A small handful of pilots showed up today to very strong west winds in the slot and on the ridge. I got there around 2PM finding Mike Lee, Rhonda, John Dullahan, Chris Donahue, and Dave the amazing 1 in the parking lot. Eventually Mike and Rhonda bailed, so the rest of us went up to launch. Chris, Dave, and I helped John launch into a nice cycle. He had a good launch and got hit by very strong lift out of the slot. He turned right and made it to the reservoir in record time. Matthew and Karen showed up shortly after John launched. Chris's radio crackled with John announcing he was at the reservoir and heading OTB. He had some altitude and went to the towers and turned around. Even with full VG and the bar stuffed his groundspeed back towards launch was < 5 MPH. So he decided with his 3300' MSL altitude to hop OTB. He didn't find much during his screaming downwind run and ended up landing in a huge flood plain of the South Fork, right next to JR's LZ from 5/11. I went and fetched him, parking the car at the Rt. 55/Rt. 340 junction and hacking through some serious overgrown brush and hopping a pair of fences to gain access to the huge flood plain field. John's landing featured honking winds to 10' above the 3' tall grass, then no wind, dumping him straight down with little time to do anything other than a quick flare attempt. It was a hard landing, but nothing bent/broken. The GPS did take flight off of the basetube, necessitating a crop circle method of finding it. It was found, enabling John to figure out where the heck he was, and making locating him a little easier. Back at launch it was still honking, and no gliders were taken out of their bags. Dinner at Fox's Pizza in Strasburg.
Bacil
Woodstock Sunday 5/20
Moderator: CHGPA BOD
Re: Woodstock Sunday 5/20
Now that's an understatement...it was more like an ICBM taking off! VOOSH!!XCanytime wrote:Chris, Dave, and I helped John launch into a nice cycle. He had a good launch and got hit by very strong lift out of the slot.
Nice launch, John!
So we waited, and waited, and waited, and the winds just would not back down yesterday. I had already loaded my glider back on the car when Matthew noticed that it was finally starting to mellow...
Matthew and I got set up and the winds stayed very reasonable, so we were both able to get in a short flight before sunset. Mine was about 15 minutes or so, and I got a couple hundred above launch in very light lift (and was joined by a pretty sizeable collection of feathered friends soaring nearby). After all the waiting and frustration with the winds, they were 15 very worthwhile minutes!
The setting sun just looks THAT much better from the air...I'm afraid Matthew was not so lucky...he got caught in a sink cycle right from the get-go and had to head out to the LZ pretty quickly.
--Chris