Soaring Road Trip
We developed this website to help with road trips to fly as many sites as possible along the Appalachian mountains and beyond, hopefully all the way to Maine. We also want to make an effort to promote free flying on the East Coast. We have a mission to fly and camp, meet up with local pilots, and chase the wind and weather to satisfy our lust for airtime. Join our adventures as we scale towering mountains, don our wings, and leap off into the sky to ascend and touch the clouds above. Experience one of mankind's most primal yearnings: SOARING FLIGHT.
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Several flying friends got together to build this website. We were H2s and H3s expressing our own frustration that it was hard to progress in hang gliding because there were not enough flying opportunities when we had off work, and there were hardly any Observers available. It turns out there are lots of opportunites if you know where they are and can travel a little to chase them...but aaahhh the weather obstacle....the right wind. Well, we tried to solve that issue too, see the Flying Sites Tab and use the "48 Hour Wind Forecast". But as time went on we eventually got our fill, have progressed some in our flying and our ratings. The new sites challenged us. We learned from the locals. We made friends. We still value road trips becuse we get to enjoy meeting other pilots, seeing new scenery and catching up with flying friends we have not seen in a while.
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Welcome to SoaringRoadTrip.com: a website and clearinghouse of useful information for hang gliding and paragliding pilots who want to fly regionally and support club activities in the broader regions around their home base, brought to you by friends who like to fly!
No pilot should have to give up on a flying day because they don’t fly alone and can’t roust anyone to fly with. Line up your flying partners easily here on this website by communicating or finding out what is going on in the greater region where you live or where you are for work or vacation.
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We created this website to help solve many of the complexities of arranging your life around free flight which involves chasing the wind and weather!
Hopefully this website will be fostering opportunities to fly more, help pilots enjoy more flying with less stress on the details:
-Where could I fly today? Is there any club flying happening somewhere I could drive today?
-Want to know if somebody is thinking of flying somewhere on any given day?
-Finding a list of flying sites near me or where I can plan to go on vacation to fly.
-Finding the club’s information so you can join and fly.
-How do I join the clubs and follow the rules and protocols to avoid abuses of flying sites (We are in this together, land for flying is hard to find and easy to lose)
-See a video of someone flying that site so I can get an overview of flying it for mental preparation.
-General flying site locations and travel times from my current location using the map feature.
-Want to know if the flying weather at a site near you might work for the mountain launch direction?
-Get a weather outlook for a couple days ahead to get lead time to clear other obligations and see what sites could be flyable in the next few days.
-Locating the flying site and getting there.
-How do I find that site to go to a club work party?
-I have some buddies from my ski group that want to come see me fly, how do I communicate where I’m going to be flying this weekend and what are the basic protocols to be observed at the flying site?
-The local news station wants to see us fly and write a story, they can find us. It is as simple as sharing the link to this website to get local promotion going.
-Tell future students to check out this website and track our flying activities and join in. This website can point future pilots in the direction to get started on the journey through USHPA training and club flying.​
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