Sunday at Oregon Ridge

[breezyk1d]

What a great day at the Ridge! Wish I could have flown on Saturday but had other duties to attend to. Had to make up for it today as best I could while father's day was in full swing.

The tow parks looked to be blown out at least for my falcon-eering so I met up at OR with John Middleton who had in impressive group of pilots out on the field - some students - quite strong; others brushing off the winter's dust or trying out new wings.

I believe it was blowing about 12-15 for most of the afternoon. It started out a good strong NE almost right up the slot, but after all the ground handling runs and hauling the glider up the slot a couple times, it turned more easterly.

I had 6 flights (first was 3/4 of the way up to test the conditions) and the rest from the top. I didn't get my second wind until the 4th trip up to the top with my glider. The wind was strong enough for me to roll my glider uphill to the top with the nose rope for several trips - that spared my arms for flying ( this is a trick I learned from Spark; currently aka "the Western Traveller".)

One flight in particular there seemed to be quite a bit of sink and rotor off the trees on the left, but waiting for the better cycles made a difference, and by 4 pm the breeze had steadied and wasn't gusting so much. 4 of my landings were at least decent, one whirled me around on the ground, and one sank me into the LZ rather surprisingly and I rolled. Several folk had difficulty in the LZ, whether upper field or lower, but only one broken downtube out of the bunch (not mine).

Thanks to John for his continued support , critiques, and advice. What a beautiful day to fly the OR; not too hot, and enough breeze to fly the gliders especially for the students who were all getting up off the ground and having very good flights (you know those encouraging kind which actually get you high enough so you feel like you are flying instead of skiing the slope?). And excellent (and much needed) FL and Landing practice for me. -Linda B.

[silverwings]

As Linda indicated Oregon Ridge was pretty nice. A foreign PG pilot flying there got incredible lift (the highest I have seen) on one flight as he was approaching the pavilion and had to do turns in the lower landing area to prevent running out of landing room! He told me it un-nerved him a little for flying a training hill, so his next few flights were a little lower on the hill. A photographer from the Times was there taking pictures of us all though I don't know if any made it into the article. All my students had a good time but several of us got some screwy air in or approaching the lower landing area. Sure was nice temps for training and flying. Alan Hobner showed up and flew an old Seahawk a couple of times. It was great having Linda (thanks for the beverages) flying with us. Ken Swingle who had not flown since last fall was demonstrating that he hadn't forgot how to fly and did a good job on his 5 flights.