Sunday, April 29, A breezy day at Wesmar

Saturday was windy and rainy in places but Sunday had a decent chance for clear skies over wesmar. And despite being a little strong, 5-10 mph on the forecast, we expected to be able to soar. Our tug pilot and 6 other pilots came out today. And while us H2's scooter towed, the experienced pilots aerotowed. Few people climbed much, but were able to work lift and extend their flight times. My best was a 15 minute flight off of an 1100 foot tow. I climbed to 1600 at the highest but quickly sunk after that. In general the lift was small and punchy and hard to stay in. One of my fellow H2's, named Matt, brought out a newly acquired glider, a Wills Wing Sport 2. John test flew it and Matt had his first flights on a glider other than the Falcon. I think he got a longer flight than any he had had before and the landing was decent, so I'm sure he's happy with his new equipment. I also acquired a used, but very fancy, Flytec vario and flew with that today. It's got loads of feature to learn about and settings to customize but the most interesting thing about it is that it will record lots of data about my flights in a convenient format that I can publish. So I may have some additional media to add to this blog in the future. Or more truthfully I will have another medium in which to analyze my flights in the hopes of learning something new.

I think I flew pretty well, but had one bad landing where I flared pretty early. I ballooned up as high as 10 feet and landed hard. Otherwise I had 3 no step landings. Because of the switch-y wind and variable conditions I consistently came in with lots of speed in order to avoid the hazards of the ground effect. By the end of the day though I was exhausted and sun burnt and a little dehydrated. I need to better prepare for the warm sunny days by bringing sunscreen, and extra water.

Next time the club is Aerotowing, I might get a chance to start training for that too! It would be nice getting dropped off at 1500-3000 feet and getting to fly from there.