Back to Main Page Back to Archive 2001

Index to weather maps

Hangola January 6–7, 2001

Had a nice day at Woodstock today. Gary Smith, Mike Chevalier, Terry Spencer and I flew for 1 - 2 hours. Mike had the best altitude gain to cloudbase at 3700 over. Mostly sunny and not too cold. Some good thermals too.

Tom

And I flew through a cloud of ice crystals, beautiful looking but they stung. Specked out over the resevoir and flew out into the valley to the bank of clouds but no lift found there. And then there was the landing, too bad nobody had a video camera rolling as it would have made a good one for The Whack Tapes. I found myself a little high at the downwind end of the field so I sped in a little faster than usual. Went for the downtubes but caught a wire instead. In just a second of fumbling I got turned almost 180 degrees and was heading downwind and downhill towards the river. I was high enough to turn so tried turning back into the wind. Caught a tip, spun and slid in on cow shit and snow. One downtube is broken, some some battens are bent and curiously we found a nut missing from the nose plate and that bolt is bent.

MC

Had a nice day at Smithsburg today. Arrived 10:30A with conditions 20 - 25 MPH straight in at the top. Marc Fink, Matthew, and Karen showed and helped me do a flight around noontime. By then conditions had backed down considerably and had gotten cross from the north. They departed for High Rock. Marc returned later in the afternoon to fly his paraglider a few times. I got in 4 more flights in the afternoon. Eddie Miller, Bob Gillesse, Eddie's cousin Shane, and a few others flew RC sailplanes, with Eddie spanking the rest of the crew with an hour and a half flight of his RC sailplane while everybody else pounded in and relaunched many times. Whatta RC sailplane pilot!!

Bacil

Gee, can't touch 3700 over. Did you have to hike up the back or is the road open?

Marshall. Coming in at 5. High 60s. Almost sank out but caught something over the lower paraglider launch and got back up. Made it to 1200 over where there was an inversion layer of paragliders. Never really got in trouble after that. Always found something. It was a good enough day that you could find your own thermal and not be immediately swarmed by others. Tried out over 215 and maintained at about launch level in light lift. My landing was marginally better than Mikes because I have perfected the art of running 40mph. Y'all dress warm up there!

It was blowing pretty hard up at the rock. But with launchable cycles blowing through and winds forecasted to back off, Mark C. and I set up. Karen decided it was too cold and Doug just didn't seem interested in the combination of cold and strong winds. But he stuck around to help out on wire crew. Thanks Doug. Brian VH and Kelvin also showed up. But Kelvin headed home while to the surprise of everyone, BVH started to set up.

At about 3:00 I decided to be the wind dummy. After going to the edge 3 times and backing off due to gusts, I launched and went straight up. The lift was surprisingly light considering the launch conditions. The winds must have been compressing at the block. I spent most of the time at between 300-600 over, but maxed out at 1000 over. Cavanaugh launched about 20 minutes after me and also had a rough time on the cube.

After an hour, I headed out to land so I could come back up and help BVH launch. Doug had departed by then. But Marc had returned from Smithsburg. Heading out to land, it really started to crank. It took over ten minutes to crawl out to the LZ with full VG. With the wind vane and streamers showing a 90 degree cross and the trouble I had penetrating, I assumed that it must really be honkin in the LZ. So I landed in Mong's field. It was actually quite light on the ground. The wind vane must have been frozen in position. After a very long carry back, I headed back up top to help BVH launch.

Even though it had backed off considerably, we still had a lot of pressue on both wings when BVH launched. He flew for about 15 minutes.

There was another unusual event up at the rock. But you'll have to read about it in the newsletter.

Matthew (200th High Flight, of Karen and Matthew)

Sunday was just too nice to stay indoors, with the blue skies and temps around 42 it felt almost like early spring time. I met Keith Olena at 501 around 2:30. The call was light southwest. When I walked out to launch to my surprise it was a good steady 10 and the direction was good. Although this seemed close to being soarable by the time we got set up the sun started mixing with the overcast and shut things down a bit. I launched into a nice 5mph cycle and flew straight out to the campground. Keith followed a few minutes later. We packed up our gliders and hiked back up top to get our trucks.

	previous page	back to top	next page

This page last updated January 8, 2001