High Rock results, saturday Aug 18

[Dan T]

What a great day to get out of the house. It couldn't have been prettier for the middle of August.

Mark C launches first and gets the duration flight of the day at over 2 hours, most of which was under 300 over. At the end of the day he says "that was fun but it sure was tiring!" I bet!

Numerous other people fly including Dave Procter who had the best altitude gain at over 2k. Dave said he had to thermal tight and real low in order to climb out.

I had launchd less than 10 minutes in front of him and experienced similar conditions. However I was unwilling to commit to the tight low turns that were necssary to climb out in those conditions and and found myself heading out to land after about 15 minutes less than 100 over.

Carlos and I did a little minuette on the way to the LZ making for an entertaining and rather technical approach and landing. Alls well that ends well and we both had good landings well apart in location if not in timing.

I got to see a couple faces I have't seen much of recently, Kelvin Pierce and Brian Hardwick both of whom flew. In the LZ Brian broke out and played a mandolin that he built himself from scratch with nothing but an instruction book as a guide. Fantastic job Brian! I can't get over how much talent we have in this club.

Several other people flew and I don't meant to slight any of them but you have probably heard enough from me.

A great day to be alive even with a 20 minute flight if that. Afterall what did the mere mortals do today?

Dan T

[TQ]

Afterall what did the mere mortals do today?

Dan T

Went to the pool with my grand-daughters. Bottled a fresh batch of 'Brown Nut Ale' home brew after dinner.

Either way, sure beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

[Danny Brotto]

Flew a 100 mile task in 2:30 for a total of 4 hours of airtime... you asked

Danny Brotto

[markc]

Surprising day. I really expected it to be brain-dead soarable at the
Rock, but turned out to be very challenging. Managed 2k over on one
occasion and broke 1000' a few times... But for every one of those,
I had two or three of struggling at or below launch. Pretty demanding
air, with small bullet thermals. Had to seriously put it on a tip in order to
get up above the trashy cr@p down low.

I think we had about 15 pilots out there today; it was really fun to
see the Rock hopping again! Emma-Jane definitely enjoyed seeing
everyone.

Some high level cirrus started moving in around 4:00, and killed any
chances for late-day magic. By 7:30, it was blowing over the back on
launch. So much for the forecasts!

But did you see how that cold front dove all the way into Georgia?
A foreshadowing of great fall conditions to come!

MarkC

[alek]

The forecast this weekend looked promising, so I came down from NY to do some flying. Flew Ridgely yesterday, and High Rock today. Ended up with a couple of short, but very enjoyable, flights at each place. Always great to see familiar faces.