Flying Sunday

[deveil]

PS Mark, Bacil and Gary-- I'm only kidding about Tom selling his soul to the Devil.

... or am I?

hah!
grary

[lbunner]

Sure was a fun day! I vowed to come prepared to deal with the cold temps and for the most part achieved the objective; new bar mits, heat packs and a neoprene balaclava kept me toasty even at cloudbase. I launched third after Tom and Pete thanks to Shawn the man, Bruce and Dan. Bruce launched next and we four cruised the ridge for awhile before climbing out under the building clouds. Bruce stated he was heading over the back at ~4300' msl. I decided to hold back as the valley hadn't matured yet and the fact that I don't have that killer glide of the VX. The next thermal took me to 5000', I headed south to a nice cloud line thinking this would put me in line for HR (shoulda loaded the coordinates in the 6030). Six miles south of launch I topped out again and headed over the back to the next ridge. There was no appreciable lift under the wispies in the valley which left me just above ridge height at what turned out to be Whitetail Ski Resort. I had a good conversation with the skiers on top as I trolled for some lift. A cloud formed right out front and I took the half pipe up and out of there still thinking I was in line with the rock. I talked to Bruce and mentioned there was an airport about 10 miles to the NE. He informed me of the 5 mile controlled airspace around Hagerstown and stated I needed to be north of the airport to get in line with HR. With no real options I snow plowed to the north toward several good looking cloud lines. Near Upton I hit the best climb of the day at 2000' black diamond radical at 850 fpm (sustained) to cloubase at 5375'. I was now in line and cruised the bunny slope to the east over Greencastle where I thermaled with an immature eagle to Waynesboro and the rock. The lift over High Rock was soft with no cohesive thermals even though there were good clouds. I cruised for awhile and was surprised to see Tom come under me. Too cool, three of us made it! Finally sated, I spiraled down and landed doing a BAFL in front of the crowd. But hey, first flight of the year you can't have everything go perfect. All tolled, 3 hours and a circuitous 41 mile flight. If someone can explain how to include an attachment I'll post the vertical airspeed graph of the flight. Sorry Janni for all the sordid details, next time we'll do it together.

Ciao

[hepcat1989]

.

[Pete Schumann]

Thanks to Shawn and Dan for helping launch Tom, me, Larry & Bruce E. "The Flying Machine" ( I like that Shawn, good name for Bruce).

Special thanks to Dan for noticing on the ramp that my main undersurface keel zipper was open on my LiteSpeed. I'd not done a proper inspection. I was distracted when I started to do my normal review. I never went back to finishing my glider inspection It did cause some problems for me on the ramp lots of glider suck, couldn't figure why. I guess that didn't help.

Well, I got left behind by Bruce, Larry & Tom in that order as they went over the back and on to HR. I was low during a bad north cross and had to land after half hour. Winds at that time were pretty north in the main LZ.

Thanks again Shawn & Dan

Pete

[Matthew]

My glider was super sluggish on my flight on Sunday. After I landed and unhooked I leaned against one of the downtubes and the apex of the control frame slid backwards with a big clunk. My Ultrasport is of the Wills Wing era that has the control frame apex attached to a slider bar that allows the glider to lay flat by pulling the apex foward on the slider bar. The apex is supposed to be at the rear of the slider when in flight. It must have been jammed up in the middle on my back-up hang loop. My glider felt sluggish like this once before and I never figured out why. I had thought it must have been conditions. Anyway, got something else to add to my pre-flight and my hang-check list.

Matthew

[markc]

If someone can explain how to include an attachment I'll post the vertical airspeed graph of the flight.

Hi Larry,

To be able to attach, you first have to be a CHGPA member. Unfortunately, there have been
problems getting info to me about who has joined over the past year.... So if you are indeed
'on the books', just let me know and I'll move you into the appropriate forum group.

Secondly, I will need to config the forums to accept the file-type that these graphs are stored in.
Is there a typical/common filename suffix that is used for them? What is a typical filesize for
a flight like the one you just had?

Thanks for any info!

MarkC

[dbodner]

I can confirm that Larry paid his dues last year.

[Lauren Tjaden]

Great post, Larry! What a fun flight for all of you.
Lauren