Desi and I repaired the crack on the canopy of the 2-33 41S on New Years Day. We also put a bungee onboard to use to keep the stick forward during storage so ice and snow (if we ever get any) won't accumulate on the elevator hinges.
A bunch of people celebrated the start of the new century by showing up at Sterling to be like birds. Let's see if I can remember everybody who was there....Shawn, Peter, Ritts, Tony, Charlie, John Bergeson, Jim David, Renee, Arvin, Bill Maxwell, Dave Cherkus, Gerry Bell, Thom Kustes, Rick Roelke, Nancy Lincoln, Jeff Orchard and me and Desi and a few more I can't recall just now, because of running around to launch the ships; some people from MITSA were out there too. The day was sunny with comfortable temperatures. There was a big gusty crosswind out of the west, and Peter said that when flying the 126 at 40mph into the wind, he found at one point that he was going backwards over the ground. Desi and I went up in the 2-33 and found some thermal activity at about 2000' and also a little bit of wave and managed a gain of about 400'. He is a master at sniffing out lift. We, without having to look for it, also found sink pegged at more than 1000'/min.
Before my flight I watched one tow from takeoff to release and it didn't make very fast progress upwind and it appeared that the glider was leaping around behind the Bird dog. I later found out why.
Everybody was happy; it was a good way to get away from talk about Y2K and it was a fun day and a unique way to mark the New Year.