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Hangola June 19 - 23, 2003

Flight Reports

Blew off a promising afternoon arguing with Matthew for a less than stellar forecast for HR. Looked crappy all the way up. Blowing East and raining as I passed Fredneck. Thinking this is really dumb. But when I got there it was sunny and coming in. Couldn't believe it!. Ran it off in maybe 5, found something and climbed out to base at 2200 over. Turned out to be a great day. Lift everywhere. Vario conked out on my third trip to base and I still stayed up. Now that is a good day. Landing was uneventful -- noteworthy inasmuch as the grass is maybe 5 ft high in places. Really! It is actually very difficult to move the glider through it to the breakdown area. Harry says they can't cut it until it stops raining. Walk back up is thru thickets of Mtn Laurel. Put the glider on the car and drove home in a driving rain.

After all the complaining about no air time and bad weather I was amazed that no one went to Woodstock today. Granted that the forecast was less than stellar but it was still a fair day. I arrived at 1:30 and found Randy W, just getting there also. We set up and launched about 2:15 or so. Cycles were switchy but settled and came stait in frequently. Once in the air the north cross was quite noticable. Got to 1000 over launch. Thermals were really small gopher farts not even big enough to turn in. Randy and I both got about and hour each. (Randy's flight slightly longer than mine.) I headed out intentionally due to the fun to work factor was passing the 1:1 ratio. Alaxander also showed up and did a 30 min flight in his bag. As I went back across the top I stopped and talked to Adam who was just setting up for a flight. Probably going to go back and do it again tomorrow.

Hank

It was a pretty mellow weekend out west. I opted to skip the Owen's to allow myself more rest for an upcoming competion. I had hoped to fly Pine today with some Santa Barbara pilots but the conditions there were OTB. I settled instead for some light wind cliff soaring down at the beach. It was just strong enough to get me above the trees off launch. I worked hard to stay up and even outlasted an RC and his unpowered Zagi. He gave up on the free flight model and switched to the motor to keep me company. The inevitable toilet flush came smooth and friendly and I conceded victory to gravity once again. My freshly tuned glider landed ace for all the spectators on the windless beach (whew!).

Kev C

Strong winds for the first 1/2 of the day. Started to mellow and come down the runway (instead of that north cross) later on. Tows were bumpy and the lift was broken, leading to extendo-sleds. I think Joe might have wrangled out a bit better flight than that. Sky was overcast, but with a high deck. Flying was good practice but the fun factor was lower than average. Amazingly the Ridgely force field was still semi-operational and we stayed dry :)

Hope to see ya today.
Jim

I cheated. Sunny gave me a mile high and I got to play around above the clouds (broken deck) for a little bit.

Later in the day, my dad came out and took a tandem in the Extacy with Bruce. Sunny towed me up to 3500' in the Talon just prior to Bruce's launch, we joined-up in the air and worked out the flap and VG settings required to do two-ship formation work with the Talon & Extacy. Good fun.

Not a drop of rain that I saw. It's like Ridgely is covered in RainX or something.

-- Joe

The raw details:
Start time at 12:45
1:30, Max Alt 4200
34.4 Miles

I launched just before it was going to rain, or as it appeared. Dark clouds had begun to take over so I felt that the time was right to make a move. The flight was interesting with strong climb rates (6-800'/") and turbulent conditions overall. I kind of zig zagged along the cloud streets in a southeast direction with my lowest point being about 1800 feet AGL. I ended up over a nice field on the west side of Williamsburg with 3600 feet in the bank. I felt the need to get down as airspace issues were at hand and the amount of good landing fields were diminishing.

I will say (write) it here that if I could have ignored the issues that caused me to land, I could have gone much further. I find satisfaction in knowing that I used conservative judgement, before painting myself into the proverbial corner. So, I can handle a little bit of could'a, would'a, should'a.

Venture out XC - Safely...

John Claytor

Some unfortunate dental work had the spirits down. The june Gloom clouds parted at about 3:30 and I was immediately salivating. Scheduling wouldn't let me take off until 5 but I was all set up and ready to go in no time flat. There was some cumulus development over the thermal factory (duh) and round house. Odd clouds, very dark gray. By the time I launched things were definitely wanning but lanch cycles were still plenty strong. I hooked some light lift at launch before cruising over to a west facing ridge. Vario was in wig out mode and under some sort of gag order. No worries though, I rather enjoyed the peace of it being off.

Scott Angel and I just recently tweaked some HUGE asymetries out of my glider so I was extra horny to get some thermal time in it. The curious part of me wanted to thermal to the old "bad side" but with the air so light I only wanted to thermal to my good side. As fate would have it the shifting bubbles demanded diligence in both directions. It put a huge smile on my face to get almost equal performance in BOTH directions for once. And all this time I thought my imbalance was a weaker left shoulder! Thank you Scotty. I love squeaking more performance with some TLC. Its like getting a new glider or upgrade package for free. With some more hours on it I might tweak on the tip rotation to eek out some more climb. I have a hunch that is what let it excel clockwise before.

Enough babble, I was just really excited. Beautiful late afternoon air time. Beautiful sunset. Great sport. Enough said.

Kev C

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This page last updated June 24, 2003