HIDDEN IN PLANE SIGHT

 The first time I flew across Banning Pass to San Jacinto getting there was a snap, but as usual I assumed too much in an unfamiliar area and as the day wore on it got more ‘interesting’. After two hours massaging rocks on both sides of the pass, the day was shutting down. Getting all the way home looked sketchy but we had to go somewhere soon. There were several airports within easy range in low country, all obscured by haze and too far from home for an aero retrieve that evening. Our best bet was to crawl back up in the desert (less height AGL, but closer to home) hoping for a miracle. Worst case we could land at Yucca Valley, another place I’d never seen from the air.The whole town was visible ahead, but so far not its airport. With only minutes of gliding time left we could not afford to waste any of it going the wrong direction. Worried it might lie miles beyond, I grabbed for the laminated chart - and couldn’t find that either. (It had sneaked under my seat pan, where I could never reach it even if I knew where it was.) Darting search for other landing options revealed nothing but a sea of hazards, and for the first time in twenty years the captain of my ship tasted desperation.I tried to call home, but we were too low now, with all of Mt. San Gorgonio between us and the base radio.Thank the gods for Thomas Edison! My student called our office and handed me the phone. Mortified by embarrassment, I asked them to quickly check the wall chart and tell us which direction from Yucca Valley we should look for the airport.Turns out it’s right where we were headed, in town, already in sight but perfectly concealed by the variegated landscape as so many small fields are.Yada yada. Cue the anticlimax, a retrieve tow seventy-five miles into the sun. There was a similar hide’n’seek my first time over Hesperia. After never bothering to look down while rushing outbound, on the way home I stopped, determined to go no further until identifying that darned airport. Glad it wasn’t a snake. I loitered over the wide city bleeding altitude long enough to grow anxious about moving on, scanned everywhere left and right more than once, and saw nothing even suspicious of being an airport. Then finally I looked straight down, and there it was directly below!For good measure here’s one more, also within easy soaring range of Crystal. When you leave here to fly north up the Sierras, Rosamond Airpark is a very useful alternate, but remains quite invisible until you arrive. It’s at the very edge of town and appears to be just another street until you’re passing by it and sight down the runway itself.This list is but a sampler, and we’ve only been talking locally! In each example the strip lies parallel with other linear features while also surrounded by urban camouflage of many kinds. It’s been a problem forever all over the map, but now we have an easy solution.Before soaring somewhere you’ve never been, why not go on GoogleEarth and scope out certain important details from different perspectives, in 3D and color, so you’ll really know what to look for? Who knows, it might save more than a frantic phone call…