Wow, Felix, I'm grateful you are okay. Keep your chin up, brother. And yeah, Steve Wendt is a magician, so keep your fingers crossed on your glider. Again, I'm glad you're okay.
Brad
Bills Weekend
Moderator: CHGPA BOD
Re: Bills Weekend
Felix, most of us have been in the trees at one time or other so don't fret too much just learn quickly. Today looks good again with ESE wind at 11. top of lift at 5000', boundary shear at 7. Could be clouds to the north, you will be on the edge of the cloud coverage. Cloudbase looks like it could go over 6000' the further north you are. Can't wait to hear how you all do. Jack's may be sightly better (higher cloud potential). But it will be very soarable at either place.
Bun
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FlyingFelix
- Posts: 418
- Joined: Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:27 pm
- Location: Baltimore, MD
- Contact:
Re: Bills Weekend
Thank you all for your support!
Besides a minor wrist sprain I am perfectly fine. Will take the sail off the wing today and se if it's fix-able, not holding my breath though.
Hope this third accident at Bills does it and the site will be accident free at least for the year, 3 accidents in 3 weeks can't look too good for our community.
I'll start a new thread with my accident and a video, perhaps it can help someone...(ME?)
Best of luck and great flight to the pilots going out today!
Besides a minor wrist sprain I am perfectly fine. Will take the sail off the wing today and se if it's fix-able, not holding my breath though.
Hope this third accident at Bills does it and the site will be accident free at least for the year, 3 accidents in 3 weeks can't look too good for our community.
I'll start a new thread with my accident and a video, perhaps it can help someone...(ME?)
Best of luck and great flight to the pilots going out today!
Felix.
Re: Bills Weekend
I made my first trip to Bill's today. There were 8 or 10 gliders there and it was soarable when I got there at 10:45. I had Taylor with me and was really more focused on spending a day with him than flying. I launched around 2:30 I guess, I made a few passes and got above launch, but after around 10 minutes got caught in a flush cycle that sent me, Rich and Tim to the LZ. Not an epic day of flying for me, but a great day out with my son. I enjoyed meeting a bunch of pilots and seeing a few others for the first time this year. Thanks to Bacil and others for the launch assistance and thank you to Bacil and Jon for the encouragement to come check out this cool site. I will bring the big pruners next time I come to Bill's. 
Matt
Matt
Re: Bills Weekend
Here's my belated flight-report for Saturday at Bill's. I hope it might provide some insight into the conditions of that day....
I launched first, at perhaps 1:00pm. Conditions were strong-ish (compared to what we usually get at Bill's), and switching from both SE and NE. Winds were topping out at maybe 15mph while I was on launch (that's only a guess, didn't measure the wind speed). I noticed that the streamers were sometimes blowing significantly upwards, much more like a cliff launch than a slot. So it was *very* thermally!
Launched into a decent cycle, and confirmed with one pilot afterwards that things looked good. My initial turn was to the left, but I don't recall a conscious decision for what the "right" time for the turn was. So much of this is instinctive and by feel at this point... Not necessarily a 'good' thing as instinct can be fooled, but at least in this case I felt I had lots of speed and "enough" clearance to turn toward the ridge.
And almost immediately I realized that this was going to be a kick-yer-butt day. Turning left into lift, and cranking it all the way around, it felt like I was getting slapped from behind, out of the SE. So it very quickly turned into one of those "Ok, here it comes, be ready!" type of days, with a hand on the basetube (sometimes even the downtube) waiting to counter where the wind wanted to push my wing.
And although I flew for 2+ hours, I can't say I had a lot of fun. I managed to top out at 1800' over launch once, with a few other gains of 1500+ over... But they were all very short-lived, and I spent most of my time a few 100 over. Or at launch level. Or even below launch. And I simply could *not* push to the south (hoping to follow Larry and Pete): every time I tried I was immediately drilled. All of my decent gains were to the north, and the thermals were tracking out of the SE.
Others mentioned getting to cloudbase, *way* better than I managed. I tend to thermal as tightly as possible, with the wing really banked up, especially in springtime conditions... But that might have been counter-productive on Sat: If I had increased my speed and the radius of my 360s, I might have "averaged" better overall climbs.
Still, how often do we get to soar at Bill's? I can count my soaring flights there on two hands, after nearly 20 years of flying. So I'm not complaining, in spite of the sore muscles the next day!
MarkC
I launched first, at perhaps 1:00pm. Conditions were strong-ish (compared to what we usually get at Bill's), and switching from both SE and NE. Winds were topping out at maybe 15mph while I was on launch (that's only a guess, didn't measure the wind speed). I noticed that the streamers were sometimes blowing significantly upwards, much more like a cliff launch than a slot. So it was *very* thermally!
Launched into a decent cycle, and confirmed with one pilot afterwards that things looked good. My initial turn was to the left, but I don't recall a conscious decision for what the "right" time for the turn was. So much of this is instinctive and by feel at this point... Not necessarily a 'good' thing as instinct can be fooled, but at least in this case I felt I had lots of speed and "enough" clearance to turn toward the ridge.
And almost immediately I realized that this was going to be a kick-yer-butt day. Turning left into lift, and cranking it all the way around, it felt like I was getting slapped from behind, out of the SE. So it very quickly turned into one of those "Ok, here it comes, be ready!" type of days, with a hand on the basetube (sometimes even the downtube) waiting to counter where the wind wanted to push my wing.
And although I flew for 2+ hours, I can't say I had a lot of fun. I managed to top out at 1800' over launch once, with a few other gains of 1500+ over... But they were all very short-lived, and I spent most of my time a few 100 over. Or at launch level. Or even below launch. And I simply could *not* push to the south (hoping to follow Larry and Pete): every time I tried I was immediately drilled. All of my decent gains were to the north, and the thermals were tracking out of the SE.
Others mentioned getting to cloudbase, *way* better than I managed. I tend to thermal as tightly as possible, with the wing really banked up, especially in springtime conditions... But that might have been counter-productive on Sat: If I had increased my speed and the radius of my 360s, I might have "averaged" better overall climbs.
Still, how often do we get to soar at Bill's? I can count my soaring flights there on two hands, after nearly 20 years of flying. So I'm not complaining, in spite of the sore muscles the next day!
MarkC
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Larry Huffman
- Posts: 42
- Joined: Fri Feb 11, 2005 12:12 am
Re: Bills Weekend
I basically agree with Mark's assessment of conditions.I followed him and Kurt off and found conditions low on the ridge as Mark described them. As I was climbing above the crest I noticed a cloud street to the south that looked pretty good so I proceeded that way working bits and pieces of lift. Once under the street it became easy and I kept working up wind until I made it to base about 6000 msl. While waiting for Pete I flew about three miles up win along the street. When Pete got up under the street I dolphin flew along the street to catch up with him to go over the back. I stopped along the way to go back to base with Dave Proctor and then Pete and I were on our way. We made a mistake by not going farther north and ran into high clouds shading the ground causing the cus to diminish. In the end we landed together 20.2 miles from launch.
Larry
Larry