Charlie Savoie got his "A" & "B" badges. Congratulations Charlie! Jeff Strong gave me a great ride on the ridge on Saturday. There were about six or seven gliders with us and the two 2-33's trying to climb up. Dezi and I managed to get 90% of the staff from the Homestead up for flights over Sugar Hill on the Ridge. All in all it was a great 9 days. I am going to Reno to see what kind of trouble I can get into on Wednesday. The Air Races are next weekend and my brother picked up some tickets. There are five of us going. I might even get to Minden or Air Sailing. I will take a lot of pictures. TM
I guess I missed a nice ridge day on Saturday but made it on Sunday - also very nice, but thermals only. I made a lousy take off in the Pegasus (tried to lift it off too soon and had some serious PIO [Pilot Induced Oscillations]). Still more to learn about the fine points of the Peg. What more than made up for take off was my first time ever sharing a thermal with a bald eagle (hawks are old hat, you know :-). The encounter was totally peaceful. We crossed paths several times and after about 30 seconds, he decided to go elsewhere and I didn't try to follow. What a gorgeous animal and what an experience.
It looked like the bugs had really been worked out of the ground tow operations and the auto-tows were working smoothly all morning. By 1:00 the Blaniks were thermalling off of the wire (rope really). Time to launch!
The first climb was the best of the day. After towing under a cloud and releasing in a smooth 4 knot thermal things looked very promising. But the clouds were mostly ragged, sparse and not very high. Apart from that first climb the lift seemed broken up and it was difficult to stay with a thermal for any significant height gain. I thought I might go North and finally got high enough to comfortably fly directly over Mt. Ascutney. There was stronger lift there (up to 6 knot bursts) but the lift was very turbulent. I struggled there for a while trying to wrap it up really tight in a strong core but the strong cores eluded me. I did manage to get over 5000 feet but decided at that point to stay local. After a few tiny yellow streaks whizzed by my canopy I realized that in that lift over the mountain there were butterflies, a half dozen hawks, a hang glider, my PW-5 and a Janus. The entire food chain of soaring was represented.
Mark Koepper PW
End of the Soaring Report