Back to Main Page Back to Archive 1999

Index to weather maps

Hangola August 16-18, 1999

Nice day. Geoff, Homer (John M) and girlfriend Julia, Bob Cannon (friend of Turkey Fred) me. And the locals. Low cloudbase early raising to over 4k by the end of the day. Class IV conditions -- "braindead soarable." You could head off into totally blue air and a cloud would form above you and suck you up. Seriously. Julia got an actual soaring tandem.

There was an interesting variation of almost 1,000 ft in cloudbase. Made for some dramatic scenery.

I had a great day at High Rock. I arrived and helped Steve and Skip launch into light conditions. That left me and a wuffo crew. They were enthusiastic to help. After practicing, we got up on launch. The cycles had strengthened somewhat, so I waited for a light cycle and dove it out. Lift was very light, but there were some excellent thermals to take us up to cooler temperatures. The bite valve on my Camelback fell off, so I drank the whole thing. A couple of hours later, I felt like exploding, but didn't want to land. So, I flew back over the woods and watered the trees. A really fun thing to do from 2000 feet up. Thermals dissipated as the day wore on and I just enjoyed boating around, pushed out and relaxed. I had a decent landing, capping off a wonderful return to flying after 2 months off. Lots of others flew and hopefully will share their tales...

Mike Buckley
2:45
2750' over launch

Mike,

Karen and I arrived at 5:30 to find Christy, Doug, Kelvin, Tom, Bob and Mark C. all setting up-- winds out of the North and a bit gusty on launch. Kurtis arrived soon afterward. After a breathtaking launch by Christy which she took straight to the LZ, Doug also got turned as he launched due to the North cross but recovered and was able to stay up. Tom got off in a decent cycle but it was still way switchy. A collective sigh led us to taking some cars down to the LZ and hoping for it to straighten out and back off.

We returned to find a slight improvement so Kelvin and Bob launched in brief light cycles. I got lucky and had a really nice straight in cycle. It was pretty turb to about 500 over and it was way cross from the North. Put-put-put with full VG on toward the radio towers and then zoom back to launch. About a half hour later it started to back off and straighten out. But then it just went due North and all rotor and we all started to sink out. Cavanaugh was able to get off in a lull for a sled but Karen and Kurtis decided to break down at launch. I got 45 minutes and 800 over. We never got the magic we had hoped for.

Matthew (looks like a towing weekend, of Karen and Matthew)

I got an earlier start than most and showed up to help one pilot get off (the launch). Set-up fast and followed off into one heck of a down cycle. Battled to the swimming pool and worked a small nasty at 400 AGL for at least ten minutes. It broke off and up I went only to find it tracking back too fast and I had to bail at 500 AL into another sink cycle. This repeated two more times until I was finally able to stick it in a nice one and climb to 3000 AL: into the light white whispies I went. Ended with another low save (250 AGL to 500 AL) and then one heck of a rock-and roll landing using up about 5 feet of the LZ.

	previous page	back to top	next page

This page last updated August 19, 1999