2’s come through over the few years that I’ve been coming to SB, that could barely kite & barely launch themselves off the hill, and the last thing we need is for them to come to our site and get wrecked. After witnessing their kiting and launching skills, many of them could use more training, but they’ve got their P2’s from elsewhere and think they’re set.

I understand the hardship of additional cost of a new site sign-off after having spent thousands of dollars on lessons and gear somewhere else, but their lives and our site are worth the cost. Local instructors need to be paid for their time (they have their own insurance costs to cover), and our site needs to be protected from inexperienced, potentially dangerous pilots. We can’t have them show up and fly without them at least getting a thorough briefing from a highly experienced local pilot first.

Yes, this mentor program sounds interesting, but how do we vet the mentors? Can just any instructor or let’s say P3/P4 pilot come to our site and mentor their students/friends there? I’m sorry to say it, but there are some bad instructors and bad P3/P4 pilots with bad habits out there. At least we know that our local instructors have years of experience flying our site, they have insurance coverage, and they have something to lose if our site gets shut down due to too many accidents. As good as they are at their jobs and as hard as they try to keep their students safe, incidents still happen, so what chance does a freshly minted P2 from a less thermic, less mountainous, less populated site have to stay safe?

Long story short, I wouldn’t want the site rating to change. This place can get crazy no matter what time of year it is. Our local instructors know what skills it takes to fly here, and seeing as their careers depend on it, they can be trusted more than someone who has nothing to lose, to assess these skills properly.

Streamers are an idea, but to be honest, I’ve seen P3 pilots crash into each other and they wouldn’t have had streamers. It’s a good idea to stay away from other pilots at all times, no matter what their ratings are. I just assume none of the pilots see me, and I fly away from people. You want my thermal that bad? Take it, it’s not worth fighting over.

The only people I will fly closer to are those that I agreed to fly with that day. We both know each other, we know we’ll get a little closer, but even then I’ll steer away if they get too close for comfort.

Oh no! Poor Jeff! ☹️😞 So sorry to hear he got hurt. Wishing him a very speedy recovery. ❤️

Just out of curiosity, how often do you fly at AJX and what pattern would you suggest we use for PGs that (in your opinion) would be safer to use with power lines, trees, houses & hang gliders present? Did you watch the video of Stephen’s tandem landing using the approximate pattern? We’re not doing figure 8’s low over the ground. We do them high up, and then bring it in to the grass when we’re about as high as the pine tree that’s by the house.

We’re all open to better ideas, but this has been working out just fine for most of us even with traffic. It’s not very often that we have more than two people coming in to land at about the same time. It’s quite rare and has only happened to me once or twice at the end of the day. When it did, we saw each other, we gave each other room and landed without problems using the figure 8’s. If we don’t have a preferred pattern, how do we all stay predictable to other pilots?

The good news is that the BOD is working on a video that will demonstrate & explain both the HG and PG approach. Hopefully that will help new and visiting pilots better understand why we do what we do at AJX.

I’ve noticed that a few of the older high-risk pilots are staying home and not flying at all. Luckily this is an outdoor activity that (outside of getting a ride up the mountain) is pretty solitary. I believe that anyone taking the Sandy van shuttle up to launch is required to wear a face-mask. She won’t let you ride otherwise, and she’s also limiting the number of people in her van.

It doesn’t seem too difficult to keep a safe distance from other people on the grass, or especially if taking one’s own car up to launch. We have soap and water on site, so washing one’s hands frequently shouldn’t be a problem either.

We definitely would like for everyone to be considerate of others, so yes, please bring a mask even if you think you’re healthy, keep a safe distance from other people when at the LZ, wear your mask when close to others, try not to touch your face and wash those hands. No need to take preventable risks.

I think I was thrown off by the relatively small 8’s in the diagram. In Stephen’s great looking approach, he goes east almost to the training hill, expanding the area covered by almost 50%. In Jana’s description, she mentions going west to the white fence.

The 8s look small in the diagram, but actually cover a pretty good area. I’m usually able to stay within it when making my approach. People don’t need to be making perfect 8s, or turn precisely at the edge of the house, just as long as they’re away from the hang glider training hill and approach. I didn’t want to expand the 8s in the diagram, because I didn’t want people to think it’s OK to expand yet more over the HG training hill. There’s a little bit of wiggle room on that side. The other side has power lines, so when low, I wouldn’t recommend going farther beyond the white fence.

As long as PGs are not flying over the HG training hill and landing on the grass at the base of it, they should be OK. It should be looked at as a ‘guide’ more than a written-in-stone rule. Besides, does nobody else think it’s fun to be able to hit, or at least get close to the PG cone to practice their spot-landings? 😄 That seems a bit tough to do from the HG approach.

This approach pattern is not going to work for everyone ALL the time, but if you watch the wind socks as you approach (when they’re not pointing at each other) and you’re not landing in the middle of a hot day when dust devils are common, this approach pattern will work great and isn’t a risk of you dying if you use it. It’s the only one I’ve been using since I’ve started flying a PG, and I’ve never had an issue with it. I’m out of the way of hang gliders, I’ve not landed into a dust devil (thus far), and haven’t seen anyone else do so yet with my own eyes.

Besides, dust devils don’t just stick to the parking lot area, they’re on the grass too, they just don’t have any dust to pick up to make themselves visible. I’ve seen them go all the way over to the hang glider side. You’re not much safer from them over there, but now you just might get in the way of a hang glider.

Unless you’re great at looking around and making sure no hang gliders are coming in at the same time as you, landing in the hang glider pattern as a PG is asking for problems. There’s a major conflict of speed. HGs are a lot faster than we are, and we can’t get out of their way fast enough. We’ve had way too many of these in the last few months. That’s why the approach pattern keeps coming up. If some of these PGs were good at keeping an eye out, we could easily share the same pattern, but they’re not. They prove it over and over again.