Deep Playa Direct: Gliders at Burning Man 2025

[Alex Polvi]

Hello, 

One of the core premises of Burning Man is the gift economy. Every year there is a group of pilots that fly powered GA airplanes into the event and offer free scenic flights as their gift to others. This year, for the first time ever, we brought a glider to the event and were able to offer the rides, not just free as in beer, but emission free as well. 

To do this, we brought a Grob 103 and performed a vehicle based launch using an electric F-150. To charge the truck, we partnered with another camp, Solar Punks, which had solar infrastructure and a 5.8MW(!) battery. To train for all this we flew with Willamette Valley Soaring Club as part of their Alvord event in July. 

Given this was a "new" initiative, the Burning Man airport gave us a launch window of 6:30-7:30pm after the airport officially closed.  We got rained out the first few days, but once we finally got a clear evening we had a beautiful sunset flight that even offered a nice 200fpm of lift. We soared for about 30min on our first scenic ride. Additionally performed the first full circumnavigation of the event in a glider, showing the community that we can offer the same gift to people of the event, harnessing only the energy of the earth. 

We see this endeavour as a way for a wide contingent of people to be exposed to aviation, and do it in a way that is emission free. The tower told me they could hear a large crowd of people cheering in the background as we did the first flight. We estimate it was watched by a few thousand people, but it was visible to all 70,000 attendees if they knew where and when to look. 

The name of our group is "Deep Playa Direct" as our longer term goal is to offer glider based, emission free, air transport across the event. 

Our goal for 2025 was simple: bring the first glider flight to the event. We exceeded our mission objectives. 

In 2026 we hope to bring more gliders (a SGS 2-32?), explore building an electric winch to accelerate our launch cycles, and establish a glider base at the event.

If this all goes well, in 2027 we will try to establish two bases at the event and offer the first ever cross playa air service. Cross country with purpose! 

Please reach out if you have any interest in being involved in future years. We would love to have you. We will plan to train again next July, and fly at the event at the end of August 2026. In the meantime, it's time to figure out how to build a winch. Also, if anyone happens to have a lead on a Waco CG-4, it would be to try to modify it for a CG hook. :) 

Thank you!

-Alex

[christopher behm]

Sounds great, but I'd be worried about the load imposed by putting a cg hook on a CG-4 that was originally aero towed.

Congrats on the exposure gained for gliding. 

Kind regards,

304DD

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From: rasp...@googlegroups.com <rasp...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Alex Polvi <al...@polvi.net>
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2025 1:14:05 PM
To: rasp...@googlegroups.com <rasp...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [RAS_Prime] Deep Playa Direct: Gliders at Burning Man 2025

 

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[Bret Hess]

For how to build an electric winch, see https://groups.io/g/winchops, the main English language group for winch launch tech .

There are two electric winch groups that are nearing completion of their first builds.