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Hangola April 9 - 11, 2004

Flight Reports

Rode 5 horses this morning, waffled about flying Woodstock. Too many late nights lately, too much work, too many goals to achieve. But then cummies began to bloom in the sun and we just had to drive on down and see what conditions looked like at Woodstock.

A couple paragliders launched, but quickly landed, faces blanched. I wasn't sure why until I launched (about 4:00). Rowdy, wrap-your-arms around the basetube air. My vario averager read 900 up per minute for prolonged periods, even when I flew straight.

I flew towards Strasburg, a goal I had made. I spotted loads of fields and whenever I sunk some (in spite of Paul telling me ridge lift was ironclad) I would find a thermal and spin in it until I could see forever again. I felt like a Goddess, for sure. Zoomed by falcons and felt the chill of the heavens or at least some clouds.

And then I arrived at the field at the end of the ridge, green roof of the barn below, the tower on the knob a tiny erector set toy. Paul wanted to try an upwind triangle and abandoned me, while I circled aimlessly. It seemed like a waste to land, so I turned around and headed back towards home.

On the journey down I flew around 25 groundspeed, but on the way back I slowed to 16, then 12, and finally 6. Ginny turned into the wind and flew sideways, while I grinned and shouted at the birds. And then I arrived home and the adventure was over. Got my ass kicked in the LZ, even though it was nearly 6:00. Next time I'll land up the road when I find that much lift over the LZ. Paul was GREAT, but I'll let him tell his own tale.

We dined at the Mexican in Strasburg. I gotta go to bed now, Ridgely first thing, gotta try a XC there if it's good. I am the luckiest person on the planet.

Lauren Tjaden

Totally Woodstocked out so I decided to go to Ridgely. Not bad. Maybe not as good as Cumberland or Woodstock (I hear Tom McG got 58 miles from Cumberland!!) but we had fun. John Hope, John Muldoon and me. Spectacular sky but with a troubling absence of birds and too much wind. Nothing on the first attempts. Sleds. So we waited. John Hope tried about 4:00 and stayed up. After he was up for an hour I decided that maybe it wasn't just luck and went up to join him. It was good. 6k bases, a cloud street and a 20 knot tailwind would probably have gotten us to the beach even given the lateness of the hour. But you know it's good when you can hang around in air like that.

Hey. XC contest at Ridgely. Come on out. I am committed (left my glider there)

After a frustrating morning at work, Hugh's XC posting put me over the edge. I took an afternoon of personal leave and bailed out of the Pentagon to grab my stuff and made like a bat out of hell to get to Woodstock. Joe Schad was in the process of setting up to launch and everyone else was skying out. I set up and self launched (a first) and beamed straight up. Flying today was the strongest lift I've ever experienced, and after dinner at Christines in Strausberg, it was the strongest most of the pilots had experienced. I had a friend out with me so I didn't want to break her into hanggliding by chasing me cross country for her first outing so I stayed on the ridge. Topped out at 4700' over launch and logged a 1:45. Was planning on landing behind Carlos' but caught a thermal at 700' over the LZ and drifted it back up to the top of the ridge and was once again was sitting at 1400 over launch. Saw everyone headed down to the LZ so decided I had had enough and was ready for dinner so did high performance turns to bleed off altitude. Had the most picture perfect landing that I could have asked for. All in all it was an incredible day of flying. Two flights in 6 days...another incredible feat for me!!!

BATMAN

Great day at the 'burg today. Eddie and friend Hal flew Zagi's. Four flights for me, aided by the nice wind velocity. Jim showed late in the day with a new(ish) Sonic and had numerous flights. Left at sunset. Felt good to foot launch!

Judy

It was a strong, turbulent lift day yesterday at Woodstock. Typical spring air. Blew out of work, arriving at launch around 1:30P. Dave Bodner set up, waiting for Cragin Shelton to observe him. Conditions were 5 to 15 MPH, and the sky was full of beckoning clouds. Cragin and Carlos arrived shortly thereafter, as did Paul and Lauren. Launched after 2:30P, got up quickly, and headed down towards the Edinburg Gap, noticing a west cross aloft. Turned around and headed NE to Signal Knob. Caught a nice thermal by the reservoir and climbed to 4200' MSL. Flew to the Knob and turned around. West cross aloft still present. Had to pull in a good bit just to move. Flew down to the gap and found very little lift around Waonaze Peak. Flew back towards launch, sniffing for a thermal to allow me to jump the gap and proceed onto Short Mt. Found a good one out away from the mountain and climbed up to 4600' MSL. Near that altitude saw two raptors playing talon lock and tumble. Cool sight! May have been ospreys. Brown on top. Figured with this altitude I should be able to jump the gap. Strong west cross and sink plummeted me quickly, so I bailed and landed out by the Edinburg Gap Road (Rt. 675) in a corn stubble field right by the river. Around 5P by this time. Distance 15+ miles. While on the ground, kept hearing transmissions of some pilots flying over Winchester, noticing where Homer's shop was at around 7 grand altitude at cloudbase. Awesome! Today was definitely a perfect upwind and downwind kind of day, with all the clouds streeting up nicely. Thanks to Cragin for the retrieve.

Bacil

Ridgely did work yesterday (Friday). First time to cloudbase (5,900) since Florida. Today should be lots of fun.

john

Flew Woodstock Friday. I've taken some pride in my launches, but not this time. One or two steps I was in the air and turning right well inside the slot. I stayed on the downtubes and managed to straighten it out. Had a decent flight after that. But, what went wrong at launch? Here's my postmortem (so to speak). Others may have a different view.

I was off the ground too soon, I don't think my nose popped, so I think my nose was a little high to start, causing me to mush down the slot. Mistake number 1. At dinner that evening, Carlos, my left wire-man said he felt some tension before I launched. Why didn't I hear him? Mistake number 2: I failed to give instructions to my wire crew. In fact, I thought I had complete control of the glider. That's what I wanted. But I didn't communicate it. So, Carlos was helping control the glider. He was probably even telling me what he was feeling, but, since wasn't expecting it, I guess I just didn't hear him. Or it wasn't registering.

Anyway, thanks again Cragin and Carlos for helping me launch.

Oh, and what happened Saturday? I won't go into the details. But, if you're flying Bill's in the future, and you find a set of keys, let me know. And, thanks to Ken Swingle for the ride home.

Dave

Good showing at the cleanup. Looks real nice and wide open. Three bags of trash two tires and lots whacking, sawing and snipping. Richard Noon was really stoked being there. Said to tell everybody "Thanks" for talking to him and sharing your Hang Gliding experiance. After the Pulpit, he was in heaven. We talked about it all the way home, he said he can't wait to launch. Thanks for being there Brian, you look real good. Sorry I missed you after the flight. Gene

Lauren and I have really been burning the candle at both ends this week. We didn't want to miss all the great flying weather at WS but obviously had to make a living too so we've been rising early, riding a bunch of horses and doing other farm work, and then heading out to fly. WS is only about an hour away so we can leave here around noon and still have plenty of flying time.

Friday was probably the best lift I've ever seen in my relatively short flying career. Many pilots, including Tom Mc., Christy Huddle, John Mc. and several others from the Mountaineers, had spectacular XC flights from the Cumberland area.

I had promised to help Lauren on her first journey down the ridge and was having zipper problems with my harness so a long XC wasn't in the cards for me. We both launched around 4:00 into solid ridge lift to 800 above with cloudstreets running beyond the horizon. Lauren and I quickly made it to Signal Knob enjoying spectacular climbs along the way. When we arrived there, we found ourselves under a near solid street that looked like it ran all the way to Ohio. Lauren was having a ball getting stinking high over Strasburg and didn't seem to need me any more, not that she ever really did, so I decided to try something different. I climbed to a couple thousand over and headed north west, into a 15 to 20 mph wind, towards the ridge across the valley. It was turbulent and slow going but lift was so incredible that I was able to arrive over Little North Mountain, 8 miles upwind, higher than I had left Strasburg and all without ever turning a 360! After crossing the far ridge, things got real interesting. My vario, which I'd kept fairly quiet by charging into the wind with my nose low, started singing at an incredible pitch. I watched the digital readout of my 20 second averager in amazement as it counted higher and higher until it registered 1,150 fpm! I was climbing through 5,200 and thinking about continuing upwind or possibly going towards Winchester but my zipper had let go. It was getting cold and my legs were starting to tire trying not to put too much pressure on what was left that was holding my legs in. I turned back towards home and made a fast return towards launch then continued south along the ridge to the Edinburg Gap to complete a 33 mile triangle.

When I arrived back at the LZ, lift was still so abundant that even with my legs dangling and cranking hard diving turns, I couldn't get below ridge height. Finally went up Moose Road towards town and was able to get down. Joe S. joined me there later, kicking himself for not getting an earlier start. He had gotten about 3/4's of the way across the valley and given up because it was getting late and he was afraid he'd miss getting a ride to his truck.

Later, while talking to Tom Mc., who had flown to Front Royal from Cumberland, (congrats Tom) I found out that Good Friday was an official XC day for the Region 9 contest and I had just missed a chance at a huge downwind flight, Guess I'd better read the rules next time. But then I might have missed the opportunity for this unique flight. Don't think conditions allow for this very often and it was incredible fun!

Hope all of you get some good springtime air soon. Paul

Shawn, Noah, J&K, and I arrived on Friday to find Ole Lady Hyner just awake from her winter slumber. She was frumping around in her rump sprung bath robe, fuzzy slippers, no make up, and her hair in curlers. As you can imagine she wasn't too happy to see us and gave us the cold ( and strong cross ) shoulder right till dark.

Friday found her in a much better mood, and after being groomed, coyly gave us that "I ain't easy but I can be had" look. After a noon panty flight the first glider took off at 1400 into STFU @ 800 fpm lift to spend the better part of 3 hours cloud hopping at 6K with a face wash at 6700' over ( 8700 msl ). The launches continued sporadically all afternoon with most pilots, including the PG's, landing with big s***t eating grins and the same "I couldn't get down" story. The last glider launched @ 1700 and still flew almost to Renovo at 4700' above (couldn't get down). The three panty pilots also had big smiley faces with one an especially good story to tell. Big eyes but a happy ending.

The landing field was quite textured but everyone handled it with aplomb and Mr. Al Luminum went home with empty pockets.

As we left I could see Ole lady Hyner grinning her grin, with a glint in her eye, and a promise on her lips of yet more earthly delights to come.

See you Memorial Day, Sweetie.

Attendees in order of appearance........ Noah (PG), Bob, Shawn, J&K, TR, Jesse, Will, Dave (PG) Mark, Ronaldo (PG).

Got there 1PM and the NW was really west with a vengance, over the back. Felt like casting the wx radio in a gentle arc towards the sunset and resisted, as it still insisted wind was NW like on the other side of the mountian

grin

Oh Well, was looking good enough id have felt bad not trying so I just had to give it a go. Gotta play to win right?

Was nice drive and felt great to get the glider on the car for a change. perhaps next week? WEEKDAY FLIERS keep me in mind if it gets good.

Dave Green

Sorry I missed you Dave. I arrived a bit later and enjoyed a fantastic evening flight. Flew from 5:25 to 6:35 and spent most of flight about 2300' over enjoying the beautiful scenery. Decided to land earlier than on Wed. (all kidding aside, I actually did fly on Wed.) so I could break down the glider before dark this time. Enjoyed another hike up to launch and beautiful sunset. Congrats to all others who enjoyed their Good Friday flying!

Kelvin

http://community.webshots.com/album/132961444VEKKEj

'Spark

After a productive 3.5 hours of cutting down trees at Bill's, we all headed for the Pulpit. Or at least, those with keys did ;-)

The weather gods must have been smiling on us for doing all that work:the predicted swing to the SW (at least on launch) hadn't yet happened when I launched at about 4:45. Should have jumped off sooner... But needed to convince myself that the occasional SW cycles were just thermal, not a true swing. SW at the Pulpit sucks bigtime.

I caught a boomer about 15 minutes after launch, and went with it. Topped out about 4'K over a few miles OTB. Landed 2 miles shy of I-81, just north of Marion. Major thanks to Ralph for the retrieval!!

Gene and Carlos flew, and perhaps some others. But I don't know much about their flights... How were things on the ridge?

SSE wind after landing, and I wasn't even aware of it in flight :-( Shoulda changed course, darn!

--mark c.

I'd like to thank everyone who came out to Bill's yesterday to help beat the underbrush into submission. The brush fought back, and managed to inflict several casualties, but our fearless pilots prevailed in the end! I have a before and after photo posted at:

http://photos.sickinger.net/20040410_bills/index.html

Yesterday's cast:

Shawn Ray, and his friend Ken
David Bodner
Brian Vant-Hull
Ken Swingle
Mark Cavanaugh
Joe Brauch
Bruce Engen
Gene Towns
Wesley (whose last name I still don't know)

Afterwards we all headed to the Pulpit, and managed to launch Mark Cavanaugh, Gene Towns, and Carlos Weill. Their photos are available at:

http://photos.sickinger.net/20040410_pulpit/index.html

R2

Nice photos Ralph,

Note: Gene was not trying to get into his harness on his second step as it looks in the photo. We commented on his launch that he had a good run right into the air. The photo really makes it look like he is trying to get his foot in.

joe(no glider, no glory)

Arrived to the LZ at around 1:30 to meet Cragin. At launch Bacil and Dave B were set up and ready. It was past 3:30 when I decided to launch, conditions seemed to lighten up. Played around for a few minutes on the ridge and went to the first right finger and found a gigantic thermal went from gain almost 4000ft in no time. The cloud behind look a little grayish, so I decided to stay upfront. I was still gaining, but it was getting colder and thought I wouldn't last long(bar mitts next time) Got out of lift came down some. Then I noticed Cragin playing around as well, but he could traverse perpendicular to the ridge in no time, my glider could hardly make progress in headwind.

At the end when I decided to land, I couldn't lose altitude. I tried looking for sink or weaker lift nowhere. Hey try same stalls, and I ended up higher. Finally, stuffed the bar to full arm extension and that did it. Full arm extension a few times and I could see landing soon.

4700ft over, 2.5 hours, 1000fpm. Very enjoyable flight.

(Good thing Cragin decided to take the car and give body rides, by the time I broke down he was back.) Dinner was at the Mexican place (third time that week for a few)

Carlos

Steven C Kinsley wrote:

> So was it sunny?

It was 50/50 sunny/cloudy.
After Mark's Oink #2 flight.
Gene and I launched. I realize I'm not that familiar with the ridge. I expected good lift in SW behind the main LZ. I took long enough to get there that I wasn't willing to go back to launch. Got below the ridge and decided to land.

Many thanks to help launch after working on Bill's.

(To Sparky, Ellis, Matthew and Karen. I left a piece of artificial grass for PG, if it is not helpful I'll get rid of it)

Carlos

Checking Ralph's pictures....in 4313 Carlos' caribiner looks like it is getting a wedgie loading the gate.

The flying down here in Fl has been off and on. I have been spending mucho time and more then a few flights perfecting a glider GW had wanted to sell. In a strange turn of events it looks like Davis might fly it in the Flytec meet.

The more serious pilots have been running practice tasks every flyable day. The group has yet to make a task call that wasn't overly ambitious. I get ribbed for being too busy/cautious and not wanting to go XC. Its all good though. I get to gaggle up with the other field umbilicals. Practicing with the final glide and route functions on my new vario and tweaking gliders between flights. My landings are slowly improving but the calculated competitor in me wants to save my wad for when it really counts. I try to avoid flying in L&V or light wind.

I have been working on a 14m versus the 13m I flew before. This one is a tad more stable most likely due to lower wingloading plus some minor differences. It thermals effortlessly and I can slow it down more then the last one. I can carve up the lift like I could on the smaller glider and also get a better sink rate in the light stuff. The bigger glider goes well but isn't quite as sick as my old small one on glide. The next goal is to convince Davis to tighten up his landing technique. Of all the flexies I think this glider is a great match to his rigid wing style and he flies it well.

I'm getting jealous of all the great mountain flying you guys are getting. Keep the stories rolling in. I for one eat them up.

Kev C

Christy Huddle ... had [a] spectacular XC flight?? I wish! I was kiting my paragliding on a little hill near Sparks' house and missed the great flying altogether. I got to hear the conversation of many pilots on my way home on 144.950, including Lauren sounding a little stressed out when Paul was far ahead. Must have been some good air. If I hadn't had the ridge run on Wednesday, I'd really be crying the blues.

As for that ridge run on Wednesday, I found out later that my altimeter was reading 700 feet higher than what it should have - probably why I felt confident running the ridge and wondering why Paul (whose altimeter was accurate) was saying what he was saying. If I hadn't run the ridge a couple of times already, I probably would have been more nervous about arriving at Short so short of altitude.

Christy

We had a nice day at Cumberland Friday. John McAllister, Marvin Presley, JR, Larry Ball and I flew. John and I arrived around 12:30 to generally overcast skies. Things opened up around 2:00 and I was first off at 2:30. Looking around, conditions seemed awfully good - cloud streets had set up running NW, perhaps WNW. I had it in my mind that I needed to get around Dulles airspace or get to the Woodstock Ridge to have a big flight, so I kept jumping cloud streets to head farther south. Never found super strong lift, but found lift under each cloud.

I reached North Mountain around 4:30 and tried to run south to a nice looking street that would have taken me within glide range of the Woodstock ridge, but the street died as I headed south. I then dove off the back of the ridge low enough that I thought I was toast. However, a nice leeside thermal got me going again. I generally flew down wind at that point and crossed I-81 on the south side of Stephans City, I think. I then tried one last cross wind glide to a weak looking street on the north side of I-66. I reached the street about 1500 agl but couldn't find enough lift to risk gliding back over the Blue Ridge and land near Linden. I opted to land on the [west] side of the Blue Ridge, just north of I-66 around the 9 mile post (I believe) for 57.4 miles. I believe those were PRs for each of us.

My radio didn't work during the flight, and I turned it on after landing to hear John McAllister saying he was crossing the Blue Ridge for 63.5 miles and Marvin was landing on the west side of the Blue Ridge for 55 miles.

A great day of flying.

Tom McGowan

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This page last updated April 13, 2004