Linda Salamone's Blog

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Weekend at Lookout Mountain Oct 27-30 2006

Friday- Rain all day
Saturday- Totally blown out (but 3 pilots refused to believe it)
Sunday- Ratty and stable (at the same time!)- a couple rigids flew
Monday- Decent day later, too stable before 2pm (which of course is when we had to leave by!)

So Mark and I got zero air time, but we did see a lot of old friends and made a few new ones. After seeing all the pilots who stuck it out and partied hard, I gotta believe that hang gliding is NOT dead and I am glad to be a part of it. I will post some pictures later when I get Mark's car unpacked. He had to do 100% of the driving on the way back since I pulled my back out on Sunday morning when I was optimistically setting up my glider. I found myself flat out on the ground with some of the most excruciating pain of my life. So many hot rubs, heat packs, hot tub soaks, massages and strategically placed pilows later, I finally succumbed to muscle relaxers prescribed by my wonderful doctor, and slept the whole way back. Mark had to do all the packing up, glider breakdown, shoe tying, etc..... what fun!

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

me and mark are headed to lookout this coming weekend. hopefully i will have all the parts to my camera and be able to post some pictures of the activities and pilots. if the weather totally turns to crap, maybe we will head to the cape cod fly-in. but for now, lookout looks like the destination..... stay tuned......

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Some days seem to work out like magic, others leave you kicking the dirt in frustration! Karl and I drove to Harris, knowing it wouldn't be stellar, but thinking it would be stupid-soarable, at least for a while. And it WAS, just not for me! It was blowing really hard when I got out of the car, and I had instrument issues to work out anyhow, so I didn't rush to set up. Dan said it was less windy than earlier, but still too much for my liking. The sailplanes were out, and drifting back with the thermals at a pretty good clip, and not getting very high. I set up and when people got ready to launch, I decided to jockey some cars down so I wouldn't even be tempted to launch when it was this strong. I was gone maybe 25 minutes, and driving back up, I see 3 glders in the air, and Ed in his new-to-him Sport2 just standing on launch. It's just so NOT ED to launch potato so I wondered what was up when I got back on top. Dead as a doornail, pretty much! And in that short time, Scott, Dan and Ron were losing altitude very slowly. Karl pushed and scratched a while and got over the trees. I got in the slot and waited and waited and waited and watched while everyone (except Karl) got lower, and lower and lower.... Dan sank out, Ron sank out, then Scott sank out, and still Karl is kicking the treetops while I grow roots. Every time a cycle kicked a tiny bit, Karl got lower. It got deader- he went up 30 feet. Yikes. Finally I ran off, remembering I did bring my glider bag down earlier, and my car was down bottom as well. Launch was good, never got up at all, set up to land (didn't think I was going to clear the corn for a second) and dropped the nose when I flared weakly! Doug got off on his PG briefly, and Lon had a similar flight as mine. Jim never launched, but Ed's glider taught a hawk how to soar. Ah well.... 4 minutes, 38 seconds... chinese food, then 90 miles back to Rochester!

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Karl and I were determined to get some air time after missing a Katydid flight on Sunday. So yesterday, with conflicting reports of wind direction (SW vs SE) we hedged out bets and headed to Italy. With only one vehicle we were faced with the prospect of hiking up if we didn't soar and Karl was pretty pessimistic (!) but I was sure we were in the right place. When we planted Karl's wind sock in the LZ, lo and behold - no less than 8 hawks soaring just above launch! We raced up top and found our path to an easy glider drop-off blocked by some mysterious guy just sitting in his car, so we hoofed the gliders in fast and set up. It was blowing in perfectly- hawks here and there- until I stuffed my very last batten. Then it DIED. once a while a soft cycle would waft in, but this was NOT what I set up my pretty Litespeed for. Plus, Karl had to help lug the heifer in so it had better be worth it! I waited patiently on launch, my back breaking from the unnatural stance in my racing harness, for almost 45 minutes. Karl and I discussed the possibility of a wonder wind flight- impossible to predict- but we predicted away. A little time had passed and we set the ground rules about flying without guilt if one of us got up and the other didn't, and where to try to land and all, and magically, the trees got that waterfall sound- steady and light. It actually began to blow enoough for me to feel confident launching so I did. I got a bit tipped to the left probably due to the slight S cross and the scrub in the launch, but it felt pretty solid and I climbed right on up. When I started stepping up higher and higher, right off I noticed two things- the funky noise my vario was making, and the fact that it said I was only 35' over. I was certainly more than 100- 200' and that noise was my sink alarm. So while I have been busy working out problems with my 5030, I reset all the factory settings. So now I have the sink set at like 20fpm and the delay in the climb beep is different and I am all screwed up! And everything is in metric so the 17 I saw for windspeed was kph, not mph.....So I set about ignoring it and finally just shut the damn thing' audio off. Karl launched after a bit and it seemed to take a while for him to get up to me. When he did, we just boated around at 200 meters (?) over and it was very smooth. I had VG on a lot and it was fun playing the sink rate war with a Saturn. At one point I got low, and then I just never got back up. It was punchier down there and struggle though I may, I just couldn't get back up to where Karl was. And I tried!!!!! Finally I gave up and headed into land. It was a great approach and perfect landing in no wind. I was pretty psyched about that. Any decent landing in this harness is a gift! Karl flew a while longer and top landed. I was worried for a while that if something bad happened in the tall weeds on top, I wouldn't know for a very long time. I did decide to start walking up when it got dark. He came down and got me and we headed home. I think we were at the right place even though it was cross some from the S and SSW at times. I don't know if Dansville would have worked or not but we did each get around an hour (Karl got longer) so it was well worth the drive. Hopefully that's not the end of our Fall flying.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Friday, October 6th was a great flying day in Upstate, NY. I got out of work by 2pm and had my daughter/driver Dana riding shotgun down to Harriet Hollister. The cu’s I’d seen earlier were gone except way to the west, and the wind was a nice 10mph from the ENE as we drove south. Moritz was already set up and the launch conditions looked pretty primo for this site. Of course the cirrus pieces were drifting from over the back, and there was a 2mph up the launch- but that’s actually GREAT for Harriet. When Moritz got in the slot, two hawks actually climbed slowly right out in front of him. He launched as I stuffed my first batten and when I saw him maintain out at the point, I couldn’t get my glider put together fast enough. Henry and Inge Boessl showed up just in time to help me launch and it felt pretty solid when I did. But I got nothing much at the point and Moritz was like 1000’ over, and I searched down the ridge to the south. I had a brief moment where I was slightly above, but then lost it and was left groveling all the way along the face of the ridge. Damn, this was going to be a sledder! When I was adjacent to our “new” LZ, I was 700’ below launch and looking to land. I continued south a little more, pushed away from the ridge to the spot I climbed out in once before, and saw that I was 750’ below when I heard my vario beep once. So I turned and lost nothing, tried another turn and gained 10’, and again and again, until I was 2700’ over and straight above the spot where I had begun. I saw Moritz then, above the launch, and he came over near me and passed below to head into the valley low. I cruised around and I heard Mark come on the radio, asking where I was; 2500’ over and still south of launch. He was getting his PG ready and I was chatting a little with Dana and boating around really easily. The climbs were from 2-300fpm and once in a while I had 7-800fpm and bouncing against the inversion it was getting really really cold. Mark launched after Moritz landed. I guided Dana to where Moritz was when I saw my car with my Sting on it from the air, and then watched as Mark got high on the ridge and I went over to join him. He was all over me and I kept running to the north. I tried to go over the lake but I lost so much altitude on my way every time that I went running back to the mountain for more “up”. After almost two hours I had just about had it with the cold. Dana had run Moritz back to his car and was on her way back to the LZ. Mark and I headed out into the valley and I set up to land… badly. Still can’t get the hang of the rocking upright thing with my “new” harness. Aah well, Mark’s landing was as good as all PG landings- easy and perfect. We packed up and headed to Morningside.
P.S. I downloaded my flight on Google Earth and it is pretty cool to see my low save in 3D!


 
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