Awsome Day

vontresc

vontresc

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vonSegelGoober
Well Today was one fine day!

Yesterday I spent all day at the gliderport (KHXF) putting together the club ships, and getting things organized for the flying season. The weather looked great for soaring, but unfortunately none of us got up into the air. Today was a different matter.

I got to the airport around 10:00 am to see Ted already rigging his Pegasus. Ted is a VERY good pilot, and seeing him rig this early is a good sign the weather is going to be good :smile:. A little late I met up with Paul my A&P and started my annual ($125, you power guys eat your heart out :D). Now when you pull the lane out of the trailer you cannot not rig an fly it, right? Unfortunately I didn't get launched until almost 2:00pm. By this time the sky looked phenomenal. I got off in lift at about 2500' AGL, and just cruised around for the next three hours.

Here is my OLC trace for the day
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=163649222

I ran into Kent, Marty, and I cannot remember the third guy's name after i landed, and they all helped me put away the glider. All In All not a bad day for the first flight of the year in the Ka-6

Here are some photos from today
 

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Awesome, Pete!

I think I spent $125 on Saturday, but it was in AvGas, and only about an hour and a half worth of it. :)
 
very nice pete. what were the winds like? looks like the lift was pretty good, around 5 knots? just think, in 2:45 minutes straight out you should've been able to cover a good 80 or 100 miles!
 
Westerly winds, i'd say about 9-15 kts, and I was able to find some good 4-6kt lift. Would have been good for a downwind dash except for that pesky lake to the east of us :D.

Basically I worked myself upwind for a while, but then I found a TON of sink, and chickened out. Ted in his Pegasus went all the way up to OSH and back, so it was definately good XC weather.
 
why did you chicken out? you were right over a huge airport at juneau :) just hop airport to airport. then if you can't find someone to bring your trailer over, find someone to bring the towplane over!
 
No real good reason other than not wanting to land out. I know it's stupid, but I think having a hitch on the Mazda will help. Gotta go hitch shopping now.
 
Wow, that looks like fun. I followed your ground track at the olc site using Google maps with the satellite view. How fun!

You have a GPS? If not, what's your method of finding your way home after all those turns? I'd imagine after a while all those farm fields start to look much alike!
 
TangoWhiskey said:
You have a GPS? If not, what's your method of finding your way home after all those turns? I'd imagine after a while all those farm fields start to look much alike!
Click to expand...

Troy,

VFR navigation around here is all about the lakes. :yes: There's lots of them, and they're generally uniquely shaped and thus easy to identify where you are. Vis was great yesterday, I think downtown Milwaukee was visible from Hartford too so that would help as well. :yes:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Troy,

VFR navigation around here is all about the lakes. :yes: There's lots of them, and they're generally uniquely shaped and thus easy to identify where you are. Vis was great yesterday, I think downtown Milwaukee was visible from Hartford too so that would help as well. :yes:
Click to expand...

PCR. Pilot Controlled Rockets at the home drome. click-click-click within 5 seconds, WHOOSH!! Ah, there she is! :D
 
Yeah as Kent says VFR Nav around here is pretty simple, but I also have a Compass :D

Seriously, I do have a little PDA based flight computer with some basic GPS nav functions, as well as glide and wind computations. It's nice to have for additional SA. Mainly I look out the window make sure the yaw string is staigt (especially when taking pics:smilewinkgrin:) and listen to the audio vario.
 
Ive always found navigation to be pretty easy in a glider, at least old low performace gliders like i fly. you dont really move fast enough to get lost. average groundspeed of 40 mph is doing pretty good in my glider, especially if you have to thermal a lot. going round in circles is more like just turning in place. pretty easy, IMO, to keep track of what direction you are pointed.
 
Pete, I was thinking of you as I was getting thrown against my seatbelt all day from noon till 5:30. Man, were there some thermals. :eek:
 
Well I didn't bring my logger along today, but I had one heck of a good flight in our Blanik today.

I needed to get my annual club checkout, and since I'm gonna give rides this year I decided to fly from the back seat. This was to be a quick checkout flight, but the conditions were simply awesome.

This flight didn't start off all that well. I took a 3000' AGL tow, and before I knew I was back down to 1500' AGL just north of the airport. I was about to enter the pattern when I caught my first good thermal of the day back up to 4500' AGL. Top altitude was just over 8500' MSL (7500' AGL), and lift was plentiful all day including some nice cloud streets. Long story short I ended up putting in 4 hours and 5 minutes today.

Here are a few photos from my iPhone.

Fred My CFI who was having as much fun as me!

Picture%20076.jpg


Climbing through 8200' MSL

Picture%20091.jpg


Random aerial shot

Picture%20024.jpg
 
Tsk tsk tsk. Fred needs to snip the button off his cap. Or not, but it could save a headache in more ways than one.
 
Sounds like a great day, and lots of fun!

You still should have come to Wings, though. ;)
 
See, Pete, it's a post like this that'll make me start flying w/o power... some day!

Thanks for putting us in the plane with you.
 
Hey come up to WI and I'll put you in the plane with ME :)
 
Awesome Pete! Keep the posts coming, maybe we will get everyone over to the dark side. Glider flying is great, I just wish I would have met Tony sooner.
 
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