Pulpit 8/26

[XCanytime]

Met up with Dan Tuckwiller at the Pulpit today. I got there first around 10:30A. It was moderately strong already with some north in a few cycles. The sky looked incredible upwind. Dan arrived a little later and we set up. Mark Gardner promised to meet us by 12 noon to help us launch. He had a job in Chambersburg in the afternoon. We were ready to go by 11:45A. The sky had filled in all around us with good looking clouds, and it was strong and gusty on launch. We saw multiple birds in the sky. A mature bald eagle, a pair of sharpshinned hawks, and a broadwing hawk were the highlights. The turkey vultures showed a north cross on the ridge. Mark got delayed by an hour, so I launched first from the pad just after 1P in a medium cycle. Hit a pothole just after liftoff, then a wall of air that restored lift and shot me up to above launch. I loitered around launch in the north cross, then bailed to south of Rt. 16 where the sky looked better and the ridge curves more to the north. As I searched around saw Dan launch and get up. Found some ratty lift that I clung to and stairstepped my way up to cloudbase at 5800' MSL. Went OTB and headed under a cloud street towards Mercersburg. Outran the street and went xwind to some clouds down by Whitetail Golf Course. Didn't find much and set up to land by Rt. 75 at Shimpstown. At 500' over the LZ hit some lift and gained 300' and drifted over to a second LZ. Found some lift over that one and drifted over a third LZ. There was some lift over that one too, but it quit, so I had a nice landing just before 2P in a cut cornfield on Rt. 995 just east of Claylick. Got in touch with Mark in Chambersburg, and he retrieved me and Dan, who went OTB to Lemar Road between Rt. 75 and Rt. 416. Back at launch it was still crankin' at 4:45P. Dan and I very briefly considered flying again, but we opted to grab some grub at the bar. A few pics follow. Bacil

[XCanytime]

Looking north at launch and Rt. 16.

Heading OTB.

Looking south towards Whitetail.

9 minutes later I'm lower!

Looking south along Rt. 75.

[XCanytime]

On approach by Rt. 995.

The sky still looks awesome.

[DanTuck]

Ahhh, finally. After the Spring we had, 5 and a half weeks without a flight was torture. Yesterday was my 101st flight since March 08 and put me over the 75 hour mark. As we waited for Mark, the bird show was very entertaining, and once we were in the air, the show went on. I hit a similar pot hole right off launch but got away clean. The sky looked incredible but it was definitely hard work to get up and stay up. For the first 1.5 hours I couldn't get more than 1,200-1,300 over launch and had to dig out from below the ridge a couple times. Up and down, up and down. But there were birds everywhere, hawks, falcons, vultures, and I'm sure a lot more. I saw some blue-winged smaller bird (peregrine?) screaming down the ridge and a ton of red-tails down low. A group of turkey vultures helped me dig out one time, it was pretty sweet. Anyway, all I really wanted to do was get over the back, even if I bombed out right away. Finally I found a good climb to 1,800 over as I drifted back. It died out between the ridges and I pointed east toward Lemasters and proceeded to bomb right out. I didn't hit a bump the entire way to my field, in fact my sink alarm was going off half the time. So I picked an enormous field of cut corn right on Lemar road and had a nice landing. Thanks Mark for picking me up. And thanks Bacil for another good call.

[DanTuck]

Did a real quick edit from Thursday's flight. Pretty boring, didn't get the landing.