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Hangola March 14 - 15, 2002

Flight Reports

Arrived on launch at LG about 1:30pm wind was North stfi @ 8-12. Set up and got ready to launch and the wind became stfo at 10. Waited for a good rotor cycle and had a fast sled to the factory. Arrived at Kirks. Wind SE. stfi @ 10. Perfect launch to 1,300 over, perfect soaring conditions for about an hour. Some thermals came in from the back side. The air was good, flew a new Airwave Sport. Super fast wing that would make any toober drool! Jeff Shriner

Should have believed the ADDs. ADDs said SE at 15 while everybody else had WNW at 4 or 5. ADDS was right. Terry and me. Terry potatoed forever trying to get off whining about it coming over the back most of the time. He finally went. Interesting flight. Whoa! Oh my God! Geez! Unbelievable! My turn. Phone in my harness rings. Stop everything. My wife. She just walked in the house. Message on the machine from Terry. Totally unintelligible except for "outrageous, ridiculous". That Terry. Venting about the Middle East or something. Actually, it did occur to me that he was frantically trying to contact me to tell me not to fly. It also occured to me that the last time somebody said that and I ignored them I ended up in a tree. But this was different. It was different because today I had on my lucky pants. These are pants that never fail me. They also never get washed (because that would wash all the luck off them- duh!) so you have to stand upwind. A little. Anyway, I eventually launched and flew. Rotor city. Massive sink. Straight in approach. good landing. Put them pants away loviiingly. You shoulda been there.

Paul and I trekked to Ridgely yesterday late afternoon, so I could hopefully try my new Eagle. We aimed to get there in time for Paul to thermal, but unfortunately our plans were interrupted by this stupid thing called working. I think I get more uninspired every year. However, that's another story. ReAnne flew for 2 hours; and Fred flew for over an hour, too. Lisa nabbed about a half an hour but was irritated by a slightly imperfect landing (oh, that I could be pissed about so small a blunder). Also, a guy named John flew over an hour, but I don't really know him, so forget giving him excess kudos (note to John: if you are really nice to me when we meet, I won't slander you on the website).

However, we arrived too late to do anything but 15 minute sleds. Paul did his usual showoff landings. I wish he'd do the stomach-mud-smear-landing-thing at least once in a while.

I DID get to fly my Eagle. She's more sensitive than the Target (I'm embarrassed to even mention it, since everyone says that Eagles are so easy to fly) but I controlled her better the second time up. At some point during the first tow I noticed we wavered like I usually don't until my third martini (theoretically, I mean, I would never actually drink that much). Had to remind myself to hold still and just let the plane pull us; to allow a few seconds for her to respond. The flying got smoother after that. She is so beautiful in the air. I kept looking at her wings while we flew.

Unfortunately, my assessment of angles sucked. I like to be good -- you know, at sports and business and EVERYTHING -- and I'm not a good pilot yet (I swear, I had to come home and jump huge fences on the horses to prove to myself that I have adequate skill at something). I was WAY high judging my angles, and displayed bad judgment the first time landing. The second time I DID fly better, and even though I was high I at least had a plan, stuck to it and landed fine. And I didn't break any down tubes this visit. I would have died; to hurt my stunning new partner.

I still had about a mile to trudge back with the Eagle, at least until Sunny drove out with the golf cart to drop off a glider cart for me.

I gotta figure this out. Everyone is convinced it was a total miracle I wasn't killed mountain flying. They're probably right, too, which is the bad part. I've been trying to judge angles all day, but the horses get pissed when you make them stand for very long.

Lauren Tjaden

Steve and I went to Daniel's today and found conditions to be better than yesterday's at Dickey's. It was blowing straight in this time.

I spent 2hrs. trying to get more than 1100 over. Steve got a little higher, but went out on a foray and wasn't able to get back up. He probably added 1 1/2hr to his logbook.

5 Central guys showed up, flew and all soared. 2 others showed up too late for flying but early enough for beer in the LZ. It was a good day Terry

H1, H3, H3, H0, H1, H3, P2. 15 mph SSW and rowdy. Careful, safe, fun. day. Friday afternoon at Taylor turned into a reasonable practice day for a number of pilots. The mix included Hang 0 to Hang 3, and even a bag lady. I arrived at 1:30 to find Ed Reno finishing set up on his Ultrasport at the top, and lapsed H1 student Matt (last lesson three years ago) pondering the new shape of his Eaglette downtube. Winds were 15 mph, occasionally gusting higher, nominally SSW but very switchy. Ed and I figured there to be a steady stream of small thermals popping off of the LZ and moving up to launch. It would continue like that for most of the rest of the day.

Rich Alexander and Chris McKee arrived shortly after 2:00. Traffic had gotten worse on the Beltway and I-95 since I had come down. Winds were strong enough on the top of the hill that I was assembling my Pulse in flattened mode. Chris and Rich set up down on the LZ and proceeded to practice flat runs and flares. Both got airborne several times on those runs - 3 feet AGL is still flying! Rich also discovered that if you yell properly when heading toward cows, they will eventually scatter out of your way.

Dan Tomlinson showed up on his BMW. Thinking ahead, he had his knee-hanger in the saddle bag. Ed joined Chris and Rich on the flats, figuring a winter off deserved some flat run work before launching. He also threatened the cows at close range, and eventually joined me at the top. Dan had his choice of loaner gliders, and ended up flying Ed's Ultrasport once and my Pulse twice.

After a couple of hours at the bottom, Chris and Rich began working up the hill for higher launches. Both were cautious in the switchy conditions and had several good flights.

I ended up with five flights. Landing results, in order were no-step, wheels, beak (bad trend to this point), no-step and no-step.

Ellis Kim arrived about 5:00, reporting a 2 1/2 hour trip from Arlington. She was able to work in several bag flights as dusk threatened.

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This page last updated March 20, 2002