flightblog@wonderwinds

First real flight of the year. For an Arizona pilot, that is embarrassing. :redface: Oh well eh? A couple of weeks ago I got a scooter tow flight from Greg Berger on a Falcon225 in a small breeze with tiny little thermals happening. Didn't try to do anything with them though. Just wanted to launch and land. Holy crap what a nerve wracker it was to do that little flight too. All sorts of rusty. Uncomfortable. Not Current.

So anyway I had the chance to fly this weekend. So I did. I had a driver (thanks Lori - you rock!) and a mission to bring a glider from Phoenix up to Mingus area, so my plan was to transfer the glider along the highway then haul up to The Craters and take a flight or two. Maybe even soar a wee bit if possible. As it turns out Kris (the owner of the glider I was transporting) was up on Mingus and pretty much wasn't gonna meet me to make the transfer. He told me there were 15 gliders set up on Mingus and it looked like it was gonna work all day up there. Hmmm... Well we had just stopped for a bit to eat, and Mingus is generally a morning site, but I figured we'd head up there and see how it looked. I knew I would be there late, but so what: could always drop off the glider and head up to The Craters after that. Plus if it was looking really good I'd set up because Mingus is a beautiful launch to fly from.

Got up on top really late. Saw one pilot (who shall remain nameless) standing on launch in what seemed to me to be an awesome and long cycle. Hmmm... I decided to set up and drop off the glider in camp. After I dropped off the glider in camp the pilot had hucked off and was doing pretty good, so I started setting up. All through the time I was doing that, and I always was slow at building a glider, it would die off then cycle in again really nice. Hooray! When I had my harness on put on my helmet it decided to blow down. WTF? :confused: About that time some of the people who flew that morning were back up on top and started giving me shit for needing a better plan.

Christ on a stick working 12 hours a NIGHT 3 or 4 nights a week does NOT lend itself to flying. Especially when Sunday is always one of the nights I work. No one seems to get that. People ask what days I have off. Jeezus I have EVERY DAY off. It's the nights I don't have off. Ask a day worker "what nights do you have off" then tell them how they can do something that'll take all night...

Where was I? Oh yeah. Helmet. Blowing down. Pilots back up top. I told Jerry "it was blowing straight in 3 minutes ago!!!" He says "well shit man get up on launch cuz it'll come in again!!!" We talk with exclamation points is the thing. So up I go. Hang check - good. Get up on the ramp. Cycle starts in. Pick it up. Right wing starts climbing fast. Oh shit get the right wing down, as I put it down again. Cycle straightens up and Jerry tells me so. Felt it get better too. Picked it up again. All mine. CLEAR! Run run run run FLY! FLY!!! :biggrin: Got into the boot of the cocoon really easy this time too. I added a weak link to the line I have that holds the boot off the ground, so I could slip my hand into the weak link and still have the boot dangling lower than it was with just the line on my pinky finger. Good plan, as that damned boot was pissing me off to get into. Anyway I was in the boot shortly after getting off the ramp, so I turned east and went prone. And up. :cheeze:

I don't have a lot of experience with this glider, so anything is better than nothing because I gotta learn it ya know? Found enough up to be over launch, so I came back in to the ridge and sorta played there, but didn't feel comfortable with the limited altitude I had over terra firma, so I headed out front. Found something, worked it, worked it, worked it, and managed to get into it. Strong too. Mister Vario was telling me I found peaks in the 800 up range. Took that to maybe 600 over launch, and drifted with it till I was almost over the ridge, but lost it. No worries. I used the altitude to show off a bit. Dork that I am, I went for a nice little cruise back over launch, then to the west and south of launch figuring maybe there's something there to play with. Found something too, so worked it again. This time I got in better a bit easier, but still not easy for me to thermal this thing. So I hit like 1100 over launch and figured that's enough. I could use what I had to carry plenty of altitude out to the LZ and play with the glider a bit. Learned something too.

I was flying the glider way too fast. WAY too fast. Like tit speed when trim was out at my forehead. Holy crap no wonder I couldn't get into anything. So I flew it a lot slower for the rest of the flight. Found major sink on the way out. Always do, no biggie. As I passed over the bailout the windsock down there was showing pure east. Oh fuck that. I am NOT landing at Cottonwood (which means south) when it's blowing from the east. No way no way no way. There are places outside Cottonwood to land, and that was my plan. I did not want to try the bailout since Lori didn't know where it was and I didn't want to hike a mile in the desert. After the bailout I found a little bubble, and had more than enough altitude to work it, so work it I did. Slower this time, and I managed a 300 foot gain in stuff that never broke 200 up. Never centered completely on it, but enough that I could climb in it. Hooray for climbing in small stuff! Also saw windsocks that were limp, and saying that the last thing they felt was south. Okay so maybe it's the airport after all?

Bled off what I needed to and set up my final. I let the bar out to trim way too fast though and climbed a bit. No wind. Too much altitude, at trim. This is gonna suck eh? Overall not bad though. Kept it level and pushed a flare a bit too late, so ended up on the wheels.

Half an hour in the air with an 1100 foot max over launch. Biggest climb was - I think - 600 or 700 feet. Best climb was 300 feet though. That was nice. Oh and Jerry was on my nose wires, so he wins the prize if I die before I fly again. Also met some people I haven't seen since my flying hiatus. People who thought I quit flying. Simply not the case, but certainly not going flying or hanging out with pilots. I'm still building a scooter tow rig. Got the rig on a trailer and the line for it. Gonna have a reasonably local pilot do some custom welding for my fair lead and turn around pulley mount. Then gonna have to go to The Craters to get the line off it's shipping drum and onto my scooter drum. 10 thousand feet of line. We think it'll all fit, but I'm going to have to transfer it with some pressure on the line. The little "paraglider-like" kite I have will provide a load, and The Craters can probably provide enough real estate to get all the line off the shipping drum.

Tonight is a work night. I couldn't stay up past 11p last night, and couldn't stay in bed past 9a this morning. Gotta work from 6p to 6a, and I'm on my feet the whole time. THAT is why I got out of flying for so long. Physically speaking, it's killing me to try to fly AND be able to go to work. That's the reason I stopped flying: I simply can't be at a launch site ready to fly, and be able to go to work the next day. No matter how much I want to do as little as possible today, I've got to move all the crap in the garage to be able to put the glider away, then put all the crap back in the garage. So I'm going to go to work tired, and stay up for 12 hours whether I like it or not. And I don't. And it's not fun.

Oh well. No complaints. They can fire me one day and I don't care. I'll lose the T-Bird, and probably lose the truck, but so what: it's a shitty job that pays extremely well. It also screws me out of hang gliding, so fuck 'em. I'm looking for work, and I'll find it. Next job can't be much worse than this one...