Nov 12: PASCO Annual Banquest and Safety Seminars

[Larry Roberts]

You are cordially invited to attend the
Annual PASCO Safety Seminar& Awards Banquet
Saturday, November 12, 2011

Hiller Aviation Museum
601 Skyway Road, San Carlos, CA

• Seminars 9:00am
• 9:00 Seminar Registration & Coffee served
• 9:15 Annual Accident Report & Safety Roundtable:

"Creating a Culture of Safety" with local pilots:

Richard Pearl, Fred LaSor, Eric Rupp, Ramy Yanetz,
And special guest Richard Carlson, Chairman, Soaring Safety Foundation

• 12:00 LUNCH BREAK
• 1:00 Finding and Using Ridge Lift - Kempton Izuno
• 2:00 Extreme XC Soaring - Gordon Boettger
• 3:00 FLARM in European Contests - Peter Deane
• 4:00 SF Bay Tour by Sailplane - Ramy Yanetz & Buzz Graves

• Cocktails, Museum Viewing 5-6:30pm
• Buffet Dinner, Awards, & Annual Meeting 6:30-9pm

Dinner Speakers from the Perlan Project
Einar Enevoldson, Ed Warnock, & John David Miller
"Soaring to 90,000 feet"

Please RSVP for seminar and/or banquet to Joel Klein:
Email: GliderPilotJoel@gmail.com OR Call 650-483-9947

-- Be sure to indicate in your email if you want the seminars, banquet dinner, or BOTH, and the number attending.
• $10 for seminar, coffee & lunch
• $25 for dinner & museum entrance
• $35 for both
• Make checks payable to PASCO

Download Flyer to print (Pdf attached)

[Peter Kelly]

This is Sunday nite - PASCO Safety Seminars and Awards Dinner were on Saturday.
I imagine we'll eventually have an article on the PASCO web site and probably in the periodical "Westwind".... but, anyone have a quick summary and debrief they care to share here on the Williams Forum?

PASCO is an important part of our soaring community, and I believe it is good if we all stay aware of latest goings on.

[Larry Roberts]

The PASCO seminars and Banquet were well attended and the seminar discussion on Safety was very good, with great audience participation. The afternoon presentations were also very good.

The banquet had a presentation about the Perlan project. The detail would have really thrilled some of our weather gurus (Peter?), with great slides similar to Dr. Jack's wave cross section images, but going above 100,000 ft., and winds well in excess of 200mph.
Wikipedia info.
Guess I should have taken notes.
We had 107 attend the seminars, and 97 attend the dinner, it was great to see some of the pilots from all over Region 11.

To quote Dan Dunkel (4S) "you should have been there".

A few notes taken from perlanproject.org website

Perlan
Perlan is the Icelandic word for Pearl.

Nacreous Clouds
(Also known as Polar Stratospheric Clouds.)
Rarely seen clouds that form in the stratosphere at altitudes of 25-30 kilometers; resemble cirrus or altocumulus lenticularis and may be composed of ice crystals or supercooled water droplets. Also known as mother-of-pearl clouds because of their soft, pearly luster. (from: Glossary of Weather and Climate I.W.Geer, Editor)

[M.Guerin]

You would have enjoyed Ramy and Buzz's presentation on their Bay area flight - it was amazing how well they synchronized.
Their (plan view) traces were nearly identical, and when viewed "real time" in 3-D, Buzz's ability to track Ramy was remarkable.
I suspect you have your "companion" flights very well-synchronized also. In any event, it was a very interesting flight review by two
excellent pilots.

An interesting side note on the morning safety talks - evidently in Germany (maybe all over Europe), they no longer teach the
visual signals between tow plane and glider - this was reported by a young-ish German pilot during a discussion on the topic.
He understood the reasoning (behind dropping the signals) to be that misinterpretation of the signals was viewed as a detriment
to safety.

As you might imagine, the accident and fatality statistics in the last couple of years were sobering. Richard Carlson gave a very
informative and informed presentation. Many issues were presented in the morning, and the proposed solutions to improving "the culture"
of safety are non-trivial to implement. Peter Deane gave a plug to FLARM as as a helpful aid for increasing safety, and also had a good
graphic on effective technique for scanning for traffic (maybe he'll post his talk).

Kempton gave a great talk as usual - although I had seen much of it, I still found lots of useful information to absorb. Gordon B. has
what I'd call a healthy "obsession" with pushing the boundaries - he is clearly in love with the sport (AND, has a 100% supportive wife).

[RamyYanetz]

Peter would have also enjoy the egg review, especially the picture of Lee's Ventus with the egg count.
And last but not least, at least 2 VSA members won awards:
1 - Marianne won the longest silver distance award
2 - Jim Wallis won the exceptional service award for his outstanding job with the WestWind newsletter.
The rest of the awards should be posted on the PASCO web site when Larry gets around to it.

Ramy