Pretty boring day today as we sit around under cloudy skies waiting for "Wilma" to show up. Doesn't look like she will cause much troble here in central Florida but I helped break down a couple tandem gliders this AM and some of the Dragonfly tow planes have been de-winged in preparation. Decided to wait till tomorrow to pull more wings in hope that the storm might stay well south of here.
Kevin C. and I tried an out and back to Fantasy of Flight (about 25 miles south of here) a couple of days back. Lift was decent and I pinned off at 1,500 then climbed to CB at about 3,500 in light to moderate lift. Kevin joined me and we started south under a short cloud street. Initially, there seemed to be numerous areas of lift and we stayed high with tops around 3,800. But then, about ten miles out, we hit an area where the clouds were dying.
It doesn't take long to get into survival mode from 3,500 feet and I quickly reached a point where I was starting to get nervous about LZ's. My leg is still healing and I wasn't anxious to try a foot landing yet and there, just to my north, was the long. smooth runway for the Seminole Sail Plane port. Kevin was heading on to the south but I saw nothing that direction that looked all that great so I fished around Seminole while losing another 1,500 feet of altitude and then landed. Of course, Kevin found lift to the south, got back up and made it back to Quest (Argh!!!) He did abandon the goal of Fantasy but I still had to drive back to Quest, rather than flying, and face Kevins gloating face. "How did you know there would be lift to the south? There were no markers that I could see." I asked.
" I could feel the air was better that way." he replied.
Yeh, Right! Oh well... guess that's why he's currently 7th in the world rankings and I'm not.
Still, it was nice to re-aquaint myself with Jim Lee, hang gliding legend from New Mexico and now managing and teaching soaring at Seminole. He had spotted me preparing to land in the zero wind conditions and had all his students watching to see if I'd do a power wack with my heavy wing in the L and V conditions. He told me later that everyone was really dissapointed when I greased it in on my wheels. They were all hoping for more carnage.
Sorry to babble on but like I said...I'm pretty bored today.
Hope you guys get in some flying this weekend. Come visit.
Paul T.
Florida Flying and Wilma
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