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Hangola July 5-8, 2001

Didn't fly at HR today, though not for lack of effort. See frustrating timeline below. How's things turn out at Templeton?

I'll try again tomorrow; at least *this* time there won't be any frontal guessing games, or highs moving through at a gazillion mph.

Would love to fly Pulpit or WS, but doubt that there'll be enough crew for the former or velocity for the latter. So looks like the Rock once again.

--mark c.

PS: I came *this* close to self-launching, what a temptation. But with absolutely no-one around....

4:15 : Damn! There's that second line of storms Paul reported, on Intellicast's radar.
5:00 : Pittsburgh's in the clear, so _maybe_ it'll move fast enough to get past HGR before sunset. Time to hit the road!
6:00 : Strong gust front a bit past Frederick. But the heavier rain is to the south.
6:45 : Watching second line of storms cross the valley, from launch. Before the wall closes in completely, I tell myself that the dim orange glow on the horizon seen through the showers is a hopeful sign.
7:00 : Pouring down.
7:15 : Worst is past. And guess what? That glow really _is_ sunlight, woo-hoo! So I start puttering around, streamers, harness preflight, etc.
7:30 : Rain stops! Start to set-up.
8:00 : Blue skies above, storms past, bright sun lighting up the mists and the clouds. Ready to go!
8:01- No-one, not even one drunk wuffo. Blowing straight
8:30 : in at 10-15.
8:31 : *Sigh* Cracked open a beer, had dinner, and watched a gorgeous sunset as I let the glider dry out a bit more.
8:40 : Some wuffos finally show. Figures!

At Templeton, the showers passed at about 4:00 or so, followed by an odd calm, then honking gusty 35 mph NW wind. Watched some buzzards getting hammered and losing control in the tubulence.

We bagged it.

On Fri, 06 Jul 2001 01:03:39 Marc Fink writes:
> > Self-launching in the slot is a lot easier than scrounging wire crew at HR
> But no safer!
> Marc

Too bad I didn't read this. Blew a launch at Woodstock Thurs. Ended up in a tree. Minor damage to glider and pilot. It was 90 cross and the bushes were swirling around in the slot but it seemed doable. John McAllister launched first and it was pretty scary. He radioed back not to launch. Adam backed off. I figured hey no problem. I mean where would we be if we listened to people with a million hours of airtime?. I got a million and one hours so that means I don't have to listen to nobody -- right? I launched when the streamers were both showing some air straight in but they lied. There wasn't anything coming in. Just junk air blowing every which way. Mushed off, got a wing up instantly. Couldn't get it back down. And that was it.

Well, I am now initiated into the rites of tree landings. I remembered the advice to grab something anything. So I did. Ended up hanging by my arms from a tree limb with the glider below me swaying in the wind not touching anything. I was at least a hundred feet up (the ground slopes very steeply). Now what do I do? Clearly not a sustainable situation. So I let go. And fell a long long ways. Stopped about 20 feet off the ground.

---------

Ok. Rest of the story. Ended up with the suspension lines draped over a sloping tree trunk -- glider on one side, me on the other. Adam came down and offered lots of helpful suggestions, eg "Maybe you outa tie yourself and the glider to the tree before you cut the hang strap." And "I know its hot but maybe you should put your helmet back on." Dixie, John's dog, clearly thought everything we did was brilliant and panted. John brought beer.

Haven't inspected the glider closely but it appears to have only a broken batten and a lot of tree rash on the sail that may or may not wash off.(and a cut hang strap). I have some scrapes and bruises on my arms but not even worth a bandaid.

I need to do some thinking here. I have become very careless.

A good crowd showed up, no doubt diverted from Hyner by lack of flight-friendly weather.

I towed up at noon through some rowdiness, but above the first few hundred feet there wasn't much happening. Worked a gentle thermal from 2k for about 500, but that's all she wrote for that flight. Except for the borderline incident part --- as soon as the tow started and I let go of the cart, I shot into the air like a cork from a champagne bottle. What the %^$^$!!?? I thought. I stuffed the bar and got the tow under control, but it was like towing a Pulse with no keel tow point. Major bar pressure. So I'm thinking "I wonder if I adjusted the hang attitude last time I landed, and forgot to change it back?" Obviously I couldn't do anything about it on tow, but as soon as I got off tow I fiddled with it, and sure enough I was hanging in landing mode.

So how did this happen? Well, I've only recently (after 4 years!) begun to fiddle with the attitude adjustment prior to landing, so it usually doesn't move. But I should have caught it on the hang check. Somehow it didn't feel out of whack, probably because I didn't consciously check for it. Add one more point to the preflight mantra.

Second time up I chased a meandering thermal to 3k, which took me away from the airport -- no big deal, since Joan was with me to drive retrieve. Went with the wind, a few burps, then a wickedly tight core (almost dizzy-making). Dove for the next cloud, but it was not a happening event. Landed in a bean field on Bee Tree Road for 8.3 miles.

Wind Riders I remember seeing were the Permenters, Ric Niehaus, Dale, Scott and Ayisha, and Rich Green. Rich I think went XC, but I don't know where he ended up. Ric was planning to fly a sailplane.

So how did everyone else do?

Bill hang-'em-high Buffam

July 5th - We went back to Sugar Hill where it quickly overdeveloped and rained. We broke down on top, returned to LakeView, packed up and headed to Dougherty Slide, en route to our next destination. Unfortunately, winds at Dougherty were a bit too cross.

That evening, we drove to Salt Lake City, (dodged several cows) and arrived at Point of the Mountain before Sunrise.

July 6th, 7:30am - Bruce was first to set up and launch from the South side into 20 mph winds. He had a great flight: 40 minutes with a perfect top landing.

By the time I assembled my glider, winds had dropped to 10 mph. I launched and scraped for about 15 minutes. Not wanting to land on the bottom, I took advantage of a brief gain (50' over) and exectuted a classic sideways sliding whack. Had I worn pants and real shoes (or landed below), I might have lost a bit less skin... Anyway, my first time at the Point, I soared and was sore.

The wind continued to die and Gary bagged his wing. Weather reports for the area predicted thunderstorms, so ...

By 10am we were back on the road to Dinosaur, CO. We stopped by the visitors center, picked up an NPS map and directions to 'Blue Mountain' and drove east, totally missing the turns. When it was obvious we weren't anywhere near a flying site, we headed south towards I70 and drove straight home. Travel time from Denver to my house was almost exactly 24 hours.

Brief stats: 6600 miles, 411 gals of diesel, 9 days, six sites, 3 states, 7 flights, 3 states, (one whack) ...

and many great memories!

'Spark

A quick report on Friday. Mark C and I took the day for High Rock (I couldn't convince him to go to the Pulpit).

We both made our first tries around 2pm. I got up in my US in really punchy rowdy air for about 10 min and then sledded. Mark launched shortly thereafter and got nuttn.

We hustled back up and I launch again in the Falcon around 4 hoping for more workable air. I got punched around above the ridge to about 300-400 over for awhile before Mark launched. He went out front and started beaming up. I followed suit and we spent the next hour 5000+ over directly above the tower playing hide and seek with the thermals. There were a lot of other people that showed up, but hey! They were too small to make out who they were! 8>))

Awesome Day! It was so clear that you could literally see to Luray.

Yesterday I went to "Waldo," a coastal site about 45 miles from where I live. The site is actually atop a mountain about 10 miles from the coast and provides a magnificent 270 degree view of Central Maine. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me, but in the meantime you can look at some pics of some of the DC crew's visit over the 4th of July at http://www.marcfink.com/mainevisit/index.htm.

Anyway, flying here is like nothin I ever seen anywhere else before. Access to the launch itself is quite an adventure, I discovered what the real meaning of 4-wheeling is by watching Mainers in action. Basically, they drive up through the woods, ascending granite slabs and ledges and going over logs and large rocks. I truly never thought 4-wheel drive vehicles could do this kind of stuff. But as arduous as that was, I was astounded when I was shown the lz, basically a partially-cleared knob directly below and to the right of launch. Said lz is a series of granite ledges with small trees and boulders spread about--I just couldn't mentally comprehend landing there safely! It was explained to me that due to the consistent coastal breeze you elevatored in, I guess kind of like Torrey.

One of the locals was in the air on a Fusion when we got there, and unfortunately I missed his landing attempt while setting up my Laminar. My escort wasn't setting up, even while he explained conditions were worsening my enthusiasm dissappeared mostly because he wasn't bothering to set up. The Fusion ended up landing with a crossing wind, resulting in an overshoot (by my reckoning you have maybe 200 ft in any direction to get it down) and being stopped by the trees. The pilot seemed pretty happy with his flight, even though he was out a leading edge as a result of the tree encounter.

I later asked if there was anywhere in Maine where a 2-wheel drive could access launch--laughter and "sheeeeet no!" The locals seem very friendly--a fiercely indepedant lot who are accostomed to doing things their own way. More to follow...

Marc

--- In WRHGC@y..., Bill Buffam wrote:
> A good crowd showed up, no doubt diverted from Hyner by lack of flight-friendly weather.
>
> So how did everyone else do?

Several of us were at Redwing on Saturday. Me, Jim Messina, Miles Bodnar, Craig Bartlett, Jim Spadafora, Norm Price and a couple of guys from NY who came later in the day. Clouds looked great to the east, but waves of high cirrus clouds conspired against our local conditions. Also the SW winds were a little high, resulting in some interesting launches. The longest flight that I remember was Jim M. getting about 30 minutes early on in a blue sky. I got 25 minutes by trying desperately to hang onto broken 100 fpm lift, while trying hard to avoid the 1000 fpm DOWN that I hit twice. Much later when the winds calmed down I did a pattern tow to 1000 which ended up lasting almost 15 minutes due to zero sink where I released. Nobody did any XC...

john

I doubt I'd have posted but since Bill mentioned my XC I figured I should set it straight. I wanked around across the road for a while but couldn't get more than 200 ft above tow and the cloud dissipated. Left with what should have been enough room to get back to the field but found 800 down that didn't quit. Landed on the worng side of the road rather than push it to clear the wires. By the time I walked everything back roughly 1/2 mile the very short window had dried up entirely. Lots of good pilots left sitting in the field. It was practically un-doable all day and obviously not worth the trouble with the weather so dead-set-up against flying.

Raean got 40 miles.

Best Regards,
Richard Green

Three days, three sites, three soaring flights! And 4.25 hours of airtime :)

--mark c.

High Rock : Friday, 7/6

Ed already posted most of the details of the day. After the world's quickest sled at about 2:20 (sink *every*where), followed by the world's fastest breakdown and setup, my second flight at about 4:30 was absolutely great. Topped out at 4700' over launch: nearly every cloud and wispy was working, never dropped below 2000' over. Burned off altitude by heading to the outskirts of Waynesboro at the end of the flight, came back and played around launch for a while, then landed with about 2.25 hours of airtime.

Fisher : Saturday, 7/7

Fully expected not to fly, because I didn't think anyone would be there. Arrived around 2:30, and worked on the slot for about an hour. Been clearing the right side of the slot back to the original border, and found that my efforts of last year had been expanded two-fold by some person(s) unknown. Thanks whoever you are! So I cleared out the remaining mean-n-evil thorn trees, felt GOOD cutting those suckers down :) .

Conditions were initially 50% 10-15 and 50% 15-20, either straight in or cross from the left. Deborah and Paul arrived, and conditions had backed down a bit, so it was clear we'd be able to fly! A little more slot work with Paul, then we set up.

I launched first, and spent the next 1:30 between 300' and 400' over the ridge. Flew down to the peak across from the old primary, back to launch, then past launch, etc... Wind was strong, sometimes seeming to be from the SE, other times from the SW. Never really hooked a good thermal, but did fly with two bald eagles and a couple redtails.

Deborah went second, and Paul self-launched; both had similar flights, though I seemed to be looking up at their wings from below most of the time. We all landed in the tertiary (nice field!), first time for both Deb and me. My approach was a bit high, will do better the next time I land there. Airtime: 1.50 hours.

Paul and Deborah stopped in to see Anna, and they mentioned that she seemed a bit lonesome. We should all make an effort to stop in on the next good south day, and maybe bring something so she knows we're thinking of her: pastries, bread, jam, chocolate, juice, that sort of thing. I think it would be very welcome.

Pulpit: Sunday, 7/8

Hmmmm... The least promising of the three days, by far. Overcast the entire way out there. Arrived a bit before 2:00: Ed was there but his glider was still on his van. Not a good sign. Sat around and watched big grey clouds move across the valley for a while. But conditions *did* improve, with sun and blue sky starting to show by the time Tom arrived. We set up, ran a shuttle, and then found that some much bigger cells were building when we got back. Turned out it was the front finally going through (around 4:00 I think), and the winds turned more northerly and picked up quite a bit.

A pilot (Rich something) who has a Lookout-II showed up, and helped us launch. Tom went first and got the highest, with somewhere around 700' (more?) over. But he got flushed after 20 minutes, just as I was getting ready to launch. Damn! Didn't want to wait because I thought that it might OD, so picked a reasonable cycle and took my chances. I eked out about 30 minutes at tree-top level to perhaps 200' over. Ed launched with the help of Rich and a wuffo, and got about 20 minutes or so.

Hazy, hot, and humid, with more rotor-surfing than ridge lift because of the cross; quite a challenge!

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This page last updated July 9, 2001