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Hangola July 4 - 7, 2003

Flight Reports

Wow, I can tell everyone isn't stuck in their offices', bumming about crappy weather and picking fights on the listserve. Either that, or its just down.

This weekend the Santa Barbara club is hosting "The Event" to coincide with the holiday and some other events going on concurrently down at the Beach. Flying to the Beach is similar to flying the Rock because so much work has gone into making it a legit landing site. Plus ditching altitude over the ocean can be fun.

The weather this weekend is not good at all for soaring here on the coast. Strong OTB means flying the back side then crossing over and out to the beach. As if that wasn't stressfull enough, some clepto stole the spot landing cone. Fortunately the ground crew swiftly replaced it with a beach towel and I was able to keep at least one foot out of the sand.

The silence of the list is great news, I hope everyone's having as good a holiday as me.

Kev C

Friday, lotsa wind, marginal lift. Learned a few things. I broke a weak link ten feet off the cart my first flight and gently landed on the wheels. Because of the cross wind, as my glider rotated around one wing as we stopped. But I noticed as I climbed back into the cart that my wing was a really strange shape. My next batten up from the tip batten was curved. Sunny fixed it for me, but I woulda had an ugly turn in my glider to contend with in already difficult conditions if I hadn't noticed. I didn't think it was possible to damage my glider with such a soft landing, but I guess if your wing touches the ground, you'd better check it before you fly again.

Flew a couple of times and got practice landing in turbulence.

Good party, fireworks courtesy of Bruce. Daniel and Janice and PK and Ric and Christian and Cindy and George and Rich and many, many, more folks attended. Managed not to get blindly drunk so I would be in shape to fly Saturday. Burned the crap out of my leg on Adam's bike. The ways to injure yourself are endless, if you are klutzy enough. Even mopping is unsafe, for me, at least.

Saturday looked like a repeat of Friday, with the wind ramping up early. I voted to go home but Paul voted to stay and he won. But some little cummies started to pop in the afternoon and I tried flying around 2.

Learned more. I wrap my hang loop once because it is too long (I have one on order that is the correct length). Sunny noticed (that with one wrap) I was actually hanging so low I was brushing the basetube. I said I really liked hanging that way and had been for awhile, but then he explained that I could accidently deploy my parachute. I said that might be bad because then I would have to cut off my expensive parachute with my hook knife. He said, no, then I would tumble and break my glider. Didn't know that, but thought it was a pretty good argument for putting another wrap in my loop, which we did.

The air was REALLY strange. My sink rate was very low as I flew under a small street, like maybe 100 a minute, but I couldn't find an actual thermal to turn in. Stayed up 22 minutes. Initially decided the punishment of the rowdy conditions outweighed the reward of flying again, but of course ended up trying again anyhow. Couldn't find nothin'.

Later learned Ric actually flew to the beach, in conditions that I considered less than marginal, more than tough. This was like hearing that your dog turned into a cat overnight -- beyond belief. I am getting the landing thing pretty good, but, damn, I gotta get better at finding thermals. I am on a different planet than the good pilots in that regard. I think I stay in the ratty crap too long, wasting altitude. I need to pay closer attention to flying directly upwind or downwind. Talked to Paul about it half the way home but clearly need to get better.

It was great to see everybody, but gotta get to work now. Hope you all have WONDERFUL 4 hour flights today.

Lauren Tjaden

Anybody fly at Hyner? I could not make it due to some last min work that came up. I was also not sure of the wind directon. But I did get to Redwing Sunday afternoon and Norm towed me up for my 1st thermaling flight. The tow was a little hairy the 1st 50ft then it was kinda fun tryin to stay behind the tug. But Norm kept me in line. Released at 3000 and Norm pointed me right into a thermal. Got up to 3400 and stayed between 3000 and 3300 for quite awhile.(to me anything more than 2min is quite awhile) Lost the thermal and got down to around 2000 and flew into another one. Then I hung around between 2000 and 2500 for a while then once I got below 2000 I headed for the field. Flight time was 37 min .Then I forgot how to land and came in to slow and flaired to early in the gusty air and did a wack job . But nothing bent so it wasn't to bad . A couple of more experianced Pilots ( no names)had almost the same landing as me so I don't feel to bad . The Redtail hawks look much better from above!!!

Bob towed me up for a second flight later in the day when it was glass smooth and it was great just to play around with air speed and my turns. Thanks to all who made it a great day.

Gary

High to all

Some of you may not know me,I'm an old timer (almoast as old as Beck). Just got back in the air again this weekend at Hyner after not flying for almoast a year. Only flew for about twenty minuts or so, but it felt good to get some air-time. Hope to be out more often, as my work schedule permits. See ya up there.

Dave b

Hyner produced decent conditions this weekend. I left town at 6 am Friday and arrived at 9:30 being met with no traffic what so ever all the way to Hyner. There was a period of soarable conditions Friday early afternoon up until mid-afternoon when a localized ugga-bogga (thunderstorm) meandered its way to the north of the site. Pilots in the air were radioed and flagged down when the booms were heard. We got a brief rain shower but missed the brunt of the storm. Renovo, about 6 miles away, got dumped on. An hour later, it was business as usual with a return to hazy sunlight and mildly soarable conditions. The LZ was quite placid all day, uncharacteristic for this typical mid-day firecracker site.

A couple of paraglider pilots flew and managed good flights in the tight, light thermals. In the lighter stuff, the paragliders were able to soar while the Hgers floated down.

The LZ owner staged a fantastic fireworks display on Friday night. Word was that he had put ~$3K into his pyrotechnics. They went on forever and were quite loud and spectacular and the party was a hoot.

Saturday was bright and clear and the lift had more edge to it than the previous day. The kids soared from 11:00 through the end of the day in the typical Hyner soar-flush-soar cycle. Mid afternoon was a bit more solid but also a bit windy. Many pilots decided to do the river thing to cool off. The mid-afternoon pilots got to sample the LZ which was Hyner-typical mid-afternoon switchy and raspy. I heard that some of the landings were interesting. John Hope had a nice flight that he was stoked about. I think he managed about 2 hours getting to 2K over. John could pretty much fly all over the sky and had some nice low saves. Another Ugga-Bogga sprung up to the north. We watched it from launch develop into a distant monster with a beautiful cap cloud on top. All pilots were down when we got a few drops of rain. The winds had become quite strong at launch. The blow off from the storm then cut off the sunlight and as the thing extinguished itself, the wind let up. At about 5 pm, it had become nicely soarable. I launched into cream puff conditions soaring the bowl 100 ft above the wall and was the only pilot up enjoying the view for about 20 minutes. While my time above the wall was brief, it was a wonderful flight as the scenery at Hyner is unmatched by any East Coast site I've ever flown. Other pilots launched but the expected flush came with gravity eventually winning out. After a brief period, it switched on again and a dozen gliders shared the air. It was a beautiful sight!

The party on Saturday night was typical Hyner and was still going strong when I turned in at 1 am.

The forecast for Sunday was promising but I left early to get back to Fairfield to fly sailplanes. I suspect the kids got to soar 3 days in a row.

Local pilots in attendance included Johm Middleton and Marney, Bob Stillwell, Craig and Lynn, Steve Krichton, Don, Kate Spoont and Tom, Bob Buchanan and Doreen, and a good contingent of Windriders, Blue Ridge Kids, and Philly boys.

It was a complete Hyner weekend: 1) it was soarable, 2) it rained, 3) someone went into the trees, 4) someone got naked.

Danny Brotto

Well, we are all back from the road trip. It was an interesting experience that I'm glad I got to join in before I get too old to participate in this sport.

I got soaring flights at Willow Creek Colorado, outside Las Vegas, at King Mountain and at Dougherty Slide near Lakeview Oregon. Bruce got the air hog award with more than 12 hours total soaring time including the two big flights at King Mountain. Had we gotten to the competition one day earlier and Bruce gotten a flight that averaged the two he got on Saturday and Sunday, he would have won the recreation class.

Sparky flew both wings a lot and showed us all around the West. Gary flew his pants off.

I learned a couple of things; Sprint sucks in open country from Kansas west. I think Bruce has AT&T which worked nearly everywhere. If you are planning big XC attempts, you're wise to bring a repeater frequency book with you. We lost Bruce and could not raise him on simplex nor on the cell phone. He was over a ridge at a small airport and we could have easily found him with a repeater. Launching in 20 mph in the West is not difficult. There was very little side to side motion at any of the sites, once you have your wings balanced and your pitch trim set, a couple steps and you are off. The Pulpit ramp at 15 mph is much dicier. All the launch cycles at King Mountain were thermal generated. I saw people take nearly 20 steps to get airborne. Finally everything you own will come home filthy except the memories of your flights and your newfound camaraderie. The image of the late afternoon sun hitting the bluffs at Doughtery Slide will stay with me forever.

dan t.

ps brought home all four spare downtubes! :)

Sunday was reasonably good too. Occasional lift over the field but most of the good stuff seemed to be hanging to the North of the field just beyond a topless glide. Wind drift was average 240/10 according to the GPS, but the clouds didn't seem to know or care. Any time I saw more than two in a row, they were pointing West. Weird. Anyway, West was where the beach was, so I went with it - grovelling along between 1500 and 2500 AGL pretty much the whole way. I finally get to the swamps and NOW everyhting is going up and I get comfortably high (3700 AGL max). Figures. Went feet-wet wth 3k and headed to the South a ways. Swamp City and VERY little in the way of roads. Decided I might never get found down there, or else I'd make it all the way to 4th of July Beach Traffic Hell (TM), thus discouraging any future retrieve efforts; so I went back up to South Bowers Beach and landed. In the sand.

It was actually blowing NNW on the Beach, according to the little fish-kite thingy in front of one of the houses. I actually caught a nice thermal at about 600 ft over the shore line and climbed up over the water again. Weird.

The beach was covered with tiny little roped off areas labeld: "Bird Spawning Area." Inside each, I found one or more divits in the sand with blue and brown specled eggs in them. I guess we are paying someone to walk up and down these semi-secluded beaches to cordon off every spot a bird happens to drop her eggs in the sand. Interesting.

Note: Flies severly compromised my planned private Beaching experience. Whole squadrons of them. Completely ruined my 'relax and read a novel on the beach while waiting for my ride plan.' Had to wade around in the water instead. Quite dissapointing, I'll say. The water's not real pretty up there. And the place was absolutley lousy with copulating horseshoe craps. The southern beaches are much nicer.

2+10, 26.2 miles (not counting the dogleg).

-- Joe

Got skunked - set up after showers passed but then it started blowing over the back. Got stuck in massive storms on the drive home. But we did get to hang out on the Rock with Sparky and listen to his stories from out West. Eddie Miller also made a cameo apperance.

Karen

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This page last updated July 8, 2003