October 15-16

This weekend was supposed to be my second training session but the sunny, calm, and clear weather we had last week apparently isn't the norm in Ohio so Saturday ended up being too windy to train. According to John, my instructor, the weather on Sunday looked promising for some new novice (H2) pilots to get a chance to do their first foot launch from the local ridge at Richmond Dales. I thought it would be cool to meet some of the experienced pilots and watch them fly so I went down too. Even with an early start, the wind was pretty gusty and wasn't blowing strait into the launch which would make a foot launch more difficult. One pilot did find a calm enough window to launch in and around noon he had a 15 minute flight on the ridge. It was my first time watching someone foot launch in person and he made it look easy. Although, I was later told he was one of the local legends and pretty much everything he did would look easy. While I didn't get to touch a hang glider today, I enjoyed seeing how the local pilots do their thing at the ridge and I did get to meet a number of them. I'm eager to get some solid consecutive training weekends in so that I can progress enough to join them for these ridge sessions.