Highland Aerosports, Saturday, May 23rd

[krryerson]

Going to Ridgely, Highland on Fri afternoon, 12:30P and will tent till Sat.

Flying on Fri and Sat.

Hopefully good condition on Saturday, May 23rd, which has forecast: Sunny, high 71, wind NW 5-10.

Getting a new part for my Discus C that we will install in less than an hour, Fri afternoon. Part shipped from Aeros and took only 11 days, door to door. That's good!

Would love to try Hyner and beautiful mountains of scenic Pennsylvania; but will have to pass this time for prep time for ECC, which is also fantastic.

Might see you at Highland on Saturday?

Knut

[Ward Odenwald]

Forecasts are still looking good for Highland on Saturday.

Hoping that I can say the same tomorrow night!

Ward

[Matthew]

Heading to Highland today.

Matthew

[krryerson]

Looks like its going to be a great day at Highland today. I am here now. Knut

[Rich E]

On my way..

[krryerson]

Two flights and ~2 hrs total airtime. Blue sky! Thermals not as good as had hoped, but still a good day with little wind. Topped out around 3600 feet. Had my first flight early around 11:30AM. Many pilots and drow back home around 4:00PM. No traffic.
More to come later. Knut

[Matthew]

Fun day at Highland. Karen and I got there late. We didn’t leave Tacky Park until 11:45 in the morning—on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend. And we didn’t see a lick of traffic. Nothing-- NADA! It was actually a quite pleasant drive over the Bay Bridge to Ridgely. Arrived there at 1:15.

Pilots had been flying and staying up. I got in the air at around 2:45 and drove around the sky till I found some lift over the hangers around 1400’. Was climbing nicely until another glider—with an orange leading edge—turned right into me. I had to turn and dive to avoid a collision and fell out of the thermal. I thought I’d be on the ground soon until I blundered into some weak lift and slowly climbed up to 3400’ as a few other gliders succumbed to gravity. I thermalled a while with Bertram east of the runway drifting away from the airpark. I flew back to the field, finding sink all the way, while Bertram stayed with the lift. I should have stayed with Bertram, who landed about 20 minutes after me. As I was setting up an approach over the RC field, I saw the windsocks turn to the South. The forecast called for it to go South. So I assumed that’s what was happening. I set up on final and noticed I was screaming over the ground. I looked again-- the windsock was out of the NW. I was too low to bring it around and landed downwind on my wheels. It was a bit frightening to be going that fast. However, it turned out— luckily-- to be a non-event. Got 45 minutes.

Second flight – the cord attached to my keel that holds my release broke at 200 feet. But at least I landed into the wind.

Third flight—lift was very, very weak. I climbed up to 3200 feet—again thermalling with Bertram. This time Bertram made the mistake of heading back to the airport while I stayed with the lift. I ended up with another 45 minute flight and a no-step landing in the LZ.

Karen flew for about 35 minutes while I was on my third flight. Charlie had a couple good soaring flights and several more flights. Valerie flew early in the day. Others included Ward, Knut, Rick from PA, Brian from Nova Scotia, Sammi, Human (sp?), John Dullahan, Rich E., and a couple of other pilots. I did not catch their names.

Matthew

[Ward Odenwald]

Watched your landing from the setup area. Scary? I’d say it was nothing less than - this can’t be good SCARY! However, what was truly remarkable about your downwind predicament was how you made the very best of a very bad situation. Don’t know if your “non-event” was a result of a series of split-second decisions, survival instinct or most likely both but teasing-out why you decided to fly the glider down to the deck while dragging your feet instead of rotating up to attempt a futile run-out will help the rest of us that will be headed down that same ground-zooming path soon.

Ward