Flytec 2005 

Okay so we had a big flying weekend on November 19th and 20th.

On Saturday, Mark, Andy, Jack, Todd and I braved the scary launch at Dansville. It was pretty sweet and I flew around for around an hour and landed at the gliderport. I had some pretty strong altitude gains(1000fpm+)- surprising for this time of year. A PGer named Matt gave it a try later and put the bag in a tree in the LZ. Bob and Mark went back up even later for an encore PG flight. I goaded them into it just a bit- it was looking about perfect from a HG perspective. Calling them a coupla pussies seemed to get them in the air right quick. I retreived them from the field shy of the airport since the wind was slightly stiff.

Sunday was a huge day, my cell phone was ringing non-stop when my daughter and I headed to the gym. I figured it would be too westerly to fly with the hunting season closures, so I was unprepared for a flying day. But Dana agreed to drive for me and Ron wanted to ride down with us so off we went. Andy launched and got up first (easily), Dave P got up next. Then I launched and a whole bunch of others joined us in the air later. I saw Moritz, Dan W, Scott, Ron, Jeremy, and Jack. We were so spread out and all getting very high- there was no shortage of lift - and we didn't need to stay anywhere near the ridge to find it. At one point I followed Dave into the valley and had a good time pimping from underneath. When I found what he was in, we both took it to 3000' over and a hawk stayed with us the whole way. The W and sometimes NW cross put us way south over the end of the ridge and Scott was climbing fast up to us. Dave told me later that the hawk made a threatening advance towards the top of my sail- talons out and aiming right at me. At the last moment he pulled out of the feet-first attack and flew away. I never saw the aggression, I just thought he was hanging with us to be friendly!
After that climb I was very cold and decided to go land, but that was sort of a problem. It seemed impossible to find any sinking air. Sometimes it was blowing very strong, over 20mph, and once I had some penetration issues as I made my way to the gliderport. I checked for air traffic when I set up an approach but it took some doing to get down. Consequently I found myself slipping S-turns at the end of the runway and I figured I may be in someone's way so I took a long final approach along the fence and landed to the NW pretty far away from the hangar. It was blowing pretty hard and I got to watch a whole bunch of pretty sweet landings as the rest of the pilots followed my lead and landed there.
Just after I landed, Mark called my cell. Dana answered and told him I wasn't in a chatty mood after the two sledders I had just taken and no one had gotten up and she went through a whole tank of gas just retreiving pilots all day. So I figure he will have a "pity party awesome dinner" laid out for me when I get home instead of eating his own shorts at the flying he missed. Yeah, but no, he was at movies when I got home and it didn't suck having the house to myself for a bit.

I hope this wasn't the last day we're going to get this month. I could use another!

So just a couple things to add to this very sparse blog of mine.
Firstly, stop on over and sign the petition to keep motorized flight OUT of USHGA's insurance mess. The form is on my front door, if you need directions, ask. It needs to go out on November 22nd at the latest so don't expect to sign it after that date.
Secondly- hey we FLEW on Saturday. Me, Mark, and Ron had really nice flights at Dansville and lots of sailplane company. Maybe the sailplane club will post some pics on their newsletter. They were all over us with the cameras when I landed there and Bob "skydog" Grant retrieved. The air was really friendly that day, gains of 1800+ and over an hour long. I had 3-400fpm avg climbs at times and the best part was the air show the hawks were performing on the end of the ridge. They were catapulting themselves upward for a couple hundred feet and then diving back into the trees. It was really quite amusing and they repeated the performance over and over. What a hoot!

Okay this is just a test- testing testing one two three....