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Hangola January 20, 1999

Karen and I somehow managed a fun day at Wallaby's on Wednesday while we were down in Florida visiting both of our families and an old friend. We had sent Karen's glider down with Mike C. and Dan over X-mas and had made arrangements to have Karen's glider tuned up. It had a minor annoying left turn. Though I had spoken with various persons at Wallaby's at least a half dozen times and had received assurances that her glider would be work on-- "yeh, yeh, we'll get to it today", no one had touched it when we arrived on January 20th. I'm still amazed that my head didn't explode in a fit of rage. But Ryan Glover and Carlos (the tug pilot) were very nice and assured us that they could take care of it that day. It turned out that the left cross tube had a small bend in it.

So while they intermittently worked on it, I squeezed in five flights-- three of which were soaring flights. I logged a total of 3:15 and had three flights on one of their Falcon 170s and two on my Ultrasport (with it's newly added fin for "safe towing"). Since I had not towed in 6 months, I was rather nervous on my first flight and overcontrolled a bit. But it was a decent sled and I was yanked up to 2800 feet. On my second flight I was working a figure 8 pattern and at about 600 feet I hit some light lift and started circling in zero sink. I eventually worked my way up to cloudbase at 3000 feet and stayed up for nearly an hour. No one else was in the air and there was a big queue of gliders waiting to be towed. I guess they were waitng for it to get better??? I could have stayed up longer but I made a classic error. I was in a decent thermal and I saw some birds in a better one. So I left the lift I was in and never made it to the next thermal. Damn Falcon! I landed and hade some lunch and checked in one Karen's glider. Karen was officially grounded from solo flying since she's still not technically allowed to get her heart rate over 110 until March. But she decided to take a tandem thermal flight with Ryan just to get back in the air and work on her thermalling skills.

So after lunch, up she went, as did I, into easy soaring conditions and cloudbase of 4500'. She was up for about 45 minutes; I came down after an hour and a quarter since I was cold. Plus, I still needed to tow my glider.

Back on the ground, Rett (the repairman) had straightened out Karen's cross bar and Carlos was truing her battens and preparing for a test flight. I returned to the queue in my glider and I was just exhauseted and figured that this would be my last flight for the day. Towing the Ultrasport with the fin was much easier than towing the Falcon. I tried to stay up but couldn't find anything. But I was surprised to find that I wasn't tired when I was flying-- I was only tired carrying the glider around and getting ready to fly. So once more I dragged my sorry ass to the end of the field. This time however, the tug pilot towed me up under a cloud in which 2 Exxtacies were working light lift. I was rewarded with a 45 minute sunset flight that was just spectacular-- one of the nicest flights I've ever had.

So, since Karen's glider had been fixed and passed the test flight, and since severe weather was being forecast for the East Coast states on Saturday (our originally planned upon driving home day), we passed on what looked like what would be a repeat of the day we just had and left the Ranch. We still had to vist our old friend. We blew her off last time we were in Florida to spend more time at the Ranch-- so we owed her. Plus my entire body ached from all of that flying.

Matthew (High Rock late Sunday???, of Karen and Matthew)

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This page last updated January 23, 1999