Pulpit Saturday 7/18

[XCanytime]

Uh, make that 7/18, not 7/19. Third time's the charm. Looking way good for the Pulpit tomorrow. See ya there early!

Bacil

[XCanytime]

Janni and I are planning on getting there early. Should be able to launch before the midday throttleup. Dan Tuckwiller looks to be on board as well. Any others?

Bacil

[Danny Brotto]

TFR presntly schedule to go up at 3:00 pm local on Saturday so keep that in mind for those downwind jaunts.

Should be a bit on the sporty side; best wishes for good a good flight.

Danny Brotto

[dbodner]

I think I'll be there.

[Danny Brotto]

Opps, that's 3:00 pm UTC on the TFR... that makes it 11:00 am local. Set to expire Sunday morning. at 10:30 so HR should be in the clear tomorrow.

Of course, check NOTAMs before jumping.

Danny Brotto

[RedBaron]

A good day. Not necessarily a good XC day since the sky was >75% filled with clouds but still good. Bacil, Tony, Dan T, Dave B, Carlos and I.
Launched after Carlos in rather strong air and sunshine. Clouds to the North looked good so my plan was to get high, jump the bowl and climb out where the towers are. I completed the first two parts beautifully, climbed to 2000' over and headed NW to intercept what looked like a great street. Arrived still high but it seemed the strong lift had already passed and what was left only took me to perhaps 1500' over. Continued on without noticing that it had become more SW and my idea of becoming legend of the day turned out to be a huge mistake. I was all the way around the bend trying to soar a NW facing ridge in SW conditions. Ran all the way to the N looking for lift, barely finding any. Turned around scratching my butt off, closer to the bend I was riding a roller coaster, I guess I was surfing in the rotor. Finally a good climb that took me back to 1500' and I was trying to get back to launch. Getting lower and lower I realized I wasn't gonna make it and bailed out to a field that looked bad but was great. Located right and in front of the towers with a single tree in its middle, not huge but big enough and level. I was served beer by a friendly local and, since I have never flown N of launch, a great flight all in all.
Bacil went OTB for a 10 mile or so XC flight. Everybody had good launches, Dan kicked butt later in the day soaring in very light conditions.

[dbodner]

Does anyone remember Carl Krause (sp?). He stopped by the Pulpit today. Hasn't flown in 20-odd years. He's been riding a bicycle, instead.

I made the mistake of following Dan launching into an extended lull. We both should've waited for later when it ramped up again. However, no lessons learned. I'm sure I'll make the same mistake again next time.

[tdilisio]

I launched from the north ramp shortly after David (who launched from the same ramp) into what I thought was a stronger cycle. No joy. A few bubbles of lift here and there.. but I was too low, and close to the trees to work em. No ridge lift was happening... so headed out to the secondary. In hindsight, I should have headed out to land a little sooner... and launched earlier in the day when conditions were stronger. Gotta work on that "raising the bar" skills thing.

[XCanytime]

A strange day at the Pulpit. Got there at 9:15A and it was honkin'. The sky started filling in with nice clouds and the drift was due east. Set up and waited for Janni and Carlos to arrive. They and Dave Bodner and Tony Dilisio arrived shortly after 11A. I took off around 11:30A into 12 to 18 MPH winds from the new pad and got up easily out in front. Stair stepped my way up to 3500' MSL under the clouds upwind. A nice big gray one was above me so I hooked into a thermal and went over the back at 11:45A. Topped out at 4K' MSL and headed for the cloud street that was looking good downwind. By the time I got over the fish ponds I couldn't find much, lost 500' in search mode, and headed downwind to a nice looking cloud. Found nothing much and picked a good field to land in just east of Rt. 416. While over the field at 800' AGL, found some lift that enabled me to gain 700' before it quit or I lost it. Headed downwind with a good push from the rear and picked out a nice field with a house and a flag indicator upwind. Had a nice landing and broke down by the driveway. The homeowner stopped by on an errand run and gave me my location. Two rights off of Rt. 30 in St. Thomas. Easy retrieve by Dave Bodner. Thanks Dave. Around 10 miles. Back at launch Carlos and Janni were soaring, and Dan Tuckwiller had shown up. The sky upwind was changing. Some high level cloud deck moved in and things got turbulent in the air. Janni and Carlos ended up landing and helping launch Dan (from the new pad) and Dave and Tony (from the new ramp). The winds had died down after Dan launched, and the upper level deck had moved out and the sun was out. Dan ended up with a soaring flight of over a half hour, while Dave got up for 15 minutes or so and Tony had an extendo. I had set up for a second flight but the dark forboding sky moving in from the west didn't look all that enticing. As soon as I broke down at 4P the winds picked back up again to soarable velocity and were still blowing consistently when all the pilots returned to launch. However, hunger won out over flying again, so a few of us hit Tony's New York Pizza joint in Greencastle for some chow.

Bacil

[DanTuck]

It was almost a repeat of last Sunday. I got there and it was way beyond falconable but I still set up with with my optimist hat on for later in the day. After Carlos and Janni launched, Tony and I decided to drop a car and put a windsock in the primary. Carlos landed while we were down there so we threw him in and headed back up. On the way up we got the call that Janni had landed out in the valley so we headed towards 30 & 522. After a short search we found him (good eye Tony) and he and Carlos snuggled up in the backseat and we were on our way. Back at launch the sky had decked over and the velocity had about halved. Tough decision whether to launch before things completely shut down or wait for it to maybe turn on again. Opted for the former and launched from the new pad at around 2:30. Found bits if lift here and there, highest I got was 175' over launch. I was really tucked in to stay in what tiny lift band was there and pretty much stayed down near 16 so I could make the primary if and when I got flushed. Slowly I started to sink and when I crossed 16, I found another tiny little lift band that worked for another few minutes before shutting down. Landed in the primary for a whopping 30 minutes. Good scratching practice (again) but I'm looking forward to a new glider.