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Hangola May 19 - 22, 2005

Flight Reports

We've had a couple of windy days lately so haven't flown but yesterday looked pretty great with strong lift, light winds and only a slim chance of afternoon storms. I decided to try a 100 K triangle to the North. Launched around 1:30 and towed through one area of lift before pinning off in another one. 500 to 600 up got me quickly to CB at about 5200'. I was pretty stoked about the prospects of trying to set a new record, the sky looked and felt great! So....then I went on a 12 mile "death glide" to a landing in a cow pasture without ever encountering workable lift. While I broke down, I watched the Black Vultures sky out above me as the sky cycled and turned on.

Just thought you guys might like to know it aint always perfect down here.

Paul

Ole man Sac was his usual pig headed bastard today. He could not decide whether to blow out, cross out from the East, cross out from the West. or just die to nothing. So, he did all of the above at least six times, with a scattering of Big Black virga snorting OoogaBooogas and rain showers thrown in for comic relief. Six pilots were in attendance for His amusement. Five flew with all being spanked pretty much straight to the field. The non flyer backed off launch 3 times. I didn't know there are dust bunnies under a car too........Bob.

Started out at Oregon Ridge but with the strong North cross decided to run up to Hellam Hill, in York, Pa.

Good decision, as it was blowing straight in at about 10 mph. Set up the 225 and the 170. Awesome day. Everyone flew as much as they could, and Karl and Joel got their H-1 ratings. Way to go guys. NOTE: Joel got his H-1; this being his SECOND lesson. Look out Kevin Carter. LOL. Bacil...this kid is good; but make sure his head doesn't get too big, ok?

Perfect day. Conditions anywhere from calm to cookin'. I spent alot of time whacking down sticker bushes that had sprung up here and there on the slope ( in between flights ).

Glen got some really good flights in too. I grabbed a couple myself and a good time was had by all.

Talked to the owner for awhile at the end of the day. He' s still very cool with us being there. I offered to mow the pasture if he needed help, etc. and gave him my business card.

Rich Hays

I launched into a lull in the very strong north cross and proceeded to have a bronco fest soaring flight, trying to catch something away from the ridge (disclaimer: flying the Pulpit in strong north is not recommended). After awhile I'd had enough and decided to go out and land, but ran into a raspy one over the lz and worked it up to the gap where 16 goes through, eventually topping at at 2K over, but no ways near cloudbase. What the heck, might as well go for the ride. After clearing the back ridge my vario decides to crap out and I'm left with a difficult decision--head NE to heavily streeted clouds or go with the drift south.

Of course--I make the wrong decision and head to the clouds, which by the time I get to them have overdeveloped and overcasted everything, shutting down the thermals. Although I have Greencastle on glide, I decide to make a run to the south where I can still see some sun past the clouds, and turn SW and cross 16. The overcast is just following too fast and I can't reconnect before having to land at Welsh Run for only 12 miles. As I break down I get rained on and a monster cell strafes the main ridge to the west with some impressive light shows.

Since I hardly get to fly at all these days--this was great fun for me. I've had a very strange trip so far--every day I've flown has been forecasted to be light and variable--but every day has been crankin' cross.

marc

Yeah, momma Jonestown wasn't too nice either. Saw pretty much the same. There are beer can dust bunnies under my Jeep.

Saturday was good soaring in the sailplane in between getting rained on since I flew late in the day. Launched after one scattered shower cleared out and climbed to 6000 MSL in lift everywhere sometimes 1000 fpm (can you spell cloud suck) Then getting rained on in virga and experiencing equally large sink. Was better a little earlier in the day. Today is looking a little ugly.

Dennis Monteiro

Ridgely was very nice.. several people got to over 4K and flights of 30 min to 1.5 hours. Only Rick tried to go somewhere and he only made it to Denton. Grat place, great people, worth the trip..

Christian

John Simon, Bryan Althouse, John and PK, and I were the solo fliers. There were a bunch of tandems. Lift was punchy at first. Lots of clouds, pretty low. First tow of the season, so I elected to stay with the strap-on fin (Sunny strongly recommended it). Enjoyed being in a gaggle with sailplanes. Dennis (sailplane pilot) was trying to take pictures of hang-gliders in the air, but alas the camera didn't work. Two flights, reasonable tows. Windsor dumped me out in a thermal on the first one, about 40 minutes. I mistook the wind direction and power whacked. Inspected the glider before launching again for 35 minutes, somewhat better landing but no medals. Broke down early so as to get son Jasper home in time to get ready for his trip to Canada tomorrow. NO BRIDGE TRAFFIC IN EITHER DIRECTION (1130 eastbound, 530 westbound).

- Hugh

High Rock was atomic early on--I launched at 1:17 into a strong but not unreasonable right cross and encountered punchy thermals with rocket cores. Because the tracks diagonaled across the back of high rock, I always had to bail half way back before topping out. This became very frustrating and led to more than one curse. Tried flying into the valley into a very stiff headwind and still the thermals straightened better once over the top of the rock. 2,200 over for an hour, 550 fpm peak lift at maximum averager setting (had to hang on tight with the bar stuffed many times).

Kelvin had a bunch of flights, both solo and tandem, and Matt enjoyed easy riding after it got overcast. Sparky showed up later with some other H 2's.

I've heard some great hang gliding lore quotes, but today I heard one of the best yet from a pilot helping another pilot with his first HR flight:

"Relax, the worst that can happen is you'll die!"

That sure would make me relax! Laughing

Three pilots flew the Pulpit today. Bacil early, then John Dullihan, and finally me.

Bacil caught the best of the sunshine and managed to achieve the highest elevation gain of approximately 2000 feet out over the LZ. John might have had the longest flight but I never saw him get terribly high. Mine was 25 minutes or so and I was first to the primary followed by Bacil and John. By 4:00 the sky had pretty much decked over, shutting down any realistic hopes of an XC.

None-the-less it beats staying home and mowing the lawn.

Dan T.

Took an alternate route to the Pulpit via some back roads south of The Corner. Passed Sparky and Jim Hodges in the primary LZ. Sky full of nice cumies, with a noticable NNW/SSE drift. Got to launch around 11:45A. Very north cross on the ramps. I hate the Pulpit in a north cross. Very difficult conditions. Would rather had been at a NNW-facing mountain in PA, that's for sure. Anyway, Spark, Jim H., John, Dan, Carlos, Gary Smith, Daniel B., and Shawn showed up in the next 2 hours. Around 2P noticed a good 10 minutes of some straight in cycles and decided it was time. The sky was getting filled up. Launched in a good cycle and got over the ridge quickly. Way north on the ridge. Very much the same flight as Marc had the day before. Strong lift, but you had to swim like a fish upstream to stay in it. Turn and you would get dumped out of the lift into a high groundspeed downwind run. Found some good lift out over 16 and got to 4K' MSL. Tried to go downwind but lost a bunch before I even got back to the ridge. Found some more good lift out over the secondary LZ to 4300' MSL. Once again, tried to go downwind, and the same daggone thing happened. Lost a bunch before the ridge. Didn't feel comfortable going diagonally across the 2 ridges without hitting the first one in a climb with at least 2K' over. By this time John and Dan had joined me in the air. It shut down, and the 3 of us struggled in the turbulent north cross chop near ridgetop level. Dan landed first, I landed right behind him, and John struggled for another half hour before succumbing to gravity. Carlos retrieved Dan and I. Thanks Carlos. The rest of the crew, save for Gary, bailed for High Rock. Back at launch, Gary and Carlos were still set up, but a very dark sky existed to the west. While I retrieved John, Gary and Carlos broke down due to the dark sky. But when John and I got back to launch, the sky had lightened some, and darn if it wasn't blowing straight in at 5P! Gary was still soaring his Zagi in the straight-in conditions. We stuck around for a few minutes observing the conditions, then hit the road. Another great adventure at the Pulpit in a north cross.

Bacil

Got to Kirchner's at 11:000am. It was mostly crossing out of the NE...AND STRONG! We went over to the shallow North facing hill. Karen had a few flights on her HG in light cycles before switching to the PG. I took a flight on her HG too.

Sparky showed up and did a little kiting. John M. showed up later with a bunch of students while Karen took a couple of flights in her PG. The winds had straightened out and lightened up.

We bailed to the Pulpit where it was overcast with lots of dark, scary clouds. We got rained on during the drive over. Hung out for a while and bailed to High Rock. Flew my Hg. Boat boat boated on the ridge for 1:15, never getting more than 500 over. Jim H. and Rich B. joined me after 40 minutes and had good soaring flights.

Matthew

Took off in rowdy air after the dufus in front of me towed and broke a weak link. Got more than an hour and climbed to 7500 at one point. Not real rowdy once you got above 1000 or 1500. Sure like this top-less glider.

Oh, Oh, I didn't say that was me that went to 7500. Gotcha!! :O) Someone else had that great flight. They can tell on themselves. I was the dufus. I waited 30 min and got back on the horse (so to speak) and towed again. Much better. Only got a half an hour but I did manage to stay upwind of the field the whole time. That in itself was good enough skills training for me considering the winds aloft. A nice time was had by all.

Rance

Wa-hoo!!! Finally got back in the air -- in the most unlikely way. Got a tow from a boat on Lake Conroe, Tx (my back yard). Gregg Ludwig has a very impressive tow system with LOTS of line. With the entire lake as a "runway" it's more like aerotowing than truck towing. Connect a couple of pontoons where the outrigger style wheels normally go; attach a boom and float to the keel and voila -- you have an almost unlimited landing field in the form of the lake!! Two long tows -- 1500 - 2000 ft altitude -- followed by two extended sleds equals a bit more than 1.5 hrs airtime. Landing like a float plane on those pontoons was unexpectedly easy -- and FUN!! Gregg provides cocoon harness (with floatation) and helmet so I didn't have to baptize my gear. I'd forgotten how sweet the Falcon flies .. on tow, virtually no bar pressure .. off tow easy flat turns with surprisingly little flight degradation resulting from the various floatation appendages. This is the first time I've flown it since getting the Ultrasport. Hard to express how good it felt to finally fly again. Kinda 'splains this feeling of intense jealousy I get when I read of all of your flight experiences.

Chuck Pyle

Forecast looked pretty good for today with a possibility of some wind from the west so I set up a 100 km triangle in my 5030, launched around 1:15 and hoped for the best. Got up to CB nicely right over Quest and headed SE towards my first waypoint SE of Wallaby. Lots of nice looking clouds but they weren't working today. I think I blundered into more areas of lift by accident than I found using my brains. Some of the thermals were smooth and strong with maximum lift to more than 750' per minute but most were gnarly and broken and hard to core.

The first leg went fairly well but I got low near Wallaby and nearly decked it there. Actually went over to the LZ to land but found a boomer kicking off the field and got a 700 foot save. By this time I realized that the winds were too strong and the lift too variable to continue on course and make the next turnpoint 23 miles away into a 10 mph head wind so I decided to abort and try to make it home from the first waypoint.

About 10 miles North and stinking low again I was wishing I had stayed at Wallaby where I could have sat in the shade and drank some of Malcom's beer while I waited on my retrieve but my luck held and I stumbled into some weak, nasty lift that eventually turned on and got me back to 5K. Still couldn't make Quest on glide from here due to the strong crossing head wind but things were looking better. Nursed it along and found one more good thermal that I used to put a few more feet in the bank and then had enough to make it home.

Davis flew with me today but out climbed me in the first two thermals (Damn, I hate it when that happens) and we got seperated. But then he chose a different route home from the first waypoint than I did and ended up landing out (Damn, I love it when that happens!) Weird, seems I always have my best flights when he doesn't and vice versa.

Lauren managed to get a sinus infection from this nasty cold we both have had lately and hasn't been able to fly the last few days. She has some antibiotics now and is feeling better so hopefully she'll be able to put another flight or two on the board before we leave here next week for Ridgely. We've rented a cottage near by and will be around for most of the summer and we're looking forward to seeing all you guys.

See ya soon,

Paul

I ended up making my first flight off of High Rock late on Sunday. Spark was my observer. Total flight about an hour. Rich Bloomfield and Matthew also flew in the ridge lift.

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This page last updated May 25, 2005