flightblog@wonderwinds

Firstly, went up to do some towing with Greg last weekend and get a lesson for Jason. I played the role of "nice guy who helps", but didn't mess with Jason's lessons at all. He did good based on feedback from Greg and Marshall, but don't tell him that! He's going to get married this weekend, so no lesson for him. Foolish choice if you ask me, but then again I'm not young and in love. blech. Anyway Mark was there too. He's a very advanced student who should be looking at his rating(s) very soon. Jake is a pretty good student pilot who flew my Eagle, and Gene is a brand new student who learned that flight doesn't just magically happen. Marshall is an instructor apprentice, and Greg is the resident instructor up that way.

So I got three tows at the end of the day. Nice soft air to play in, and no need to break it down and haul it up a mountain or hill again. Cool, but not the point today.

Memorial Day at Dry Canyon got canceled due to weather. Specifically, no weather for so long that the Forest Service closed the forest due to the risk of fire. Once before they let the club have their fly-in, but not this year. Too bad, but maybe everything works out in the end. As it turns out, my new glider STILL isn't here. Greg supposedly went out to Wills Wing to pick it up yesterday (Friday) but I'll believe it when I see it. About a week ago Greg told me that Wills told him they took another look at the glider to make sure everything was hunkydory and realized they didn't include my tail fin. Vertical stabilizer if you're into multisyllabic words. Fuckers! The U2 doesn't come with one but I wanted it because BC says he'll never fly a glider without it. I might not use it, but I might and can't if I don't have it available. Anyway they threw a new keel in and added my fin for me. Plain white so I can decorate it as I see fit.

Bottom line is I'll be seeing my glider for the first time on the day I was going to travel back to Alamogordo for Memorial Day at Dry Canyon. That'd suck as I don't really want to get to know it when I'm busy taking their site XC record from them. Now it seems I'll be flying at Mingus instead, which works out just as well I guess. XC from Mingus isn't as friendly as XC from Dry, but I'll have quite a few flying sites to take the new ship to, so all is well.

Oh and get ready for the First Annual Labor Day at Mingus Mountain Fun Fly-In. Last year's 30th anniversary at Mingus gave some of us the idea to make an annual event of it, so some might see this as the second annual, but given that this one will be completely different than last year I'm okay with calling it the First Annual.

That's all folks!