SkyPark’s World RC Soaring Festival
A photo essay from this spectacularly successful event held this past weekend at SkyPark near Lake Arrowhead, California.
This was the second event held at the brand new, purpose-built alpine soaring venue located 5000 feet above the valley floor at the renowned SkyPark at Santa’s Village. It’s less than three hours drive from LAX near beautiful Lake Arrowhead, California. We had 38 pilots and planes in attendance for the event and we were blessed by two days of unbelievable weather.
The SkyPark is an ‘alpine lift’ event, which means that staying aloft is based predominantly on thermals coming up from the valley floor below. And most everybody that flew ‘skyed out’ with the gigantic thermals.
Notably, Ed Stewart won the spot landing contest with a plane that really shouldn’t be doing spot landings because how fragile it is — yet he pulled it off like a champ.
Now, for those of you who know me, I’m a man of few (written) words, so I’ll simply let these beautiful pictures — provided by the PR folks at SkyPark at Santa’s Village — tell the rest of the story of this remarkable weekend. Click any picture for a larger, higher resolution version.
And yes, there will be a SkyPark World RC Soaring Festival in 2023! Keep an eye on New RC Soaring Digest Events (see below) for the ‘save that date’ as soon as it’s available.
©2022 Karlton Spindle
Resources
- Alpine R/C Soaring in So Cal — The SkyPark soaring venue official Facebook page.
- SkyPark at Santa’s Village — From the website: “provide an outdoor experience for Guests that creates memories of wonder, thrill, and camaraderie. SkyPark aims to achieve this by providing Guests adventure-based activities in an alpine forest nestled in the San Bernardino Mountains…”. The flying site is open daily with a $10 fee.
- SkyPark Camp and RV Resort — From the website: “located on California State Route 18, otherwise known as the scenic Rim of The World Highway in Skyforest, California. This Southern California alpine secret sits high above the Southern California basin…”.
- New RC Soaring Digest Events — The place to find premier RC soaring events around the world.
- Flying in the Mountains — By happy co-incidence in this month’s issue, RCSD regular contributor Raymond Esveldt has a primer on flying in the alpine.
All images are ©2022 SkyPark at Santa’s Village, all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Read the next article in this issue, return to the previous article in this issue or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
