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Hangola March 19 & 25, 2001

I Launched around 12:30 and went right to 1000' over before I even had a chance to zip up. Conditions were nnw 10-15 with beautiful straight in and smooth launch cycles. The air was awesome, good climb rates (300-500)fpm range and not much of a prevailing wind so there was little drift to deal with. The thermals were very snakey and hard to stay with at times, but if you were persistent you would get high. I flew for 2 hours and topped out at 5100' over launch. Tried to work the valley several times but only found one thermal out over the pig farm next to the church. On one of my valley attempts I let myself get too low and came back to the ridge 100' below launch. This made for some anxious moments since it wasn't totally bullet proof and the thermals were small and punchy down low with some pretty big areas of sink. It took me a good 5 to 10 minutes to regain control of the situation and climb back out. A good time was had by all, everybody got a piece of it as conditions just kept getting better. Karen launched into a boomer and went right to 3600' right in front of launch. Randy had numerous rides to 3500'. Joe flew to Pillow to check on his fellow workers. Lenko soared. Jeff gave John's falcon a good work out. Keith and Dave also had good flights.

Did you know that Lama's will spit on you if prevoked? Ask Dave Fink for details, (Dave you should have listed to Debbie.)

Marc, Kelvin and myself all had awsome XC's today. We all made it past Chambersburg, I landed just above Scotland for 21 miles, 5440 above launch 7340 msl, they landed 4 miles further on next to Shippensburg.

Ed

Great day at Woodstock too, especially late. Probably not as good as the Pulpit though. I had a terrific 1 1/2 hours in the air. Last to launch at 5:00 PM. Landed at sundown after flying all the way to the north end and almost all the way back.

I want to thank Pete Shuman and Tom McGowan for leading the way and providing a target to chase. Mike Balk for wiring and then finding me in the boonies and taking me all the way back up to launch at 8:00 at night, God for bringing in this great late day air, and Wills Wing for making this all possible. (:-) Not to mention all the other pilots and spectators who help make this such a wonderful sport. I'll be high for three days. It must be the epinephrine's.

A great day to be in the air. After it stopped trying to snow, the sun started poking through the clouds and the thermals started to turn on. Doug, Jim Carroll, Christian, Herb Graybill, and myself were the cast of characters. After a couple of scratches below launch (http://www.bigfoot.com/~buffam/barograph.jpg for the gadget-inclined) I found a decent thermal or two. The best was 600fpm, peaking at 1280 fpm taking me to almost 2500 over. (Doug, of course, got almost twice that.) I got an hour, as did everyone else, plus or minus a few (plus a lot for Doug, naturally).

Jim Carroll flew his new monster Falcon and got some exercise for a certain sphincter muscle over staying out in front. (The wind higher up was around 20 for a while.) And while we're telling bad stories, I'd better get there first with the report that the first thermal that ripped through launch picked up my nose (well, the glider's nose) as I was walking it down to launch, flipped it around, and caused an ignominious beak. Thanks to Herb Graybill for helping me out of an embarrassing jam.

Christian and I landed in the big field and had a real cool cross-country walk (guided by GPS - well of course! Two gadget nuts together. How else would we do it????) back to the primary LZ. 1.4 miles as the GPS flies.

Life is good.

Bill

When I arrived at launch around 11:30am Bill was already setting up. Conditions did not look promising. It was light west with cycles so light I swear it was trickling down. I set up and figured it was good enough for atleast a sled. Conditions started to improve with small blue holes starting to open up. I decided to take advantage of a nice straight in at 10 warm and fuzzy cycle. The first thermal got me to 900' over, but that was short lived and I was right back down on the ridge. I flew like this for almost an hour, up to 700' over and back down to 100' over with the occasional sinking below launch. But the day had potential, for now the sky was getting alot more blue and the clouds were lining up and getting close to the mountain. I was about 400' over when I saw Bill get bullied around in the launch slot and figured I'd fly over and take a look. Man, I went from 400' to 2000' in about 2minutes. The honest average was 700fpm with some solid 1200 fpm cores! From that thermal on conditions just got better. I eventually reached cloud base and 4600'over. Debating the idea of flying to Joe and Karen's house but decided to just enjoy the view and cloud hop up wind. I flew for alittle over 2 hours and landed in the main l/z. Bill had a good low save and got high. I did get a chance to fly with Jim arroll and Clint's Falcon. Christian was there after nursing a sore back and had a good flight. Herb Graybill had nice flight in the late afternoon air, which he reported to be sweet!

Doug.

Sounds like the day was great everywhere.

Ridgely turned on early and kept going until late. I took pattern tows early to get practice with the new glider. I took four but stopped after the second landing in a row where I blew through a strong thermal just before rounding out, and had the glider crabbing in a direction totally opposite the general wind. No damage and no hard times, but more excitement than I needed on a new glider.

Some other pilots took extended sleds. Then Sunny took up up a tandem and soared for twenty minutes so the parade began in earnest. Just after noon I caught a low save (first of three that day) and took it to 5300. Some others were up and down but mostly up. Rick Niehaus came late, launched about 2:30 and went 22 miles. He's the only one that actaully went went XC, although everyone was thinking about it. I think the cold may have held some back.

Later in the afternoon EVERYBODY was up until they popsickled out. At one point I was in a threesome at 6500 ' cloud base with Geoff Mumford on his new Stealth. The other pilot was from Capital? Steve Atwood? Sounded like Geoff found a buyer for his green machine. Everybody got something out of it Sunday!

Best Regards,
Richard Green

Another specktacular Pulpit production in the face of a rather sketchy forecast. We all kept wondering, where is Bacil, anyway?

We arrived at around 11:00 and Ed was already ready to go. Me and Kelvin thought might be a bit early yet, so we were content to listen to Ed report bouncy conditions at 200 to 400 over for about an hour.

About an hour later Ed was seen climbing out directly over launch, and radioed that he was at cloudbase. Kelvin looked at me and asked, "...well Marc, think we should go?" While he asked me Ed started getting hazy in the white room, so I said "can't think of any good reason to wait around any longer."

Kelvin launched directly into a boomer and was 1,000 over before he even got started zipping up. I followed him, but since I was down to one wire assist, (my honey Ellis) I had some trouble getting launched, and after launching it took me 5 or ten minutes to find the sweet spot. Kelvin was already long gone.

The drift was surprisingly slow in the face of the forecasted winds. Climbs were very light down low, up to around 4,000 msl my tangent rarely reported anything over 350 fpm, but once within 1,500 ft of Cbase (which I recorded at 6,700 msl--though Ed reports getting much higher than that) the rates picked up dramatically, my Tangent with 20 second averager twice showed 700+ fpm climbs. Despite all this variation, I found the conditions overall to be quite smooth and very enjoyable.

Upon reaching the Michaux forest the SW drift put me right up against the widest patch of no-man's land, I saw 11 miles of forest ahead and I was only at about 5,000 msl, and the drift was diagonal across rather than straight over. Finally, I only could see one or two dying clouds over the forest, so I chickened out. I went on glide to the north hoping to reconnect with another street, but the sink was quite strong, and lo and behold, I spotted Kelvin in a fairly nice lz next to 81 (about a mile square, I think even Steve K. could've landed there)

I glided in for a sweet no-steeper right next to Kelvin for a very fun 26.7 miles.

Special thanks are to be given to Ellis for making this possible for all three of us, she decided to bag flying so she could assist launching and retreiving all of us. Am I a lucky guy or what?

Marc

PS--And to top it off Maryland beat Stanford this weekend! Fear the Turtle!! What a fun weekend.

Yep, I did some bag flying at Smithsburg afterwards. Tried out Marc's Arcus and had one awesome flight, hanging out at launch level for at least 10 seconds and landing almost all the way at the end of the field.

By the time I had climbed back up to launch for a second flight, it was starting to shut down and so my that flight was not quite as spectacular, but still a good learning experience. Speed control is not quite there yet.

-- ellis

In retrospect, I shoulda gone to the Pulpit... So where was Bacil?

This one is for the Hangola report (and inquiring minds). Please correct any errata.

It was a typical long hang-wait. Conditions were light west cross for most of the day and a 1 hour lull around 3:30pm. Timing was critical: many sledded, while others valiantly scratched and scraped. Ironically, conditions at launch improved marginally, very late in the day.

Folks who flew (my feeble recollection) included Doug Henderson, Gary Smith, Steve Padgett, Tom McGowan, Adam Arkfeld, Dan Tomlinson, Mike Balk, Mike Chevalier, John McAllister, Bob _, Christy, Pete Schumann, Bruce Engen ... what was I saying?

Other dim recollections: Pete's excellent low save (1st flight) and XC on the 2nd. Tom's two soaring flights and XC. Mike (the incredible) Balk's OTB from 2k over to the Fort Valley, Dan climbing above me and disappearing to the N., John's long flight in marginal conditions, Steve's first flight since his knee surgery last Oct.

Terry couldn't fly due to a parts delivery error, but helped out on launch and retrieval (many thanks!).

Around 4:45pm. I observed Gary Smith, Steve Padgett and Doug Henderson. Coincidentally, Doug is now officially a hang 3. Doug and I learned in '76 and were in the Vegas (SN)HGA until 1985 when he took a break.

I launched at 5pm into maybe 5mph and squeeked 350' over briefly, mainly focusing on tree top avoidance. Headed for the LZ after 30 minutes due to tree and late-for dinner phobia.

'Spark

Since Joe's off the listserver, I guess people are waiting for me to do the report.

I arrived on the Mall around 8 AM to mostly clear skies with about a 8 mph wind blowing: an advent of what was to come. No HG people yet, but plenty of kite folks, one who made paper ducks which he strung up by their beaks on poles - they would turn into the wind and bob and seem to flap their wings. Eerily lifelike. I chased the guy down and bought on out of his trunk for a great discount...then Marc and Ellis showed up and she promptly bought one as well. They'll look good flying off the old pulpit weather tower.

We had a table and TV and boxes of junk, and approached someone at the judge's table for guidance on where to set up camp ("NOTICE: do not harass, tease, provoke, abjure, agitate, wheedle, lobby, beg, bribe, hypnotize or commandeer the Judges") They didn't seem to know what to do with us, but as soon as some old geezer came tromping up they dumped us in his lap. He didn't know a thing about us, didn't know we were here last year, and seemed to think the best place for us would be far off in a distant corner of the field. Not wanting to ruffle any feathers, we lugged our stuff over there and waited for Joe to show up with his golden contact and fix us up right.

Sure enough, Joe arrived and walked right up to a cute young thing named Averi who ushered us into the main thoroughfare not far from the generator. First rule of thumb: if you're in need of help, always hunt out the hot young babe FIRST, and avoid old geezers like the dickens. It seems so obvious in retrospect.

So we set up shop, and as the wind picked up we stretched bungees across the table to hold down the literature. We kept trying to push Joe's collection of old HG magazines and back issues of the MGHA newsletter off on people, but the big seller was the general information pamphlet MHGA put out for the REI seminar. I have to say, we did a sweet job on that thing.

Janet gave some kids a ride in her harness, and I talked to group of kids from one of the local technology schools about a glider they were designing. Every time I hear someone make a disparaging remark about public education I'd like to parade some of the top kids in front of their faces and make them eat their words.

Anyway, the wind and eventually some rain picked up and we bugged out around 2:30. Thanks to Marc and Ellis, Janet, Dan, Cragin, Ralph, Sheila John Codd and especially to Joe who once again organized the whole thing. We also have some pilots who just moved into this area who will be joining us in the mountains, and perhaps towing as well. Forgot their names.

Afterwards I joined Joe and Janet at their house for a nice dinner (pizza AND barbecue) with Sheila and her parents.

Brian.

Sunday, March 25, 2001
Manquin Flight Park
John Claytor
WW Sport 167

Saturday weather reports appeared to show a trend of high west and northwesterly winds in the central Virginia area just like every day for the past week. After not flying for 8 weeks I was in piqued anticipation for some airtime. After careful analysis of the weather forecast shown on the chga website, I thought that a small window of opportunity might exist for some truck tow sleds early on Sunday morning

Arriving at the field at about 8:45, the wind was blowing from the north northeast at about 5 to 10, so after a little chat with Steve Wendt I began to set up. Around a quarter to 10, I was loaded on the truck and taxiing to the far end of the tow road. The first two tows netted about 6 minutes of airtime with my sink alarm screeching the entire flight to flare on the second tow. We agreed to try one more tow and then sit it out for a while to see if conditions would mellow, get stronger or whatever. After about a 900 ft. agl tow I was toying around with some small punchy lift, chasing birds trying but not really climbing - ended up hanging with a couple of birds for a 10 to 15 minute extendo. It was now 10:30. Where are the Manquin regulars?

While taking a break from the turbulence Steve and I passed some the time by throwing Zagi R/C hand launched gliders - a popular Manquin diversion - conditions continued to warm when Steve wowed us all by thermalling his Zagi from about 10 ft. agl to well over 500 ft.

12:30 back on the truck, this time pointed into the southwest surface wind with a west wind encountered at about 300 feet agl. The first tow for the after noon netted about 700 feet of tow with the sink alarm singing a now familiar tune right after pin off. The next tow gave about 1100 feet before release and after pin off I turned 180 degrees to go get the thermal I encountered on tow and it was a good one. I rode the 300 per min. to 600 per min. lift to 3500 while drifting to the east at 15 mph. I boated around at that altitude for about 10 minutes until I was to cold (wearing a long sleeved shirt), and decided to pull in and get back to the flight park. I crossed the field and went about a half mile upwind and still being cold found some 900 per min. sink to core to get down. Now approaching the field at 1100 agl, I laid into a nice thermal and being warmer for 10 minutes thought "what the heck". I cored the thermal knowing that I did not want to get so cold again so I mentally set the limit at 3000, so watching my altimeter while climbing and reading 2970/2980/2990/3000. I pulled in and started my run back upwind again having to core the sink to get down, finally landing after about an hour. Where are the Manquin regulars?

To close this was a fantastic day for me with my highest flight, my longest flight and a climb rate on my 3 second averager of 980 ft. per min.

John Claytor

Richmond, VA

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This page last updated March 26, 2001