tonycondon
Gastons CRO (Chief Dinner Reservation Officer)
Instead of going to Sidnaw, leah and I trailered the Cherokee out to Ulysses, KS. That is nearly in colorado (only 35 miles west), nearly a 5 hour haul with the truck/trailer.
this morning got up with the sun and rigged, ready to go and excited to be flying in a new place. well fog and clouds took a while to burn off. I was the second to launch, at 3:50 PM. Not enough time left in the day to really go anywhere so I decided to just play around locally, maybe do a small "local" triangle or something, and get used to flying my glider again. All goals accomplished. I flew for 2 hours, keeping my 2 hour per flight average alive this season. I had some fun doing runs upwind about 9 miles from the airport, flying straight going faster in sink and nice and slow in lift. On many of the runs i actually gained altitude or lost only a few hundred feet over many miles travelled. That was fun. I had a few low saves that prevented me from landing out. Some good lift was encountered, one thermal I cored with a steady 500 fpm on the vario.
I doodled around closer to the airport as the day died and landed just before 6. Steve Leonard had been nice enough to loan me a GPS Logger so I was able to post my trace to the OLC. here is the link:
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=-1923163696
You can see the how I was able to fly straight with little altitude loss there. Steve has a Nimbus 3 which has about 2.5 times the glide ratio of my glider. thanks to the OLC's handicapping system I was able to beat steve's score for the day by 4 points.
Hopefully the weather tomorrow will get started earlier and I can do some cross country flying. I promised Leah ice cream if she chases me and I think she is craving it. she was really pushing me to fly somewhere today.
Monday the goal will be to fly back to Wichita, or at least get as close as possible. Should be fun. I'll try to report back tomorrow night.
this morning got up with the sun and rigged, ready to go and excited to be flying in a new place. well fog and clouds took a while to burn off. I was the second to launch, at 3:50 PM. Not enough time left in the day to really go anywhere so I decided to just play around locally, maybe do a small "local" triangle or something, and get used to flying my glider again. All goals accomplished. I flew for 2 hours, keeping my 2 hour per flight average alive this season. I had some fun doing runs upwind about 9 miles from the airport, flying straight going faster in sink and nice and slow in lift. On many of the runs i actually gained altitude or lost only a few hundred feet over many miles travelled. That was fun. I had a few low saves that prevented me from landing out. Some good lift was encountered, one thermal I cored with a steady 500 fpm on the vario.
I doodled around closer to the airport as the day died and landed just before 6. Steve Leonard had been nice enough to loan me a GPS Logger so I was able to post my trace to the OLC. here is the link:
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=-1923163696
You can see the how I was able to fly straight with little altitude loss there. Steve has a Nimbus 3 which has about 2.5 times the glide ratio of my glider. thanks to the OLC's handicapping system I was able to beat steve's score for the day by 4 points.
Hopefully the weather tomorrow will get started earlier and I can do some cross country flying. I promised Leah ice cream if she chases me and I think she is craving it. she was really pushing me to fly somewhere today.
Monday the goal will be to fly back to Wichita, or at least get as close as possible. Should be fun. I'll try to report back tomorrow night.