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Hangola July 16-18, 2000

Decided to go to Manquin yesterday thinking that there would be minimal chance of rain there. Wrong.

Set up my brand-spanking new Laminar only to have the the worst storm those guys have ever seen descend upon it. Ray D.s' keel snapped under the 50+ mph gust loads, but the Laminar and other gliders seemed to survive OK. In the space of about an hour I think 4 inches of rain came down.

Glider got wet.

Marc

Monday, 7-17-00

High Point, Cumberland. Launched at 6:00 p.m., got an hour at the Cumberland fair Monday night then decided to land. Never made it above High Point launch but was above Fairgrounds launch for most of that hour. Other pilots - Mark Gardner (launched last and decided to land early with 1/2 hour and 500' over put on nice show for the crowd), Larry Ball on his new Litespeed (2.5 hours), Jim Rowan, John McAllister (aka Homer) - 3 hours?, John Myers (almost an hour), Doug Wakefield (1.5 - 2 hours?), and Terry Spencer. It was nice because there weren't many spectators which means only two rows of the lz were taken up by cars. I chased off cars that were driving across the LZ as John Myers was trying to land.

Tuesday, 7-18-00

Great evening at the fair yesterday! Crowd-pleasers included Jim Rowan, Bob Gillisse (first time at site), Ed (some guy who hasn't flown for a year), Mark Gardner, myself and Sparky and his 5-year old son Colten who came to provide driving services (Sparky, not his son). Thank you!! I got about 650' over and decided to land after 40 minutes as I was getting more and more nervous watching the cars stream in and the parking lot (our LZ) getting smaller and smaller. Fortunately it was blowing north so the approach was over the cars (prefer that to the alternative). Mark flew an hour, got about 1,000 over then did some great wangs, Jim put on a nice show then flew over the grandstands and waved at people (some waved back!), and Bob Gillisse (1200' over?) enjoyed his first flight at High Point and also put on a great show. Flew 1.5 - 2 hours? Many thanks to John Myers for driving me back up to get the truck.

HOWEVER, the most fun came after the flying was over! We went over to the fair (free admission for pilots) and checked out the train show they have. It's awesome! It's a permanent set-up in a building on the fairgrounds where there's a bunch of layouts for the different gauges (HO, O, G, etc.) Over one of the layouts including a mountain they have a hangglider suspended in mid-air. The best part though is the replica of the fair and circus where they have miniature rides (a ton!) that are actually spinning around and operating! One of the "rides" is a miniature bungee jumping crane that just has a big red dot below it (okay, sick humor). The circus has miniature guys that are swinging on the trapeze and elephants and performers that circle around. Okay, yes, I was totally impressed! After the train show it was off to the duck races (the one with the red collar won) then a VERY impressive fireworks show that was well-worth the wait (started at 10:30 instead of 10:00 as scheduled). All the pilots stuck around for it. If you can come to the fair they'll have fireworks on Friday as well - and check out the train show :-).

Sheila

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This page last updated July 19, 2000