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Hangola April 23 & 24, 2000

Arrived at launch yesterday at about 2:00 with a carload of pilots who we met at the LZ after dropping off cars. Everyone was standing around hemming and hawing since it was overcast and hazy. You could only barely make out the upwind mountain ridge and there were patches of thick haze in the valley. Apparently it had been this way since 10:30am (don't you people enjoy a leisurely Sunday morning with a cup of coffee and the Sunday paper???). Since the haze hadn't really gotten any worse, I jumped into the soup with Mike Balk, Steve K., Mike C. and a couple of others after Christy launched and said that conditions weren't too bad. I figured I'd stay close to home and just put it on the ground if the haze worsened or if it looked like rain was developing.

Actually some narrow bands of sunshine appeared in between the lenticulars as the wave established itself. But with the developing wave, winds had picked up at launch grounding most everyone except Tom. Cloudbase was reported to be at 2800 over so I dove down whenever I got close to 2500 over. With the upwind ridge still obscured and haze lurking to the South, I didn't want to worry about being whited out above the clouds. The lift was everywhere! It was very pretty with the sun cutting through the cloud bands and I flew halfway out to route 11 and halfway up to Strasburg with my vario constantly beeping even though I was flying 35+ mph most of the time and stuffing the bar to my knees a lot to keep from getting too high. Though after about an hour it started to shut down. But still I ran into a bar ripping thermal and I was tired from all of the fast flying. So I landed after an hour and a quarter.

Dave Proctor again picked the worse time to launch as Mike B. was struggling to stay up and Dave ended up with a sledder. Karen, Judy-Judy, Craig and Ellis decided to bag it for the day. Nelson Lewis bagged it as well since it was too late for him to go anywhere. Steve Padgett had his glider fall over twice and, after some urging from fellow pilots, did an inspection and found a couple of dings on the leading edge. So he was out as well. But Mark C. and BVH wisely waited for the end of the day release of heat and they each got up in some quasi-magic light lift. It had gotten so light that Ben and LE were able to launch their paragliders.

Matthew (this strong Spring air really isn't my cup of tea, of Karen and Matthew)

High cirrus clouds did not discourage Tom and myself from heading to Ridgely to attempt some tow action. Brian V-H had driven straight there from Woodstock on Sunday Evening.

There was strong wind, and the tug rarely had to turn during tow. There was not a lot of lift, and what little lift there was was pretty light. Tom marked a thermal for me, and I got to it about a hundred over him (about 2k). He turned left, I turned right. He went down, I went up. The drift was fairly strong, and I quickly had my decision to &go or stay& made for me. And of course that was exactly when I lost the thermal!

I found the thermal at 1200' and worked it slowly to around 3300' At altitude, the wind seemed to vary from either the north or the west. My drift track was mostly ESE. But it was tough staying with the light lift, and I went to land.

Going for the down wind tree line, I thought I had some lift, but I couldn't circle in it. It turned out I was actually soaring the tree line at about 200' Unfortunately, I didn't realize that until too late and had to land.

6 miles, 30 some minutes.

Tom had three flights, one of which lasted about 30 minutes. Steve K and Terry flew the Rock with extended flights.

Just goes to show you that you never know until you try!

-Mike Balk

I had my first aero-tow today. I got there about 2 after it had pretty much scuzzed over and Tom and Brian milked the last of the thermals.

Chad made learning easy. I did a tandam tow first and saw the difference between horizontal and vertical corrections. The next was a solo tow and everything was fine until pin off and I forgot to turn right. But Chad dove left as I went straight fooling with my bridle, so there was no problem. The third flight was by the book and I had no problem with horizontal and vertical correcttion and went right when waved off. I saw how the distance dimension brought in another couple of variables in rowdier air.

So learning to aero-tow is a step by step process. I can see how it would be hard to assimilate and set up a reaction set to all three dimensions (plus other factors) in one flight. Definitely a couple of steps above truck towing.

Ed

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This page last updated April 24, 2000