Now is the time.
To all the people who have asked if there’s anything they can do to help out, 8:00 Saturday morning 7/17/21 is the day and time.

The plan is to get most of the rebar in for the first pour. That will have to cure, and then the columns can go in and be made plumb. After that, there’s more rebar and a second pour, and then the East side of the shade structure can be backfilled.

Gene and I have removed most of the dirt that we can remove with machines.
Now there’s a need for a bunch of guys with shovels to do the fine detail work of cleaning out corners in the holes, evening up the edges in places, and… there is one place where due to the fiber optic and power being there, needs to be dug by hand.
If we have a bunch of people there, no one should have to work too hard. We have three or four shovels, but if you have a favorite you’d like to bring along, please do.

It would be nice if you’d RSVP here. If you decide to come, check here in the morning, and if it hasn’t been called off, I’ll see you there.

Just an option:

If you’re feeling like other people want to fly, and you don’t like the conditions, there’s space off to the north east of the lower launches to park your glider.

But you can ask, and if you’re not wild about conditions, odds are good the people behind you aren’t, either.

Upper launch, of course, there’s room all over.

Regarding pitch on the structure:

I agree there should be some pitch to the roof. The former roof, with no pitch, would randomly douse you with water after a rain.

But the taller the shade structure’s eaves, the less shade you have when the sun is at low angles.  It’s a tradeoff between headroom for tall people and shade.

If the high side is to the east, there will be less shade in the morning, and the roof will have a positive angle of attack for Santa Ana winds.

I think a gable roof or a hip roof would be better.  I particularly like the hip roof, because it slopes down in all directions.

Currently, it’s hard to reliably get enough altitude off the existing training hill to have the speed required to do a good skim and flare.  Top of the 80 foot training hill to the edge of the grass is about an 8:1 glide.

However, with a little more construction, we’ll have a launch accessible via Gator or Ranger with a fully-assembled glider at about 130 feet and about 6:1 to the edge of the grass.  Haven’t launched it yet, but that should be steep enough to get a good dive and skim in.

This launch is up by where Kenny’s trailer used to be.  I would like to name it the ‘Whack’ launch.

Because it was Kenny’s nickname,  and used as a launch to practice landings we’ll probably see a few, and also I think Kenny would be amused by that kind of humor.