US Soaring Team Junior Camp

The 2005 Junior Cross Country Camp is becoming a tradition! With the very great help of the Albuquerque Soaring Club (ASC) and Rick Kohler of Sundance Aviation the second team sponsored Junior Camp held in Moriarty, New Mexico was a great success. This is the second year for this venue to encourage and train junior pilots for cross country and competition soaring. This camp grew out of the work and influence Orion Kingman (24) as camp 2005 organizer and Mitch Hudson (29), Director of Region 9 and ASC liaison. This year Orion Kingman took on the job of camp organizer and manager. Without Orion's help and guidance, plus the help of the ASC this years Junior Camp would not have been possible.

Equipment Challenges
Camp participants came from the far and wide including the states of California, Texas, Virginia, Ohio, and Tennessee. Mitch Reeves brought his beautiful Janus to the camp while Dean and Tammie Carswell graciously were on the way in their Stemme for the event but mechanical gremlins stepped in at the last minute. The Albuquerque Club intended make their 201 Libelle available as well but again mechanical problems scuttled this plan. The good news is that all the participants were able to fly each day.

Orion Kingman is an example of what these camps are all about. Orion attended the 2004 camp having some cross country experience. This year Orion attended the camp on the heels of his first contest, Region 9, having placed 4th flying his very own Discus in the Standard Class. In fact only two of the Junior pilots attending this years camp did not have their own glider!

Preliminary Camp Highlights

Moriarty, New Mexico is a nearly perfect place to host a camp of this type. The airport is low traffic, there are good off field landing options, a very supportive local club (Albuquerque Soaring Club) and fixed base operator (Sundance Aviation). The weather was a combination of blue days, thunderstorms and excellent soaring with 18,000 ft cloud bases. Most of the eight participants had the opportunity to fly solo or dual cross country flights with experienced contest pilots. The members Albuquerque Soaring Club provided their Twin Astir flown by John Seaborn. On several days two cross country flights were accomplished in the twin. The Albuquerque Soaring Club also provided their excellent club house and facilities that served as home base for the camp.

There were approximately 50 tows accomplished by camp participants through Sundance Aviation.

The day started at the 10:00 am pilots meeting in which we had a short weather briefing, talked about the previous days achievements, reviewed any house keeping issues, planned tasks and typically discussed short weather, performance and contest topics.

After flying the days flight logs would be downloaded and analyzed using SeeYou and a laptop projector. In addition short video and longer PowerPoint presentations were given. Dinner at the field capped the evening. On one evening Dan Sorenson, past Junior Team member visited and gave an interesting rundown on his world championship experiences.

There were many firsts at this event including longest flight, highest, strongest thermal, furthest flight and longest. While there were several off field landings the participants made good account of them selves and no damage was done to any gliders. The improvement in the cross country skills of the participants was dramatic even from day to day.

The last day of the camp saw cloud base at 18,000 with 1000 fpm climbs and great streeting. Sarah Kelly and 2005 US Junior Team pilot Mike Westbrook flew long flights with Sarah achieving 541km and a Diamond Distance arriving back at Moriarty in the late evening. Sara's flight was third for the day in the USA and 7th in world on the On Line Contest. Mikes 613km flight was number one in the world on OLC for the day. (see the OLC on the June 16th or click here)

Financials

Between the entry fee, donations, fundraising and the team sponsorship the budget for the camp was $2,575 with the team supplying $800 of this total. These funds were used to pay for direct flight costs only (tows and rentals). The camp finished up on budget. Thank you for your contribution to the Team sponsored Junior Camp.

Special Thanks

First and foremost Orion Kingman deserves a lion share of thanks for doing much of the organization and raising most of the funding for the camp. Mitchell Hudson and the Albuquerque Soaring Club (ASC) deserve a very big thanks as the local sponsoring club. Mitch made his personal Discus for use by camp participants. Mark Mocho and Brian Resor of the ASC provided a good deal of help as well. The ASC allowed the juniors to use their club house for meetings, bunk house and dinner location. In addition ASC allowed several of the camp participants to use their Astir and Libelle gliders. Sundance Aviation supplied the towing and were helpful in their support.

The Future
In 2005 there were several team sponsored camps and more are in the works for 2006.The Team Committee has established a new contribution category that allows contributors to support the camp aspect of the team program directly. See the camp page here. There is some discussion about holding a Region 9 contest at Moriarty in 2006 with the 3rd Junior Camp just before the contest. This would allow participants to stay on and fly the regional after the camp. There is also a Junior "nationals" in the works for Uvalde in 2006. See the details of this event on the new U.S. Junior Soaring Association web site here.

	Sponsoring Clubs Albuquerque Soaring Club Gliders used by participants Discus (Mitchell Hudson) Astir (Albuquerque Soaring Club) 1-26 (Albuquerque Soaring Club)	Critical help from Mitchell Hudson Mark Mocho Sundance Aviation
See more 05 Junior Team pictures here...

Junior Pilot Resources
JUNIOR PILOTS INVITED TO SIGN UP If your under age 26 and interested in soaring, click here to receive the U.S. Team Junior eBulletin. The team sponsored eBulletin includes alerts about next years Junior Camp and much more. SIGN UP NOW!