Today was a cloud buffet. In the start circle, JYflyer and James Stinnet and I were all at 10k starting to grey out together. I loved getting to do that with buddies going round and round. I learned a good lesson today about picking cloud streets.
73 mile triangle task. The 2nd leg was the 23 mile grunt into a 15mph headwind. Since I picked a lonely street that only went 5 miles, I got low and spent a crapload of time just surviving between big sink and wimpy climbs. The rest of the field took the good street and blazed their way. I shoulda just run across the blue and gotten on my way but I kept on. I was in the air 4.5 hours before landing back at the tow field. The other 4 or 5 rigids beat me in by far. I’m just glad to get there so I can leave a set-up glider in the hanger. SWEET.
***My landing picture is a snapshot from David Glover’s Video above****
JYflyer had a wierd thing happen and his flap cable came off. So he was flying 40+ for his whole flight. And it was ROUGH air. Most of us have stories of going weightless. JY climbed up into his Atos VR control frame and spent 3k trying to get the flaps connected again to no avail. He landed about 35 miles into the course. The poor guy, his luck is bound to change. Freak incident. He landed fine without any flap and he was glad there was some wind!
Tim is in lots of pain. He’s a tough dude but has a lot more days of hurt. Keep him in your thoughts! Apart from flying a SWEET Mustang and dragonfly, he has an Exxtacy and Sport2. Great pilot too.
Later,
BJ
THe flying here is unbelievably fun. The clouds are so dependable with lift it’s unreal. Like flying with thermal goggles on or something.
Thank you for the blog. Cool to read in depth about your experiences. Keep it up! Glenn
By: Glenn on August 27, 2008
at 1:50 pm