Oat Mt HQ

[Simon]

Hi, I am Simon (call sign "T.T. Jr.") and I am a P2 pilot who owns a coffee shop in Fillmore. I fly with Mark P as much as possible out here, and, as per conversations Mark and I have been having, we would like to be able to share this flying site more than it has been in the past. Given the weather has not been great, I am compelled to spend as much time, or near as much time, on this website as Chris G. For those who are near this area, please send me a personal message (not an email) with your full name, email address, and cel phone number. I can send out a text message to multiple people as to when we will be out at Oat Mt, when to meet, and the probability that conditions will be good. If you do not trust me with this information, then feel free to scope out me and my coffee shop, i am pretty much always there weekday mornings from 6am to 11am. The name of the coffee shop is "Coffeeboy", address is 358 Central Ave, Fillmore, CA 93015 (between the computer store and hardware store). I will need some flying history as well, Oat Mt is a P3 site considering the nature of the thermals out here.

[Simon]

No comments on me calling myself Tom Truax Jr?

If your cellular phone provider is Sprint, chances are it will take 36 hours to receive text messages after I send it to you. I suggest switching to AT&T or Verizon. I am on Verizon.

[Simon]

I may have not mentioned it, but i did introduce myself to Tom once, and i have to say i am at least twice as good looking as he is. I am yet to see him do his thing, though Mark P has said nothing but good things about him.

Took to short flights on Oat yesterday, 10 minutes each, sled ride to the LZ that is half way up to launch. I called my local posse before going up, Allen K and Mark M. They were preoccupied. Flying this flight pattern gave me chance to fly past the point that i had an incident at back in July. There was no lift yesterday, and no wind. I executed two beautiful reverse launches even in these conditions because i can "fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee" as my friend Muhammad Ali would say.

[SHORTCUT]

Hi SImon!
you P2 Skygod

I'm intrigued.

Can you give us some details on Oat Mtn?
Location Map (is that Forest Service RD 4N14 ?)..or some description of the location.
Acess: 4WD?...2WD?..Hike/fly
Best Conditions: Wind Direction?
Landing options: LZ?
Hazards?

My guess is maybe if we visit the Cafe in Fillmore...we might get a site intro?

Thanks

Greg
Elsinore

[ksp78648]

your call sign "TT JR." is going to be ASS if you keep it up.

with love
kristyn

[Chris G]

Ow, Simon, I think your girlfriend just gave ya the smackdown..;P The worst callsigns have a nasty habit of sticking. For a while I was "deer..."..nevermind...

[Simon]

I think my girlfriend is calling Tom Truax an ass. I am going to need to apologize to Tom for that next time I see him. The statement that I am twice as good looking as Tom still stands, here are some pictures to compare;

When is someone going to stand up on behalf of the Sundowner?

Details about Oat as a flying site will be provided by Nitrous/Mark P soon. For now contact me as to whether or not there will be flying on Oat. I will send out a text message after a write this message to all the pilots that are on my list now. It will say, "Simon TT Jr King from Oat Mt HQ. Test." This is coming from my cel phone, make sure to save the number. If there are definite good days to fly Oat, I will be contacting you.

[John Fritsche]

I flew my HG (I'm biwingual) at Oat once last summer. It was a pretty weak day, and we launched too late. I do remember this: great launch, good LZ. I think I remember it facing due west? And I left guessing that it's probably very consistent spring through fall (and hot and rowdy mid-day), like a Kagel or Crestline, but probably not so great in winter (again, like Kagel or Crestline). Am I right? Also, isn't it, or access to it, all in the hands of one particular pilot? He was a really nice guy, a dentist if I remember correctly. I'd like to look forward to some summer flying there, but I don't know the protocol or have any contact info. What's the story?

[Southside]

Oat is located above the Santa Clara river basin making it susceptible to the sea breeze and Santa Ana winds. In other words, in only works on rare occasions. Having said that, it would probably be a good place to go on post-frontal days when cloud base is too low to make it through the Casitas Pass. And perhaps if you can time it right you can work the convergence when the sea breeze does come through on the other non Santa Ana days.

There is no public access that I'm aware of, but two pilots own some property up on top. But even with that being the case, one shouldn't expect to just show up and fly.

John

[Nitrous]

Here is the story with Fillmore. I started flying Oat in 94, with the land owners permission, I was able to fly for an hour or two on the weekends or after work when daylight permitted. I lost access when there was a change of ownership around 98. I started negotiating with the owners after I lost access but needed help to afford the property payments. I had approached the SCPA club about shared ownership of the very top of Oat and had several pilots that said they would put in around 5K each, but one pilot committed to a full 50%. The property was sold to another because I could not get the escrow opened as fast as he could. That was painful for me, I still did not have access to a launch.
My paragliding love life was at an end, I can not call in sick at my job, I have a wife and 2 kids that come first in my life. Spending all day in SB, Ojai, etc, 2 or 3 times a month was not in the cards.
I was able to negotiate a lease to access the launch a few years after that, and was able to fly on a regular basis. About 5 years ago the area burned, and the property owner decided to sell it. The 50% partner was still committed so we were able to complete the transaction with the commitment from both of us that we would limit access. Access is permitted when either my partner or I are present. This was done to safe guard landing access. There are many LZ on the mountain and at the base, but all are on private property and we wanted to make sure that if there was a problem, it would be taken care of to the property's owners satisfaction. The LZ are tight, my partner and I have to trust the pilots to nail their landings; otherwise we could lose most all of our landing zones.
Southside post is a good synopsis of the site.
It is difficult to organize pilot groups especially when there is a potential of east wind, Please call me 805-208-1345, and you are welcome to check out the site. Simon has volunteered to help organize the group at his coffee shop so that may be a better way to come and fly with us.

[ksp78648]

when my father was a more active member of the flying community, i can remember pilots showing up, uninvited, at our home and at his dental office. not very considerate when he is drilling in someones mouth, some people do have lives out of the air. and that should be acceptable. we are trying to make the site more accessable, we love to see pilots flying, but in todays society people are sue happy. and my father is not willing to risk losing his flying site, hiking, and camping site for his family and his partners family so people can have 1 "epic" flight.

I know simon is trying to get more pilots involved in flying at oat, and that is great. but there is red tape, and it needs to be respected. we are in the process of trying to get ride of the red tape, again seeing pilots in the air is amazing.

Also, the provate property that we land on, happens to be our patients. Fillmore is a very small community and it is important to be respectful to the community and their property. and i am sure that goes for every flying site.

all that being said, agian we love to have pilots come and fly! just be respectful and patient. it has taken a lot of effort to keep this launch site and landing zones.

[Simon]

Putting aside all the nonsense I have said so far, this discussion is aimed at eliminating any confusion as to flying in Fillmore. Nitrous is a very generous person, he wants to share his flying site and be responsible about doing so at the same time. There are some difficult aspects as to communicating with multiple pilots, organizing a meet place and time, and familiarizing new pilots with the site, of which i am here to help resolve. Since being signed off as a P2 pilot on May 14 of last year I have logged approximately 14 hours flying at Oat Mt specifically. The conditions are great here in the Spring and Summer. Here is the flying site index page for Fillmore, http://scpa.info/sites/fillmore/fillmore_index.htm. This page could use some more information, and as has been more or less stated, Mark or Ron do have to be present in order for other pilots to fly on their property. For those who have given me your phone numbers, expect a text message from me if there is a good potential for long flights out here.

[John Fritsche]

Southside, when you say that the place is "susceptible to the sea breeze," do you mean that it gets blown-out by high winds, or that the cool air shuts down the lift? It looked to me like the place should be smokin' on any warm, sunny (non-Santa Ana) day.
I have no problem getting to fly only when the right people are escorting me. When I owned land in a gated community near Tehachapi, that's what I had to do. And that didn't stop a less-cautious pilot in that community from letting in too many of his friends, who irked the community by having accidents and/or landing in random back yards. The HOA then made it a lot harder for ANYONE to fly there.
If Fillmore is consistent in summer, I'd really like to start hooking-up with Mark and Ron (at their convenience), since the next-closest, non-coastal options are another hour or so away, right?
From what I know so far, Ojai isn't for me. Maybe I've come to the wrong conclusions(?), which are: big turbulence scares me in my PG, Chief's & Nuthouse can't be done with HG (I'm biwingual), and Pine is only for hardcore XC flying because if you don't go XC, the LZ is terrible. If I'm ill-informed, please correct me so I can get excited about Ojai this year.
Flew Alternator with Matt Hendershot today. Beautiful.....sled run. Are sled runs to be expected on days like this (Santa Ana)?
PS: If anyone can't tell, I'm somewhat new to this area...

[Chris G]

Ojai is a phenomenal place to fly. It's my preferred location for new pilots, XC clinics, etc. There's absolutely nothing about it that is any more challenging than SB, the glides to the LZ are easier, the terrain clearance is often better, the opportunities for getting up are greater and easier to get to, and the turbulence isn't that bad. In fact the worst turbulence I've ever experienced was last Sunday in SB and that includes 8 years of flying Ojai and Pine in July. I would consider Cheif's a P2 site, Nordhoff P2/P3, and Pine a P3+. Obviously the conditions will have something to do with it but with a 22º spread it's pretty mellow. 25º spread is pretty darn good, and 30º is strong but can still be easy and fun.

Chief's is absolutely doable with a HG. Andy (teaches for Greblo) and Emily do it most Tuesdays when the road is open and land at their trailer in upper Ojai. Nordhoff Peak is also HG friendly and both have enormous landing zones. The Nuthouse is the only place that isn't HG friendly but it's a great way for PGs to fly Ojai when the roads are closed. You just have to have your launches together, and I'd recommend RLF, RS, TUR and XC sign-offs.

The south side Pine LZ can be a bit tight for a HG but if you land in the river bed you have all the space you want. On the up side, there's really not much of a reason to land a HG on the south side of Pine and the North side is full of huge LZs.

Ojai and Pine got a bad rap for a variety of reasons that had very little to do with the terrain and more to do with bad decisions. A good bit of the bad rap comes from the fact that it's a 45 minute drive from SB.

A bunch of the pictures you see in the rotating header at the top of the page are of Chief's launch.

[John Fritsche]

Thanks for correcting my Ojai misconceptions, Chris. Now I'm stoked to check it out. When IS the road to Chief's open? When I had read references to Nordhoff, I thought it was just a landmark, not a launch. What ARE the access issues to these places? Is it a NFS thing, or private property? Since the Nuthouse is all I've heard you mention lately, I assume there's no access to the other sites right now? Is that because of snow or something?
I look forward to meeting you. I don't mind the extra drive (I'd be coming from Lompoc) if the forecast looks pretty good. As a teacher, I have summers off and can fly just about every day then, but I have to stick to weekends for another few months now.