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Hangola May 20 - 26, 2004

Flight Reports

Bob Schwinn and I flew and it pretty much sucked. Rowdy tows with lots of wind and no lift but big thanks to Gary Cargen for stopping by to help out.

Today's report for my simple flights are on my blog at http://members.cox.net/cragins/flightblog.html#top (report follows) Sunday, May 23, 2004, Highland Aerosports, Ridgely MD

There has been way too much idle time between my flying days. Business travel, parental duties, weekend classes all conspired to give me a 6 week break in flying. Today the forecast we for SW winds 1-12, but with a chance of late day thunderstorms. I arrived at Ridgely early, to find Larry Huffman and Pete Lehmann presiding over their advanced cross country clinic. I spent the morning with the Highland staff, watching a few tandem lessons and waiting for signs of lift - like little cummie clouds forming in the distance. About 2:00 several pilots decided to give it a try. Jason played wind dummy, and reported very small thermals, but nothing he could work. John Middleton did better, finding enough to stretch out a 25 minute flight. I had my first launch at 2:30, but after a rather rowdy first 500 feet, popped the weak link at 640 feet. I returned to the main LZ, landing in some turbulence, and missing my flare to belly in on the wheels. Again. Darn. Again.

I got right back in line, and this time the tow was much smoother. Tug Pilot Windsor dropped me right in a working thermal, that I slowly rode from 2500' to 3000'. Then I spent a while flying in and out of the lift, effectively maintaining atr 3K. Lost that one over the swampy woods, and was not able to find anything else. Landed with 15 minutes airtime with a very smooth no step right by the taxiway. Rather tired and hot, I took a break for a coke and snack, and found the hammock by the picnic tables quite inviting. The plan was a third late day flight, expecting a sled. However, shortly after 4:00 Sunny called in all the aircraft when they spotted a thunderstorm in the distance. I rushed to break down the glider, and was on the road about 5:00. It was not a super day as flying goes, but it was excellent to get back into the sky.

I see no flying stories have been posted. That is because you bastards have been busy flying all day, I know.

Paul and I rushed from work Thursday and camped at Ridgely. The frogs sang and the air was cool, and I didn't twitch all night. I set up Ginny before 7 AM on Friday. Larry Huffman had promised he would come to Ridgely and take me flying. I was very excited. I was going to have an expert guide me from cloud to cloud. Yeeoooww!

Around 8 AM Adam said a thunderstorm was coming, and that I should break down. Jim rushed out instead and grabbed Ginny. I watched him fly her off his shoulders and park her in the hanger. (thank you thank you thank you)

Larry showed up, with Brenda, his wife and my good friend. However, even all his flying mojo couldn't change the conditions. The clouds hovered close to the ground all day, while the wind gusted. Stupid weathermen. But later Sunny and Kristen rescued seven kittens -- too long of a story for here, but they were tiny and hadn't eaten for 3 days. The rescue involved heroics on Sunny's part. We all felt great when they began to nurse the cream off of a towel Sunny produced.

Marc Fink showed up, grinning, and then Pete drove in. We all ate and drank, and chatted outside while mosquitoes gnawed our ankles. Not a bad day even without airtime. But remind me to stay away from the airchair. It still sucks, 2 years after the last time I rode it.

Saturday morning we awoke to bright sunshine. Many of our friends arrived, either for the XC clinic or just to enjoy the day. I removed Ginny from the hanger and strolled around the runway, picturing my flight (View into the fantasy flight: Oh! I am falling out of the lift! I am turning my glider, tight, before my vario even has a chance to react! What a perfect bank angle! Oh, I have passed 20 miles! What a genius I am! And what a perfect landing I finish with, right on the beach!)

Reality proved more challenging. Actually, we had great fun. Sea and Aisha and I flew first, trying to ride the light bubbles we found upward. I flew about half an hour while Cee managed even more. He latched on to the best lift on the East side of the runway. He flew brilliantly. I flew again, and got to watch the experienced, talented pilots in the XC clinic. I was pleased that I had had several ideas of where to find lift, not just one. I found I could watch for birds, pilots, and swirls in the grass, and even breathe occasionally, all at once. I have a long way to go but am getting better. I joined the edge of a gaggle downwind of the runway (which seemed to be the best spot to work all day) but I realized I was drifting away from the airport at only 1500 to 2000 feet. Everyone else was flying faster ships. I scurried home like a bunny being chased by a wolf. Turned out I was too conservative and made it with extra altitude, but hey, I need to leave myself a margin of error right now.

I had managed to squeak out an hour total, but Pete said he was flying again and I decided to go, too. I figure being there at the right time is half the battle. Sunny towed me extra high but I found nothing. I mean like NOTHING. I figured the day was over and landed after 20 minutes. Didn't know where the hell Pete went.

But this is the amazing thing. Lots of pilots flew XC, on a day I considered VERY hard. On a day when I didn't really consider flying XC. I never got high at all. But lots of the guys made decent flights. Better than decent. PK flew something like 30 miles. And Pete, no kidding, made it to the Delaware Bay. I think he has purchased a chunk of antigravity on the Internet and breaks it open when the rest of us are sinking out. Utterly unbelievable. This is very inspiring, to know that I have so much to learn, to keep me from getting bored for a couple of years at least. Am hungry to get better.

Paul and I had to pack up and leave after Saturday's fun. Arrived home late, to find 3 enormous trees felled by a storm on our place. A huge mess. Also we found ourselves locked out accidentally by the woman looking after our place. Broke in through a window. Had clients all day today. Yeesh, I don't know why I get stressed here on our beautiful farm.

Hope the pilots today had boowah flights, all you Sky Gods and Goddesses. And I hope Larry enjoyed the sunset on the beach, and that the surf licked his toes while he laughed.

Lauren Tjaden

Well, first and foremost a big thanks to the hiland gang and Larry ("big L") Huffman and Pete ("bookeeper") Lehmann for yet another highly successful xc clinic. There were a cast of thousands--well, maybe teens, and I will leave it to them to bask in their own glory since I don't have an exact idea who did what. But in the face of difficult conditions pilots accomplished great things, though I thought yesterday was pretty sweet compared to the previous day and what appeared to be a dismal forecast.

Saturday was blue and found the intrepid xc air-force intrepidly doing battle with inverted air and very week lift around the field, nobody daring to leave with less than adequate height. I got in line to launch just as a huge death gaggle was sinking towards the field and landing.

Well, not one to be accused of picking good indicators for my decision-making, and since nobody else had left yet, I decided that I would simply release from tow, point my nose downwind, and go, lift or no lift. Besides, my landings have not been quite up to Ralph Sickenger landing contest snuff as of late, so I thought it just as well that my ignominious encounter with earth be in the privacy of a field removed. Oddly enough, I encountered a couple of bumps around Greensboro which stretched my glide to around 7 miles, but I failed to clue in that things were indeed starting to happen, as several pilots managed to get quite far, including especially outstanding flights by PK and Pete.

Sunday had an even worse forecast--higher winds and less lift. Yet, even while we sat in our chairs discussing the mythic mysteries of gypsy convergence phenomena, tantalizing q-streets began to form before our very eyes. John Middleton tested the waters with an early flight and did an admirable job of a low-save right over the field.

Things were looking better.

At around 1 pm or so our commanders ordered the pilots to man their gliders and prepare for battle. Now, the rest of my story here is basically a lesson in how important it is to be ready to go before ya go.

We lined up our gliders, exercising our ground formation ballet talents--ably directed by Jim ("traffic cop") Rooney. I was in pretty good position, but I decided that rather than leave early I was going to wait for the others to get out so I could just pimp. An OK strategy, usually, assuming you're actually ready to go. Right before he launches, Pete asks me if I had coordinates to goal, reminding me that it was neccessay to end up there if I wanted an effective retrieve probability. I didn't, and so I spent the next ten minutes playing with my toys to get the data entered, by which time the entire xc clinic field had left and was already on course. OK, so I might have a little catching up to do, I thought.

I wheel out my glider, and by this time the "non-clinic" freeflyers are launching in front of me. I'm excited with anticipation, and about this time I feel moisture streaming down my back and legs. I think, hmmm, haven't even been scared yet, so I couldn't be wetting my pants, what could that be? I look down at my harness and liquid is dripping from the boot like a leaky radiator, and I realize that I musta not have screwed the top on my camelback securly. So I wheel out of line and climb out of my harness only to discover that I had a full blowout--an entire half gallon of gatorade and water had permeated my harness and stowed gear. How sweet it is!

After more friggin with the riggin--and hearing reports of pilots half way to goal--I wheel out and tow around 3:30, trying not to consider what the f*ck else could could go wrong.

Windsor takes off and we encounter fairly bumpy air, and soon after turning north off the end of the runway--POW, the weaklink blows. My first thought is there is no way I'm going to land, and my second thought is "if its good enough to blow you off tow, its good enough to climb out in." This I manage to do, and despite the rather late time I can honestly say the conditions were very good and stayed that way till quite late, though I did noticed that as I went out on course that I was being persued by cues that were apparently OD'ing behind me.

I won't bore with in-flight details, but that I manged to lose the street 12.8 miles short of goal when I fell out of the lift line. It was simply a case of it was there but I failed to find it. However, the absolute best part of the whole weekend for me was that I managed my first successful stand-up flare with my Vulto/Talon combo after changing the hang strap and trim position on my glider. Amazing how touchy the settings can be and how difficult it can be to find the "right spot."

Back at Highland there were many happy pilots with cloudbase-eating grins on their faces, a fitting end to a fun-filled weekend.

m

After studying the weather I figured it would not be soarable but I didn't want to get too rusty. I spent yesterday afternoon at Manquin. If you were in the sun it was hot, if you were under the pavillion, it was nice and cool. There were actually cumies here and there throughout the afternoon. I took 5 truck tows, almost consecutively. Each one better than the last but only able to get 10 min max. I would have liked to seen one of the "professional" pilots there to judge the thermalability. No one seemed to do much more than just extending their tows. It was a nice afternoon anyways.

Anyone looking at WS, HR, or Pulpit this week?

Rance

Steve, you coulda flown there with one wing tied behind your back. It was a remarkably glorious day. Graphic illustration of why I choose to ignore the soarcast when making my "should I bother going out to fly today" determination.

Max altitude 5k. Top of lift was generally a hair over 4k. 400 up or so when your found the core. Accurate(!) cloudsign and birdsign everywhere.

Way better than the approx 100 up to 1k that was forecast!

Made the Beach in 1.5 hours, even with the distraction of a completely blown out Harness side-zipper (Somewhat uncomfortable until the offended body parts turned numb). Blowing OUT to sea almost perpendicular to the beach when I landed at approx 4:30. Cumies well out over the water. Convergence wasn't inland there just yet.

Unfortunately, due to combined Comm & Nav issues, the beach we hit was not Goal, but good olde South Bowers, just north of goal. I believe that we managed to stay out of the Dover airspace by a good 6 inches by landing down there, but we came really, really close. Probably not good to do as a regular practice.

I'm checking, but the reg I have giving the exact dimensions for the airspace in radial/DME is old, and was published before the keyway was put in. It has just the Class D. Will have to order up a new version to see about the Class E.

North of the river splittng the Town of Bowers Beach is clearly out of limits, however. That is, naturally, where the bar lies.

-- Joe

steve kinsley wrote:

I think I deserve a share of the credit. I decided sunday looked like a better windsurfing day than a flying day, left the glider parked and drove to the beach. When I could have flown there. Maybe. oh well.

fyi. The sky looked a lot better about 10 miles out from Ridgely. There were birds up. There was a sea breeze at the beach with a convergence line only a mile or so inland

Over the weekend Pete Lehmann and I conducted an xc clinic at Highland Aerosports. We held one there previously and had decided that this one would be a little different. We wanted to have pilots with higher overall experience and for it to be hands on with a more advanced subject matter. The pilots that participated were all eager to do more and each one contributed valuable information to the clinic making our part easier. I'm going to let the pilots tell their own stories but Saturday brought difficult conditions and our little group rose to the occasion with some having respectable xc flights. Sunday turned out better than expected with numerous pilots making the beach and others doing nearly as well.

The crew at Highland along with others helping went above and beyond to help make this work better than I could have hoped for. The ground crew did an outstanding job of getting all of us into the air without any fuss and I was amazed at how well the tug pilots dropped so many of us off in lift. They were so good at it that maybe they should be showing all of us how to find lift on course.

There were also people that pitched in to help with retrievals making the whole thing work better.

There were so many people pitching in to make this work out well that I would only forget someone if I tried to mention all of them. I want to thank everyone involved for making my weekend a most enjoyable and rewarding one.

Larry

Larry and Pete did an excellent job with the subject matter. Some of the things learned and discussed at this clinic will help me as long as I fly. The material covered was on a more advanced level than I had anticipated before attending. Great job guys....!!!!

I attempted one XC on Saturday and conditions were very challenging. I got about a mile from the runway and in zero sink at 1800' and decided to head back to land and grab another cart to try again. I broke a tip strut on landing and spent the rest of the (soarable part) day fixing it. Pete and Larry made it to the shore (DE Bay) and I think Christian made it 17 miles. Can't remember who else left at the moment.

Sunday started out looking like the same kind of day as Sat. and I was just about to pack up and start my trek home when cummies started to pop. (sometime between 2:30-3:00) Everyone quickly suited up and grabbed carts. The tug pilots were doing a great job towing us to the lift. Thanks...!!!

I maintained 2000' to just east of Greenboro when I started to come down. I kept flying downwind but all the while probing changing my course several times thinking maybe I was in a blue street of sink. Scoping out fields as potential LZ's and down to 1000', I spotted a gaggle of birds over a farm silo. I flew over it to find a sweet 5-600 fpm thermal. Climbed to 2600' and was under way once again. This happened one more time before I reached Hughes Crossroads. On the second semi-low save I topped out at 3600' and remained there all the way to Frederica. It was there that I slowly started to desend. I could see the bay but had to cross a large marsh with no roads. I flew a mile or so over the marsh lands hoping to get another thermal but found none. I turned around and flew back to RT 113 and landed a mile north of Fredrica. I think it's 27 or so miles.

I had no GPS or basetube map and felt lost most of the time. I never saw another hang glider the entire flight however I did hear pilots talking on the radio but had no idea where they were due to being unfamiliar with the terrain. One other thing I would like to mention, I flew under blue skies the whole flight. There were clouds several miles away on the north and south but none in my area. I think everyone else pretty much did their XC's without the assistance of clouds also.

That's how my flight went... I'll let everyone else give their own accounts since none of us got back to Ridgely until 7:30 or so and I was in quite a rush to get going home. I can tell you there were a lot of smiles.

What a great way to end the weekend.....!!!! Everyone had timely retrievals... great big thanks to all the drivers... Brenda, Craig, and those that picked up Marc Fink and Paul ??? (sorry).

Also a great big thanks to the Highland Crew for their outstanding job running the flight park. As always it was a pleasure to visit.

Thanks to Pete and Larry for doing such a great job with the clinic.
Still smiling,

Dave

Hi,

What follows below is the account I wrote for our Pittsburgh club's newsletter of the flying Larry Huffman and I encountered this past weekend at Ridgely during the XC seminar we held. Thanks to all who attended, and especially to the Ridgely crew who so skillfully yanked us off the ground. And, lest I forget them, thanks to the the NWS for their inaccurate forecasts. Bless 'em.

Pete

ps Pardon the third-person references to myself. I am too lazy to edit the thing into the first-person.

Ridgely XC Seminar Flight Report

Over the May 22/23 weekend at the Highland Aerosports tow park in Ridgely,MD, Larry Huffman and Pete Lehmann got people to pay good money to sit and listen to them expound on their sometimes controversial opinions. The money collected went to support the Highland Aerosports flight park, and despite poor forecasts on both days they got a fair bit of flying, as did the seminar's ten participants.

After first having been lectured to by Larry and Pete, the initially decided goal for Saturday had been to fly to the Dogfish micro-brewery in Rehoboth Beach. That destination had been suggested by Joe Gregor who coincidentally possessed those very coordinates in his gps. Sadly, the wind direction rendered that goal too difficult, and the pilots were then simply directed to fly downwind in the crappy, blue conditions until they hit a beach. All but one pilot, PK Kelley, got the change in instructions. However, that didn't hinder him, and he got about thirty miles for the day's longest flight. That was quite an effort under the circumstances, and involved struggling to get crosswind towards the Dogfish pub while only once getting as high as 3,300ft. Of the rest, only Pete did make it 28 miles to the coast, landing at Bennett's Pier beach. By the day's standards, 200fpm lift was booming, and being "comfortable" meant that one had gotten over two grand. Larry made it about halfway, as did a bunch of other pilots. It was hard work, but the incredibly flat terrain, light wind, and open country made it a low-stress affair.

Sunday's forecast was even worse than the preceding day's: more wind, less lift, and no clouds. Fortunately the NWS did itself proud, and there were in fact clouds, little wind, better gains (max 5,000agl), and reasonable (150-300up)lift. The only fly in the ointment was that the wind was somewhat crossed from the right, and along with the light lift this meant that the pilots were being pushed towards the Dover AFB airspace. Therefore, the pilots had to fly crosswind to get to goal, and stay out of the airspace.

In the end, Pete made the designated Bennett's Beach goal that he'd discovered the day before, before turning around and flying back almost six miles to land at the main highway. Meanwhile, four others (Joe Gregor, Dave Proctor, Christian Titone and Jackie Williamson), demonstrating a profound lack of faith in their gps,'landed just barely outside of the airspace for 26 miles at "a beach", Bowers Beach. Larry got the same distance, but landed 1.8 miles short of the real goal as he wasn't willing to hazard a low, and possibly upwind, glide across the marshes and into a sea-breeze. Even those who didn't make the beach had decent flights, most making it about 2/3 of the way, notably Dave Fink (22 miles)who'd been close to goal but had turned back to land near the highway after having also been blocked by the marshes. All in all it was a surprisingly good weekend.

Well actually. Ovrcast and light. We both got about 30 mins going back and forth, a few 360s now and then. Topped out in the 200 over range. I finally got bored/brave and ran to the south overlook to see if anything interesting was happening. Nope. Down down down. Joe joined me on the ground a few minutes later.

So sometime later after we get the gliders on the vehicles and we are standing around reminiscing, there is a large noise. As in "BOOM". Or maybe "BAM". What was that?! Turns out the tire on Joe's glider suffered a spontaneous blow out. Good thing it didn't happen in the air right? He might have lost control of the glider!! AIYEEE!! And initiated a whole new category of hang gliding accident reports.

I, as I am sure all of the XC clinic participants, would like to thank Larry, Pete, and the entire Highland crew. I had a blast, got to land at the beach on the Delaware bay for the first time, and learned a little in the process. Great people, and as Pete elaborated, much better than predicted weather. A bunch of us had dinner at Sammy's, and let the beach traffic die down.

Actually I have plenty of faith in my GPS. It was the coordinates that I didn't trust ;-) I just followed the captain.

Thanks everybody,

Dave

PS: I thought I would be intelligent (for a change) and leave the truck open so it wouldn't be 385 degrees C inside at the end of the day. I would like to thank whoever closed the windows when the thunderstorms looked like they would be coming thru. While it is nice to have a cool truck, cool and wet suck. Thanks.

I had just about backed out of going down to MFP today but Tim thankfully convinced me to give it a try. I took my first truck tow and released at 880'. There was light lift and I was able to take it to just over 2100'. The view certainly gets different up higher. :o) Unfortunately I figured I had the altitude to have just a little fun so I cranked & banked a couple of FUN turns. I headed out to where I saw a bigger cloud and (just like last time) hit lots of sink. Now that's twice I've turned from known lift to go do something else (doooooooh!!!). McFly, DON'T DO THAT AGAIN! Only 16 minutes, but the gain over flat ground was well worth it.

I had fun taking pictures of Tim on his tow on my way down though. I've got a loooooong way to go on the in-flight picture-taking thing. Practice, practice, practice.

As for Tim... I think I'll just call him "SPOT" from now on. On his first landing, he got within 3' of the cone. His other landings were almost as good (kicking the cone over on one of them). His approaches and landings are some of the best I've seen. Someone to be reconned(sp?) with in a future spot landing contest.

Fun was had at mfp today.

Rance (mr. indecisive)

PS: Steve had three students there on their 3rd-4th scooter lesson doing amazingly well. At the pace they are going, I could see them doing their first truck tow in just a few weeks. That's the power of scooter tow! Look out Kevin for the new Wonder-Boys from Baltimore. <VBG>

Went to Manquin yesterday to finally pick up and get trained on the new scooter system that Steve and Tex had built for me. As I had expected, it is a superbly crafted set-up with attention to detail that reflects Steve's many years of experience with towing. Tows were very smooth and the 4 stroke 125 is not very "torquey" at all--perfect for training. Conditions were less than ideal--very hot and humid and generally light cross--but all tows, even those by early students (on Steve's system with Steve at the controls) were uneventful.

The best part was that I actually got to yank Steve up a bunch of times. Steve simulated "flight departures" including a kamakaze run at me on the scooter, but we had fun and survived. Conditions were less than ideal, as I had said, but Steve got me to 300 ft with 1500 ft of line out, I'm sure we could have done better with wind coming in and less sinky humid air.

I'm sure this system will greatly enhance training in Maine. I will be leaving tomorrow with a stopover in New Hampshire to attend the region 8 regionals, which, unlike region 9's months long event, is a weekend-only showdown among New England's xc duelists. I've never flown any of their sites, so while I don't expect to be a threat to the local hot-shots (or even luke-warm shots) I very much look forward to meeting the area's pilots and flying their sites.

See ya guys soon...

Marc

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This page last updated May 26, 2004