Ridgely Friday August 18

[huddlec]

Rich and I got out to Ridgely yesterday. There was some really good lift in the middle of the day with my best climb being to a nonwispy 3.7K or so east of the field with over 500 fpm on the averager. A bunch of topless gliders were pimping off Rich on his Falcon at the same to the southwest of the field. The clouds eventually covered all the fields to the east shutting everything down. I got an hour of really fun flying. A bunch of PA pilots were there, as well as Heather, Carlos, Bob B, Mike Lee, student pilot Judy from Pittsburgh (what a hike!).

Later on Sonny spent over an hour working on getting my new Matrix harness to fit, with success. The main key was putting a half inch of insulation in the boot block and loosening the shoulder straps an equal amount, to get the CG forward. I took a maiden flight in it late in the afternoon. Definitely less draggy. The landing would have been good if I'd remembered to push upright, but I was spending more time than usual keeping my track straight. Seems with only the single main straight to the harness, the body moves around a bit more and the glider with it. Something I'll get used to, I'm sure. So I won't be in a faded pink harness anymore. (It's black with blue stripes - Moyes doesn't have any green material for harnesses - so I'm still not color coordinated. As the French woudn't say 'Je m'en fous'.)

Christy