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Tim Ward
General MemberI find a good sharp set of loppers to be good for up to maybe 1 1/2 inch branches. There is, or was, a pretty sharp folding saw on Gracie for larger stuff.
General MemberIt’s still being a reservoir for watering the lawn. AIUI, it was inspected and signed off by SB Co. during all the hoo-haw over camping at the Ranch.
May 4, 2024 at 12:09 PM in reply to: My Guide to the PG Landing Pattern at Andy Jackson Airpark #20110General MemberIf you wanted to add something, you could point out that the place to look for possibly conflicting HG traffic is somewhere near the horizon (so about the same altitude as you) anywhere from south of the LZ to east of the LZ. I tend to lose altitude off the southeast corner somewhere before starting my downwind, base and final.
I think for some PG pilots, the speed at which an HG can get from that area to being on final is surprising, and so they tend to tune them out of their consideration in the same unconscious way some automobile drivers “don’t see” motorcycles and bicycles. Not seen as a threat, not seen at all.
Sink rates aren’t identical, of course, but pretty much anything around your altitude will likely be landing at a similar time, and most times that will be on the LZ.
General MemberWhile I appreciate the vote for Site Director, I’d like for people who don’t pay much attention to know that I was the one who recruited Luke for the role.
General MemberYep. The combo of Kathy organizing and Nacho and Noel BBQing makes a pretty certain good time.
General MemberI think Luke’s done a fine job as site coordinator. He’s been willing to do what I was reluctant to do, which was spend money.
I think members need to realize that if we want the nice facilities (and I think most members do) , it’s going to either cost money or involve more volunteerism on the part of the club.
I’m willing to vote twice for Kathy for events coordinator.
General MemberWe could even have a 3rd fly-in event every year.
Hopefully during some nicer weather than winter.
General MemberMeh. I instruct at AJX. That’s a “commercial interest”. I don’t think anyone has had a problem with me serving on the board.
Before he retired, Rob McKenzie had a “commercial interest”. He’s been on the board many times. I would be hard-pressed to find his participation to be anything but a benefit to the club.
I’ll agree that, yeah, while there could be a conflict of interest, most of that would relate to other people with “commercial interests” in the club, since it isn’t going to be in anyone’s interest to lose AJX.
In any case, members with “commercial interests” in the LZ are generally known quantities to the membership, because they’re local. There’s no strangers with mysterious motivations moving in.
I’m pretty sure members can figure out for themselves whether people can be trusted to make their decisions on the board with respect to what’s best for the club rather than what’s best for them personally.
Honestly, *generally* what’s best for them personally would be to let someone else do the work.
It’s not like we have such competition for board participation that we need to limit the field artificially. And if the only people we can get to volunteer are those who have some sort of financial stake… then that’s who we can get.
General MemberWhat ever happened with that area that was an olive grove just below the E that the city bulldozed to make it less attractive to the homeless?
It certainly wasn’t optimum, and a slightly longer turnaround, but I thought the city offered it to enhance their reputation as an extreme sport community. And run out the homeless, of course.
That’s been years, so city council and their focus has likely changed.
General MemberThank you, Len.
I’m afraid I didn’t get you anything, though.
General MemberNominally, the issue between the board and Gene is dogs and the horses.
If that’s the issue, let that be the issue , settle the issue of dog(s) and horses, and move on.
If it’s going to devolve into personalities and past disagreements, well… there’s lots of people who might be vulnerable to that sort of talk. Somewhere on YouTube there’s likely a video of me ranting at a PG pilot that cut me off on approach so he could get an extra five minutes or so of flight time. I was pretty spectacularly angry.
I think the horse issue can be pretty easily solved, if it hasn’t been already.
The dog issue has been an issue as long as I can remember, and though Max may be the latest offender. I don’t think that problem as necessarily specific to Gene.
You could get all the locals to stop bringing their dogs, and there would still be vacationing pilots who brought their dog with them and yet are not the most attentive doggie parents.
I don’t know what the answer is, anymore than I have all the other times the dog problem has arisen. I like dogs, but I leave mine home.
General MemberI had no idea. I knew I hadn’t seen him for a while.
I’ll miss him.
General MemberMy takeaway is that the way the carabiner is loaded has a lot to do with the ultimate strength.
From an engineering point of view, I rather liked the gate latch design on the cheapo lookalike found at Wal-mart. I wouldn’t use that one, but the overlapping notches looks like it would spread the load over more square whatevers than the design on the more expensive biners that had little projections on each side. That kept being the failure point for the gate.
That overlapping design has the drawback that it doesn’t take any load until the carabiner deforms a little and there might be some loading range where the whole carabiner could stretch and take a set and not want to open anymore, but for me, that last might be a feature, not a bug.
My other thought related to the other end of the gate. I think a couple extra grams making the gate longer so the pivot could have a little more material between the pin and the end of the gate would probably raise the point of failure. It’s always going to fail *somewhere*, but some of those failures looked like a slot.
General MemberInterestingly, if you go to https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_ep4+shtml/235048.shtml?gm_track#contents
and checkmark the ‘track’ feature, so it shows a black line in the middle of the predictive cone, then zoom way in on the map, it looks like the middle of the likely path goes very, very close to the LZ and launch.
Of course that doesn’t mean that’s where it will actually go, but it’s funny to see that prediction.
General MemberNot unexpected, but still sad.
In the late 70s and early 80s, Kenny, Mike Wall, Steve and I flew together a lot.
We met him at Marshall. He’d parked his station wagon in the middle of the setup area. It was obviously a hang glider pilot’s car. But whose? As we were setting up, he came in to top land, and his approach set him down on the roof of his car. Which would have been a pretty neat trick, if he had managed a no-stepper, but he didn’t. He ran down the windshield and the hood and did a pretty good no-damage whack.
As far as I know, that was where he acquired the sobriquet ‘Crash’. He wore it as a badge of honor for several years, then I think he got a little tired of it.
I remember him slicing out the prototypes of SlingWings from foam egg cartons on the coffee table at Kenny’s house.
He and I independently discovered ‘The Rock’, down in Rubidoux. The road to the top was terribly washed out, and I could only get about halfway up, so I hiked the rest of the way to fly it.
Steve must have been out of town when I showed it to Kenny and Mike. I told them we’d have to hike halfway, and they were really skeptical… and then some kids came by with a dirt go-kart. They wanted to see people fly, and we didn’t want to hike any more than we had to, so they took the equipment up.
The day was successful enough that a day or two later Mike, Kenny and I were back fixing up the road with shovels.
Then a week or so after that, Steve wants to show us this cool new site he found in Rubidoux.
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